My father will tear the flesh off your bones if you hurt me. The threat rose automatically to her lips, but she held it in, for Aureste Belandor’s name, a formidable charm throughout her life, held no power here.
“Look at those eyes,” Yvenza suggested with a smile. “Her father’s eyes, to the life. Notice the fire there. She’d burn me to cinders with those eyes—if only she could. In the interest of self-preservation, we’d best extinguish that blaze.”
“Don’t do anything to make her ugly, or I won’t have her,” Onartino warned.
“You’ll have her with her face turned inside out, if you’re told to,” Yvenza informed him. “But now that you mention it, I perceive the difficulty. You are required to sire an heir upon this girl, and it wouldn’t do to demand performance beyond your capabilities, my son. Very well, we shall not mar her beauty—today, at any rate. How best to damp a fire, then?” Yvenza affected to ponder. “Water usually serves. Yes. Our little runaway shall spend the next week cooling her heels in the subcellar, where the water on the floor rarely exceeds an inch in depth, except when the cesspit overflows.”
“I’m not afraid of your subcellar.” Jianna lifted her chin. She knew that she ought to hold her tongue, but could not. “As for the cesspit, I feel that I’ve been living in one since the day I was brought here.”
“Take care, maidenlady.” Yvenza’s face was unreadable. “I find myself in danger of coming to like you.” She turned to her son. “Onartino, ring for someone to take her down below. And don’t let me hear you offer to do it yourself.”
“Magnifica, this won’t do.” The doctor spoke up with great courtesy and great firmness. “The maidenlady has been injured, soaked, and chilled. She must not suffer further abuse.”
“Did you say ‘must not’ to me, Falaste?” Yvenza inquired gently.
“I speak as a physician. I trust you don’t mean to kill her?”
“Correct.”
“Then keep her out of that death trap of a subcellar or she’ll take a fever within hours. Be certain of that.”
“You seem much concerned for her welfare. Do you know who and what she is?”
“I do.”
“Then you must also know that she won’t escape punishment.”
“Allow me to offer a suggestion. Punish her by setting her to work in the infirmary for the next week. I can use the assistance.”
“Nonsense. That is a holiday.”
“I don’t speak of ladling soup and rolling bandages. She would do the real work—emptying bedpans, mopping up the vomit, changing soiled dressings, bathing infected wounds—all of it. For a gently reared young woman, that will be punishment indeed. And it would be of great help to me.”
“If it’s help you need or want, then you’re welcome to borrow the servant of your choice. Any or all of them will prove more useful to you than this reluctant princess here. She’ll take her lessons in the subcellar, and if she should happen to contract an ague, it will serve to drive the point home.”
“Magnifica, indulge me,” the doctor persisted. “I ask you in the name of my loyalty to grant me this personal favor.”
“Do you, lad?” Yvenza hesitated. “Ah, you know me too well. When you ask so, I can’t deny you. Very well, you may take charge of the girl, but mind you work her hard. She is not to enjoy it.”
“I don’t think it likely that she will.”
“Then she’s yours for the duration of your stay.” Turning to Jianna, Yvenza observed, “Within the confines of the infirmary, you will obey Dr. Rione’s commands without question or argument. You understand me?”
Jianna inclined her head, too relieved by her avoidance of the subcellar to resent this newest form of servitude. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Onartino’s face, which for once had lost its impassivity. He was eyeing the doctor with a look of sullen antipathy.
One of the cold drafts of Ironheart swept the hall, raising gooseflesh beneath her sodden garments. Jianna shivered. Her teeth started to chatter and she clamped her jaw, but saw that her reaction had not gone unnoticed by Dr. Rione.
“Magnifica, I’ve reconsidered,” announced the doctor. “I’ll have that meal after all. Is there soup in the kitchen?”
“There is always soup in the kitchen.”
“Lentil onion?”
“See for yourself. After you’ve eaten and attended to your patients, come to me and we will talk.”
“I’ll look forward to that, Magnifica.”
He looked and sounded as if he meant it, Jianna noted with wonder. And Yvenza’s maternal smile had reappeared.
“Maidenlady, come with me.” The doctor’s courteous tone turned the command into a request.
She obeyed willingly, glad to remove herself from the dangerous vicinity of the matriarch. Onartino’s gaze pressed her as she went. Through the galleries she followed Falaste to the kitchen, where a clutch of servants greeted him warmly. The doctor seemed a near-universal favorite. Jianna watched with interest as he returned the greetings in kind. As he spoke, he stripped off his hooded rain cloak, tossing it casually across the back of a chair. She saw then that his thick hair was a very dark brown, almost the same color as her own. His lean frame was plainly clad in serviceable garments.
“Good to see you again, boy …”
“What’s happening with the Ghosts?”
“Did you see ’em crunch any Taers?”
“Did you bring any ferret feet?”
“Welcome home, lad.”
“Thanks. Here’s your feet, Skreps.” The doctor handed a small bundle to one of the potboys. “Try to make them last.”
“You’re the flashfire, Rione!”
“Tell that to Celisse and make her believe it.” The doctor, evidently quite at ease, picked up a chair, placed it beside the fireplace, and turned to Jianna. “Sit here, maidenlady. Rest, warm yourself, and dry your clothing as well as you can. You’ll have little leisure for it later on.”
Again she obeyed willingly, removing her wet cloak and spreading it on the hearth, placing her wet shoes and stockings beside it, stretching her icy hands and feet toward the fire. The heat sent the blood coursing through her veins. Her fingers and toes tingled agreeably. An involuntary sigh escaped her and she let her eyes close. For a while she sat motionless, allowing the warmth to work its way clear through her. Her thoughts slowed and her mind emptied itself; she might even have fallen asleep for a moment or two.
The aroma of food recalled her to consciousness. She opened her eyes upon a bowl of thick soup and a heel of bread wordlessly proffered by the doctor.
“Thank you.” She took the food. He started to turn away and Jianna, seized with some inexplicable urge to hold him a little longer, inquired inconsequentially, “Who is Celisse?” Wife? she wondered. Sweetheart?
“My sister.”
“Older or younger?”
“Younger.”
“She’s not here at Ironheart?”
“Not these past three years.”
“Everyone here welcomes you home. But you and your sister aren’t—kin to the Belandors?” she probed. Related to Yvenza? Or by-blows like Nissi?
“No.”
She paused, expecting an explanation, but none was offered. The doctor was civil enough but distinctly reserved, and if she pressed him further the conversation would assume the aspect of an interrogation. She nodded and began to spoon her soup. Falaste Rione took a seat at the kitchen table among the servants, with whom he ate and chatted on a basis of apparent equality.
She herself had never taken a meal at table with a menial, not even with Reeni, of whom she had been genuinely fond. The idea would simply not have occurred to her.
Was he a servant himself, then—some sort of privileged, upper-level servant? Surely not; not with that educated speech of his, the excellent quality of his manners, and the medical knowledge. Something in between?
The food was good and filling. As Jianna ate, her energy and optimism returned. The warmth of
the fire was likewise comforting. Her skirts were starting to dry. She could gladly have stayed there eating soup and covertly studying the doctor for hours. All too soon, however, he rose from the table and approached her to announce, “Maidenlady, it is time to set to work. There is much to do.”
* * *
Aureste Belandor sat at his desk, blind eyes fixed on the oft-blotted paper sheet before him. For the past half hour he had striven to pen a reply to the Magnifico Tribari’s very courteous inquiry concerning the Maidenlady Jianna Belandor’s delayed arrival, but the right words eluded him. The right words did not exist. For the moment he had given up trying, and his mind wandered the wooded slopes of the Alzira Hills.
The thump of a knock on the study door roused him from his reverie. Aureste blinked. “Come,” he said.
The door opened and a Sishmindri head poked in.
“Woman,” announced the amphibian.
“Woman? What woman?”
“No name.”
“Throw her out. Don’t trouble me again with such nonsense, or you will be whipped.”
Incredibly, the Sishmindri ventured a reply. “You say, let this one in, else be whipped.”
“Ah. That one. Why didn’t you say so? Admit her.”
The Sishmindri’s head withdrew and then a familiar figure wrapped in a cloak of grey-brown frieze stepped over the threshold. Aureste eyed her without interest. “Well, Brivvia,” he said. “Come forward. You may seat yourself.”
“Thank you, Honored Magnifico.” The Magnifica Corvestri’s maid obeyed, perching gingerly on the edge of the same chair she had occupied upon the occasion of her previous interview. “Thank you, sir.”
“What have you to tell me?” He made an effort to fix his attention on her.
“Well, firstly that I’m sorry, Honored Magnifico, truly I am, very sorry indeed, sir, and I hope you can forgive me.”
“For what?” His interest remained minimal.
“For taking so long about it. You wanted quick action, you made that plain. But I must say it took some doing. There’s usually guards or servants hanging about the corridor, and then there’s a whopper of a padlock on the door. Getting past all of that was quite a trick, I can tell you.”
Aureste’s mind still sought the Alzira Hills. He controlled its wandering impulse with difficulty. What was the woman jabbering about? He had issued her orders, not long ago, although it now seemed vastly distant. She was to serve as his agent in Corvestri Mansion. It had all seemed important at the time.
“Well, I did it,” Brivvia announced with a certain air of triumphant shame. “I got in.”
“In?”
“The master’s workroom. And truly, ’twasn’t at all what I expected. I thought there’d be dead bodies all cut up and laid out on tables. And hearts and hands and heads and bowels scattered all over. And crystals sending out magic rays that would turn me into a sheep. But there wasn’t none of that. It was just a room, an untidy room at that, stuffed with all kinds of trash, but nothing that scared me. Why, it was only—”
“Brevity, woman.”
“Yessir. I searched, very thorough like you told me, and found nothing of no use to you. But I did the other things, Honored Magnifico,” she added placatingly. “And they went off all right.”
“Other things?” His mind slipped gears. For a moment he did not know what she was talking about.
“That little packet you gave me. I’ve tacked it to the bottom of the top drawer of the master’s desk.” She paused, evidently expecting congratulations.
“Oh. Yes.” The exquisitely forged letters establishing Vinz Corvestri’s connection with the Faerlonnish resistance movement were now in place, awaiting discovery by the first remotely competent investigator authorized to search Corvestri Mansion. Aureste found that he did not care in the slightest.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Honored Magnifico?” She was regarding him with a puzzled frown.
“It was.”
“Went clear against my better nature, it did, but I followed your orders, sir. I’m not lying about this, either.” No reply was forthcoming and she added, “I followed all your orders, if you get my drift.”
“Then I am satisfied.”
She seemed to expect additional commentary or inquiry. Her frown deepened, and at last she prompted cautiously, “Well then, sir—would you like to see it, then?”
“It? What are you talking about?” His patience was beginning to fray, and he wanted to be rid of her.
“Why, you told me that I must bring something of my lady’s, and I could see there was no help for it, so I’ve done what you said. Here it is. Take a look at that, sir.” From some recess beneath her cloak, Brivvia produced a pair of gloves; very elegantly fashioned of the thinnest, palest grey kid, elaborately cut and pierced to display a lining of emerald silk.
Aureste’s recollections stirred at the sight, for he recognized the gloves, although he had not seen them in nearly twenty-five years. The young Sonnetia Steffa strolled across his memory. She walked beside him along a path overlooking the sea. A stiff salt breeze had pulled some of her chestnut hair free of its confining pins. Now the shining strands whipped wildly about her head, and she was laughing, her eyes very bright and her cheeks very pink, her hands lifted to capture the fugitive locks—hands clad in those distinctive gloves. He reached out and caught one of her hands, felt the pressure of his grasp returned, and for a while they stood there blind to the world around them, while her hair streamed free in the wind.
And then, a different picture, a different place—this time, the bare and wintry garden behind Steffa House. Skeletal branches, withered stalks, dry fountains. Lifeless. Sonnetia sat on a small bench of white marble, gloved hands clasped in her lap. Her face was almost as white as the bench, but still the most beautiful face in his world. There was room for two on that bench, but he was not welcome to join her there. And now her voice echoed in his mind across the years, although he did not want to hear it.
“… I did not let myself believe it, but all that they say is true. You have become the friend and the servant of the Taerleezis.”
“I’ve protected my House,” he heard his own voice answer.
“You have protected your own fortune.”
“And yours as well. Do you think that your father would hold Steffa House, were it not for my influence?”
“Did my father ask any favors of you or your Taerleezi friends?”
“He didn’t need to ask. I gladly do all in my power to assist your family. I had assumed—wrongly, it seems—that the preservation of your home would not displease you.”
“The destruction of your honor displeases me.”
Verbal attacks rarely troubled him, but Sonnetia Steffa possessed the power to penetrate his armor. Twenty-five years later, he relived the jolt of pained anger. And he recalled his own response. “Come, this is absurd. You are only a young girl, without experience or knowledge. You prate foolishly of matters beyond your understanding.” In the years that followed, he had often wondered what course his life might have taken had he managed to hold his tongue.
“Certain matters are not beyond the understanding even of so foolish and ignorant a creature as myself.” Her voice had been very quiet. “I understand that you have cut yourself off from your nation, from your home, from your people. I understand that you are no longer one of us. I understand that I no longer know you, if indeed I ever did. And I understand that I cannot and will not join my life with yours.”
“You don’t mean that; you speak in anger. You’ll reconsider, when you are calm.” He had taken a step toward her, and he still recalled the gesture—hand upraised in its grey kid glove—with which she had halted him.
“I am calm.” Her white face and the tears in her eyes belied the claim. “And I will not reconsider.”
“Sonnetia, there has always been strong feeling between us. It is there still, say what you will. You won’t throw all that away on a sudden whim.”
<
br /> “It is neither a whim nor sudden. The division between us has been widening for months. You have not noticed.”
He had not allowed himself to notice. “We’ve had some few differences over small matters—”
“Not small.”
“But nothing to justify the ruin of our betrothal. Your father has consented, remember. Your parents and kin won’t permit you to do this.”
“Aureste, do you not understand? They will applaud me.”
There could be no answer to that. For a while, he had stood searching her face for some sign of weakness or uncertainty, something that he could turn to his own advantage, but there was nothing there to use or control, which was one of the reasons that he so much admired her. Strength of will notwithstanding, her feelings for him ran deep; of this he had no doubt. Sooner or later her own emotions would erode her resolve, and then things would be right again. It was only a matter of time, or so he assured himself. Thus convinced, he had taken his leave, returning to Belandor House to await the retraction and contrition that never came. All that came, in fact, delivered by one of the few remaining Steffa servants, was the great sapphire ring that he had given to her upon her formal acceptance of his proposal. And from that chilly day until the present, he had never again set foot in that garden.
“Just what you asked for, Honored Magnifico.” The voice of Brivvia intruded upon his recollections. “Clean and very nice, but not new. Could it be any better?”
As if from a distance Aureste heard his own voice return. “Is she not likely to miss these?”
“Not she. I found them tucked away at the very bottom of an old chest. She’s never asked for them in all the time I’ve served her. She’s forgotten they exist.”
“Probably.”
“You’re content then, Honored Magnifico?”
“Content?” His lips turned down at the corners. “You’ve done well, Brivvia. Here.” He flipped her a coin, which she caught neatly. “Now leave me.”
“Yessir.” She looked down at the coin and her jaw dropped, for it was gold. “Thank you, Honored Magnifico! Thank you, sir!”
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