by Sharon Lee
They had been kinder to Faldana than they had to him. That was what he thought at first. They had taken her Ranger leathers, as they had taken his, and given her a plain white robe. Her wrists were bound with common rope and her flesh was whole. She walked as one in pain, however, and the subtle mauves of her aura showed flarings of a sickly yellowish green.
"Meri!" Her broad face lightened with joy—then horror, as she took in his situation.
"Oh, my love—"
"Silence!" Lord Wing strode through the door, swinging his arm out in casual cruelty, striking her across the face.
The auras filling the room flared into one lightning bolt of crimson, abruptly dissipated as Michael's elbow went into his gut.
"It ain't the worst he can do," the man snarled.
"Correct." Lord Wing stood before Meri, his hands fisted on his hips.
"Michael?"
"He won't talk, your lordship. I didn't figure he would."
Lord Wing nodded. "The time has come for strong measures, then."
"I cannot tell you what you want to know," Meri said, struggling with the mangled notes of the man's tongue. "If you are not as we are, you cannot do what we are able to do."
"Yes, yes. You've said so, over and over. You're a brave man, and your ability to withstand pain is both prodigious and admirable. However, I must have the information, and time has become short. Therefore, I am forced to resort to . . . less savory means. Michael."
Michael stepped forward, grabbed the robe at the shoulders and tore it from Faldana's body. He put her on the stone floor, not ungently, fastened her bound wrists over her head and each leg wide. After making certain that the bonds were secure, he rose and stepped back against the wall.
"Very well." Lord Wing pulled an object out of the pocket of his coat. Meri stared. In form, it was not unlike a male member.
Except that it was cast from poison-metal.
"Remember," he said, holding the thing so close that Meri felt the dire essence burn his cheek, "that you can stop this at any time."
Chapter Nineteen
Even the kitchen garden at Artifex was kept formal, with not a creeper nor a blossom out of place. Becca had yet to discover the stern policeman-gardener who kept all in order, for she had met no one during her extensive rambles around the grounds.
Possibly, she thought, opening the gate and stepping out onto the flagged path, the Gossamers kept the gardens as part of their duties, or perhaps it was simply fear of Altimere's displeasure that kept his plants so orderly. At least, that was what Elyd would have her believe. On the other hand, Elyd would have her believe trees spoke, sprites danced in the water garden, and dangerous monsters lurked hidden in the wild wood beyond Artifex's perimeter—or, rather, beyond the point where Altimere's kest extended.
Elyd was kindness itself, and Becca was quite fond of him, not the least because of his care for Rosamunde. But she suspected that from time to time he told her bouncers, to amuse himself and relieve the tedium of answering her endless questions.
Not that his answers were always helpful.
When she had asked him how it was that fosenglove, teyepia, and tea rose were all at bloom together, all she had gained was a sideways look and a muttered, "Who will tell them otherwise?" In answer to her inquiry as to why it was that she never saw him in the garden or the kitchen, he had shaken his head and answered very slowly, as if he thought her wits had gone wandering, "Because my place is in the stables, unless the master wishes otherwise."
And when she asked if he had served Altimere long, his only answer was a blank stare, as if he had forgotten how to speak.
It was, she supposed now, as she walked along the pathway away from the water gardens, perfectly possible that Elyd did not know how long he had been in Altimere's service. The days were so pleasant and unruffled that it was difficult to keep them separated, or, indeed, to experience any sense of time's passage. As if, thought Becca, events marked time, and, lacking anything save peace, its passage was suspended.
Certainly, the inconstancy of the growing season did not help one keep a sense of time. Since she had come here with Altimere—eighteen dinners ago, she told herself scrupulously—she had observed two serath bushes, side by side, in what appeared to her gardener's trained eye to be in identically robust health: one dormant, and the other blooming madly. Closer inspection showed her that this was not unusual. Here, a stand of fosenglove waved its belled stalks in the breeze, while three steps further on, there were only the broad leaves and the shy head of a new stalk barely peeping beyond them.
If the plants themselves could not keep the seasons . . . Becca shook her head, pushed open the second gate and stepped into a small, chaste garden very nearly under the branches of the wild wood. This point, as near as she could tell, was the furthest from the house, and, to hear Elyd tell it, Altimere's influence. To be honest, these factors—and Elyd's insistence upon the monsters inhabiting the wild wood—had made her spurn it as a likely spot for her own garden. Unfortunately, a thorough inspection of the rest of the grounds surrounding Artifex produced no other place so promising, and Becca had returned today to study it once more and be certain that her memory had not played her false.
It had not.
Broad-leaved climbers bearing glossy blue fruits that Elyd had told her were winberige clambered over the stone wall, daring even to shoot tendrils into the shadows cast by the untamed trees beyond. From the right, the path was lined with penijanset, wagging their copper beards in the breeze. To the left an escort of lord's purse tossed their golden heads.
Directly before her was an elitch tree, the gold and copper flowers pooling 'round its sturdy trunk, and a stone bench beneath.
Becca walked over to the bench and sat down with her back against the firm trunk. There had been an elitch and a bench in her garden at home—perhaps it was that circumstance that had convinced her that this was the only place for her herb garden?
But no. It was the fact that here, unlike any of the numerous other gardens at Altimere's house, there existed land that was not already being used for plantings. Beyond the brilliant swirl of flowers a silky expanse of meadow grass rippled like water under the gentle breath of the wind. Despite the nearness of the wood, and the presence of the elitch, there was sun enough for those plants that loved it, and shade a-plenty for those shyer and more delicate. She dared to believe that her few seeds would find this land as nourishing as the other plentiful growth. If she planted thoughtfully, she might make a more restful transition between the flowers in their ordered imitation of carelessness and the untamed trees beyond.
It was settled, then, she thought. This was the spot. She would ask Altimere's permission this evening, and request the services of an under-gardener, or a pair of Gossamers to turn the soil. The way things grew here, she would have a proper medicinal garden started by the time she and Altimere had shared eighteen more dinners.
Meri leaned his elbows on the balustrade. The rock was warm and slick against his skin, the salt breeze sharp as a slap on the cheek. Below, the sea assaulted the shore, its black surface picked out in the pale reflections of stars.
He could, he thought carefully, jump.
Of course, there was no guarantee that Sea Hold would allow him to do so, nor that Sian had not seen fit to place a tiny geas upon him, after all—for his own good. He might test either proposition merely by mounting the rail. If he was wrong—about Sea Hold, about Sian—then the agony might stop now.
If he was right, there would be alarms, and guards, and a room deeper inside the hold, without windows.
His stomach clenched, threatening the return of the meal Sian had insisted he eat.
"'What a strange sort of coward you are," he murmured, salt puckering his mouth. The storm he had tasted earlier would make landfall at the turn of the tide, he thought absently, or he was a lubber and the despair of his mother's kin.
Not that he wasn't necessarily so, in any case.
The wind freshe
ned, scraping along the rock face, whining in crevasses, the various pitches conspiring to sound like conversation. Indeed, the Sea Wise said that the dead rode the storm wind and would speak with any brave—or foolish—enough to say their name.
Meri closed his eye, listening to the wind gabble in the night.
"Faldana?" His voice was hoarse; his inner eye seeing her as he had seen her last—broken, drained, and defiled on the dead stone floor in a windowless room on the very wrong side of the keleigh.
The wind gusted, throwing grit into his face, twisting his hair in wet, spiteful fingers, but Faldana did not answer him.
Or, thought Meri, as the first driven raindrops bruised his face—perhaps she had.
"Thank you, Nancy." Becca smiled at her maid in the mirror. "That's lovely."
The tiny creature gave one more, and quite unnecessary, pat to the glossy dark curl trailing in counterfeit abandon from the orderly cluster at the top of Becca's head. The curl drew the eye from imposed perfection, past Becca's left ear, following the curve of her cheek before plunging to her shoulder, and spilling wantonly over the swell of her breast, bringing the admirer to a doubled delight.
Altimere had explained these things to her, and she learned them, despite secretly finding it more than a bit silly to be referred to as a "treasure of art." That this mode pleased Altimere must be her only concern, and that she learn to dress herself to please him her only care.
Not that she needed to keep such close care as all that while Nancy tended her, her maid being, in Becca's opinion, even more of an artist than the master of the house.
The glass reflected a sharp flutter of jeweled wings; Nancy was never patient with wool-gathering.
"The amethyst drops, do you think?" she asked, and watched in the mirror as the tiny creature tipped her head consideringly. She hung in the air just behind Becca's shoulder, her wings moving in a blur of garnet, green, and gold—then suddenly darted off across the room.
Becca shook her head, noting the sensation of the renegade tendril feathering across her tender flesh. Altimere had been teaching her other things, as well . . .
A flash in the mirror warned her of her maid's return, bearing, not the expected ear-drops but a deep purple flower from the bowl on the bedside table. Hovering so close to Becca's right ear that she could hear the hum of the busy wings, Nancy delicately seated the flower among the careful curls, then zipped away so that Becca might study the result in the glass.
Study it she did.
"Yes," she said eventually; "I see. The ear-drops would have distracted the eye from the fall of the curl."
Behind her, Nancy turned a handspring on the air. Becca bit her lip, careful not to laugh. One did not laugh at the infirmities of others, and it was no fault of hers that Nancy could not speak, and must thus make her feelings known in—other ways.
Why Altimere had chosen not to give the maid a voice, Becca did not know. He had turned her questions on the point, asking if she wished to always be gabbled at by a mere servant. It would, Becca thought privately, have been nice to have someone else to talk to—though of course she did have Altimere and Elyd.
The Gossamers likewise being voiceless had led Becca to suspect that the lack was far less what Altimere termed "deliberate design," and much more because he hadn't known how to go about it. He was a proud man, and proud of his skill as an artificer, so naturally he would not wish to admit to such a thing—and Becca had stopped asking him to give Nancy a voice.
And, truly, aside from that one small thing, she could not wish for a better attendant, though it be a mute mechanism that drew its ability to move from the sun's rays or no. It had been Becca's whim to name the tiny creature "Nancy," for it was not overtly female, its naked silver body slim and sexless as a dragonfly. Still, a lady's maid ought to be female. . . .
Nancy zipped between Becca and the mirror, and darted toward the door, which as hints went was quite broad enough.
Becca laughed and rose, her skirt rustling like leaves. She smiled once more at her reflection, approving the deep purple bodice with its lacing of silver ribbon, the single sheer sleeve covering her right arm, while the left remained uncovered and unadorned. The bodice hugged her upper body, the skirt merely clung, reproducing every line of her limbs in shimmering, silver-shot amethyst. She recalled the first time Altimere had dressed her for dinner—that had been before he had given her Nancy—and her insistence that she must wear at least one petticoat. He hadn't laughed at her silliness, but had taken her onto his knee and petted her, explaining that custom was different in the Vaitura. So patient and kind . . .
She laughed again, softly, and nodded cordially to the woman in the glass, with her fine eyes and her glowing brown skin. And here was Nancy, darting back from the door in an agony lest she be late, flitting around Becca's head, the agitated flash of her wings almost seeming to crown her with flames.
"I'm going!" she said, and did, relishing the cool slide of fabric along her naked limbs as she walked. Her feet in amethyst and silver slippers made scarcely a sound as she moved down the hall. She paused at the top of the ramp leading to the receiving hall, and there he was at its foot, wearing plain black shirt and trousers, his hair flowing loose upon his shoulders.
He looked up as she hesitated and smiled, opening his arms. Laughing, she ran as fast as she could down the slippery wood, until he caught her up and swung her about, his lips brushing the tops of her breasts before he set her on her feet.
"Yes," he said, stepping back, the better to observe her. "You are extraordinary, Rebecca Beauvelley."
She laughed up at him. "If I am, it is because you have given me the means to be so."
"Now, can that be true?" He tipped his head, his amber eyes teasing her. "No," he said, after a long moment of consideration. "No, I cannot allow that to stand, zinchessa. You were extraordinary when first I was privileged to look upon you, astride a quarter-Fey horse, full of kest, and with an aura to challenge the sun's pallid rays. If I have done anything, it is only to give you the scope that is your birthright, and to guide you toward performing great deeds."
He offered her his arm and she stepped forward to put her hand on his sleeve.
"Shall I do great deeds, then, sir?"
"Oh, undoubtedly you shall," he murmured, leading her toward the dining room. "Together, we shall accomplish marvels."
* * *
It was just the two of them at dinner, lounging on pillows with the meal laid out on the low board between, and music wafting from the golden harp in the corner. There was a specific order in which to address the meal: first, a cup of sorbet, which dried the mouth and prepared it for the tart cold soup; after the soup, one savored a plain cracker before moving on to the next course of skewered vegetables—every possible vegetable, from every season, presented at one time, flavored with butter and hot-salt—removed by another cup of sorbet, and then on to cheese and fruit and wine.
Conversation was as delicate as the foodstuffs. Altimere had chosen this hour to tutor her in his language, and her part was scarcely a complement to the meal. However, he never complained, nor lost patience, but smiled and encouraged her, and leaned over to feed her choice bits from his own hands when he considered that she had been especially clever.
After the meal, they repaired, as always, to the terrace overlooking the night garden. There, Altimere sat in his chair, and she curled onto the cushion at his feet, leaning her head on his knee.
"Altimere?" she murmured, as he stroked her hair.
"Yes, my child?"
"May I plant in the elitch garden?"
"Now, which is the elitch garden, I wonder?"
"It is—" He traced her ear with a light fingertip, and she shivered deliciously—"Mmm."
"Mmm, indeed," he agreed, his rich voice languorous. "But the elitch garden . . . ?"
"It is in the shade of the wild wood," she said, while his fingers followed the errant curl. "An elitch, and a bench beneath it, guarded 'round by penijans
et and lord's purse—surely you remember it, sir!"
"I believe I do have some vague recollection," he murmured, cool fingers against her cheek. "But it appears that it is planted already. Unless you do not care for penijanset?"
"There is . . . some space merely given over to grass," she explained. "I would like to plant an herb garden there, if you will allow me the service of an under-gardener—or perhaps some Gossamers—to dig the beds." His fingers stilled. "I will be most careful, Altimere," she added, wondering if she had at last overstepped.
"I wonder," he said after a moment. "This herb garden—I apprehend this would be for the raising of medicinal plants?"
"Yes," she agreed. "Aleth and easewerth . . . fremoni." She hesitated. "I am an herbalist," she continued, when he said nothing more. "I do not wish to lose my lore."
