The Shifu Cloth (The Chronicles of Eirie 4)

by Prue Batten

  No matter what potions and remedies he ground up, such remedies as Ebba had taught him – borage to banish melancholy, thyme to calm his throat and banish coughs, fennel for debility – nothing worked. In desperation and hoping that the place would unlock a memory, maybe even a voice, he dragged himself to the cove of Isabella’s disappearance on the exact anniversary of that night.

  *

  The evening was clear and calm, the welkin wind moist and cold, bringing a tingle to the back of Nicholas’s neck. As he sat on the rocks at the side of the cove, an image of his cousin being tied and hooded flashed through his mind. He tried to banish the traumatic moment until he was ready, instead thinking on his own place in this world of mortals in which he lived.

  But as always, it came back to the difference that seemed to striate his very soul, the difference between he and she.

  Why is it that the sum of one’s parts are so affected by one of those parts being so altered from the rest?

  For so long he had quietly envied Isabella, envied that she was completely all of one thing – mortal – while he was neither one nor the other. A mixed up melting pot of Færan and mortal and as alien one to the other as sugar is to salt.

  I’m a confusion where one side must by its very essence, cancel out the other.

  But all that aside, he cared for his cousin as if she were gold and it was that above all else that reduced him to what he was as he sat on the rock in that hideous cove. He had not been able to protect her that night and he a Færan.

  *

  ‘Poor miserable Færan man.’

  A thrilling voice disturbed his self-indulgence, setting the hairs on his arms to attention.

  He turned around and found a Ceasg standing behind him, her lustrous tail shed and in place, shapely legs. Her beauty drew his breath away. She was as tall as his shoulder and her form was clothed in sea-green fragments that undulated in the welkin wind. He chided himself for ignoring the unsettling fingers of the little zephyr earlier, knowing it implied something Other was close by.

  Her hair waved in the eldritch breeze, silver tresses touched with the light of a winter’s frost, her skin as pale as snow, nacreous, like the lustre of the pearls that laced through her hair. Her hand touched him and he knew if he had been mortal, he would crave more of the same. But he was of Færan blood and sensed danger, as though he had just put a finger into an icy stream. He stood up as she came closer, so close that as she spoke, cool breath with the tang of sea dusted his neck.

  ‘Poor Færan. Searches for his sister without luck it is said, and lost his speech as well. I can hear your thoughts, Færan. Speak to me with your mind voice.’

  Alert as never before, he sifted through his thoughts, allowing only those the Ceasg would approve of to come to the fore.

  ‘It is true,’ he offered politely, knowing the waterwight could be malevolent.

  She looked him over, a glint at the back of her eye smacked of short temper.

  ‘Nicholas of the Færan has spent too long wondering and wandering. Cassiope of the Ceasgs has helped once and has waited long for him to return here to help him again.’

  ‘What do you mean, ‘helped once’? I’d remember one such as you.’

  She simpered, walking around him, trailing cold fingers over his chest, round his neck, flicking the leather buttons of his shirt open. One…by one…by one, until his chest was laid bare.

  He let her move, his wits sharp. Something tingled, an intuition.

  ‘Have you not wondered how you did not drown so long ago as you lay face down amongst the ripples of approaching tide? The black men gave little care as they sped away.’

  Nicholas’s heart began to thump, the woman having returned to her position in front of him, a scrap of sea-coloured wisps falling to reveal a perfect globe of breast. She sidled closer again, so that he was able to see the bluish veins tracing across her flesh. She reached for his hand, placing it on her cool skin so his palm lay across her nipple. Her fingers moved to his exposed chest, running along the lines of muscle – lower and lower to his belt. Seduction incarnate…

  I feel nothing. She is iced poison and I feel nothing.

  ‘Did you help me?’ His guts clawed as a wicked giggle filled the space around them. ‘Then you must have seen the men, where did they go?’

  Like a weather change, she whipped her breast back into the confines of the fabric and her face shut down.

  ‘Færan is an ungrateful churl. Cassiope wastes her time with him.’

  She flung herself round and was about to walk back to the shoreline when Nicholas grabbed her arm.

  ‘I am thoughtless. But then all Færan are – you know this. It’s a universal truth.’ He held her chilling hands in his own and ran a touch over her palm, letting one finger linger. Her breath sucked in.

  ‘What you say is true.’

  She kept her face turned from him.

  ‘If it was you who saved me, I am in your debt. What did you do?’

  ‘I turned you over and I nursed your head, stroking away your hurts until the tide changed and you woke. Do you not remember?’

  ‘I remember the black men and then a kick to my stomach and head. Nothing more. Which is a shame,’ he added as he gentled her with his fingers, shifting them back and forth as if she were silk. He bent his head and kissed her palm.

  ‘Færan knows many tricks,’ she sighed, sitting on a rock, indicating with a tip of her head that he sit by her. ‘It is true the black men hit you very hard. I thought if they had been your bane that you would have died from the force. Men were very strange. Voices were sharp and unknown.’

  He lifted a hand and ran it through her waving silver hair, wrapping a tress of it round his hand and pulling her toward him, lowering his head to her neck.

  ‘Did you see them leave?’

  He licked and felt her shiver, his own body stone cold at the touch of tongue to skin.

  She sat very still and then spoke words that pierced him like sword strokes.

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. If Nicholas of the Færan will follow me and let me love him then I will take him to where they have gone.’

  It was his turn to sit unmoving and then, ‘And if I do, shall it take you long to show me where they have gone?’

  She pushed hard at his chin, almost a punch.

  ‘Færan does not believe me.’

  ‘Cassiope,’ he stood and towered over her, ‘give me proof that you know something and I will decide.’

  ‘Black men disappeared with great speed as if they had never been. Like ghosts of the sea.’

  ‘Then tell me, Cassiope, if they disappeared, how do you know where they have gone?’

  ‘Feckless Færan.’ She stamped her foot. ‘You have tricked the woman who saved you. If you were not already cursed, I would bring such an oath down upon you.’ She spat at him and stormed toward the waves. ‘Cassiope won’t forget, Nicholas of the Færan.’

  ‘I owe you for my life, Cassiope, and I will honour the debt,’ he thought-shouted after her. ‘But I will not enter your world.’

  He watched her swim away, a splash of furious phosphorescence.

  Make love to her? Never.

  He buttoned his shirt and dragged the tails into his breeches, goosebumps lifting in the after-chill the Ceasg left behind.

  I am cursed.

  But how?

  And by whom?

  Chapter Three

  Isabella

  ‘Isabella! Wake up!’

  A hand shook her and she stirred, feeling pain where her head had slumped forward in sleep onto the loom. Her fingers came up and rubbed at the rigid indentation across her forehead.

  ‘Madame Koi is coming. Quickly.’

  The kitchen maid hovered as she balanced a tray of bowls with one hand and pressed Isabella’s shoulder with the other.

  Isabella dragged at wisps of hair and tucked them behind her ears, smoothing her robe. She was exhausted, as limp as plants without water. For two days she had wo
rked with only minutes of snatched sleep and the occasional bowl of food or tea and her clothing was as creased as she felt.

  The doors slid apart, pushed with a latent temper so they fetched up hard against the wall. The walls themselves shivered. Madame Koi stood poised, diminutive and poisonous as an asp. Isabella believed the woman had been pretty once, for her face was oval and her features even, but the running of this house and the need to meet the expectations brought of being the mistress of the First House of Merchants had drawn lines in the white skin and thinned the mouth.

  Her lips were painted a startling red and her jet hair, although streaked with grey, was pleated and ornamented instead of the simple bun of a matron. Thus she stood in the door, her robe a picture of fire-breathing dragons as each pin in her elaborate headdress shimmied and shook with every breath.

  ‘Tuh! The smell!’ The kitchen maid translated as the mistress flicked open her fan with a sharp click and fluttered it under her nose. ‘Well, woman, is it finished? For all that my staff has run after you these two days, it had better be.’

  Isabella stood and bowed over her hands, relying on a translation of her words.

  ‘Yes Madame Koi. I am just removing it from the loom.’

  ‘It seems passable.’ The woman grunted, reaching out to stroke the fabric, her fingers resting on the fibre. ‘The Master will expect a great return on this and if he doesn’t get it I shall make sure you are punished. Fold it carefully and pack it, as it must leave as soon as possible if it is to be at the market in a month. Then make use of the bath-house; you stink worse than a fox-spirit.’

  As she said this last, her hand clenched into the sign of the horn and she backed from the room, her heavy silk robe with its fire and brimstone hissing on the doorframe.

  ‘Isabella, you were lucky I came to get your bowls. If Madame had found you asleep, there’d have been hell to pay!’

  The kitchen maid, Lu, or Lucia as she had been known in the Marshlands from where she had been stolen some ten years before, put down her tray and took up the completed fabric by one end. Her hands were crippled and bent with years of work in water that was invariably as cold as ice or as hot as Hell.

  She had no special skills and had been sold as a kitchen maid because that was what she had been in the Marshlands – a wench in an inn, able to hold a tray and fill mugs with wine and ale, a hard worker. There was nothing pretty about her – a heavy face, a line of dark hair above her lip but she had taken to Isabella and mothered her when the young woman from Pymm was sure she would die of a broken heart.

  ‘Thank you, Lucia, I couldn’t survive without you.’

  Isabella gave the older woman a hug. Together they stretched and then folded the fabric, the colour flowing like molten copper.

  ‘Aine, it’s lovely! What is it? It feels like silk but it’s not. Oh! The colour moves. Look at that.’

  As the light from the open door lit on the fabric, the colour flowed from copper to rust and even to green, as if the very newest branches of the elm had bled into the fibres.

  ‘It’s half silk and half paper and they call it shifu. Master Koi found some old scrolls in his library that were made in this very same way. They had outlasted many of the other scrolls and there was one that told of the mechanics of shifu-cloth. Being the First House of Merchants, he was allowed to weave the cloth because it is only a First House rite. This is the first time for three hundred years that it has been done. I suppose I feel privileged, once I forget about being a slave.’ She moved towards Lucia as they made their last fold, taking the bulk from the kitchen maid. ‘It has the durability, warmth and strength of paper but the lustre and feel of silk. As to the colour,’ she paused and her eyes welled. ‘It’s the colour of my mother’s hair when she sits under a tree in the last light of day.’

  And I wrote a message on it, Lucia, begging my stepbrother to find me because after you told me we were farthest north by northwest, I knew I had to get a message out of here. But I am not going to tell you because it is my secret, my risk.

  ‘Now now, you’re tired and in need of a bath, food and sleep in that order. Go to the bath-house and clean up, put on fresh robes and then come to the kitchen. You can sit in a corner and eat some chicken soup and Cook has just made dozens of the bread-buns the Master likes.’

  She grinned, tossing her rope-like plait down her back. She left with the jostling tray, her pattens clattering as she moved down the steps to the snowy ground, for the staff were not allowed to walk along the verandah.

  Isabella watched her go, staring at the marks left in the snow.

  Comfort is a relative thing. For you it means you sleep in the kitchen annex where it is warm. For me it’s another thing altogether and one I shall never have again unless I can escape this place they call the Han.

  *

  She lowered herself into a circular wooden tub that was filled with warm water. Whatever else Madame Koi might be, she thanked Aine for the fact the woman liked her household to be washed and tidy, as if such things should reflect on the excellence of the First House of Merchants. Twice a week staff were allowed to bathe, the women first and the men after. Lucia and Isabella always sat together, sharing a moment of warmly scented freedom.

  As she sat now, swooshing the warmth through her aching fingers, sinking so the water lapped at her collarbone, she wondered at Lucia’s equanimity. She had no desire to leave, to escape, maintaining that her position in the House of Koi surpassed the life she had in the Marshlands where as often as not the publican sent her to bed his customers.

  Since being abducted to the Han and entering the First House, she had been left alone, unlike most of the female slaves who were required to produce at least one male child. She had a bed, a bath, good food, and clothing. She was allowed to attend festivals and had a rest day in every ten working days.

  ‘I tell you I’m content. Look at me. I’m no painting that’s for sure. Men in our land saw me from the hips down and here I am free. Why would I want to go back?’

  Isabella sighed.

  Master Koi had never been anything other than respectful towards his talented weaver and dyer but lately there had been a look in his eye, as if he weighed and measured her. It unsettled her and made her chafe at her bonds even more.

  But what bonds? What ties me here?

  And there was the nub of it. They were so clever, the people of Han. No slave had any idea of the route in and out of the place.

  Or so it seemed.

  Until Lucia, creeping to the bucket in the middle of the night, heard the Master talking to someone as porcelain cups were clinked and the pouring of fermented rice-wine lapped at the night silence.

  ‘Next time you go south by southeast, look for a girl with sewing and embroidery skills for the House of Koi.’

  ‘But I sold you the best I have ever found, why do you want another?’

  ‘I agree,’ the Master’s voice had exhibited the faintest tinge of concern as he replied. ‘The girl is quality but perhaps there is too much quality in her to be a house seamstress. I have plans for her.’

  ‘The Imperial House?’

  ‘I think so. She is a good girl and beautiful. She shall be our gift. New blood.’

  Lucia had left then because she heard doors sliding further along the verandah, but what had really caused her to leave was the presence of something on the outer edges of the garden – something spine-tingling and a musky smell on the night breeze. As she relayed the story to Isabella, she made the sign of the horns and shuddered.

  ‘Aine it put the wind up me.’ She shivered again and then returned to the first part of Master Koi’s conversation and pushed Isabella’s chest with her finger. ‘You could live in luxury. The Imperial House wants for nothing except a suitable bride for the Son.’

  ‘I would still be a slave doing a slave’s work. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘No – the Master said ‘new blood’. I think he plans to gift you to the Son. You are very lovely and you can
read and write and play music. You are too good to be an Imperial Seamstress let alone a seamstress in the First House of Merchants and I think the Master knows this.’

  ‘Better a seamstress than a whore.’

  Lucia’s face had hardened, her mouth tightening as if someone had pulled a string.

  ‘Exactly why I prefer living here than south by southeast.’

  ‘What?’ Isabella grabbed Lucia’s padded cuff. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I prefer…’

  ‘No, not that. The other, you said something about south.’

  Lucia shrugged carelessly as she stood, her shoulders set against Isabella. ‘I said south by southeast as if it matters. I heard that visitor say it to Master Koi. And you shouldn’t care either. If you try to escape, they cut off your feet and leave you to die.’

  Isabella’s heart fluttered, hope grabbing at the vague directions thrown at her as Lucia went to leave.

  ‘Lucia, I’m sorry. Don’t be angry. You are my only solace. Please?’

  She held out her hand and Lucia looked at it and then at her friend’s face and her slow smile crept back, softening the hard, lightening the dark.

  ‘Oh Isabella, you’ll be the death of me you will.’

  She squeezed the younger woman’s hand and left.

  Isabella whispered quietly as she watched the kitchen maid clatter away. ‘I hope not, Lucia. But I am farthest north by northwest, aren’t I? That’s all I need to know.’

  *

  The year leading to this point had been a painful journey for the confident, sometimes brash young woman from the Pymm Archipelago. Every day, she could hear the word pride murmuring around the eaves or in the leaves of the garden. Pride – the downfall of many an ego. What then, had happened to her pride in this strange place? Certainly what skills she had were no longer viewed with pride. They were a means to survival.

  She suffered the whip-end of Madame Koi’s tongue for all her attributes as the woman drove Isabella to finish goldwork dragons on a gown when her fingers were bleeding from the gold purl and chafed from the cold because Madame wouldn’t waste a brazier on her. She had put up with a painful wound, evidence of jealousy after an imperial messenger had cast a lusting look in Isabella’s direction. Madame Koi had hit her hard with her ivory fan. The blades had cracked with the force of the blow which left a welt deep enough to see bone. Lucia had bravely stitched it together and it now left a white tattoo across Isabella’s hand.