House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “You are a mage, then?”

  “I?” Taudde was startled to realize how much he had given away to this woman. “More a theorist than a practitioner,” he said, since he didn’t dare deny it entirely. “But I cannot claim great skill, and you are no doubt aware that Miskiannes lacks strong magic.”

  “But—” began the woman.

  “Leilis?” a servant leaned through the doorway, saw Taudde, and instantly assumed a more formal manner. “My lord—the first of our keiso is ready to attend you, if I may announce her?”

  Leilis, her manner a perfect mask of impersonal calm, withdrew. She left Taudde merely with repeated declarations of Cloisonné House’s desire to meet any wish he might discover, but clearly did not include her own presence among wishes she was willing to fulfill. As soon as she had departed, the first of the keiso entered.

  Taudde tried to collect himself. His part this evening was surely sufficiently complicated without adding the distraction of even the most compellingly ensorcelled woman. There would be time later for less urgent matters, if he could first break free of Miennes’s leash, free of the threat Mage Ankennes posed to him. Those concerns must come first.

  The keiso who had come into the banquet chamber was not as young a woman as Taudde had expected. Though beautiful, hers was a mature beauty. She was a good deal older than he—at least his mother’s age. Her face was delicate in bone, but with an assured set to the mouth and a slightly sardonic tilt to the eyebrows. Violet powder extended the line of each eye and blended on the left side of her face into an intricate tracery of violet and blue that reached from the outside corner of her eye halfway along her cheekbone. This was a style Taudde had not seen before, and he blinked—and then smiled, for despite his nervousness the good-natured, ironic glint in the keiso’s eyes instantly put him at ease.

  The keiso was wearing a blue overrobe traced with a complicated pattern of lavender and blue that echoed the pattern on her face. There was a comb of sea ivory in her hair, and she carried a knee harp in the crook of her arm. She set this on a small table near the door and swept into a low bow, her hands pressed together before her heart. “I am Summer Pearl,” she said. Her voice was warm and lovely, with a slight burr to it, like the deepest tone of a set of alto pipes. “Welcome, my lord, to Cloisonné House.”

  Smiling, Taudde returned her bow. Gesturing to her harp, he said, “You are an instrumentalist?”

  “I play a little,” Summer Pearl answered, with a glint of humor in her dark eyes that mocked the modesty of her words. “Of course I will not match my lord’s skill.”

  “Of course not,” Taudde said drily. He took his place at the table, to the left of the table’s head. He tried a nikisi seed from the bowl on the table. It was excellent, with under the sweetness an unexpected trace of heat that lingered on the tongue.

  Summer Pearl came and knelt on a cushion across from him, on the inside of the U made by the table. “In Lonne, it is customary for the host to take the most honored place,” she said, with a nod toward the head of the table. She offered this explanation with a modest, diffident air, pretending mild embarrassment at proffering advice to a valued guest. Again, there was a touch of humor in the curve of her mouth, as though she invited him to share a subtle joke at her own performance.

  It occurred to Taudde that the skills of keiso were more comprehensive than he had expected. He could not keep from smiling. “Not this evening,” he said, and rose to his feet as Prince Tepres entered the banquet chamber.

  The prince was accompanied by Koriadde and by Jerinte Naliadde ken Miches—Taudde would have preferred Koriadde’s brother to the less-courteous Jerinte, but no one had consulted him—and of course by the dour Jeres Geliadde.

  Taudde bowed, stopped from kneeling by the prince’s slight gesture. He caught a sudden reverberant echo of the earlier strangeness as the prince entered the room but could spare no attention now to consider the phenomenon.

  Summer Pearl, clearly startled by the prince’s arrival, had risen gracefully and now began a deep bow of her own, saying warmly, “Eminence, we had no expectation—”

  Koriadde, stepping forward, caught the keiso’s hands and prevented her from completing her bow. He said, “We are not formal this evening,” and kissed her hands, smiling down into her beautiful face.

  “Cloisonné House is lovely tonight,” the prince said, also smiling at the woman. Summer Pearl smiled in return and bowed her head, taking the compliment as directed at herself, and the prince nodded to her. They were fond of subtle compliments in Lonne, as well as subtle threats.

  The prince nodded to Taudde and walked across the room to take the place of honor at the head of the table. He wore an overrobe of black and jewel-dark purple. His fine hair was back in a single braid, bound off by a plain black band. The stark colors suited the prince’s rather angular features, making him appear both older and more authoritative than so young a man would likely otherwise have managed.

  Though the authority, at least, seemed a natural quality. This young man had been the heir for… only for the past year, surely? The Dragon’s ruthless execution of the latest in his string of rebellious sons—which one had it been? Rette?—hadn’t that execution taken place only this summer just past?

  The past year must have been a difficult time, surely, for Prince Tepres. A harsh education in power and its uses. There was something about him that suggested he’d grown very fast to meet the demands placed on him. Taudde felt his mouth tighten. He kept finding himself inclined to admire or like the young prince, which was disconcerting and not at all welcome.

  He turned, a little too stiffly, to greet the prince’s two young companions and bow slightly to Jeres Geliadde. The young men bowed in return, hands over their hearts; the prince’s bodyguard inclined his head minutely, frowning.

  “Do cease this sour manner,” the prince said to his bodyguard, frowning quickly in his turn. “I vow, you tire me with this refusal to be agreeable, Jeres. This is Cloisonné House, not some disreputable dock establishment.”

  “Sit down and smile,” Koriadde advised the older man, following his own advice. “We are all friends here.”

  Taudde tried to find the young men’s confidence amusing, but could manage only a biting sense of irony. He nodded to a servant to pour tea, which was of the kind most admired in Lonne: a pale crystalline green with a complex floral scent and no discernible taste. It was served in fragile cups like lacquered eggshells. Taudde lifted his cup, smiled, and nodded at the girl to pour for the other men. He meant to say something to Koriadde, something light and humorous. But Miennes arrived just then, smiling and affable, and Taudde lost the flow of his thought in his struggle to hide his revulsion at the man’s presence.

  At least he now found it very simple to focus purely on the urgent concerns of the moment. Lord Miennes was clad in the best style of a Lonne nobleman, in a fine amethyst overrobe, matching amethysts in the rings on his fingers. Miennes, Taudde thought, would have been greatly amused to hear the prince chiding his bodyguard for unnecessary wariness.

  He forced his expression into an easy smile.

  Miennes made his bow to the prince and took a place at the table.

  Two more keiso entered the chamber. They bowed to the prince, then to Taudde, and finally to the rest of the gathering, smiling with what appeared to be unfeigned delight. Both were younger than Summer Pearl. The first was a young woman with pleasantly rounded features and a dimpled smile; she wore an overrobe embroidered with autumn leaves, in rust and copper, from bodice to hem. Her blue-black hair, falling down her back in a thick plait, was gathered into five descending clips of amber and gold.

  This keiso carried a white bowl in which floated a single exquisite pale-lavender flower. She set this bowl in front of Taudde with a small bow that suggested she was particularly delighted to find him, specifically, present at this banquet. A light, spicy fragrance rose from the flower. “My lord, I am Meadowbell,” the keiso said, in a cheerful tone. “
Welcome to Cloisonné House. May this visit be the first of many!”

  “Thank you,” said Taudde. Deliberately emulating the prince, he reached out a finger to brush a delicate lavender petal and said, glancing at the keiso rather than at the bloom, “A beautiful flower.”

  The keiso smiled delightedly as though she were not accustomed to being paid such compliments, or at least not by men she admired as she admired Taudde. Taudde, amused at this flattery, concluded that, unless the men of Lonne were blind and deaf, this keiso’s cheerful manner and softly rounded figure must surely make her a favorite even among all the beauties of the candlelight district.

  Koriadde declared, “Well said, my friend! We shall count you an asset to the flower world!” and lifted a tiny cup in salute.

  Taudde put his hand over his heart and bowed slightly in his turn to acknowledge the compliment.

  “And do you have a mistress in Miskiannes upon whom you practice your graceful manner?” Miennes inquired.

  “I have forgotten,” said Taudde, offering another slight bow, this time to the keiso, who laughed and slyly bowed her head, turning so as to glance at him over her shoulder in a teasing, deliberately seductive gesture.

  The other keiso, the youngest of the three, said in a light, bantering tone, “Meadowbell has a keisonne, my lord, so all other men must be wary lest she break their hearts! Now, I am still free. My name is Featherreed.” She looked at Taudde through down-swept lashes. “You are from Miskiannes? How exciting! Is it true snow never falls in Miskiannes? Do flowers bloom all through the winter?”

  This keiso was as tall and slender as her namesake, fine-boned, with delicate features and a graceful way of moving. Her hair, golden as wheat, was pinned up with small ivory combs. Birds as golden as her hair flew in a spiral from throat to waist around her overrobe.

  “It snowed at my uncle’s house once when I was very young,” Taudde told her. This was even true. “We thought it very pretty, but the snow did wilt the winter lilies, which would otherwise have bloomed straight through until spring.”

  “So an unexpected snow may rob us untimely of our last blooms,” Miennes said, smiling warmly around at the keiso. “But in Lonne, of course, we are fortunate to have other flowers we may cherish while we wait for spring.”

  “A sharp winter is perhaps the price Lonne pays for possessing the greatest and most splendid mountains in the world,” remarked Taudde, though in fact he thought the stark mountains of Kalches more beautiful. He wished, suddenly and intensely, that he was home among his own mountains now, but hoped that long practice kept this yearning from showing in his face.

  “Ah, Kerre Maraddras!” said Koriadde. “I tried to climb it once, you know.”

  The prince, accepting a tall slender glass of straw-pale wine from Featherreed, turned his head at this. “Did you? I didn’t know that. How far did you get?”

  “Hardly past the first shoulder,” Koriadde replied. “I was young and foolish and had neglected to wear spiked boots. Fortunately, you will say. I hardly like to think of the mountain’s response, had I had the temerity to lay a hand on the stone of his face.”

  “We should have been robbed of the pleasure of your company,” agreed the prince. He had relaxed visibly and now lounged comfortably back on one elbow, holding his glass of wine with his other hand. “I went up Kerre Taum once, where the rock is broken, beside the waterfall.”

  “A good climb,” Koriadde agreed.

  “Surely not to the very top? Can one climb so high?” asked Featherreed admiringly. She offered the prince the bowl of nikisi seeds.

  “Almost all the way.” The prince’s dark eyes had gone quiet with memory. He stirred a palmful of seeds with one fingertip, but did not taste any. He said softly, “There is a great hollow there, cut into the rock where the spray breaks against the cliff. One can see halfway to Ankanne. The Laodd looks small under your feet, like a townhouse, and the townhouses look like toys. From that height, the bridges across the rivers might be made of quills and golden thread, and the ships coming into the harbor of gull’s feathers and paper.”

  “I would be afraid to be so high!” exclaimed the young keiso. “But you describe it so well I can see it from this very room. How beautiful it must be!”

  “The Seriantes princes make that climb when they are twelve years of age,” said a deep voice from the door. Taudde saw without surprise that Mage Ankennes stood there. He felt he had known of the mage’s arrival before Ankennes had even laid a hand on the door, if not quite consciously. It seemed to him now that the whole of Cloisonné House reverberated with the mage’s arrival. That Ankennes’s words fell as he spoke them into the ordinary world and yet echoed as well into a different world lying just aslant of the visible and ordinary. Yet, in this house, the mage himself seemed somehow more ordinary and less threatening than ever before. Taudde eyed him covertly, trying to decide whether the mage was doing something himself deliberately to create this impression or whether it was caused by something about the house itself.

  Then the mage’s words distracted him completely, for the mage was continuing, “The hollow of which Prince Tepres speaks is not merely a natural hollow. It is the tomb of the kings of Lirionne. Young princes make that climb in order to become acquainted with mortality. There are steps carved into the face of Kerre Taum, but even so that is not an easy climb. Customarily, a prince’s father or an older brother will accompany the boy. I believe it was Prince Rette who escorted you, was it not, eminence?”

  “So it was,” the prince said equably, showing no visible reaction to the mention of the Seriantes tomb or his deceased brother who now occupied a niche within it. Yet, though his outward tone was calm, there was a sudden tightness to the undertones of his voice. Everyone else in the room had gone noticeably still.

  “Sometimes the thoughts prompted by Kerre Taum are dark ones.”

  “So you have said to my father,” Prince Tepres said, his tone at last acquiring an edge. “On more than one occasion, I believe. If his answers do not please you, Mage Ankennes, do not look to me for satisfaction.”

  “The heart of the mountains is the heart of darkness, as I think the dead on Kerre Taum would tell you. Though the dead have no speech, their bones speak a language more true than any that passes the tongues of the living—”

  “Enough, I say!” snapped the prince, straightening. “That is all past. Do not speak of the dead.”

  The mage stopped, bowing his head in what appeared perfectly ordinary and polite apology and acquiescence.

  Taudde did not understand why Ankennes should make such strange and daring comments. He did not believe for a moment that the mage had so little self-control that he could not resist baiting the Seriantes prince. He was certain Ankennes did nothing without reason.

  Did Ankennes wish to draw attention to himself and away from Miennes? Or perhaps away from Taudde? Or perhaps… it occurred to Taudde that if Ankennes wished to encourage the prince in fear or bitterness or hatred of his father, he might do worse than refer to his dead brothers. Though Taudde could not guess why the mage should bother, when he expected the prince to very shortly follow his brothers to the Seriantes tomb… perhaps he intended to achieve all those results, or something else entirely. Taudde could easily believe the mage subtle enough to have half a dozen goals in mind for every word he spoke.

  Summer Pearl said gravely, with a practiced grace that suggested keiso also learned to smooth over incipient quarrels, “Memories at times clamor as loudly as the Nijiadde River crashing over the cliffs. And the approach of winter draws out memories we should perhaps rather let sleep.”

  The prince gave the older keiso a sharp glance and, after a moment, inclined his head. He did not smile, but he leaned an elbow on the table, his manner easing. He said, “ ‘The season of falling leaves, and falling winds, and falling mists; memories, too, come down and linger with the cold.’ ”

  Summer Pearl evidently recognized the quote, for she responded, “ ‘Memories deepe
n as the snows deepen; they drift over our hearts; our hearts, frozen in ice, wait for spring.’ ” She poured a tiny cup of fragrant tea for the prince and lifted her own cup to him. Taudde found himself wondering whom the keiso had loved and lost.

  Mage Ankennes, evidently willing to allow the keiso to ease away from the difficult moment, quietly took a place toward the foot of the table and nibbled nikisi seeds. Taudde studied him discreetly, but came to no further conclusions.

  Two more keiso came into the room. The first was a young woman with the look of a Samenian, coarse boned and over tall. Despite her lack of beauty, she had the confident air of one who sets her own worth very high. She wore a blue overrobe with falling leaves and rising birds embroidered in rust.

  However, the second girl, once she came into sight, utterly eclipsed the first. She was a truly lovely girl, with beautiful creamy skin, clouds of twilight hair, and the most exquisite eyes Taudde had ever seen. She wore a rich blue overrobe with white moths fluttering in a spiral over the great blossoms of moonflowers.

  She was also, Taudde realized slowly, extremely young. Everything showed this, but most especially the girl’s obvious nervousness. Her shyness, however, did not detract from her beauty. Quite the reverse. Glancing around, Taudde saw that every man in the room was as captivated as he. Even Jeres Geliadde appeared to have been charmed. The prince set his wineglass down, making no attempt to disguise his interest.

  The other keiso, Taudde saw with some amusement, were unsurprised by the effect the girl had produced. Summer Pearl had a tolerant, humorous curve to her mouth; her eyes were alight with gratification. Meadowbell and Featherreed were exchanging glances filled with enjoyment that approached hilarity.