by Patty Jansen
“Just try it quickly. Then I’ll know if we need to make any adjustments.” She gathered up the dress and dumped it in Sariandra’s arms. “Here, use the dressing room up here.” She went to the door in the side wall and shepherded Sariandra inside.
The room was tiny and held only one chair and a dressing table which had been without any make-up or hair pieces or wigs since Ellisandra took over. The mirror made it look much bigger than it was. Apparently it was built as private dressing room for the lead actress, but Ellisandra had never seen it used as such. She lit the lamp with the flame box in her pocket and left Sariandra in the room.
She had been checking the inventory lists of the stores for a while when she realised that Sariandra was taking a very long time.
“And? How is the dress?”
“Fine.” Her voice sounded muffled through the door, completely lacking in enthusiasm.
“Do we need to make it shorter?” Sariandra had inherited none of her father’s height.
“Um . . .”
“Can I have a look?”
There was no reply to that, so Ellisandra softly pushed open the door. She met with no resistance. With someone in the tiny room, it was warmer inside than out. Sariandra stood before the mirror, hugging herself. Ellisandra had been wrong. The yellow dress did not look good on her at all. Her skin was marked with areas of rashes in the neck and upper arms. The dress was too loose in the shoulders, and the hem . . . oh my, why did it hang uneven like that? It was because . . . it was tight in the waist. In fact, the waistline hung at least a hand’s width above where it should hang at the front, because her lower abdomen showed a very distinct and tight rounded swelling.
Oh.
Well.
That made sense. Everything made sense now.
Sariandra met her eyes and there was despair in her expression.
Ellisandra whispered, “Jintho?”
Sariandra nodded. Her bottom lip trembled. A tear leaked out of her eye. She blinked, but now another tear ran out of her other eye. She covered her face with her hands.
“I’m sorry!” She let herself fall to her knees. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Stop that.” Ellisandra grabbed her under her arms and dragged her to her feet. Sariandra sobbed into her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do. My father is so angry.”
Ellisandra closed her arms around the poor girl.
No, Asitho wasn’t angry. Anger would probably be the first reaction of a parent in this situation. The next reaction, when the first had worn off, would define the parent. They could keep it quiet, give the young couple their blessing and forego the big showy wedding. It happened. With parents being really strict on girls and not telling them about all the things they could do to avoid the situation, it happened rather a lot, actually.
Or they could blackmail the girl, blackmail the poor hapless young man, blackmail the poor hapless young man’s brother and make everyone as miserable as possible. And oh, yes, you’re getting all this money in return for signing away your rights as heir to a Foundation family. Was there anything else? Could he perhaps have thrown in that Enzo should really seek some medical help for his drinking? We’ll give you a job you’ve always wanted, but you’ll have to do all this demeaning shit? Like marry your younger brother’s pregnant girlfriend?
Ellisandra caught a glance of herself in the mirror over Sariandra’s shoulders. Her cheeks had gone bright red.
“Take the dress off. We’ll sort out something. I’ll make sure you’ll look glamorous,” she said to Sariandra. Her voice sounded detached, as if it belonged to someone else.
“I’ll resign if you want.”
Ellisandra took Sariandra by the chin. “Say that again, and I’ll slap you in the face. I’m serious.”
Sariandra nodded, pressing her lips together.
“Are you all right? Are you healthy? Do you have any problems?”
“You’re kidding? My life is a problem.”
“I mean with your health.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been feeling a bit tired, but nothing else.”
“Have you seen a Healer?”
Sariandra’s eyes widened.
“You know, to check up on your health?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll arrange it.”
“But—”
“No buts. You will see a Healer. In all of this, you are more important than anyone. More important than your father, or the council. That is my little niece or nephew growing in there.”
Sariandra changed back into her own clothes, and for the rest of the day, whenever Ellisandra walked past her, she smiled.
Even Tolaki noticed it. “What did you do to her? She seems completely changed.”
“She enjoys the theatre,” Ellisandra said, and she felt a twinge of guilt about not sharing what she knew with Tolaki. In the past they’d shared everything. But this was beyond gossip and she wasn’t sure that Tolaki would understand. Tolaki’s family was very traditional, agreed with the council in a no-nonsense kind of way. They were serious business people, and with Jaeron in the council, the men had no idea about the other world out there, the world of artists and women and other people who were irrelevant in Miran.
Poor, poor girl.
She had badly underestimated Sariandra, even though she prided herself on being a good judge of character. She knew nothing, especially not about love. Sometimes she would dream of a man sweeping her off her feet with his kisses. Old rules said that there would be no interaction between a couple until they married, but many couples went out and kissed, and sometimes more. Jaeron had never shown any interest, and damn it, she wanted the affection that everyone said was part of marriage.
Sariandra was not unfortunate; she was lucky to have that affection.
The bad weather of that morning cleared up in the afternoon. Loret and his team, who had come to the theatre in the morning, asked permission to go to the Andrahar house. The orchestra had also just finished practice and Ellisandra realised that she had left some of her production notes at home, so it was a large and mixed group of people who walked from the theatre up the hill to the Endri quarter.
There was much talk and laughter, and somehow, she ended up walking next to Vayra. With a certain amount of dread she realised that she now had no excuse not to go with him to the house and look at those colours that he asked her about.
He and Loret were talking about a stonemason specialising in old-fashioned stone carving, and he’d also employed a panel-maker who constructed custom-made resin panels with inlaid stems of grass. It was how the magnificent doors to the theatre had been made.
“I didn’t know anyone could still make those,” she said. It still surprised her that he knew so much about Miran, and why he’d been so keen to learn. Seeing the welcome they had given him, she would have left long ago.
“It wasn’t easy finding someone, but he’s amazing.”
“I can imagine.” She’d seen pictures of the hot rooms where the panels were made, where people arranged every stem of hay by hand so the reflection off the stems made a pattern once the resin had been poured on top.
“I’ll show you how he works.”
She followed the group into the yard.
Much progress had been made on the house in little time. Most of the exterior had been completed. The only thing missing were the roof tiles on the rooms that were built around the main section of the house: the laundry, the staff rooms and the front porch. Stacks of roof tiles sat in big piles for this purpose.
The main section of the house looked almost finished, except for the front door. A couple of workers were walking in and out, carrying tools and stacks of tiles.
“Wow, did the house really have wooden window frames?”
“Yes. They’re harder to come by than the resin ones, but wood has better insulation. The whole house has been built to retain heat.”
Under the canvas shelter against the side wall stood a dome-shaped tent
that hadn’t been there before, a strangely unearthly-looking glowing white thing.
“Have you been sleeping here?” she asked Vayra when they were crossing the yard.
“No, I normally stay in the office. The tent is for the resin-maker. The resin dries better when it’s warmer.”
A heated tent?
“Come and have a look.” He opened a flap at the tent, and they went inside a little tunnel that connected to a second dome-shaped structure that glowed like a light pearl. The sound of a sanding machine came from inside.
“What is this thing?”
“It’s a miner’s tent, from Hedron. It’s what they use to house exploration miners on the surface at Hedron. See how it’s got two walls with an air chamber in between? That insulates the living area inside. Pretty impressive, isn’t it?”
He opened a flap which let them into a heat lock and then into the inner tent where a pungent smell of resin hit her in the face.
Inside the structure stood a table where an old man was working. It was so warm inside that he needed to wear only a shirt and trousers. On the table lay a half-finished panel. The man bent over it, carefully arranging stems of straw with a pair of tweezers.
He looked up when Vayra and Ellisandra came in.
She recognised him. When she was young, he used to sit at markets plying his trade. She hadn’t seen him for quite some time. He’d been one of these people who had quietly disappeared and their trades had disappeared with them.
“Old Jasep is one of the best in resin-making,” Vayra said. “Apparently some people have been ordering a lot of these doors.”
“They’re very traditional,” Jasep said. “But the councillors want them in all the places where they don’t belong.”
Such as Asitho Bisumar’s house.
“Still, the money is good, so I keep quiet, but it pleases me so much that I get to make some doors that are not to be put in some modern monstrosity. It is so nice to work here.”
His hands had resumed arranging stems of straw in intricate layered patterns. Already with the light in the tent, you could see the patterns in the different ways in which the stems reflected the light.
He rose from his seat and went to the back wall, where a pot bubbled on the stove. He took it off with two stained rags, and carefully poured molten resin over his designs. The pungent smell of it filled the tent. He used a brush to spread it evenly over the straw. “You want to be careful, because you don’t want bubbles to form.”
“It’s beautiful,” Ellisandra said.
“The patterns in the door represent mountain flowers. Each panel maker has their own designs. That why the cheaper versions are rubbish. They’re put together quickly and with poor materials.”
“We’ll leave him to work,” Vayra said.
Old Jasep laughed. “Ha, he pays me too much to spend my time chatting.”
To one side of the tent stood a smaller table with three chairs. They were very old, beautifully-made and didn’t suit the modern tent at all.
“Where did you get these?”
“They’re from the office. Sit down. Want some tea?”
She laughed. “You even have tea in here?”
“It that odd?”
“This whole tent is such a strange combination of foreign and traditional Mirani things.”
“These are all traditional things from many places. The mining tents have been used at Hedron since their first settlement, and the design has changed little in the last hundred years. I only like beautiful, well-made and good things. I don’t care where they’re from, as long as they’ve been made with skill and craftsmanship.”
He rummaged in a cupboard and took out two tall mugs. He filled these with water, added powdered tea and put them inside a box which produced a slight hum. Vayra waited.
Ellisandra looked around the tent. Apart from a device with a screen on the table, there was a bigger machine on a stand next to where Vayra stood. It had a screen at the front, where occasionally lines of blue text appeared and scrolled out of sight. The writing ran from right to left, and she figured it was Coldi.
Once, Vayra glanced at the screen, raised his eyebrows and typed something. This line appeared on the screen in yellow. A blue line responded and he replied something else.
Where did the blue text come from? This did not look in any way like it came through the Miran Exchange.
The box stopped humming. Vayra took out the two mugs.
He placed them in front of her on the table. Steam rose from the tea inside. She picked up her mug. It was made of a very strange metal that wasn’t even warm. After the cold of the theatre, she was also starting to get nice and warm so that she had to take off her cloak.
“It’s very nice in here.”
“This is what Miran could be like in the future.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have all these things to make your lives more comfortable.”
“We’re already pretty comfortable.”
But she realised that was an Endri view of things. Many of the Nikala lived in cramped, cold and damp conditions. Too many people had no homes at all and slept in porches and hallways. “These tents . . . are they expensive?”
“Depends on your definition of expensive. Why?”
“Because housing is a problem for many of the Nikala. Short of the empty Endri houses being converted with apartments, there is no quick accommodation available . . .” She was going to add something like for women who want to escape violent marriages or young people who flee abusive households. A lot of the older apartment blocks were very cramped and cold. If they had windows—which many didn’t—they were draughty. People got diseases that were entirely preventable. These tents were easy and comfortable. You could quickly build an entire city out of these.
“And how did you get all this here? Illegally?”
“Why would I do that when there is a legal route available? It has come overland from Barresh to Bendara and then via air to Miran. Nothing illegal about it.”
“Is there still a land route between Bendara and Barresh?”
“There used to be a main road. A lot has overgrown with jungle, but the Barresh side has been cleared. The Mirani side is only really bad between the border and the start of the Bendara agricultural zone. I would like to re-open it. I would like to build a train line from Miran to the western coast. Transport would be easy then.”
It would. Ellisandra dreamed of sitting in a cabin—trains had cabins, didn’t they?—and being brought drinks while looking at the landscape slide past outside the window.
Then she sighed. “Like that will ever happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the boycotts, because of the import restrictions. We can only dream of things like that. As soon as the council finds this legal loophole of yours, they’ll close it.”
“Then you stop them.”
She frowned at him. “Are you serious?”
“Of course I am. People tell me I have no sense of humour. I think I inherited that from my father.”
“How should I stop the council? They don’t listen to me.”
“Then you make them listen. That’s part of their tactics, too. They do whatever they want because no one challenges them, because you’re complacent.”
“I think there’s a bit more to it than that.” She tried to keep the indignant tone out of her voice, but didn’t think she succeeded.
He fixed her with an intense look and pointed a finger at her chest. “Because you’re complacent. They treat you Endri women like shit, because you let them.”
“Because they hurt some of us.”
“They can’t hurt you when you as a group stand up for yourself. Because there are more of you than there are of them.”
“You want to try and face Asitho Bisumar and tell him to leave his daughter alone? Do you want to face my brother and tell him that he can’t marry this girl, because she is my younger brother’s?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to try. I want you to do it.”
She snorted. “That’s not how Miran works.”
“No. It isn’t. But it is why Miran is a backwards hole, and other nations have freedom, are connected and have proper hospitals and housing. Because people stood up and protested. It’s your choice.”
“Maybe it is, but it’s my life, too, and I only have one.”
She was making excuses, and she knew it. He knew it, too, and he continued to meet her eyes until she had to look away, and even when she did, she could feel his gaze on her.
I’m a coward. We’re all cowards. We could make this place so much better.
“Anyway. I really want your opinion on wall colours in the bathroom.”
She looked up sharply. He was saying all these insulting things about Miran and wasn’t even going to apologise?
He smiled. “So, you can get angry.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re complacent.”
“You would be, too, if you were in my situation.”
“I probably would—”
“See? There you go. Because of Father, I can’t—”
“—for a while. Until I saw that being complacent doesn’t work, that people take advantage of it. And then I would make a plan.”
“You can plan as much as you like, but if the other side has all the resources and the power—”
“—I wouldn’t execute the plan until I was certain that it was going to work.”
“That may be easy for you, but how do you argue against everything you’ve grown up with? You’ve had an easy life, studying at the Trader Academy and Masterbuilders Guild and gamra Law.”
He laughed. “I see Mirani intelligence is not as bad as it’s made out to be.”
She smiled awkwardly. Probably she should not have let him know that the council knew those things.
“In all honesty, what else do you know about my life?” He met her eyes, his expression honest and open.
She shrugged. “Nothing, really.”
“It’s easy to assume that other people’s lives are easier than your own. But I am very familiar with standing up against the only life you’ve known.” He managed to sound kind, but she was sure that she had insulted him.
