Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  “Weeks?” Shawonda said indignantly. “How could she be so cruel to you, leaving you in that little hole? For weeks!”

  “It wasn’t so bad after Huon came. I knew he was all right. And I had my books and . . . well, the Lady Regent isn’t cruel.”

  “She’s kind?” Shawonda said ironically.

  “No. She’s, this is with ordinary people, you understand . . . she’s neither. She’s just . . . clever. Patient, and very very clever.”

  The elder Thurston girl shivered a little. “Sounds scary.”

  “Oh yes,” Yseult said, her mind traveling back. “You have no idea.”

  CASTLE TODENANGST, CROWN DEMESNE

  WILLAMETTE VALLEY NEAR NEWBURG

  (FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON)

  PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

  OCTOBER 15, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD

  Yseult struggled with the cote-hardie. The voluminous folds kept getting hung up. Three weeks of physical therapy and exercises had helped her arm, shoulder and wrist. But she still didn’t have the full range of motion back. With an annoyed exclamation she ducked her head down and bent her body, shaking herself and wishing for Carmen Barrios or Virgilia. The slubbed silk slowly slid off her arms and over her head.

  Huon knocked on the door. “Ysi, Ysi, what’s taking you so long? It’s almost time!”

  She looked at the pools of sunset orange silk on the floor, hesitated for the tenth time and then set her lips.

  “Huon, please come help me. I can’t get the dress on with my arm still injured.”

  “Help you!” Huon suddenly squeaked, a thirteen-year-old boy again, not a man impatient with female fripperies.

  Yseult caught her breath on a sudden laugh. “Huon!” she chided. “I’m wearing the chemise and underclothes. I could get those on and laced up by myself. It’s just the court cote-hardie. It’s so tight and I can’t lift my left arm enough. I’m perfectly decent.”

  She opened the door to the sitting room and looked at Huon and approved.

  “You’re going to be as much of a popinjay as Odard!” she said. “That looks really good on you. Now come help me keep up the reputation of House Liu!”

  His cheeks were as red as the crimson shirt under his plain gray houppelande of fine merino wool. It was belted over parti-colored hosen in black and a darker crimson. The belt, with its empty dagger sheath, was one of Odard’s; an elaborate affair of fifteen five-inch-wide black enameled plaques in a filigree pattern, set with lapis lazuli cabochons. It had a matching state chain over the shoulder that picked up the dark sea-blue of his eyes, like the Pacific off Astoria on a sunny day.

  “I approve,” she said. “Where are the shoes and hat?”

  He waved a hand aimlessly at the window and said, “Shouldn’t I send for a tirewoman?”

  “We don’t have enough time . . . and, Huon?”

  He looked at her, inquiringly. She hesitated and shrugged.

  “I think this is a test.”

  “Test?” he frowned. “Of what?”

  “Resourcefulness and ability to think on our feet? Who knows; do you want to get into a who’s-the-clever-one contest with the Spider?”

  “St. Michael, no! I’m thirteen!”

  “I don’t either, and I won’t when I’m thirty!”

  A startled expression crossed his face. “I never thought of that! And, in that case, will you help fix my stuff, too?”

  “Of course! I wouldn’t have let you out of the room like that!”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  She giggled, suddenly. “You might be heading towards brother Odard’s dandyism, but you’ve got a long way to go yet! It’s all in the details. I’ll take care of it in a minute.”

  She picked up and shook out the sunset-colored cote-hardie. “I’m going to crouch a bit and you throw it over my head and get my hands into the sleeves. Then you have to help coax the sleeves up each arm and make sure the skirts fall without getting tucked up at the waist.”

  Huon looked appropriately solemn as he carefully cast the many yards of raw silk slub over her head and they worked together on coaxing the tight sleeves into place.

  “Your chemise is showing,” he fussed.

  She waved a hand at him. “No, it’s supposed to show. I’m too young to be showing off my pitiful assets. It needs to be absolutely even all around, though.”

  She shrugged and lifted the collar of the complex dress while he walked around and around and carefully tucked and tugged at the delicate pink silk chemise. Then she reached under the skirts and deftly pulled the hem of the chemise. The wrinkles at the neckline slowly vanished. The chain and saint’s medal were lightly outlined by the silk, but that was acceptable. She shook herself making sure the gown moved freely and moved into the sitting room and studied herself in the better light. Huon followed her out, carrying the rich caramel-colored sideless surcoat.

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just unbutton the buttons and then do it up?”

  “The buttons are just for show,” she said absently, carefully pulling the seams of her sleeves straight.

  The obsidian buttons were burin-carved in a cloud pattern, each one slightly different; they marched their way up to the elbow.

  “And the front ones—if I did that it would button up all crooked. Some of the court ladies wear theirs so tight they actually have to sew themselves into them. Buttons would gap, do gap, these are for show, too . . . It looks very, very . . . ummm, when they do them too tight.”

  She felt her cheeks heat up. Huon laughed a small laugh that reminded her he was old enough to start looking at women that way.

  “I’ve seen it. Like they painted themselves in silk, and nothing left to the imagination.”

  She nodded, still a little pink. Huon shook out the sideless surcoat, found the front and flung it over her head. It settled neatly around her and a few tweaks set it in place. The front and back had been cut out, too, and then lightly laced, to show off the cote-hardie itself.

  “Where are your jewels?” asked Huon.

  “Under the prie-dieu.”

  He brought out her belt and state necklace, pearl set copper, and helped her get them set just right. She swallowed a bit at the sight of the empty dagger sheath at her belt. She and Huon wore the sheaths as tokens that they were Associates; they were empty in token of the accusations against them.

  She found the veil, gauzy wild pink that picked up the brilliant color of her dress. Huon carefully combed the disordered strands of her braided hair smooth and draped the veil. The copper and pearl diadem fixed it on her head.

  “Doesn’t this make your skin go green?”

  “No. It would, but it has a lining of silver on the inside. That might make my skin go black. But it’s a lot slower to tarnish than copper . . . Huon! I’m so scared!”

  She saw his throat work and was sorry she’d spoken. “But, you’re with me. We’re House Liu! We can do this.”

  Huon’s face firmed. “Right, Ysi. Our father came out of the Change a baron. There’s strength in our blood.”

  “Come here and let me straighten out your houppelande and state chain . . . no, first put on your shoes and hat! Let me comb your hair . . .”

  Fussing over Huon steadied her and she saw her brother relax and smile a bit and relaxed herself. The clash of spears thumping the hall warned her that it was time. She walked, quickly, but carefully back into her bedchamber, holding up her skirts. She gulped and touched the porcelain of Bernadette and the picture of the Virgin.

  “Give me strength, but also, give me smarts. This is going to be very scary!”

  She slipped the rosary under her belt and heard the door open. She walked out and gasped. Jehane stood there between the spearmen, lord Chaka’s youngest sister, and looking very grown-up now, her smooth brown face inscrutable.

  Oh! I wish I could smile and dance up to her and hug her like I used to do. She was always so nice to me; but she looks . . . so, so . . . magnificent and so solemn! And she�
�s the Lady Regent’s amanuensis, now. I have to be careful. Some days I wish I didn’t have to grow up. Life was simpler back then.

  Jehane nodded with regal calm. “Come then, young mistress, young master. The Lady Regent will examine you in this matter of the treason of House Liu.”

  Yseult shot a quick look at Huon and straightened her back. Her fingers pinched a small fold of the sideless surcoat and the cote-hardie under it and lifted it, a scant inch from the floor. She glided forward and followed Jehane out of the room.

  Two large men-at-arms in black armor stood at the door like the legendary metal men of the ancient world except for the faces under their raised visors, others beyond, in the corridor.

  Things may have seemed simpler in bygone days, thought Yseult.

  Even then she couldn’t help admiring Jehane’s magnificent pale green ermine-trimmed cote-hardie with the elaborate dagged sleeves faced in silver silk, black marks echoing the ermine. Either she had perfect taste, or the Lady Regent did and insisted on it for her immediate staff, or both. Probably both.

  But they weren’t, not really. I just never noticed what was going on over my head. Mother has been intriguing for years, and so has Uncle Guelf. What an inheritance!

  Probably her father had as well, and her mother had helped. It was the play of great lords, the game of advantage.

  The audience chamber to which they were escorted in the Dark Tower was an uncomfortable room despite the handsome stone of the floor and walls and the roof of carved plaster arabesques. Harsh light from the bare high windows fell in spears on the spot before a large desk of carved walnut on the slightly raised dais. The Lady Regent sat there, wrapped in a great cloak of priceless black-and-white ermine. Two Associates’ daggers lay on the desk before her, points towards the accused, their bright edges glittering against the dark silky wood.

  Yseult sank into a deep curtsy and held it, as Huon did his bow.

  “Rise, and approach,” the Regent said.

  Yseult took a deep breath as they did, and let her eyes take in the room.

  It was large and chilly, with a great medallion of the Lidless Eye set in the wall behind the desk, jet and niello and obsidian and raw gold. Yseult looked for the hot-water radiators. They were there; bronze pipes running in through the classic cast-iron radiators.

  So the Spider wants us to be cold and uncomfortable. Did she think I wouldn’t notice and would just be frightened, or did she expect me to notice? Or is she testing to see if I do notice, and just caught that look at the radiators? Oh, yes, that’s it.

  Hard wooden chairs ranged in an arc before the dais, but Yseult and Huon were not offered a seat. Jehane sank in a deep curtsy to the Regent and sat quietly next to a girl about her age; she took up a little blond-wood writing desk on her lap and dipped a pen ready in the tiny bottle of ink built into it.

  Standing beneath one of those glaring windows was the Grand Constable, Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath, in dark elaborate male court dress and an ostrich plume in the clasp of her chaperon hat. Yseult shuddered under the cold gray gaze.

  Quietly Yseult identified some of the others. Chaka, Lord Mollala, young and burly and chocolate dark like his sister Jehane, with a frown on his scarred and bluntly handsome face. Sir Garrick Betancourt, and Lady Delia de Stafford, in subdued formal dress much less fanciful than what her reputation as a leader of fashion would make you expect.

  Ranged along the back and sides were the faceless, black-armored men of the Protector’s Guard. Two flanked the Lady Sandra, their naked long swords over their shoulders.

  In the Lord Protector’s day they would have been behind me and Huon. Ready to take off our heads. Lord Chaka’s father stood like that once, after the Princess was kidnapped by the Mackenzies while she was visiting with him. He was pardoned, though.

  The Regent studied them from behind the desk in a silence that stretched. Yseult looked up into the dark brown eyes under the cream-silk wimple with its platinum band. She’d heard of drowning in someone’s eyes, usually in bad love songs, but never like this. Such an ordinary face, smooth and slightly plump and middle-aged . . .

  For an endless time all was still. Then Sandra spoke, her contralto voice quiet and emotionless as water of rocks in an ornamental garden.

  “This investigation is convened. Let it be noted that We—”

  She used the royal pronoun, a sign that the business was very, very official. Jehane’s pen scratched and scritched steadily on the paper. She wrote quickly and neatly in shorthand, a little silver clip holding her sleeve back from the ink.

  “—are not sitting in Star-Chamber.”

  Yseult’s eyes went up involuntarily. Star-Chamber did have stars on its arched ceiling, or so rumor said. Sessions of that court were strictly secret. Sometimes even the sentence was never announced, just carried out.

  “Let Huon Liu and Yseult Liu be sworn.”

  A smooth-faced priest in a black robe brought out a great Bible in a tooled-leather cover, and a silver-gilt reliquary. Yseult put her hands on them and swore:

  “. . . by my hope of salvation and in the sight of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  Everyone crossed themselves; she kissed her crucifix as well. And I mean to tell the truth!

  The Lady Regent joined in the gesture. She was a petite woman in her fifties; a gray cote-hardie showed beneath the ermine robe, buttoned by steel-gray Madras pearls and silver.

  All these powerful lords, Yseult thought. And Lady Death, whose name is fear, and the Regent dominates the room as if she were a giant made of fire.

  She had wielded unquestioned power from the Willamette to the Yukon and inland to the Rockies for twenty-three years; fourteen of them all by herself, this little woman in silver and gray. The Lady Regent didn’t blink for a long count of five.

  Then: “We are gathered here to hear and ponder the matter of the children of the House of Liu. These are Yseult and Huon Liu, children of the late Eddie Liu, well loved by my late husband, and Mary Liu . . . not so well loved by myself.”

  Yseult swallowed. The brown eyes studied hers, moved to her brother, and a very small smile showed.

  “I suspect that despite natural piety, you are not well pleased with her right now yourselves, children. She has been so stupid. Ambition can be dealt with; it’s even useful. Against folly and self-deception, even gods contend in vain at times.”

  The very slight tinge of playfulness leached out of Sandra Arminger’s voice. Something like the metal on the edge of a razor replaced it.

  “Your mother is guilty of high treason. This is not in doubt. Her actions, her letters, the testimony of Castle Gervais staff; the actions of Guelf Mortimer, her brother, and Alex Vinton, who she made privy servant to your elder brother, all speak unambiguously for themselves. She intrigued with our enemy, the Church Universal and Triumphant and its Prophet Sethaz. She intrigued with them long before we became aware of their focus on our lands and people. She could have warned us; and we would have been much better prepared in September—but she didn’t. Many good and loyal vassals have died because she didn’t.”

  Yseult made herself breathe and forced her eyes to stay open. She wouldn’t have done all this just to kill us. We’d simply be dead.

  “Thus, the one hand. On the other”—one small, beautifully tended hand reached out and tapped a stack of letters on the desk, bound with a purple ribbon—“if these are to be believed, your brother is the pattern of a gallant and loyal knight. And they are from the Princess Mathilda, and Rudi Mackenzie, and Father Ignatius of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict. My daughter is naturally of a more kindly nature than I, but she is nobody’s fool and neither is Rudi Mackenzie or the knight-brother, and they all sing the praises of Sir Odard’s courage, his skill at arms, his steadfastness, and his cleverness. Yes?”

  Yseult took a deep breath. The praise for her brother and through him for her family and House made the blood rush back to her face and gave her strength; she could feel
it curling up from her stomach into her heart and mind.

  She blurted: “Odard . . . Odard is a true knight. And he truly loves the Princess Mathilda, my lady Regent. He would die for her.”

  “Absolutely true,” Huon said with respectful firmness. She suspected he was also praying hard that his voice not break in midsentence. “He’s deeply in love with her.”

  “Or in love with his expectations should he marry her,” the Regent said. “That would provide a strong motive for his heroics, if true. Many men are brave in their own service. But more to the point, Rudi Mackenzie says quite bluntly that he and all the rest would have died if Odard had betrayed them, which he had opportunity to do . . . and had opportunity to do in ways which would have been undetectable, and which would have furthered any ambitions he may have had with respect to my daughter. I have great respect for the Mackenzie tanist’s judgment and long close experience with it. Nor is he such a friend of Odard’s that he would shade the truth in such a matter.”

  Silence fell for a long time; the room grew a little darker, and she could hear rain beating down on the windows. The Black Months were at hand here in the Willamette, drizzle and slate-colored skies and short fugitive days. The Lady Regent moved one finger slightly, and the gaslights were turned on by the guards, each with a small pop. The mantels began to glow behind the frosted-glass fronts, and the mirrors behind cast the light.

  Yseult struggled to read the Regent’s smooth face and opaque eyes, and swallowed. Anything she said could kill her and Huon; but to stay silent was a hideous risk as well.

  She’s always been so closed. It’s part of why she’s so dangerous.

  Yseult fought for balance. Huon’s hand on her shoulder helped. What does the Regent want? she wondered. Shall I grovel? Will it help? Or retire to a convent and make a vow of chastity?

  Then: No. It wouldn’t help. I can’t guess what she’s thinking but I can think clearly and use logic myself. And she’ll respect that, respect boldness and clear thought.

  She nerved herself to speak evenly and quietly, her fear drying her mouth. “Lady; may we follow the pattern of our brother in courage and honesty. But also, not in the matter of frankness. Odard always played his cards close to his chest. I ask you openly, why are we a risk, two minor children?”