Mira's Last Dance

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  He grimaced, but complied. And it began to dawn on Nikys that it wasn’t just his hair color he was planning to change for a new disguise. “Are you proposing to set my brother an example in acting, Learned?”

  “Something like that. We’ll see if it works.”

  His back being turned just then, she tapped her upcurving lips in a prayer of heartfelt gratitude to the Bastard. And when Zihre said, “We can continue this privately in my chamber,” picked up after them like a proper maidservant and followed with zeal.

  She collected Penric’s smallclothes off the line in passing, threadbare linen trews almost dry, and, when the door of Zihre’s chamber closed behind them, handed them silently across. Penric gave her a smile of thanks and slipped them on at once.

  Zihre’s… workshop, Nikys decided to think of it, was nicely appointed; part, no doubt, of keeping her prices up. Nikys had a shrewd guess of just how much coin it cost to run a household with a dozen employees and a dozen more servants, with nightly hospitality added atop. The cleanliness, recently restored, and the pleasant effects of the decorations no doubt helped as well to keep the house’s customers from growing too rowdy, striking a fine balance between inviting and daunting. The furnishings were for the most part simple, storage chests and a wider-than-usual bed. The one personal grace-note was a large collection of masquerade masks arrayed on one wall, inventively decorated.

  The bed was stacked with women’s dresses and undergarments. Zihre had Penric stand while she held up one and then another against his long body, murmuring, No, no… yes, no, and tossing them onto alternate piles. She shook out two extended tubes of stuffed cloth; Penric pointed without hesitation at the thinner. “Hm, yes. I thought those snake-hips would need more, but you’re right.” She fitted its strings around his waist, so that the tube fell to and circled his hips. Another wrap went around his upper torso, and they debated how much stuffing to stick in it; again, choosing less not more.

  “Your hands and feet need work. It’s the details that do the job, you know.”

  “Indeed, Madame.” Cheerfully obedient to her pointing, he sat himself on the bench in front of a small table with drawers and a mirror.

  She dove into the drawers and unearthed several lacquered boxes, full of more grooming tools and makeup than Nikys had ever seen collected together. Zihre set Nikys to work on Penric’s feet, and herself tackled his hands. Such a pedicure was not a task Nikys had undertaken for another person since before she’d married, trading services with like-minded girlfriends, giggling together as they clumsily copied the skills of mothers and older sisters. Well, and the care she had tried to give Kymis, in his later illness, but that had entailed no giggling. By the little smile playing about Zihre’s lips, Nikys wondered if she, too, had fond memories of such youthful hen parties.

  Penric’s feet were hard-used. But the routines of files and scrubs and oils came back to her soon enough, aided by a few workwomanlike tips from Zihre. The bright copper nail lacquer that Zihre handed off to her finished the job, and she sat back, pleased, to find Penric looking down at her with a crooked half-smile. She had not the least clue what he—he and Desdemona, never forget—were thinking of all this.

  “Hair’s dry now,” said Zihre, fluffing it; the henna had caused it to curl more than its usual soft waves. “What do you think? Back? Up?” She rolled the mass of ruddy silk in her hands and twisted it this way and that.

  “Down, surely,” put in Penric, rolling his eyes up in a vain attempt to see what she was about. “To screen my neck as much as possible.”

  “Mm, but one wants to make the most of those cheekbones.” Combs and clips in her clever hands split the difference, resulting in a handful of wisps falling across Penric’s forehead, hair from the sides drawn up to a knot at the crown, and a copper cascade falling free down his nape.

  “Now let’s see…” Zihre’s hands dove into her makeup box. She inked his lashes brown, was dissuaded from applying more than a hint of kohl to his lids, and finished with a mere brush of rouge to his cheeks and lips. For the first time, Penric twisted around to check the results in the little mirror, his henna’d eyebrows quirking.

  “Stand.” Zihre gestured and Penric complied. She shook out a loose length of blue-green dyed linen and dropped it over his head, careful not to muss the hair. After guiding his copper-tipped hands through the sleeves, she smoothed the soft folds down. The sleeves were pieced and pierced along the top edges, allowing pale skin to peek through, holding the sea-colored cloth demurely draped across his collarbones; it dipped lower in the back, veiled by his hair.

  The hem, unfortunately, only fell to his calves. Nikys pointed mutely.

  “Yes, I thought that might be the case. Here, girl, help me.” They collaborated on pinning a second skirt, a darker blue with a ruffled hem, around the roll at his hips and under the dress, which made up, or down, the requisite length to his ankles. A belt of copper links cinching the waist finished the job. Zihre stood back to study her handiwork, lips pursed. Penric blinked back, amiably.

  “Five gods,” murmured Nikys. “That’s really unfair.”

  “Amen,” agreed Zihre, with a vast sigh.

  “What?” said Penric, as the contemplative silence lingered.

  “Never mind, Learned.” Zihre turned and rummaged in another chest, retrieving a pair of clogs raised more in the heel than the ball of the foot. “Try these on.”

  Doubtfully, he sat. “Wouldn’t flat sandals be better? Surely I am already too tall.”

  “Goddesses are permitted to tower.” She tapped his pink cheek. “More to the point, it will change your walk. No use in adorning you like this if the body inside still lurches about like a lad.”

  After a moment, he nodded agreement, and Nikys knelt to adjust the leather straps, careful not to smudge her lacquer-work. He rose again to teeter cautiously around the room. He muttered something in Adriac.

  “What was that, Learned?” said Nikys.

  “Mira says she used to risk her neck in shoes three times this high, on cobbled streets with the canals waiting for a misstep, and that I shouldn’t be such a weakling.” On the second pass around the room he was steadier; on the third, natural, and she wondered what swift tutorials his multi-minded demon was offering him.

  “And what is this tall and elegant red-haired lady’s name and history, Learned?” Nikys asked. “Not to mention that of her servants?” There had been such a rapid succession of tales to account for themselves, she was losing track.

  “Ah. Good question.”

  He headed for the bench; Zihre put in, “Don’t plunk. Dispose of your skirts gracefully.”

  He hesitated, then did so quite credibly. “I suppose I had better be Mira. That will be easiest to remember. History… hm. I don’t know how long this masquerade must last.”

  To the border of Orbas, quite possibly, Nikys imagined. How many days? And they still had no money.

  After a moment’s thought, Penric offered, “I am Mira of Adria, a… retiring courtesan of that realm. Traveling to private service. In our youth, Zihre and I were friends—no, better, we had a mutual friend. We have not met before. In her name, I imposed upon your hospitality when my party was unexpectedly benighted in Sosie. Because, hm, why did we lose our baggage this time…?”

  “You sent it by carter,” Zihre suggested, “and it has not arrived. In fact, it may never arrive.”

  “Oh, very good.”

  “It happens,” she sighed. “Lost in a river crossing, they claimed, but I think it was stolen.” Nikys wasn’t sure if this was an addition to their fiction, or a personal anecdote. It certainly sounded more plausible than shipwreck, and much less interesting, thus needing far fewer supporting details.

  “And your servants?” Nikys prodded Penric.

  “Have not been with me long, but share my destination.”

  “And my brother’s…?” She touched the upper half of her face. Penric gave her a fractional shrug, acknowledging the problem. Any hal
fway-accurate description of the fugitives circulating by now must mention Adelis’s burn scars, unique and condemning. The old masquerade mask that they had modified for him back in Patos to hold his dressings in place was no solution; too obvious a disguise, it would draw the attention of observers just as dangerously as the disfigurement itself. Her eye fell on the collection of fine masks decorating Zihre’s wall, and an idea began to niggle at her. Later.

  Penric—Mira—tapped his, or her, lips with a thumb. He glanced up through his lashes at Madame Zihre. “I should like to repeat my treatment of last night, now. How did you fare by this morning?”

  “Sore and swollen, as you said.” She shrugged. “Not… unbearable. Is it time again?”

  He gave a tiny nod. “There is a balance to be struck between destruction and healing. I provide the destruction, but your own body must provide the healing. Mostly.” The rather merry mood between them had suddenly turned sober, and Nikys’s brows drew down.

  To Nikys’s brief bewilderment, though she had the wits not to betray it, Zihre knelt before him and composedly undid her bodice. Penric frowned and laid two fingers upon her left breast at a patch indeed swollen and reddish, and his face fell into that look of inward concentration that Nikys had learned to mark when he’d been healing Adelis’s eyes. She bit her lip. Wasn’t he supposed to be saving Desdemona’s strained powers for his own bruised heart, right now? She must tax him later on that.

  Zihre’s breath caught, and she went rigidly still for a minute, until Penric’s hand fell away.

  “Still bearable?” he asked gently.

  She nodded and rose, looking down at him with that worried mystification he so often engendered in people.

  “I’ll fetch in my medical case to you later and attend to the draining, and then we’ll see,” he said.

  Another chin-dip.

  “I should prefer not to impose upon you any longer than we must,” Penric went on.

  She waved a hand. “This morning’s amusement repays me for a few baths and meals, Learned Jurald. Or—Lady Mira? Madame Mira?”

  “Sora Mira, if we are to go by the Adriac style.” He pondered. “I must work on my accent. Her accent. Mira spoke little Cedonian. Excellent Darthacan, though. How is my voice, by the way?” He repeated in a higher register, “How is this voice?”

  “Don’t overdo,” advised Zihre. “Tall Mira can be throaty. Or breathy. Just don’t go deep, or loud.”

  “Understood.” He started to stand up, paused, and rose with more conscious grace. “Well. Let us make a test.” He smiled at Nikys. “Shall we go introduce Sora Mira to your brother?”

  Nikys barely controlled her grin, struggling for servility. “Oh, yes please, Learned.”

  Madame Zihre waved them out, turning to restore the tools of her trade to their boxes, and Nikys and Penric exited to the atrium balcony.

  “Let’s go around a time or two,” Penric muttered. “I need to practice this walk.”

  Nikys nodded, and he laced his arm through hers to stroll along. After a moment, she asked, “What were you doing for Madame Zihre, just then? When you laid on your hand?”

  He grimaced. “Just a little healing. I hope.”

  “What sort? Uphill or down?”

  “Some of both. She suffers from a tumor there. Not a tame sort, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh.” She hesitated. “You can do this?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.” He sighed. “I suppose we will be long gone before it has time to prove not.”

  “Is it costly to you? Magically?”

  He waved away the question, a non-answer that made her suspicious. He lowered his voice. “Not as costly as the risk to Zihre of harboring fugitives, even if unknowingly. If things go ill.”

  “Well.” She drew breath. “We should not let them go ill, then.”

  “Aye.” His voice fell softer still. “I should have been able to understand such things better, back in Martensbridge. Tumors and their ilk. There is an element of chaos involved, that I can sense direct, but no prayer addressed to my god ever returned any useful insight. Despite the fact that all five of my demon’s first human riders eventually died of related disorders. Including Mira, come to think.”

  “We are sorry,” said Desdemona, even more quietly. “We did not realize, then.”

  He gave a curiously compassionate nod. “Not your fault, exactly. It couldn’t have been until Umelan—Des’s sixth rider,” he added aside to Nikys, “fell into the hands of the Bastard’s Order in Brajar that you even could learn to balance your chaos, and not to shed it internally unawares.” He ducked his head to Nikys again. “Which is yet another cause for the Temple to pursue hedge sorcerers and secure them to its disciplines, I suppose. Or else divest them of their demons. Not a reason that is widely known or understood.”

  Desdemona vented a tiny growl at the mention of the Temple’s demonic destructions, but did not press the argument. Nikys gave the arm wrapped in hers a little squeeze, and she was not sure which of the occupants of that complicated head she was attempting to console. Was Penric at any such inner risk now? It didn’t sound as if he thought so.

  They fetched up at their chamber door. “Why is it, I wonder,” Penric mused, “that men dressed as women seem more risible than women dressed as men?”

  Nikys shook her head. “I don’t really know. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?” She poked glumly at her well-filled bodice. “I don’t suppose it’s an experiment worth my time to try. Not since I was twelve. Not even with tight wraps.”

  “No. Definitely not worth your time. Or your worry. You’re perfect as you are.” A faint smile curved his rose-tinted lips. “At least Des likes the gown. I don’t know how an incorporeal demon should have developed a taste for fine clothing, but she has. At home I try to do my best by her, within the limits of my calling and purse, but evidently she’s missed the styles of her own sex.” Penric took a moment to compose himself, in both senses, as Mira, then gestured Nikys ahead of him.

  Adelis had used the bathhouse while she and Penric had been so long occupied in Zihre’s chamber, and was dressed again in his least-smelly shirt and trousers, barefoot. Nikys reminded herself to go collect the rest of their laundered clothes off the line soon. As Penric wafted in behind her, the startled Adelis grabbed his hat, tipped it low over his forehead, and stood up. He shot Nikys a glare of dismay.

  “I’m sorry, is this your room?” he managed. “Madame Zihre assigned it to—to my master.”

  “More or less, but that’s fine.” Mira cast him a dazzling smile. “I don’t mind sharing.”

  “I met a new friend,” said Nikys brightly. “Her name is Mira.”

  Adelis scowled. “You shouldn’t be chattering with people out there. Learned… Jurald told us to be discreet.”

  “Please, sit,” Mira said throatily, waving a kind, pale hand. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”

  Adelis, who hadn’t been doing any, looked around as if for some task to feign, found none, and sank back into his chair. Mira sashayed to the bed and sat with a cheery seductive bounce, arms back to support herself, chest thrust out. She tilted her head, somehow making her blue eyes seem to glint like sun on the sea. “I met your sister in the laundry. I do love travelers’ tales.” She kicked a rather long copper-tipped foot against her ruffled skirt hem.

  “What tales have you been telling?” Adelis asked Nikys. His attempted-casual tone did not quite mask alarm. Really, with his hat pulled down like that this might not be wholly a fair test.

  “You are indeed a very strong-looking guardsman,” Mira purred. “So your sister said. I was sure she must be exaggerating, but it seems she understated. Well, sisters. I suppose she is accustomed to the fine view. What’s your name?”

  “A—Ado,” Adelis improvised. His eyes, in the shade of his brim, had grown quite wide, and his scored cheeks flushed.

  Mira clapped her hands. “An Adriac name! Have you ever been there? It’s a very fair, rich country, if one do
esn’t mind that touch of tertiary fever now and then.” She favored him with a limpid moue. “You should pay it a visit.”

  Adelis gave Mira a third look, and a fourth. Nikys could see exactly when the coin dropped, because he yanked off his hat and threw it to the floor. “That,” he said, in an entirely different voice, “is horrifying.”

  “How rude!” Mira sat up, fluttering her hand before her pouting lips. Penric turned his head to Nikys and added in his normal voice, “You know, I think we could really use a fan. Mira knows an entire sign language with them, very nuanced, although it may be out of date. Or Adriac in dialect. There’s a translation project for me. I wonder if Zihre has one she would lend, somewhere in those miracle boxes of hers?”

  “I imagine she would, and I’ll bet you could make her laugh with it,” said Nikys. She sat down on the bed beside him. Her. Them, howsoever. She turned to Adelis. “He fooled you for five minutes. Do you think he could fool a troop of border guards for a quarter-hour?”

  “Unless they’ve taken to stripping travelers to the skin, yes.” He added after a moment, “And maybe even then. If all he needs is to be not-Learned-Penric, Temple sorcerer.” And after another, “I never had any doubt that he could escape the country, one way or another. Maybe even he and you together. That… is not the core of the problem.” His hand crept to his lurid scars.

  Nikys leaned forward, intent. “I had an idea about that.” She glanced aside at Penric. “Is Mira the sort of woman who would have the whimsy to dress her servants in matching liveries?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Perhaps with matching masks?”

  “…Huh.”

  “One masked servant draws attention to himself. Two such servants draw attention to, I don’t know, Mira?”

  “Mira lived for attention,” Penric conceded. “Well, in her public life, at least. Privately too, really.”

  Not scholar Penric’s style at all, Nikys suspected, but he had certainly proved he could rise to any challenge.

  Adelis’s gaze kept flicking back and forth between Nikys and Penric. Or perhaps Nikys and Mira. Penric caught his eye and flipped at the curling copper hair, smirking. Adelis’s lips flattened, and he turned his face away. He was still a little flushed.