A Rose Point Holiday

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “First cut of new year,” Bryer said, handing it to her. “For you to wear.”

  Touching it gently, Reese said, “Let me guess. It’s a reminder that every year the roses die, and every year they grow again.”

  “That too.” He gaped his beak at her. “Good application of lesson. Also private message. To the keeper of the aerie goes the gift. It says she is worthy.”

  The honor of it lanced her in the heart… just before she laughed. “And the flower dies, so that’s a reminder too, right? ‘Keep being worthy.’” She turned it, smiled. “Wait, there’s more too. The little imperfection makes the rest of it look better, right? Or maybe ‘it’s all right not to be perfect.’” Which one was it? “It’s all of it. You put a lot of work into this one present...!”

  He folded her hand over it. “All good things are made with effort. Families. Gardens. Worlds. Lives.”

  “I understand.” She dipped her nose to the rose and inhaled, felt the fragrance sweep into her and open her throat and heart. “Thank you, arii. I think I know just what to do with it. But first... have you seen Talthien or Shoran?”

  “Stables,” Bryer said, talons clicking on the flagstones as he returned to the ladder.

  Naturally. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll leave this here where I can find it again on my way back inside.” She set the flower on the mantel before she headed on her errand.

  The two Eldritch were indeed in the stables, along with Terry, Sascha, and the two Guardkin. Her arrival caused a cessation in the conversation as every gaze swiveled to her. Reese put a hand on her hip and said, “All right. What new problem do we have to solve.”

  “I told you she’d know,” Sascha said. “Boss, those people from the village have to walk here. All three hours of the trip. Four. Six. Whatever. I suggested we go get them...”

  “And I said it would be rude.” Terry was leaning back against one of the stalls. Naturally the horses weren’t nibbling his hair. It was only her head that they liked to slobber on.

  “Is he right?” Reese asked the Eldritch.

  Talthien muttered, “It is not rude. It’s stupid to think it’s rude. The catechism says to find offense where none is offered is violence against the God and Lady. But it doesn’t matter because they’ll never say yes.”

  Reese expected Shoran to agree with Terry, so she was surprised when the other man didn’t say anything until Moire leaned over and prodded his leg with her nose. He reached down to pet her ruff, smiling. “All right! No more cold nose, please. I’ll stop brooding.” Straightening, he said, “Mistress, I think... you should send yon tiger. It’s a long walk in winter. Not everyone should be making it. Not everyone would, in fact, under ordinary circumstances. They’d stay home. If you sent something to bring everyone back… well, that would be the first time the entire village could attend a New Year’s Feast like this.”

  “But?” Reese said, hearing it in his delivery.

  “But I fear Talthien is correct,” Shoran said. “It may offend. Your conveyances are convenient and empowering, milady, but... they are very modern.”

  “Is that the only problem?” Reese said. She eyed Terry and Sascha. “This is such an easy fix I don’t know why you haven’t figured it out yet. What am I employing you people for, anyway?”

  “Our sterling good looks?” Sascha offered.

  “Or our heartwarming banter,” Terry said, grinning at the tigraine. “But obviously not our brains. Go on, alet. What do you want us to do?”

  “Build a carriage,” Reese said.

  “A... what?” Terry said carefully.

  Sascha was laughing though. “Oh, that’s perfect! You want us to make some kind of fancy princess carriage big enough for a village?”

  “I don’t think they come that big,” Reese said. “So maybe you’d better make a few smaller ones. Don’t they haul hay in wagons? Make fancy wagons, attach the horses to them, and go get the Eldritch. It can’t take you long to whip something like that together, right?”

  “We’re engineers!” Terry said. “We can do anything. Except Taylor is going to blow a relay when you tell her you want to waste time on this.”

  “It’s not wasting time if we use it for every holiday,” Reese said. “And for... I don’t know. Hay rides? Harvest festivals? Do they do that in real life?”

  “Hay rides and harvest festivals,” Sascha mused, tapping his finger on his mouth. “That sounds—”

  “Don’t say it,” Reese warned.

  “Promising! I was going to say promising!”

  “Sure you were,” Reese said dryly. “Anyway. Can you do it, Terry? I’ll authorize whatever disruption of schedule is necessary to use the genie for the parts.”

  “Oh, we shouldn’t need the genie for almost any of it. This will be a great chance to put the machine shop to work.” Terry chuckled. “I admit, half of the fun of this job is never knowing what we’re going to do next. Anyone can toss together a typical Alliance town. This assignment? I’m configuring a gem grid one day and trying to figure out how to rusticate a well so it looks like someone built it before there were power tools the next. It’s a real adventure.”

  “Is it really that different from what you’re used to?” Sascha asked, curious. “After living with your own Eldritch lord all your life?”

  “I say that especially after living with Lord Lesandurel all my life—and all his too. He came to the Alliance and adapted to us, you know. This... this is new.” Terry grinned, ears perked. “I’m off, then. Give us an hour, maybe two, we’ll have what you need, alet.”

  “Great. And put my coat of arms on it or something! If I end up with the fancy coaches, I might as well get it right.”

  Terry saluted her and jogged out of the stable, leaving her to deal with the stares of the Eldritch. “I assume that coaches are fine?” she said, suddenly worried. “I can call him back—”

  “No!” Shoran exclaimed. “No, it’s... just... that ladies usually do not send coaches for their people. We have always walked. It’s expected.”

  “But it should be all right, right?” Sascha asked. “Sending carriages is less ‘this is horrible and foreign’ and more ‘this is strange and eccentric’?”

  “Just so.”

  “I can handle being eccentric,” Reese said. “You two will go down with the wagons? Coaches? Whatever.”

  “Of course,” Shoran said. “The dogs have not yet seen the village. They will want to. Yes?” He looked at them, received two nods. Moire had been sitting next to him, following the conversation like any other participant might have; Graeme had as much of himself in Talthien’s lap as could fit, with the youth leaning against one of the hay bales.

  “Can you talk to them?” Reese wondered. “I mean... can you hear them, the way Talthien can.”

  “I can, yes,” Shoran said. “Though I don’t think I can do it as easily.” He glanced at Talthien. “This matter with the dogs will take a great deal of negotiation, so it is for the best that they can speak to all of us, if necessary.”

  “They just prefer not to,” Talthien said. “Graeme says it’s complicated... something about it being easier to hear one person the more you practice with them? But he doesn’t know if that’s just him and Moire, or if it will be like that for all the dogs.” Graeme glanced up at Reese without lifting his head and puffed out a breath through his nose. “Moire also says she’s not anyone’s dog. She’s Graeme’s mate, and she refuses to make an attachment to anyone who would part her from him.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Reese said, and wondered how the inevitable jealousy was going to fall out when the dogs picked their companions. Fortunately, being at the top meant she got to delegate at least some of the initial procedural issues to the people most involved with them, so... “You’ll have to tell me how it goes.”

  “Yes, milady,” Talthien said. “And if the coaches are to be ready soon, I should go dress myself and groom my friends. Sir,” to Shoran, “you should tell her your choice!”

>   “Oh?” Reese said, interested. “Did you finally decide on a horse, then?”

  Shoran had flushed, but he gave her one of the abbreviated Eldritch nods. “Yes, Mistress. If it will be no trouble to you, I’d like the rabicano filly.” At her blank look, he nodded toward one of the brownish horses, a mare that looked like she’d been frosted in white.

  “Wonderful,” Reese said, meaning it. She’d half-expected Shoran to put the choice off indefinitely as a way of politely wiggling out of accepting the gift. “So what will you name her?”

  “Mistress?” Shoran asked, stunned. “You can’t mean me to name her! It should be your choice. You intend to breed her… she will be the foundation of a line of foals. She will need an appropriate name to be noted in the books!”

  Reese said, “I don’t know if you want me in charge of naming a stable full of horses. I had enough trouble with mine... and I named her Penny, after a small copper coin from Terra.”

  “It could also be a girl’s name,” Sascha offered. “Short for Penelope.” He grinned at her expression. “Hadn’t thought of that, had you?”

  “No,” Reese said, liking it. Bringing herself back to the task at hand, she said, “It’s New Year’s Day, Shoran-alet, and she’s your horse. Give her a good name to start the year with.”

  “Then… I shall name her Eiluionase,” Shoran said. “If… that sits well with you, my lady. It means silvered Beauty.”

  “Better not rename Penny Penelope, then,” Sascha said. “The way things are going, you’ll be needing at least one horse that answers to less than three syllables.”

  Reese grinned. “I think it’s great,” she said to Shoran. “Beauty it is.”

  They left a very proud man to finish tending his charges and prepare for the journey back to the village. Strolling alongside her toward the keep, Sascha said, “Those horses are all going to end up with high-minded names. It’s going to be a barn full of Courages and Faiths and Duty-until-Deaths.”

  Reese chuckled. “And one very lowbrow Penny.”

  He grinned. “Sort of obvious, that metaphor.”

  Reese snorted. “Don’t work too hard, fuzzy. Remember, I apparently hired you for your looks.”

  Sascha nodded sagely. “I wouldn’t want to sprain anything.”

  She smacked his arm lightly, swayed away from his threatened swat, and wondered when she’d started laughing.

  The coaches were everything Terry had threatened, frothing with ornament and bedizened with her new coat of arms and covered in scrolling filigree metal, a watered gold that was just right in the wan winter sunlight. Nor was that the only thing the Tam-illee had made, because the horses pulling the wagons wore shining harnesses hung with sleigh bells, fancy blankets... and hats. With feathers. It was the most outrageous equipage Reese had ever seen, and that counted the illustrations from her favorite fantasy novels; confronted with it, the only emotion she was capable of was a stunned awe.

  “Ta-da!” Terry said, opening his arms as if summoning with them.

  The pressure in her chest was almost certainly the harbinger of a paroxysm of laughter that would end the boning in her bodice. Reese managed to get the words out level. Mostly. “I... I have no idea what to say, alet. It’s... astonishing.”

  “Are you sure anyone’s going to want to get into those things?” Sascha said from behind her, skeptical.

  The foxine folded his arms, smug. “See for yourself.”

  Tiptoeing closer, Reese peered into the first wagon and found Shoran and Talthien already in it, exclaiming over the cushioned seats and admiring the clever mechanism that allowed the passengers to winch a cover over their heads during inclement weather.

  “You asked us to speak their language,” Terry said. “We heard and obeyed!”

  Reese pressed a hand to her mouth until she was sure she could maintain her composure. “And did Taylor blow a relay?”

  Terry chuckled. “I think the request was so ludicrous she just accepted it. It happens that way sometimes. Little things you fight. The big things have momentum.”

  “Tell me about it,” Reese murmured.

  “Are these things really going to get them here any faster?” Sascha asked, arms folded.

  “Not by much,” Terry admitted. “Walking horses go at a slightly quicker pace than walking people, but your guess is as good as mine about whether they’ll make better time while pulling. The wagons are made of modern materials, so they’re much lighter than real wood would be—that’s in our favor. But the roads here aren’t fantastic.” He shrugged, swished his tail once in a way that reminded Reese of Graeme and Moire. “My best guess is that we’ll be back in the afternoon.”

  “But with more people than could have made the walk, hopefully,” Reese said.

  Terry nodded. “Hopefully. But we should get going if we want to keep to our timetable. Sascha? You coming? That second wagon won’t drive itself. At least, not with horses attached.”

  “Coming,” Sascha said. “We’ll be back, Boss.”

  Watching the two wagons roll out of the courtyard, Reese wondered just how many Eldritch would decide to return in them. Would Talthien’s mother convince the others to stay? She hoped not. But she’d done everything she could not to push them too far, and that was all she could do. If they didn’t come, at least she could celebrate with the Pelted, and with her Eldritch family.

  Strange to say it that way. Her Eldritch family. But when she married Hirianthial, that would make Liolesa her cousin-in-law. And Val and the priests, and Felith... they might as well be family after all they’d been through together.

  Reese headed back up the steps to the front door. It was going to be a good Feast no matter what. She found herself hoping, though, that it would be a good Feast with her tenants, no matter how much more comfortable it would have been without them.

  CHAPTER 11

  Thanks to the magic of Alliance technology, the feast began assembling itself in the great hall by mid-morning even though the festivities weren’t supposed to begin until the afternoon. But stasis fields, warmers, and coolers were basic appliances in Alliance kitchens, and since none of her Pelted residents were willing to do without them, they’d been among the first of the conveniences that appeared at Rose Point. Reese had wondered if her borrowed Eldritch staff would be familiar with them, given Liolesa’s politics... but she’d forgotten that even something as readily available as a warming platter relied on Pelted power sources that hadn’t been available in Ontine before the recent renovations had commenced. Her chef and the kitchen staff thought kitchen appliances were several times more awe-inspiring than modern lighting or heating or transportation. A horse could take you down a road. But keeping the soufflés from collapsing? That was magic.

  Reese traipsed down the stairs and into the great hall, following her nose. She’d spent most of the morning hunting for Allacazam, who’d rolled himself into a dark closet on the second floor, and after that she’d tidied up her clothes and donned the fillet she’d received on Longest Night. Bryer’s flower had been tucked into her hair at her ear, using the fillet as an anchor. She thought she looked about right: the dress split over her leggings and boots, which let her move easily, but it was still a dress, and she’d had it made in wine red because it reminded her of Hirianthial’s eyes. That was definitely a thought to keep to herself, because the twins would never let her live it down if they heard about it.

  When she arrived, Kis’eh’t was supervising the procession of dishes and their disposition on the decorated table with Irine’s help. The selections already looked amazing, even though the main courses hadn’t yet arrived. Right now it was all fruit-filled pastries and almond cookies and two towering cakes on stilts with ridiculously ornate frosting patterns that looked like wallpaper but were actually stamped and molded sugar. There was punch—cold—and cider—hot—along with wine, pots of coffee and kerinne and hot chocolate, and pitchers of water that were remaining artificially cold, though their glass curves were filmed
with steam from sitting alongside the warmer drinks. There was pie, inevitably, because Kis’eh’t wouldn’t have allowed a feast to go by without one, or in this case, several. And so many breads. Braided breads; glazed breads studded with gem-like candied fruits; sweet rolls and salted pretzel-like breads... the smell was overwhelming, intoxicating, yeast and sugar and the deeper, fruitier aroma of decanting wine.

  “I guess the dessert team finished first?” Reese said, setting Allacazam on one of the tables.

  “They’re used to making dessert in advance because it lends itself better to being prepared in stages,” Kis’eh’t said as Irine gave Reese a hug. “Since they didn’t know we’d be putting everything in stasis fields until the guests arrived, they proceeded as normal... and here we are.”

  “With food for a fleet of people,” Irine said. “Thank goodness we have the Hinichi visiting, or we might not eat it all! You look wonderful, arii.”

  “I do?” Reese looked down, self-conscious, and gathered the fold of her skirt. “You don’t think the whole pants-and-dress thing is too déclassé?”

  “I think it suits you,” said a voice from behind them, and there was Hirianthial, wearing a court coat in a brown as rich as a mink pelt, edged in golden embroidery, and by now she was no longer surprised by the succession of stunning outfits he owned... which is why she was able to look down and notice him wearing shoes. Not boots, but actual shoes. They were inevitably opulent, brown suede with embroidery and buckles, but none of that mattered because she could see the line of his ankles and calves. Her expression when she lifted her face made him press a hand to his mouth to hide the twitch at their corners. She started laughing.