House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “A gentle courtship,” murmured Narienneh. She tapped the letter with the tip of one finger. “Perhaps. We do not want the heir’s interest to wane, but your suggestion may be wise. Profit and prudence combined. A slow and gentle courtship… that may serve our purpose well. Write out an acceptance to this, Leilis, if you please. I think it best if Moonflower does not see the prince anywhere save within the protection of the House, but the prince is welcome to engage her company here. We will all be very respectable.”

  Leilis bowed her head.

  “You are quite correct,” added Mother. “We do not wish the bud to lose its fresh purity. If Rue is not available to accompany Moonflower, then someone else may chaperone her. No one who resents her. Bluefountain has sense. But I will want two women with her. Hmm. You may stay with her, perhaps.”

  Leilis acknowledged this with a nod, though chaperoning young keiso was not ordinarily a part of her duties. But she did not dislike the idea, in this case. With Moonflower in the room, Leilis doubted that she herself would even be visible to the prince’s eye. And if the prince happened to bring with him the foreign lord, Lord Chontas… She did not permit herself to consider whether she either wanted or did not want a renewed acquaintance with that one. She had not described the prior encounter to anyone. It had seemed too complicated. She did not know how to frame it even to herself, much less to anyone else, even if she’d been inclined to confide in anyone. Or had anyone in whom to confide.

  Round white lanterns glowed in the slender branches of graceful trees along the river. The lanterns echoed the moon, which could be glimpsed now and then through long streamers of apricot and dusky-violet cloud.

  With the lighting of the lanterns, the flower world itself came to life: Graceful keiso strolled along the riverside walks, accompanied by musicians and players of the candlelight district or by their patrons or keisonne. The musicians were often loud and the players flamboyant, but it was the keiso who drew the eye. It was neither their elegant overrobes nor their grace that produced this effect, or not wholly. It was that air of confidence they wore that proclaimed their quality as clearly as a herald might have announced it.

  Leilis had had years to become resigned to the hopelessness of herself ever joining their privileged company. She no longer repined over the impossible. Now she stepped deliberately back into the intimate dining chamber and drew the curtains across the balcony entrance, shutting out the evening.

  Prince Tepres had come alone to Cloisonné House. Well, as nearly alone as his father’s heir could manage. Only the dour Jeres Geliadde had accompanied him. Leilis did not allow herself to feel disappointment at the absence of the foreign lord.

  Prince Tepres wore an understated dark overrobe that was almost as plain as his guard’s, with only a tracing of saffron and purple embroidery across his shoulders and on the cuffs of his sleeves. He had chosen well, Leilis admitted to herself. The severe plainness of his robe accented his pale hair and brought out his dark eyes. She suspected he knew it, too. Well, a king’s heir must learn such things, she supposed. A prince was surely as much on display as any keiso.

  Moonflower wore a simple blue overrobe embroidered around the hem with leaves and dragonflies, and a jeweled dragonfly in her hair. Mother had, of course, chosen the robe and the jewel, and very appropriately. Though Leilis privately thought it would have mattered very little to the prince whether the girl wore a keiso robe or drab servant’s brown.

  This evening Prince Tepres had chosen to soften his image to suit his company: He had brought Moonflower a kitten, which he was just now releasing from its basket. The creature was a soft silver color, with ripples of smoke-dark stripes showing through the silver when it moved and eyes as green as willow leaves.

  The kitten had been a clever choice. It instantly gave prince and keiso a common source of merriment. Moonflower exclaimed over its soft fur, then set it down on the floor and laughed with delight as it pounced on her toes. Leilis was certain its claws had been carefully blunted before the prince had presented it; she knew from personal experience how easily sharp claws would go right through light house slippers.

  “What is her name?” Moonflower asked the prince, kneeling down and wiggling her fingers in invitation. The kitten, accepting this enticement, flung itself flat on its side and tried to wrestle the girl’s hand into submission. Moonflower laughed.

  “Moonglow,” answered Prince Tepres, leaning his hip against the table and smiling down at this charming picture. “For she so delightfully captures the soft beauty of the moon.”

  Moonflower glanced up to meet the prince’s eyes. If she’d been in doubt about his implied compliment, his smile banished that doubt. She blushed and laughed at the same time, scooping the kitten up into her arms as she rose. “She’s—” She paused, because any compliment she paid the kitten now would sound like vanity. “Thank you,” she finished simply. “Um—eminence.” She blushed again, most becomingly.

  “We are not at all formal tonight,” the prince assured her. He moved to the head of the chamber’s small table and knelt on the cushion there, opening a hand in invitation for Moonflower to join him. His bodyguard took a place against the wall, effacing himself with a practiced air. Leilis, with deliberate humor, took a precisely similar place on the other side of the room.

  Servants—Birre and Kaerih—brought in the first dishes of the evening: rounds of soft bread with a delicate mousse of smoked fish on sea-green plates, and mussels in saffron broth in small black bowls. Bluefountain slipped in after them, carrying her kinsana. She gave Prince Tepres a thoughtful glance and knelt on the floor by the door with only the sketchiest bow. He returned a slight nod, looking amused and, beneath the amusement, faintly annoyed.

  Bluefountain began a soft rippling melody that did not press itself on the attention, the sort that could spin out for a long time without ever really being noticed. Clearly she intended to stay for a while. An additional chaperone, and this one a respected keiso, would certainly ensure the unimpeachable respectability of the engagement. Wise of Mother, given the speed with which the prince seemed inclined to move in this courtship. He leaned closer to Moonflower and murmured something, gesturing toward the kitten, which was playing with a ribbon the girl had taken from her hair. She laughed and answered, “Oh, I’m sure Mother won’t mind—doesn’t everyone love kittens? What kind is she? I’ve never seen one like her.”

  “There are few of this breed in Lonne,” agreed the prince. “They’re called Pinenne Clouds, but they’re rare even in Pinenne, I believe. My mother brought them with her. This one is a Cloud silver, the rarest color in the breed.”

  “All the way from Pinenne!” Moonflower marveled.

  Well, it was a little marvelous, Leilis acknowledged privately. Pinenne was a town of the northern border. If a devotee of the late queen, one would say that Pinenne lay on the border between Lirionne and Enescedd. But if not an admirer of the queen, one might say just as accurately that Pinenne lay on the border with Kalches. Certainly the town had a reputation for more than pretty cats. But young Moonflower didn’t seem to know anything of this.

  “And a kitten from your mother’s home,” the girl was saying. “How kind of you to bring so special a gift. I have very little to remind me of my own mother. But I will think of her now, as well as your mother, when I see this kitten.”

  “Ah.” Prince Tepres lifted a hand to prevent the kitten stealing mussels out of the broth, then absently stroked the little animal. “Your mother has also gone beyond? I am sorry. I did not know.”

  Moonflower glanced down. “When I was eight. I am fortunate to remember her well.”

  “That… may be harder,” said the prince in a low voice. “To remember clearly what one has lost.” His own mother, of course, had died when he was much younger.

  “But not so hard, after the first grief, as having no memories to hold in the mind and the heart,” Moonflower said gently, and moved a hand to touch his in uncalculated sympathy. “It must be a
comfort to you, that you still have your father, at least.” Her grief for her own father, still immediate, was very clear in her soft voice.

  Realization had dawned: The prince saw that this was why the girl had become a keiso. Yet he could hardly proclaim his delight at this outcome. He said instead, “You loved your father? Then I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Something in the prince’s tone drew Moonflower’s attention. She said after a moment, “You don’t love your father? Or, no… you aren’t certain of his love for you? I’m so sorry.”

  “My father is the Dragon of Lirionne, first,” Prince Tepres answered, a little too quickly, as though this was an idea he had spent his life rehearsing. “Of course, he must be so. And he’s had poor fortune with his sons…”

  “Poor fortune” was not the term Leilis would have used to describe the brutal sequence of treachery, suspicion, trap and betrayal, and counterbetrayal that had led, in the last few years, to the executions of the Dragon’s three older legitimate sons. For as little acquaintance as the two had, the conversation had become remarkably intimate. And with no noticeable effort. What a keiso the girl would make! Leilis thought the prince himself was surprised. She pretended very hard she wasn’t present, since undoubtedly Prince Tepres would have preferred she not be. Near her, his bodyguard was echoing her I’m-not-here invisible attitude.

  Servants brought in new dishes, increasingly elaborate. Leilis suspected neither the prince nor Moonflower really noticed the food. They fed tidbits to the kitten, which finally curled, purring, onto a corner of the prince’s overrobe, and fell into a replete slumber. They did not discuss their fathers, but Moonflower told Prince Tepres a bit about her mother, and coaxed him to respond with small details he remembered about his—from a faint crease across Jeres Geliadde’s forehead, Leilis thought this was unusual. Moonflower told the prince stories of her seven sisters, and he told her a few from his childhood about his seven brothers, including the brothers who had rebelled against the king their father and been executed for it—and, from the look in the bodyguard’s eye, this was strikingly unusual.

  Moonflower listened with flatteringly close attention and heard possibly more than the prince had meant to tell her. “You were closest to Prince Rette, of all of your brothers, weren’t you?”

  “I was,” agreed Prince Tepres, glancing down. “He was only eight years older than I—not that eight years is so little, but from the time I could walk, he was patient with a younger brother tagging at his heels. He seemed to me everything a prince should be: brave and strong, quick of tongue and hand. Good at everything. I idolized him, I suppose.”

  “Why—” Moonflower began, and stopped.

  The prince lifted his eyes to hers, searching for—what? Leilis wondered. Signs of pity, of hidden condemnation, of fear? What would a highborn girl of the Laodd court think about Prince Rette, about the older two princes whom he had followed into treachery and then death? What did Prince Tepres fear to find in Moonflower’s eyes?

  Whatever that might be, he didn’t seem to find it. After a moment, he relaxed a little. “My brother—” he began, and halted. “I—you have to understand—” He stopped again. Finally he said, “My left-hand brothers are all much older than I am, you know. You did know that? They all hold high places in my father’s court—well, not Mieredd, but he’s never been interested in politics or power or anything to do with court, only in ships and sailing. But my father… You understand, kings don’t share power easily. My mother—” He stopped abruptly. Then he began again. “They—I mean, Gerenes and Tivodd and Rette—they were never… um.”

  Leilis guessed that the prince was trying to explain, without condemning either his father or his brothers, that the king had never allowed his right-hand sons the authority that was their due and that they had bitterly resented their father’s tight-held rein. This was fairly common knowledge in certain circles, but nothing that anybody would be comfortable putting into words. Moonflower obviously didn’t understand anything he was trying to say, but her attention to Prince Tepres was close and sympathetic.

  “Gerenes and Tivodd were both high-tempered. Hard-mouthed on a tight-held bit, as they say. Impatient…”

  And neither one half as clever as he’d thought himself, as Leilis recalled. A bad combination, arrogance and folly. A combination that had led to the downfall of plenty of young lords. And young keiso, for that matter.

  Moonflower, probably still not following much of the prince’s meaning, nevertheless made a sympathetic sound.

  “But Rette… I’ve never understood why he…”

  “I’m sorry,” Moonflower said softly, responding to the pain in the prince’s tone however little she understood.

  “Neither did my father, I think,” Prince Tepres added. Hidden behind the flatness of his tone was deep feeling, but clearly nothing he intended to volunteer. Grief for his brother and rage at his father, Leilis guessed, and neither emotion safe to express. Shock at the events of the summer, still not wholly accepted; resentment of the brother, for embroiling himself in that last disastrous plot; both terror and pride at becoming his father’s heir? Leilis wondered if the prince himself had ever recognized, ever let himself untangle, all the wild knots that must have been created in his heart this past summer.

  “Couldn’t your father just, just, I don’t know, have… just sent him away, or—”

  “No,” Prince Tepres said, with finality.

  Moonflower was silent for a moment. Then she said, “How simple my father’s death seems! We all grieved for him, we still grieve for him, but… it’s not a complicated grief. Except… Poor Enelle felt so awful for being the first one to understand that some of us would have to be sold into contracts. Nothing any of us could say could make her really feel that it wasn’t any fault of hers, even though she really knows that it wasn’t.”

  She offered this comment delicately, with a downcast glance. Not by even a glance did she suggest explicitly, Just as it wasn’t your fault about your brother. But the implicit suggestion was clear, if subtle. The prince drew a breath, but Moonflower added, “It was hard, leaving my sisters. But we—we keiso, we say we are sisters, too, did you know? There are things—things here that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.” And she looked up quickly to meet the prince’s eyes for an instant.

  Prince Tepres leaned an elbow on the table, relaxing. “Tell me about your sisters,” he invited.

  The supper stretched out about twice as long as was usual for such an engagement. Even then, Prince Tepres quite clearly had to compel himself to rise and bow and take his leave, and Moonflower was equally clearly sorry to see him go. The prince offered Bluefountain a plainly set sapphire ring for her company, appropriate but in no way remarkable. But he offered the younger keiso no jewel on his departure. Rather, with surprising diffidence, he opened out a cloth-wrapped parcel to show Moonflower a set of twin pipes of sea dragon ivory and gold. “I believe these pleased you the other evening,” he explained. “I thought you might like them, because of your tale of the sea dragon. The ivory makes me think of that.”

  “Oh,” Moonflower breathed, touching the pipes with one tentative fingertip. “I do love them—but they’re so beautiful—are you sure you want to give them away?”

  “Ah, well—it’s not such a generous gift. I don’t play pipes, you see, but I thought you might, as you are a keiso.” The prince tipped the pipes into her hand and gently folded her fingers closed around them. “You would please me very much if you would someday play them for me.”

  “I don’t play pipes yet,” the girl replied earnestly. “But I will learn, so I can play these for you. I will have to learn to play very well, so I do not insult your beautiful gift.”

  “Your touch, even inexperienced, will surely draw only beauty from them,” Prince Tepres assured her, and took his leave.

  “Well, that was a resounding success,” Leilis said to Bluefountain later, after settling Moonflower back in the room she shared with Rue. Bluefount
ain, long secure in her own worth to Cloisonné House and to the flower world, found no threat in Moonflower’s swift rise. That was why Mother had sent her to accompany and chaperone the girl’s engagement: Narienneh was too wise to put the newest of her daughters in company that would resent her. Now Leilis helped Bluefountain unstring and put away her kinsana. “She’s exhausted. And thoroughly charmed. She has the kitten on the foot of her pallet, and the pipes next to her pillow.”

  “They’re a matched pair. As much as those twin pipes. Ah, young love,” Bluefountain said nostalgically. She was rubbing a perfumed ointment into her fingertips, lest extended playing ruin the softness of her fingers. “She will be flying through the clouds in her dreams tonight, I’m sure.”

  “It’s all quite genuine, you know.”

  “Oh, I know! There’s not a stitch of cunning anywhere in that child, is there? Not that she’s foolish—”

  “No. Just candidly charming,” agreed Leilis. “No wonder the heir is falling for her—how much candor do you suppose comes his way? Though I’m sure plenty of charm,” she added.

  “Well, if she’s charmed you, Leilis, she may certainly warm the heart of a young man. You suppose his father—”

  Leilis shrugged, honestly unable to guess. She wondered whether Bluefountain was right: Had she herself been charmed by the innocence of the girl? She supposed she had. It was a strange realization. Uncomfortable when Leilis thought about it, and yet not entirely unpleasant. She said merely, “That’s Mother’s task, to judge that.” Her tone was a little sharper than she had intended.