Kis’eh’t cocked a brow at them both. “Should I ask...”
“No,” Reese and Irine said in unison. Glancing at the Harat-Shar, Reese said again, more firmly, “No. I was just having a moment.” She held out her hands, expecting and receiving the kiss he’d wanted to bestow on them. “You look perfect, as usual.”
“Practice,” he offered, eyes dancing. “One learns to make oneself presentable.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the coronet,” Reese said, touching her forehead. “But I can see how repetition makes it easier. Once you make the necessary compromises.”
“Like?” Kis’eh’t wondered.
“Like no corsets. Ever.” Reese wrinkled her nose. “And also, shoes I can run in.”
“You learned that lesson well, didn’t you,” Irine said, one ear sagging.
“I’m definitely done being the helpless heroine. As much as possible anyway,” Reese said. She looked up at her fiancé. “What brings you down so early? I thought you’d be reading, or relaxing. Like you promised your cousin. And me.”
Hirianthial chuckled and tucked her hand under his arm after another kiss, this time on its palm. “Peace, Theresa! I was resting, I pledge you. But it is in fact my cousin who brought me down before time—she sent a message saying she is on her way.”
“Early?” Irine asked.
“I’d better see how far along we are in the kitchens, then,” Kis’eh’t said, and excused herself to jog away.
“I suspect it is for Araelis’s sake,” Hirianthial said to Irine, quieter. “As she has no one to host for this year.”
Reese wondered how he could say that with such equanimity, and guessed that after fifty or sixty years of not being Jisiensire’s host, he felt removed enough from it to not miss it the way Araelis must. Poor Araelis! Reese had thought through the loss of her husband, and understood intellectually the loss of Jisiensire’s tenants... but she hadn’t realized what the New Year’s Feast would be like for a lady without a people until she’d had a people of her own. And she wasn’t even as attached to her people yet as someone like Araelis must have been, having known her tenants for decades.
“If she’s on her way, she’s probably already here,” Reese said. “We should go meet her.”
“Let us,” Hirianthial agreed. As they headed for the doors, he said, “Normally we would hear the Queen’s arrival announced long before she reached the keep; guards at the gates of noble Houses know to announce the Royal House. I suspect the Pad is allowing her to catch them unawares.”
“I bet she likes that,” Reese said. “Particularly since her arrival is probably announced with something loud. Like trumpets.”
“How well you know us, my lady.” Hirianthial paused and finished, amused. “And how well you know the Queen already.”
Reese snorted. “It doesn’t take long to notice her sense of humor runs to terrible jokes and questionable pranks. What takes time is believing it.”
That got her a full laugh, one long enough that she looked up at him and grinned.
“Yes,” he said, opening the door for her. “Yes, that is exactly it.”
Passing through under his arm, Reese said, “You know what? Leave the door open. Both of them. The hall’s not going to get cold anymore, not with the climate control working. I think it’s a good symbol.”
He glanced behind them at the warm, bright hall festooned with roses and boughs, and the feast taking shape on its tables like treasure, glittering with butter and glaze. “In many ways. Yes.”
That was how they received their queen, then: standing on the steps in front of the open doors to Rose Point castle, which so long had stood empty and barren. Liolesa came without entourage, wearing a gown in midnight blue more in keeping with her usual wardrobe, but no crown, and with her head high and her cheeks and nose pinked by the brisk wind. Behind her was Araelis... but Araelis wasn’t alone, and Reese gasped when she saw the two women accompanying her. It couldn’t possibly be, but...
“Alet,” said the Harat-Shar Natalie Felger, author of all of Reese’s favorite romance novels, “I am very glad to see you again.”
“You know one another?” Araelis asked, surprised.
“We met on Harat-Sharii,” Natalie said, and confused and delighted Reese with a hug. Pulling back, the pardine grinned, whiskers arching. “I see you found your way, ah?”
“I did... yes. You helped!” Reese exclaimed. And then laughed. “And it looks like you found yours, doesn’t it?”
“The paintings have come home at last, and so have we,” Natalie agreed. “I’m glad it happened while I’m still young enough to enjoy it.”
“But old enough,” said her niece, Shelya, “to sit back and let the rest of us do the hard work!” She hugged Reese with one arm, protecting a platter. “Hello, alet! I hope you don’t mind that we brought a cake?”
“Is it the lemon one you fed me before?” Reese asked, and then laughed. “It is, isn’t it.”
“Authors,” Shelya said, “like a certain symmetry to things. I think it’s from all the years spent tidying up loose plot ends.”
“Of course they do,” Reese said. It was incredible to be greeting the two Harat-Shar she’d had dinner with less than a year ago, when that dinner seemed to have happened in some other lifetime. How badly she’d needed Natalie’s empathy! And that sense that even “normal” people could have history with the Eldritch, and come away changed. Reese could still remember the wonder of those cached paintings, so richly pigmented and so intimate in their portrayal of a friendship she’d thought improbable at the time. In retrospect, the questions that night had raised in her had led her, inevitably, to this moment now.
“Yes,” Natalie said, satisfied. “You really have found your way.”
“I’m home,” Reese said, simply, and smiled. “And I’m thrilled to offer its hospitality to you. Please, come in!” She looked into the courtyard. “Is it only the two of you...?”
“For now,” Shelya said. “The rest of us are one week out! But Aunt Natalie and I... we’ve always lived ready to pack up and move the moment we were called.” She grinned at Liolesa. “So we were the first ones here.”
“Fitting,” Liolesa said, “for Sellelvi’s direct descendants.”
Araelis, Reese noticed, was looking much more present than she had at the Vigil. “Well, let’s not all stand out here in the cold! Come on.”
The Hinichi had come downstairs while they were outside talking, and the savory courses were filling the tables and adding to the delectable mélange in the air. It was going to be an amazing meal but even with their additional guests Reese doubted they’d finish it all, which made her wonder if there was some custom about leftovers. Gifts to the poor? Of course, Firilith had no poor because it had almost no people, and Freedom knew whether the state of other Houses’s provinces warranted that kind of codified charity. And wasn’t poverty a contextual thing, anyway? A lot of the Eldritch aristocrats thought they were rich, but they also thought having enough candles to light their mansions at night was the height of luxury.
Truly, she was in the right place. If there was anyone who understood how you could be poor by one standard and rich by another, it was her.
The remaining dishes made it to the tables, and brought with them a parade of Laisrathera’s Eldritch servants and priests along with the rest of the Tam-illee. The resulting bustle looked like a miniature of the Alliance under one vaulted roof, and if Bryer and Kis’eh’t and Allacazam—and herself—were a small representation of their species compared to the Tam-illee, Hinichi, and Harat-Shar, there were still more aliens in one place than she thought the world had ever seen, and that idea took her breath away.
…but her tenants were still missing.
An hour after the food had been set out, Reese cornered Irine. “Have you heard from Sascha?”
“No,” Irine said, already pulling out a telegem. “I assumed he was on his way.”
“They should have been he
re by now.”
“Let’s see what’s holding them up, then.” Irine tapped the telegem awake and tucked it against her ear. “Ariihir?” She listened, frowning. “Really?” Another pause. “You’re sure? All right, I’ll tell her.” Taking the gem off, she said, “He says they’ll be there in three hours.”
“Three hours! They were supposed to be here now! What am I going to do with all the guests for three hours?”
“We could start the feast without them,” Irine said, uncertain.
The moment she heard the idea, Reese knew it was wrong. “No.”
“I guess it’s a good thing we’ve got the food in stasis fields, then?”
Reese grimaced and looked at her guests. Three hours! What to do? And yet she had to do something. She couldn’t keep them waiting with nothing to do but mingle, no matter how much they seemed to be enjoying one another’s company. Eventually they’d get tired of it and want to know why they couldn’t eat yet, and that would introduce awkward questions.
Fortunately, she’d gotten fairly good at improvising.
Stepping onto the pedestal reserved to the dance caller, Reese said, “So, it looks like we’ve had a delay. What do you say we take a tour of Rose Point? I’ll show you the amenities and talk about what we’re planning.”
“Show them the horses!” called one of the Tam-illee.
“Show us the horses!” another of the Tam-illee said. “We haven’t all had a chance to see them.”
“And maybe the gardens?” Reese said, eyeing Bryer. When the Phoenix inclined his head, she said, “And definitely the gardens!”
As the group began to drift toward the great hall’s doors, Hirianthial joined her. “Trouble?”
“I hope not,” Reese said. “But we’ve got three hours to fill, and we can’t do it with the traditional stuff.”
“It will go by quickly, my lady. You will see.”
Thankfully, Hirianthial was right. Reese wouldn’t have thought the Tam-illee would be entertained by a trip through a castle they were intimately familiar with already, but she hadn’t counted on their reaction to the addition of the Hinichi and the visiting Harat-Shar and even the servants hired by Felith from the capital. All of their guests had questions, and Taylor and her friends were eager to discuss their efforts. If the tour turned into an impromptu brainstorming session strung across half the property, well… that was typical for Laisrathera, and Reese didn’t mind. They needed to test their ideas, and since doing so allowed them to imagine a bright and beautiful future, everyone enjoyed it as much as they would have something more obviously recreational.
The entire party was in the courtyard, heading back toward the great hall, when Reese heard the wagons. She hadn’t planned on a spectacle, given how delicate the forthcoming scene was probably going to be, but no one showed any signs of wanting to retreat into the hall to oblige her. Reese resigned herself to handling her disappointment in front of an audience and turned to face the gates. She wasn’t a fool; if Sascha and Terry hadn’t returned immediately, it had been because there’d been a fight. And you didn’t win fights with Eldritch… not on the first round, anyway. She’d be grateful if Shoran and Talthien returned with the dogs; more than that, she knew better than to expect.
Hirianthial drew alongside her on the left. On her right, Liolesa, in a rustle of skirts. Reese knew her tension was communicating too clearly when the latter said, “Calmly, Theresa.”
“Easy for you to say,” Reese muttered. “You’ve been doing this for six hundred years.”
Liolesa’s mouth twitched, but she didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. Reese knew the Queen could have hidden her amusement with those six hundred years of practice. This was the Eldritch liege-lady’s equivalent of offering her vassal a shoulder to lean on, and if nothing else she’d earned that much. Reese remembered Felith’s long-ago explanation of draevilth, the lines of duty that linked tenant to lady to queen; she might not have the lady-to-tenant part down yet, but the lady-to-liege part was working fine.
The wagons pulled up... and scattered all Reese’s thoughts.
They were full. Completely full.
As the horses came to a halt and the two drivers hopped down to open the doors and put down the steps, Reese did a quick headcount. Every single one of her tenants had come.
The dogs jumped down first, groomed to gleaming and dressed for the holiday: Moire had a silver ribbon around her neck, and Graeme a red. They sat neatly alongside the steps and watched the Eldritch process out of the carriages, and Reese no longer perceived them as too fancy. They were just right, now, exactly perfect. One by one, the Eldritch lined up in front of her by family, the same way they had in town when she’d distributed the Lady’s Day gifts. When they’d all disembarked, the priestess stepped forward.
“Lady. We know we are tardy. If you have hosted the feast without us, we will be glad to deliver our gifts and depart.”
“It’s New Year’s Day,” Reese said, meeting her eyes steadily. “I won’t eat without my people.”
A long pause, one she felt like a wind through the crowd even though no one moved.
“Then, we would give you the gifts,” the priestess said, quieter. “And be glad of your hospitality. I shall begin.” She set a sprig of greenery wrapped in gold and silver ribbons on the ground in front of Reese. “From the Goddess and Lady’s priestess, a sprig of the uliienire, which brings fertility and good health to wives and mothers.”
Reese bent to pick it up, deciding she’d have to bring a table next year if they were going to leave her offerings on the ground to keep from accidentally touching her. She found herself concentrating on minutia like this because she was trying not to cry. Hadn’t she remembered there being some custom about greenery and kissing? And here her Eldritch had brought something, but even better. The little sprig smelled piquant and bright and the stem’s prickly bark chafed her thumb as she rubbed it. “Thank you. All the blessings She can give, I will be grateful to accept.”
The priestess nodded and stepped back. She was replaced by the senior land servant, the one she’d given the binoculars to. And he’d brought…
“For you, Mistress,” he said, proudly, going to one knee to open the bundle in front of her. “There are no monsters in Firilith anymore, God and Lady be praised… but hunting we have in plenty now that so much of the land has returned to the wild.”
The pelts he revealed were breathtaking, all in shades of white and ivory and bisque. Set all together like that they were overwhelming, stacked almost as high as her knee: so much fur! Hirianthial was the one who lifted the first. “Ice deer?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“And northern mist bears,” the land servant said, satisfied. “These particular pelts have been in our family for decades. We rarely hunt—it is perilous with so few of us—but I think now things might be changing. And if you seek goods of value to trade with other Houses, Mistress…”
“Oh yes,” Araelis said from Hirianthial’s side, drawing abreast. “Those are beautiful. And ice deer! Few people hunt them anymore.”
“They are magnificent,” Hirianthial agreed, draping one of the pelts in Reese’s arms. “But these, my lady, should be made into something for you to wear, as they are a gift to you from your tenants. There will be other hunts. Will there not?”
“Yes, my lord,” the land servant said. And bowed. “God and Goddess bless you both for it.”
“Thank you,” Reese said. “I… I’ve never had anything so grand. Not until I came here.”
Was that too much sharing? Would they resent her for not being rich all her life? But no, in his eyes there was appreciation for her admission. He bowed again and stepped back.
The next man to step into place before her she knew, at least. “Shoran-alet.”
“Mistress,” he said, smiling. “Your beast servant comes before you now with his gift.”
Reese put her hands on her hips. “It had better not be the horse back.”
His mouth flex
ed but he controlled what she was sure would have been a laugh; it was in his eyes when he looked at her. “No. But related, my lady. Your present was generous, but I would not have that gift reduce your herd. With your permission, I would like to give you her breeding rights.”
A murmur now, which she ignored; she imagined the rest of her tenants had already expressed their opinions to one another about her overly generous offering to a mere servant. What arrested Reese was Hirianthial’s reaction, because he’d become very still. There was a trap in this gift somewhere, but where? She didn’t know the first thing about where to find it either—what did she know about breeding and husbandry?
But someone else did. “Irine?”
The tigraine wiggled her way out of the crowd. “Arii?”
“Can you explain?”
Irine glanced at Shoran. “Ordinarily if you own a non-sentient animal, you also have the right to rent their bodies to make babies with other people’s animals. If he gives you the breeding rights, then you get to decide what horse has sex with Shoran’s horse, and who gets the babies. Otherwise, that would be his decision.”
Reese rubbed her nose. Typically blunt, but at least the explanation allowed her to see the trap. “Is that how it works here?” she asked Shoran.
“Yes, Mistress. Yon tigress explains it well.”
“Which means in another generation—horse generation, not Eldritch generation—we’re back where we started, with you horseless and having never been enriched by the gift,” Reese said. “Because you’re going to outlive Beauty—” Better the Universal translation than to trip up on the Eldritch name—“by centuries.”
Behind them, Talthien muttered, “I told you she wouldn’t like it.”
Shoran inclined his head, just the slightest of nods. “Do you not want the gift, my lady?”
And that was a trap so big even she could see it coming. “No. I honor the gift and I do want it. On one condition. No, two conditions.”
The rustle that went through the crowd was loud—or was it that the crowd was otherwise so quiet that any noise at all seemed magnified? Scanning her tenants’ faces, Reese said wryly, “I guess conditions aren’t usual. But this time, you’ll accept them, and then I’ll accept your gift, and we all eat happy. All right?”
A Rose Point Holiday Page 19
