Dannor stood back, head to one side as she eyed the handfuls of yarn, and Fareas’ aching eyes slid past her to the design Dannor had made. There were the mountains of the Andahi Pass, Inda standing on a cliff with sword raised. Just below and to the right a tall blond figure knelt, laying a straight sword at the feet of a noble red-haired figure in Montrei-Vayir crimson and gold.
The women became aware of Fareas. They stepped back from the loom and saluted. Dannor whirled around, sidling a quick look right and left before she too saluted, her practiced, dimpled smile flashing.
“The Adaluin is dead.” Someone else seemed to speak with Fareas’s voice.
Exclamations—decent sorrow without much real emotion—brisk offers to see to the messages, bonfire, memorial feast, were like scattered flower petals. Fareas scarcely heeded them. Dannor’s pretty eyes rounded, and her mouth formed a sorrowful “Oh.” Her brow puckered, she pressed her hands together in a posture of surprise and sorrow. But her eyes, they were as watchful as Fareas’ own.
The dizziness Fareas had done her best to ignore began to flicker at the edges of her vision and she sat down abruptly. The last thing she heard was Dannor’s voice ordering steeped leaf, a blanket, a fan, then, for the first time in her life, Fareas-Iofre fainted.
She was unconscious only for the space of a dozen breaths, but she woke with a sickening headache. This sign of weakness from the Iofre, whose calm strength had seemed as unending as a river, upset the household as much as the long-expected death of the prince.
Dannor had been a Jarlan for several years, ever since her mother-by-marriage, the Princess Tdiran, died in a riding accident on the ice. She forced herself to keep her voice sweet, and to make her orders into questions: “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to . . . ?”
By the end of the day, the servants were willing to take her orders as the Iofre was put to bed, the funeral fire organized, the celebration feast in the process of being prepared, and messages went out in all directions.
So when Dannor went in to see Fareas-Iofre, and in her most caressing voice told the princess that Branid and she wanted to marry, she smiled and waited for her reward.
Fareas-Iofre stared up at that lovely face. She had supported Branid’s heirship because the new king had ordered it. Dannor was related to one of the oldest Jarl families. Branid must be married—on the surface everything was as it should be—so what could she say but yes?
Chapter Nineteen
A succession of pleasant days passed in the low mountains of Elsaraen above the vineyards, during which Tau rode, danced, listened, admired artistry in many forms. Not all his mother’s company was old. There were half a dozen young people—four of them young women. All single, all aristocrats, all adept at being agreeable.
One of them Tau had met in Bren during the time he lived under the guise of a pleasure house musician named Angel. At first he’d expected affront. He’d been a hireling, if a popular one. But he had forgotten the magic of rank. She claimed him as a close acquaintance, though in Bren they’d scarcely exchanged a dozen words.
As the days passed, he was aware of an increase in restlessness. This was a pleasant life, but not his life. He knew why Jeje had left once she’d discovered Tau’s mother in Nente, married to a duke. Jeje had surely hated Nente and its court because she hated the unearned privileges and powers of birth.
She hated kings.
As Tau exerted himself to be agreeable, he debated leaving. Only which way to go?
At length he became aware that his mother was expecting someone else. A woman? Matchmaking, to bind him with the ribbons of family and connection?
That night, he sensed a subtle air of triumph when they gathered for dinner. He said, “I think it’s time for me to move on.”
“Taumad.” Saris regarded him in dismay. “Why? Have I disappointed you in some way?”
“Mother, I have had a wonderful time, but I feel the need to get on with my life.”
She did not start an argument with the obvious Cannot you make a life here? “Please. Give me a morning of yourself, then. Just the two of us.”
It would be churlish not to agree.
And so, the next morning, Tau performed his drills in his enormous bedchamber for the last time. When he emerged, his travel gear packed, he found he found his mother waiting with a breakfast set for two in a charming room of pale yellow.
She welcomed him with genuine warmth, but he sensed intent, as with dainty grace she heaped his plate herself, giving him a generous pile of fluffy wheat cakes and pepper potatoes with cheese crumbled over them. Then golden eyes met golden eyes. “Would you like to inherit a dukedom?”
Tau dropped his gaze to the gilt-edged porcelain cup as she poured him freshly steeped Sartoran leaf. He lifted the tiny cup and breathed in the complicated scents that evoked spring fields, mountain wild flowers after a storm. Summer.
When he opened his eyes, she was still waiting for his answer. “Your duke would adopt me, old as I am?”
Your duke. Her only acknowledgment of this clumsy hint at her motivation for her rise in rank was a faint pucker above her brows. He took that in, thinking that she was playing a role. She’d taught him that the life of art required one to live the role of the artist.
But her faint air of regret made him wonder if she did care for her duke in her butterfly way.
“Alas, no.” Her tone was cordial as she brushed her fingers over her waist. “His future duke or duchess is here. But if we present you at court, my husband’s rank, our name, and your manner and mode will bring you a range of possibility. I can name two charming single women who will inherit ancient duchies. I will admit there are few others who combine charm and wit with birth a suitable match for ours, but we could send you to Colend. You would not like Sartor now.”
“Aren’t there already enough Deis in Sartor?” Tau asked, laughing soundlessly. Then he leaned forward. “Mother, I appreciate your offer. You’ve always been generous with me.”
“I’m glad you said that.” It was almost a retort, but her tone was too pleasant, her smile too fond. He sensed he’d hurt her. “I trust you will honor me with your reasons for leaving.”
Few could manage such a request without sounding either pompous or provoking. But he did hear the challenge in her lack of question.
“You know how much difficulty I have had with expressing my true thoughts.” He frowned at his crumbled biscuit, not wanting to sound ac cusatory. He’d never minded running around naked as a small boy, but he had always hated the adults’ well meaning examinations of his every action, idea, and motivation, discussed endlessly as if he was a pet on display. He’d learned early to hide his thoughts—but all this his mother knew as well as he did.
“My reasons have to do with experience. What I’ve done. What I’ve learned.”
“Please go on,” she said.
“Thank you for bearing with me. I broke my habit of silence with Inda and Jeje. As much as I was able. But Jeje is somewhere in the world and hates writing. And Inda . . .” Has Evred between us.
Evred. Tau sat back, nerves tingling. He would not discuss Evred, but he could examine his impulse there. “Well, Inda’s busy being a Marlovan Harskialdna, which is about five men’s worth of work. So I’ve gone back to my old habit of talking inside my own head.”
She tipped her head, her manner attentive.
“It’s easy to say that people ought to be taken as they are, without pretence, or rank. That was why you and I fought so much when I was young. I resisted the roles we learned to play. But civilization—order—seems to be predicated on playing roles, and the more rank one has, the more levels of the pretence.”
“One might say, the greater need for privacy. But do go on.”
“There’s privacy to protect one’s true thoughts from what one says and does while among the others, what the Colendi call the court mask. Then there’s protecting one’s life.”
“Ah.”
“I think I’v
e figured out social hierarchy. It’s the agreement to advance or withdraw in order of rank, because no matter where we are, we humans can’t seem to get away from rank. Somebody has to be first, so either we fight for it, or agree by other means. Face, manners, protocol are the other means.”
He looked up. Saris indicated he should continue.
“You did try to tell me, but I guess I had to learn it on my own. See it at work outside of life in Parayid. So my first experience in the world was shipboard. Rigid hierarchy. No face, but there is protocol as well as force. On board, the captain has as much power as any duke.”
“I was wrong in predicting you would return to me within half a year.”
“I almost did. After two months. But then I met Inda.” Tau shook his head. “Never mind, the subject was hierarchy, and the context my leaving your fine home, and your generous sharing of it. My first storm convinced me why the hierarchy aboard ship worked. Everyone knew what to do, and command was mostly based on experience. My next hierarchy was that of pirates. Based on speed. Skill. Above those, savagery. After that, Freedom Island, where rank was a complex net of naval successes and favor of the harbormaster. In Bren, I was back to aristocrats and entertainers. Then I was with the Marlovans, whose rank is less dependent on birth (though it is certainly present) than on military prowess.”
She had listened patiently. “Your conclusion?”
“The worst are pirates, a distortion of civilization.”
She smiled. “They are at their weakest when they assume the trappings of civilization.”
“I know that you were taken by pirates.”
She laughed. “You could say, in a manner of speaking, that I took them. But I will not bore you about my experiences while you are making a point.”
“I don’t know that it’s worth making.” He spread his hands. “I can respect rank based on merit. I have trouble respecting the unmerited supremacy of birth rank. When I looked beyond the dazzle of wealth, fine clothes, and houses, the brilliance of art and intricacies of fashion, I discovered that in any other hierarchy other than a royal court, one does not have to suffer fools and defer. Pirate leaders are savage, but not stupid, or they don’t last long.”
Saris’ amusement verged on laughter. “Do you consider yourself free from snobbery?”
“I’m a vile snob,” he retorted. “I was raised to be.” And when her eyes narrowed, “My personal hierarchy ranks people according to wit and skill. Style. And power. And so I’m leaving. Mother, why did you give me the education of a prince? That’s not a requirement of the sex trade.”
Saris set down her little gold bread knife. “Walk with me.”
She opened what had once been an arched window, scarcely more than an arrow slit. Someone had knocked out the stone to floor level, widening the window just enough to permit passage. A door of mullioned glass had been fitted in, the central muntins worked around colored glass in a pattern of twining lilies.
Tau followed his mother out onto a narrow parapet. The stone was pale gray, the crenellated edges of the wall weather-worn. This was the oldest portion of the castle.
She shaded her eyes with her hand, gazing over the terraced valley, where people moved about tending the grapevines. In the distance, a carriage rolled along the road, pulled by four horses. Her gaze drifted past and came to rest on a pair of horseback riders proceeding up the steep hill at a sober pace; they vanished round a cliff. Ah.
“Let us return to the matter of masks.” Saris smiled at her son. “You’ll probably remember, if your memory is as clear as mine, that I taught you all about how humans mask emotion. That we in the pleasure houses see people not just unclothed but unmasked. Desires bared, emotions unhidden.”
“I remember. But—”
She held up a hand, her smile wry. “How long before you discovered how wrong I was?”
“When I was taken by pirates. Later when I worked at the Lark Ascendant. I learned that some don’t take off their social mask even if they remove their clothes. Pretence is among the lineaments of desire, just like anywhere else.”
She laced her fingers together tightly. “My mothers warned me, when I was small, but like you, I thought I knew better than they. What did old people know? Then they died within two weeks of one another before I turned fifteen. I knew enough to run the house, and inside I was queen. Everyone deferred to my so-called wit and wisdom.”
“What happened?”
“I discovered the real world when my house was burned down. I still prevailed, but my life was . . . difficult for a time.”
Tau held out a hand in appeal. “I’m not going to rail at you for my upbringing. I know I couldn’t raise a child well. And you were about the same age I am now when you were raising me.”
“I realize now that I was lonely, but at the time I thought to create the perfect being,” she admitted. “And my intention was to send you as an elegant weapon against our family in Sartor, who’d had the temerity to drive my parents out. You were not surprised when I told you our name. How much of the rest have you figured out?”
“That we’re tied in with the Montredavan-Ans in some way, that there was probably a runaway match, and that there was some sort of disgrace or I would have been claimed by cousins years ago. And you kept changing our name.”
Saris nodded on each point. “A runaway match indeed. The Marlovans were angry because a missing Montredavan-An bride upset their marriage treaties, and the Deis were upset because my mother had been chosen to mate with a distant cousin she loathed. Both girls were disinherited. Not that that presently means anything for the Montredavan-Ans. But for the Deis, the worst crime of all is acting contrary to family decree. The Dei family, in their own view, (as you have probably discovered) transcends mere governments.” She dusted her fingertips together. “So they are raised.”
“So you resumed one of the names you were entitled to when you married”—your duke—“his grace?”
“Yes. With the Deis everything is fine, and you are welcome to as much of their attention as you want. I never met any Montredavan-Ans, and what little I’ve heard makes me disinclined to pursue their acquaintance. I will never lay claim to their name.”
“I’ve met a couple of them. Back to why you raised me the way you did.”
“Can’t you guess it? Well, no, you don’t have the crucial piece of information yet. The runaways ended up in Colend for many splendid years. Thence to Sartor, full of art and style. They were initially welcomed by the eastern Deis, probably as a snub to my family; the western Deis. They set up in the pleasure business, bringing the newest Colendi arts to it. Unfortunately, this was just when the current queen was beginning her reign of austerity, and to counter it—she was ruining business—they used their popularity to begin to interfere in politics. I can tell you more if you really want to hear it, but they were invited to leave and not return.”
“Ah. So they returned to Iasca Leror, and set up in Parayid under a new name?”
“Exactly. They were very old before thinking about an heir. The Birth Spell gave them me. Our success by then was known up and down the coast, all the houses with pretensions copying our styles to varying degrees and becoming social centers. I was raised to resent the pretensions of the Sartoran Deis and thought the best revenge would be to send you back to Sartor one day as a prince in every way superior to them.”
“Revenge?” Tau gave his soundless laugh.
“You were to break hearts, then snap your fingers under their noses. Or carry off the most wealthy and prominent of them. The choice was yours, you were just not to reveal who you were until it was done.” She chuckled. “Well, I was very young and arrogant, I must confess.”
“So you will not raise your heir the same way you raised me?” He indicated her middle.
“No. I believe in retrospect I told you too much far too young. There was no chance for discovery, to emotionally comprehend the facts I required you to learn. But I only comprehended that after you were gone.�
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Tau almost laughed. “Had you planned to tell me who I was before sending me to Sartor?”
“Oh, yes. You were to outwit them, you see, and outmatch them at their own games. See beneath their masks.” An airy flick of fingers from an arched wrist. “You know what is said of us in the histories: Deis are kingmakers though never kings.” She smiled. “Let us finish our breakfast in peace.”
They slipped back inside and finished their meal, each feeling far better about the other than they had expected.
At last she smiled. “May I make one last request?”
It was lightly said, and she did not move, but he sensed that this next surprise was also planned. Maybe everything had been planned. Exasperation drove out regret: dealing with his mother was like walking in a maze of mirrors and glass. You think you’ve found the path at last, then walk smash into an invisible deflection.
“Of course,” he said, because of course he could not say no.
“Stop in the blue parlor on your way.” She rose and shook out her skirts. “It’s the little room where you were first brought.” She kissed his brow and rustled out.
A short time later he opened the door to the blue parlor, and then stood on the threshold, stunned into speechlessness.
Chapter Twenty
JORET Dei caught herself up first.
“Where is Her Grace? The footman said she was coming.” Joret narrowed her eyes, offering a friendly smile. “You will be her son Taumad, am I right?”
It took Tau a few long breaths to gather his wits. Was this how people felt when they saw him? But what did people see, besides pretty features? His kin-cousin Joret Dei was even more beautiful than Saris in a way that had nothing to do with youth. There was no mirror maze in Joret’s dimpled smile or dark-fringed blue gaze. There was no vestige of artfulness in her exquisite features or dramatic coloring, no studied grace in the straight limbs clothed in the plainest of riding outfits. Her hair was braided up into a coronet in the style of the Marlovan women when at work; she did not hide her thoughts as her expression changed from doubt to gravity and then interest.
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