Delia of Vallia [Dray Prescot #28]

by Alan Burt Akers

  The penultimate portrait, of Velia, a daughter born later, loved and named for the older Velia, again would soon require replacement, for Velia was growing up. Delia hoped the mistress would allow a visit with Velia here in Lancival, for Velia was being educated and trained by the SoR. It might not be possible. Discipline sometimes imposed a harshness well-nigh insupportable to a mother.

  She held the bronze rose-key in her hand.

  She knew—she had been told—that her dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe had conferred upon her a thousand years of life. She did not age. She had seen to it that her children and her friends and loved ones had also bathed. Like her husband, she had for the moment pushed aside the unanswerable questions this longevity aroused. If the time ever came for drastic measures, she, at least, would be ready.

  Crossing to the chest with the rose-arbor legs, she opened the front doors.

  She took out a silver-mounted balass wood box, the wood hard and black and shining. She opened the box. From it she took a thick, black, snakelike whip. This she put on the bed, quickly.

  From its velvet bed she lifted her Claw.

  Shining, razor-sharp steel, clawed with talons, the thing fitted up her left arm with steel splines. She turned it over. It shone with oil. With it she had been trained to rip a person's face off.

  She put it back, quickly, replaced the whip, shut the lid, and pushed the box back into the chest.

  Despite what the mistress might say, Delia did not intend—just yet and so soon—to wear the Claw and carry the Whip.

  “Not,” she said, half to herself, “not yet, by Vox!"

  She shook her brown hair free about her naked shoulders. Then she picked up two fluffy yellow towels and walked along the corridor to the bathrooms. She left the door of Velda's room open.

  Steam engulfed her in the suite of bathrooms. Naked women walked about, took the steam, talked, swam in the pool. Delia was quick. At this time she wished merely to wash off everything she could of her stay in Mellinsmot.

  She was not sure; but it seemed more than likely that Tandu had also written a note, sent by the icemen. He had expressed no surprise at her sudden determination on departure.

  “Yes, my lady. We can do all that is necessary here until the sisters arrive."

  “May Djan go with you, my lady,” Dalki had said, looking up as the flier lifted.

  They had called the remberees, cheerfully. Yes, Delia reflected, toweling herself briskly and bringing up the circulation, yes, it was almost certain. Her two Djangs must have said that the empress needed to be hoicked out of the plague spot at once. This was the only way she could be commanded to leave Mellinsmot.

  But, all the same, she still would bet that Dayra was the cause...

  Many of the women splashing about and gossiping and taking the steam were known to her. Many more were not. You could not expect to know every single girl personally who went through Lancival. And, of course, a goodly number of highly respected sisters of the SoR never went through Lancival at all.

  She exchanged a few words with women if they talked first, giving not the Lahal form of greeting of the outside world, but the SheonFaril—the Sheonli in its usual abbreviated form. Two women near her under the hot air funnels which teased the hair into a glowing sweetness were wrapped up in each other's news.

  “Taken her off, my dear, without consent."

  “Did you have to castrate him?"

  “No. I'd have liked to, but it was thought not necessary. The poor girl—well, she was only a Sister of Samphron, but they're not too bad."

  “And her parents?"

  “Everyone suffers after the Time of Troubles, although the new emperor has worked wonders. Oh, yes, they were only too happy to make a gift to the SoR. I think the mistress has dedicated that sum to some new curtains for the refectory."

  “We need some of the targets to be restuffed. The girls seem to knock them to pieces wonderfully quickly these days."

  “I know! It is these new bows. They are so much more powerful and accurate than our old ones."

  Delia smiled and let the warm air flow over her head, turning her shoulders to feel the grateful heat spreading down. Soon she was dry and her hair, carefully prepared by one of the superior novices, gleamed with its auburn tints through the Vallian brown. Naturally, she wore no jewels.

  Walking back to Velda's room she saw Yzobel waiting inside. Yzobel wore a rose-colored gown with a silver belt and dagger. She looked splendid.

  “The mistress is waiting?"

  “Yes, Delia. She says that she thinks you have had enough time to cleanse a regiment of Jikai Vuvushis."

  “If ever you become the mistress, Yzobel—and you might, you might—I trust you will be as intolerant. It tones up the muscles."

  Yzobel laughed.

  Delia put on her underthings which were not of sensil, not even of silk, but of a plain smooth cotton. They happened to be scarlet. Had she been intending to wear her pale lemon-colored dress—in the color called laypom of which she was fond—she would have worn appropriately colored undergarments. As it was, when she put on the rose-colored gown, fastening it with bone buttons, what she was wearing underneath would remain a mystery.

  Her sandals were flat of sole and heel, fastened by a mere three latchings of simple leather. Her belt, like Yzobel's, was fashioned from silver links. Her dagger was the long thin dagger of Vallia. She took no other weapons of steel.

  From a drawer in the chest she took out her two brooches.

  One was the regular circlet of roses of the SoR.

  The other was small and neat, a jeweled representation of a hubless nine-spoked wheel. Delia owned more than one of these brooches. She pinned it to the rose dress firmly.

  She saw Yzobel's little frown, a dint of her lip as her teeth caught.

  “I know, Yzobel. But the mistress cannot deny my womanhood."

  “She would be the last to do that!"

  Delia nodded her head, agreeing. “Do you really need new curtains in the refectory? I heard Keshni and Lovosa talking."

  “So you heard of Lovosa's latest? She was most wroth they did not let her unman him. He deserved it."

  “Probably. I was not there."

  Again Yzobel's lip dented under her teeth. “Yes, and we do need new curtains. A thousand orphans were discovered wandering in the Lower Mai Hills—"

  “Wandering?"

  “Yes. They fondly imagined they were a war-band ready to fight the invaders. Some of them were barely seven years old."

  “So they proved expensive."

  “That is one reason we are here. As for the curtains, we do need them. I, for one, do not care if the old ones fall to pieces."

  “Nor I."

  Going along the corridors and down the stairs, Delia was well aware that by saying that was one reason they were here, Yzobel did not mean that Delia had been summoned here by the mistress to contribute gold. Yzobel meant that succoring orphans was one part of the reason for the existence of the SoR.

  One part, an old and original, of a surety, but in these days a part that had to share resources.

  She was the empress. Well, for what that was worth when set beside the work these women did to the glory of Opaz and Vallia, she had already dedicated that part of her life. The mistress would be the first to explain that a sorority that did not exert every sinew to gather in revenue from everyone, high and low, rich and poor alike, would wither. The Empress of Vallia, in great fashion, could bestow a chest of gold. Had done so. But if every sister did not make her contribution, then the feeling of responsibility died. Unpalatable facts to some, these were, and Delia knew that. As for her own financial affairs, she had never considered herself to be a rich woman. Training with the SoR had engendered in her an understanding of the satisfactions of simplicity. That was just as well, considering the troubled times through which the country had gone and was still, by Vox, going through right now. Every copper ob they could scrape up had to go to the Treasury
to pay for the upkeep of the country, pay the army, buy saddle animals, both of the ground and the air, pay for education, pay for a thousand clamorous demands of empire.

  She put a hand to the plain white leather pouch on the silver belt. Among the items there—a comb, a kerchief, a few pins, odds and ends—could be found not a single bottle of scent.

  Scent cost money. Perfume cost more. The SoR relied on gifts together with some income from their holdings in Companies of Friends to keep them going. The lands around Lancival within its mellow valley supported them in the way of most of the food they required. They did not squander their money on resources.

  All the same, perfume was a vital part of a woman's style; the SoR were not foolish enough to prohibit its use.

  Natilma na Stafoing passed Delia in the shining hall leading to the lavender court. Natilma smiled. A remarkable woman, robust and yet elegant, with long hair done into coils, she wore hunting leathers and there was blood on her gloves.

  “Sheonli, Delia! How nice!"

  Delia smiled and spoke for a few moments. Natilma was one of the more senior sisters, and was well spoken of in the line of accession to the mistress. As they talked with the radiance of Zim and Genodras, all a lake of rubies and emeralds, flooding about them, Yzobel fidgeted. Natilma observed, and smiled again, and went on talking.

  Lansi ti High Ochrun came by, and stopped to talk. She, too, with her copper hair and heavy mouth, was high in the councils of the SoR, another prospective mistress.

  Yzobel shuffled her sandaled feet.

  Taking pity, Delia laughed, and said: “I must really go. The mistress is waiting."

  So, lightly, Delia walked out into the lavender courtyard into the radiance of the suns.

  “If I were mistress,” said Yzobel ominously, “I wonder what I would do about those two."

  “Well, you are too young. And when you reach your hundred, they will probably not be here."

  Then Delia checked herself. It was extraordinarily difficult to reconcile herself to this unexpected longevity. She was not at all sure that she wanted it. When Yzobel reached her hundred she would enter the ranks of those sisters who might look, one day, to become mistress. She would look very little different from the way she looked now. Only by the tiniest marks could one Kregan judge the age of another.

  And Delia would look the young girl she truly was until she was a thousand. Was that nice? Well, time would tell.

  At least four of the women who happened to be passing and stopped for a moment to chat as Delia made her way to the mistress's tower did not, she judged, happen to be passing by chance.

  Yzobel clicked her dagger.

  “Brazen,” she said, and her nostrils pinched in.

  Yzobel could get away with outrageous behavior, and Delia knew it. In the normal way of the Discipline, no sister could speak thus of another without reprimand. But, there was something planned in the way the ranking sisters just happened to be walking meekly along as Delia went toward the mistress.

  Nothing overt was said. Just making their marks, as it were. Delia fancied there would be more making of marks yet, before they ranked their Deldars and got down to the politics of the affair.

  The mistress of the Sisters of the Rose could have her apartments in no other tower than the Tower of the Rose.

  Thither Delia went.

  The grey stone walls, ivy clad, appeared to her to shed a cooling benediction from the heat of the suns. The archway closed above her head. The rugs upon the floor were not all of Walfarg weave; there were many lesser carpets to cushion the feet. Up the blackwood stairs, a single sharp ring upon the bell, and the door opening and old Rosala smiling and beaming and stepping back to usher in the sister come to see the mistress.

  “You are well, Rosala?"

  “A touch of gyp in my left elbow, my dear. But I'm as chirpy as a cricket and shall be two hundred and ten next birthday."

  They went along the carpeted corridor whose walls were adorned with the trophies of various past deeds. The mistress's room at the end looked just the same to Delia. Then she frowned. In one corner a curtain was half-drawn across a bed. It was a proper bed, as anyone could see with half an eye, not a day-lounger.

  That bed was a new touch, an addition to the usual.

  That did not, of course, mean it was abnormal.

  Most of the drapes were of that pale sheer rose color that verged on the opalescence of a Zimful sky at evening, when Genodras had sunk below the horizon. When Zim sank first in the long cycles of alternations, then the evening sky held overtones of quite different natures. Against the walls and drapes the furniture stood as ever, the familiar pieces, polished, cared for, each one in its place and each one fulfilling its own duty. The desk, of balass wood, still angled across the curve of the southwestern tower window.

  The mistress did not rise to greet Sister Delia.

  She used one pale hand to gesture to the seat set four square before the desk. Delia sat.

  Winsome to suggest this brought back vivid memories of herself as a young girl. Trite to suggest that, and trite to ignore the feeling.

  The scent of flowers banked in their troughs along the wall brought back the memories! The flick-flick plant on a windowsill, set there to catch flies, would as ever have to be hand fed. A new tang hung in the air. Delia, gently, tested its meaning. Medicaments. Well, then, and perhaps now she understood a little more of the chance meetings and the markings of marks that were no chance.

  “Faril Sheon, Delia,” said the mistress in all formality. Her voice breathed more memories; but the tone was weaker, the full bell-note fallen away. Delia sat straight, heels together, hands in her lap, head up. She looked at the mistress.

  Here in the heart of the heart of the Sisters of the Rose there was no need for the small secret sign.

  “SheonFaril, mistress,” said Delia.

  “I am more than glad to see you. You have worried me."

  The mistress had once been able to lift a full-bodied man above her head and throw him up a flight of stairs. Now she could do that, perhaps, to a fair-sized dog. Her face, unlined, bore only the marks of wisdom and experience and pain engraved upon it in the planes and the shadows. Her eyes were as bright and brown as cobnuts as ever they had been.

  Like Delia, she wore the rose-colored gown. Her belt from which swung the long Vallian dagger was of plain rope, untwisted, raw. Her hair, brown as a thrush's wing, held her face in a composition at once peaceful, dominating, gentle and harsh, all in that puzzle of vaol-paol that is a woman's face. In that eternal vaol-paol, the Great Circle of Universal Existence, was to be found more than mere philosophy.

  “I grieve to have caused you concern.” Delia's gaze lingered on the half-curtained bed in its alcove corner. “I apologize for my daughter Dayra. I assume that is why I am here."

  At the mistress's expression, Delia added, annoyed at the tinge of alarm in her voice: “It is not little Velia?"

  “No. Velia is a rose beyond price. Nor—this time—is it your Princess Dayra, who calls herself Ros the Claw."

  Delia felt the breath in her. If this was bad news, she must find the strength to bear it. She said nothing. She waited as the Disciplines taught.

  “You have seen my bed. I use it, in here, rather than waste my meager strength retiring to my chamber in the evening and dragging myself here in the morning."

  “Mistress—"

  “Wait, my daughter, wait. Once I was as you now are. But that was long ago. It is time I sought peace with Opaz. Time I handed over to stronger—"

  “Mistress!"

  “Do not grieve, Delia, who was Delia Valhan, and is now Delia Prescot, Empress of Vallia."

  “You know that means—"

  “It means a very great deal. But I am going, no one and nothing can halt me, and you, Delia, are my chosen successor. You are to be the mistress of the Sisters of the Rose."

  * * *

  Chapter six

  “Take this gift away from me."

/>   “No."

  “You have been selected by me, Delia, to be the mistress. Your election will follow."

  “No.” There was no hesitation, no doubt, in her. This was not for her. “No, mistress. I am aware of what this means. You know I am aware. But I cannot."

  The mistress placed a plain square of yellow linen to her mouth. Her coughs were tiny scrabblings, as of nestlings.

  “How can you refuse?"

  “I do not know how. I know only that I must."

  One narrow hand, doubled over, ridged and veined blue, crept onto the desk top. That hand trembled.

  “Delia—"

  “I cannot—I feel pain, and shame, and dishonor—all foolish feelings, I know. But take this gift away from me."

  The mistress said: “Once I had a husband. He was all the world to me. But he died. Once I had children. One is still alive—somewhere. All you will need of husband and children you will find here, in Lancival."

  “That I can believe, yet cannot—"

  “Once I was called Elomi the Shining. I was born in Valka. Did you know that?"

  “I knew."

  “Valka is so beautiful it can break the heart. Yet Lancival is—"

  “I cannot be the mistress, mistress. Do not ask it of me."

  “And if I—?"

  “You would not command. It is not in—"

  “But if I did?"

  “You will not."

  The mistress sat back in the wide-armed overstuffed chair. She appeared to shrink. “No,” she said in that forlorn whisper. “No. I would not."

  For a moment, silence enfolded the two. The mistress looked across at a side table where stood a crystal parclear set, the glasses sparkling. Instantly, Delia rose, crossed to the table and poured a glass of parclear, the sherbet drink fizzing in crystal abandon. The mistress sipped, and then drank. Her neck looked fragile as she swallowed.

  Delia made no move to pour parclear for herself until the mistress nodded.

  A moment later, the fizz stinging her mouth, Delia was ready to battle on against an unwanted fate.

  Like any general swinging his troops across a battlefield to search out a fresh opening for an advance, the mistress took up a fresh subject.