House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  Summer Pearl had the indulgent look of an older person watching young love blossom. Meadowbell and Featherreed looked amused and a touch envious. Rue had a slightly calculating expression in her dark eyes.

  Servants brought in sticky nut candies and bowls of rose-scented water so they could wash the stickiness off their fingers, and Bluefountain began to play again, a warm, light melody that broke the mood and made everyone smile. Rue rose to her feet and went out into the center of the room. She moved with a new kind of grace, and there was a general settling around the table as the company prepared to watch her dance.

  The music lifted suddenly and Summer Pearl and Meadowbell both joined Bluefountain. Summer Pearl’s knee harp drew a light, ethereal descant about the deeper, burring sound of the kinsana, while Meadowbell’s pipes tossed glittering notes out at seeming random and yet fit perfectly into the piece. It was a variant of a Miskiannes dancing song, Taudde realized, doubtless chosen in his own honor. Rue was preparing to dance, and Taudde was suddenly ashamed that he’d assumed the subtle calculation he’d seen in her face had been due to Moonflower’s success.

  The dance Rue performed did not use the set of strict forms Taudde would have expected from a Lonne-trained dancer. Instead, Rue seemed to float through the dance, always on the verge of drifting into a form and yet never quite letting her steps resolve into the expected pattern. This lack of resolution created a tension that was wound tighter with every form Rue did not quite carry through, and in only a few moments no one in the room was looking anywhere but at the dancer.

  Rue drew the dance to an end that did not conclude and yet somehow was still satisfying. At that moment, while she made her bows, every man in her audience would have sworn that Rue was the most beautiful woman in Lonne, little Moonflower notwithstanding. And this, Taudde thought, with no deliberate effort on her part to beguile. She had only given herself to the dance.

  The prince began the applause, a soft tapping of fingertips against the polished surface of the table, and the rest of the gathering joined him.

  “Beautiful. Very lovely and unusual,” Taudde said to Rue. He added sincerely, “Indeed, I do not recall anything I have ever seen to rival it,” and went on, “Truly it is said that one must come to Lonne in order to live! I hope you will accept a small token of my regard, forgiving any imperfections of taste a foreigner might have shown in its selection.”

  Bringing out the packet he had set aside on the sideboard, biting back a sharp reluctance to do so, Taudde unwove the cord that bound it. He set out on the table the items he had brought, each wrapped in its own fine suede cloth and bound with a little cord.

  Not being personally acquainted with any of the keiso, nor even being certain how many keiso would be present, Taudde had simply bought a selection of small gifts for them. Understanding that ostentatious generosity was expected—indeed, a keiso House, almost as much as high-class but ordinary prostitutes of other cities, must surely depend on the generosity of its patrons—he had made certain the gifts were expensive, for all their small size. He chose for Rue a bracelet of copper and amber, judging that it would set off her coloring well. She accepted this gift as her due, with a slight inclination of her head.

  To Summer Pearl, he gave a ring of silver and Enescene jade, and to Meadowbell and Featherreed combs of mountain cedar inlaid with abalone shell. To Bluefountain, with a bow to acknowledge her skill, he gave a deceptively simple little flute of black wood that he had found at the Paliante and loved immediately: He had expected at least one of the keiso to be a true instrumentalist. All the keiso accepted their gifts with graceful exclamations of happiness, and Bluefountain blew a soft trill on the flute and closed her eyes in pleasure at the clean, pure sound.

  To Moonflower, he gave a fortuitous trinket: a finger-high sculpture of a sea dragon carved of expensive red inda wood from Miskiannes. To Koriadde and Jerinte, Taudde gave graceful thanks for the pleasure of their company and small practical knives with sharkskin hilts and deadly edges. The sheath of one was set with small cabochons, the other with tiny pearls. Both young men seemed pleased.

  To Jeres Geliadde, he gave a completely unadorned knife, of the kind meant to be carried unobtrusively in the boot for emergencies, and received in return a curt nod.

  To Ankennes, Taudde gave a drinking cup whimsically carved to resemble a mage’s scrying ball, and the mage laughed and claimed he would see more truth in a cup of liquor than any true crystal. Taudde only hoped his own smile looked unforced. He had used a triple-bladed tuning rod to weave deadly sorcery into the cup, so that any wine poured into it would become inimical. Lest someone other than the mage might fall victim to the poison, Taudde had also limited the sorcery so that the enspelled malice of it would wear away over the course of a few weeks.

  He would be shocked if the mage actually drank from the cup in the meantime. That spell was not very subtle. But, though Taudde would be delighted if Mage Ankennes did drink from it, its “loud” ensorcellment was meant merely to drown out the far more subtly enspelled items Taudde had brought to this banquet. Ankennes would, of course, know these, too, carried sorcery. But Taudde hoped to prevent him from determining the exact details of how that sorcery would work.

  To Miennes, with a significant look, Taudde gave a set of twin pipes made of horn and bound in silver. To the prince, with a deep bow of extravagant gratitude for the honor of his presence, and with a deepening reluctance he worked hard to conceal, he gave an even more beautiful set made of sea ivory and bound in gold. As the prince touched his set, Taudde felt the familiar whisper of sorcery waking. He found himself gripped by a sudden intense urge to snatch the ivory pipes back, break the waiting enchantment, render the pipes harmless. But it was far too late for second thoughts. Taudde slowly lowered his hand to the table.

  “How lovely!” Bluefountain explained, turning to study first the pipes made of horn and then the set made of ivory. “What exquisite work! Are these from Miskiannes?”

  The prince smiled and offered his set to Bluefountain so she could examine them more closely. Several of the other keiso peered over her shoulder as she turned them over in her hand and then, with a glance at the prince for permission, brought them to her lips and played a single note. It swelled in the room, mellow and pure, and Bluefountain closed her eyes and lowered the pipes again, smiling with delight.

  The note seemed to Taudde to echo with shadowy grief, and he had to pause a moment before he could lie smoothly. “I bought them in Miskiannes. But I believe they were made across the sea, in Erhlianne. They do fine work there.” They did, but not as fine as the work Kalchesene bardic sorcerers could do. But he did not say that.

  “Lovely,” agreed Mage Ankennes, smiling blandly. “Certainly more than the equal of my cup. May I?” He leaned forward to examine the prince’s set more closely, then sat back again with a murmured, “Masterful work indeed. Lord Miennes, yours are very fine as well. If I may?” He took the horn set and examined them curiously.

  Taudde tried to match the mage’s bland smile, but suspected he’d failed.

  The mage gave the set back to Miennes and nodded to Taudde. “Lovely work, indeed,” said the mage. “ I commend your… taste, indeed I do, and the craftsmanship that went into this piece.”

  Taudde murmured appreciation, wondering just how much of the complex working Mage Ankennes had perceived. That the mage had given the pipes back to Miennes was surely a good sign… probably a good sign… Just how subtle was the mage?

  “They are so beautiful, and such a pure sound! I have never seen anything to match them,” murmured young Moonflower, putting out a tentative finger to brush the carved ivory of Prince Tepres’s set. Her glance rose, Taudde thought by chance, to catch the prince’s, and she blushed and looked away. The prince smiled. The rest of the company hid smiles of their own, or in the case of the prince’s bodyguard, a frown. But at least the young keiso had drawn everyone’s attention away from Taudde. He took the opportunity to covertly trade the pla
in ring Jeres Geliadde had given Moonflower for a narrower ring of his own that was roughly similar. At least it seemed unlikely the child would have any call to try to use it to solicit aid from any guardsmen. At least not soon.

  Miennes accompanied Taudde to his carriage, of course. On passing out of Cloisonné House into the night, Taudde felt again that odd jarring dissonance he had perceived on arriving. The sensation startled him. He had almost forgotten his earlier feeling that the keiso House was a fraction aslant of the ordinary world. He hesitated in the doorway, half inclined to go back into the house and see whether he might find Leilis, compare the dissonance that clung to her to the sensation that occupied the doorway. Study, even unravel, the strange spellwork that had been imposed on her… She had at least seemed a naturally reticent woman. He would have to find an excuse to see her later. He would have liked to find her now.

  But Miennes, of course, was present. Interfering in small ways and great. Miennes, at least, deserved the fate Taudde had crafted into those pipes. But Taudde found his angry regret growing only sharper. He had needed Miennes to step into his own trap, and the lord was dangerously perceptive and clever. So Taudde had baited his trap with truth, and Miennes had taken that bait. And yet…

  Taudde knew he could have thought of a way to deal with the Lonne nobleman that would touch no one else. Or at least, a way for himself to get free of Lonne. Well, he hadn’t wished to leave Lonne and he had been seduced by the vengeance forced into his hands, and it was too late to regret his choice now. Taudde told himself that he was glad to comply with Miennes’s demand. What was the saying in this city? Something suitably coastal: to catch two fish on the same hook? Something of the kind.

  But at the moment he could not be glad of anything. Even thinking of Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes’s coming grief and despair brought him no pleasure. Taudde tilted his face up to the sky. It was very late, not in fact far removed from dawn, and the air was crisp with the approaching winter. But lights glowing all about the candlelight district drowned the darkness, and no stars were visible. Music played somewhere nearby, and a girl sang… a long slow lament that somehow seemed to contain in its cadences the rhythm of the tides and winds. The music rose above the girl’s voice, crying like the voices of seabirds.

  The prince and his close companions had departed first, the prince giving young Moonflower back into the care of her elders with obvious reluctance. Koriadde and Jerinte had implored Meadowbell and Featherreed to accompany them to a nearby theater, a plan to which the two keiso had acceded with pleasure. The prince had not opposed the idea, but also had not shown any sign of wishing to join them. He had headed back toward the Laodd, his bodyguard trailing at his heel. Taudde hadn’t seen Mage Ankennes go, but the mage, too, had departed, thankfully without seeming to want to examine Miennes’s pipes more closely.

  Miennes himself, of course, had lingered. He drew Taudde a few steps from their waiting carriages. “Well?” he demanded, his low, mellow voice edged, to Taudde’s ear, with a hard and ugly undertone.

  “He took the pipes,” Taudde said shortly. Then he stopped and took a breath. Needing Miennes to believe him and doubt nothing, he layered truth and impatience and arrogance into his tone over the anger he felt. All of it was real, so there was no reason for Miennes to doubt anything he heard. Taudde continued, “Play the set I gave you, and you will draw his life from his body and leave only a husk. What you do then, or whom you do it to, or for, is your business. I have no interest in the politics of Lirionne.” Which was decidedly not true, but he layered sincerity through the statement.

  Miennes smiled as though he believed it. “I’m sure not. So. The pipes. I see. How fitting.” Then he frowned. “When I play mine? You will play them, of course.”

  Taudde tipped his head slightly back in refusal. “You are the one who wants him dead. You play his death. I promise you, no one will be able to charge you with it; the mages of Lonne know nothing of true sorcery.”

  “I have said, you will do it,” the Lonne nobleman said, low and dangerous. “I am astonished you object—being what you are.”

  He had no idea what Taudde was. “I will not,” Taudde answered. “Indeed, I cannot. You took the other set of twin pipes as a gift and they became yours. No one now can use them for their intended task but you. I have accommodated your desire. But I am not a murderer. I will not play the pipes myself.” Though, he thought bleakly, he had become sufficiently a murderer when he had made those pipes. It was a weak claim he made now. But he needed Miennes to believe it, and so he worked hard to at least half believe it himself, at least for this moment. He added a sharp and bitter truth to anchor his deception, “But you are correct: I have no love for the Dragon of Lirionne. If this blow strikes through his heart, that is very well.”

  There was a brittle silence. Miennes broke it at last with a sharp laugh. “Well, if these pipes work as you say, I suppose you are murderer enough for me. But do not,” he said, his tone again affable, “mistake me for a man who will tolerate defiance.”

  Taudde did not. He was certain Miennes was already considering ways in which he might punish his new tool’s insolence. He bowed his head and answered, this time with a far easier truth. “I do not want you as my enemy, my lord. I promise you, the pipes will do your will.”

  This drew a smile of renewed confidence, a warm expression that went oddly with the cold note in the Lonne nobleman’s voice. “Well, if I am to choose my own moment… perhaps I may at least do so with purpose. Not tonight, then, I think. But in a day or two, when… circumstances align most favorably. What does one play, to make them do their work? A mourning dirge?”

  “Any music will do, lord—a springtime melody as well as a dirge. Nor does the skill of the piper matter: Death resides in the pipes and not the player. Play them at your will, my lord. You may play those pipes at any moment you desire.” Taudde set smooth confidence under his tone to encourage the other man’s confidence. “I will hope—” and he tried fiercely to hope it, “—to hear shortly that the Dragon of Lirionne is bereft of legitimate sons and all Lirionne in mourning.”

  “Yes,” Miennes said, with a nod that combined both threat and dismissal, “I hope that, too, and for your sake as well as mine.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The striking success of Moonflower’s first appearance as a keiso annoyed some of the less-generous-hearted keiso. But it delighted Rue, pleased Mother, and—most satisfying of all—completely justified Leilis.

  “I think perhaps it might be best to withdraw the child from the public view for a time,” Mother mused, studying a chart of tentative keiso engagements for the coming weeks. Some of the more popular keiso refused to commit to any specific engagement very far in advance, so keeping up the chart was a complicated task, as Leilis knew from personal experience.

  Mother tapped a stylus on her desk and frowned. “Moonflower has received twelve invitations already. But sometimes fame grows best where it is not actively encouraged. Men desire most fiercely what is farthest from their reach.”

  Leilis, who was carefully rearranging flowers in Mother’s collection of crystal vases, discarded a few that were on the verge of becoming overblown. She glanced sidelong toward Mother and murmured, “Some flowers are best in the bud; once fully opened, though still pleasing to the eye, they have already lost their special loveliness.”

  Mother’s frown deepened. “Perhaps.” She set down her stylus and set the chart aside, lifting instead a roll of fine parchment with an embossed seal of saffron wax. After a moment of consideration, she offered this across the table to Leilis.

  The letter did not require more than a glance. Leilis brushed the ball of her thumb lightly across the seal, set the letter back on the table, and murmured, “Cloisonné House is favored above all keiso Houses by the attention of the heir.”

  “Of course,” agreed Mother, in a rather perfunctory tone. She was still frowning. “And profitably so. All of our keiso, not merely Moonflower, will receive many
rich gifts if the heir and his companions become regular visitors.” That consideration was nothing to dismiss. Keiso Houses must always be extravagant, yet the continual generosity of their patrons could not be assured. In tense times, men hesitated to spend hard coin on luxuries and the entire candlelight district suffered, but the keiso Houses suffered worst because their daily expenses were highest, and hardest to reduce. The approaching spring would make this winter decidedly tense. “This will require careful management, however,” murmured Mother.

  “Young people often prefer romance over practical sense,” Leilis said thoughtfully.

  Mother half smiled, an expression that held more thought than humor. “So they do. And you?”

  Leilis hesitated. Romance? Or practicality?

  The girl might well fancy herself in love. But to send a keiso into a royal family was perilous. Prince Tepres had no true wife, yet. But soon enough he would, and eventually his wife would be queen. A queen was unlikely to be pleased to share her influence with a mere keimiso. She might object, strenuously. And a queen would have influence of her own, which did not depend on her lord husband. As the king would likely have married her for political advantage, even he might find her influence difficult to counter, lest he lose that advantage.

  A queen who resented her lord’s flower wife might pursue a persistent feud against her. Possibly against all keiso. Such feuds had occurred before in Lonne’s long history. Sometimes they ended with the death of the king’s keimiso. Sometimes they ended with the entire destruction of one or more of the keiso Houses. That, too, had occurred before.

  The pause lengthened as Leilis realized that she was setting concern for Karah’s personal happiness against the good of the House. How strange that she had become so sentimental! She said after a moment, “A keiso from Cloisonné House would be a very respectable keimiso for Prince Tepres, but the king may well wish his son to first take a wife and secure a right-born heir of his own for the succession, before getting children on the left. A wife whose child is the king’s eldest born might well be less offended by her lord’s taking a flower wife. Cloisonné House might best win the Dragon’s favor by slowing his heir’s rush—and Karah’s age provides every necessary reason to resist haste.”