by Sharon Shinn
“I have always planned to return to Chialto,” she said frostily. “Your invitation has no influence on my actions.”
“No, I’m sure it doesn’t,” he said. “But you have not heard the extent of the invitation yet. King Vernon would like you to temporarily take up residence at the palace.”
That made her open her eyes and take a step backward, until she felt the smooth surface of the glass against her spine through the heavy fabric of her robe. “Why?”
“It is common for the primes of the Five Families to keep quarters at the palace so that they may easily come and go,” Darien said. “And it is customary, when a new prime is installed, for that individual to reside at the palace for some period of time. It is not required,” he added. “But it would be much appreciated by the king.”
Zoe frowned. “It sounds awkward and uncomfortable. I am not accustomed to court ways, and I feel certain I would make dozens of social blunders.”
“King Vernon very much wishes that you will take up residence in the palace,” Darien said. His voice was still pleasant, but there was a hunti undertone that hinted of intransigence.
Zoe toyed with the idea of resisting, just to test her waywardness against his will, but she thought there would be many battles ahead between the two of them, and it might serve her better to conserve her energy. “What would be required of me?”
“You will join the wives for breakfast, the king and all his guests for dinner, and participate in whatever social activities occur during the duration of your stay. You will have your own apartments, with space for three or four servants, and you may come and go as you please. You would live at the palace merely to promote the notion that the kingdom is, indeed, one family, and that yours is a part of the king’s.”
“Will it be clear to King Vernon—and his wives—that I am no longer in contention to be one of his brides?”
Darien smiled. “It already was, the minute your aunt Sarone publicly named you prime.”
She turned away and began pacing again. “And will you advise me if I seem to be on the verge of a solecism? For if I recall correctly, you maintain apartments at the palace as well.”
“I do. And certainly, if I think you are about to make an error, I will try to guide your actions.”
“When would I be expected to make my appearance at the palace?”
“I had hoped to bring you back with me when I leave your estate.”
“Which will be?”
“Tomorrow or the following day.”
“I am not sure I will be ready to leave so soon.”
“Then I await your convenience.”
She stopped abruptly and swung around to face him. “Let us travel down to the temple in town,” she said. “Let us see if this arrangement you propose is, in fact, in my best interests.”
His face was grave again. “Let us do so indeed,” he said. “I am certain you will find that it is.”
The temple in town was scarcely bigger than the kierten at Zoe’s house in the village. It had the required five-walled shape, but room for only three benches, which made a triangle around a small covered table in the center of the space. There was no deep barrel here, filled with dozens of each blessing, just a pretty basket with a shallow layer of coins.
“My cousin Keeli tells me that there are only three of every blessing to be found in the basket,” Zoe said with a slight smile. “So perhaps you will pull up something other than a hunti trait if you dip your hand in three times.”
“Is that what you wish to do?” he asked. “Pull three blessings?”
“Let me see if I like the first one I draw,” she said. She swirled her fingers through the flat metals disks and picked one. “Change,” she said, showing it to him.
“Does that convince you?” he asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “Let me try again.”
Even she was a little unnerved when the second coin she pulled from the basket showed the exact same symbol. Darien said, “The message seems a little difficult to deny.”
She kept both pieces in her fist and pointed at him. “Now you draw one. Let’s see if even here you are showered with nothing but hunti blessings.”
He nodded, his expression a bit sardonic, and swept his hand through the metal disks so quickly she was sure he didn’t have the time to feel for any particular glyph. She had never seen him so surprised as when he glanced at the coin he had selected.
“What is it? Let me see,” she demanded, and he wordlessly tilted his hand to show her.
Change.
A shiver went down her back. He was right; the message of the blessings seemed incontrovertible. Not only was her life scheduled for transformation, but Darien Serlast was an inescapable part of that future. The slightest laugh escaped her lips.
“I have to look,” she said. “This won’t take very long.”
Handing her two coins to Darien, she carried the basket to a bench and dumped its contents in her lap. He sat on one of the other benches and watched her, idly turning the blessings over and over in his hand, as she sorted through every other coin in the basket. There were three symbols for triumph, three for talent, three for honor, three for loyalty, three for wealth—three for every single blessing on the list.
No other coin was stamped with the symbol for change. She and Darien Serlast had drawn the only ones.
FIFTEEN
Zoe supposed she should have expected it to be raining when she made her way down to the river flats. Here in the middle of Quinnasweela, the weather was still generally fine, but there was just enough chill in the air to remind everyone that colder, more miserable days were coming. She had to confess, she was glad she would not be camping on the Marisi when the truly wretched weather moved in.
She was not yet living in the palace, though she had been back in the city for two days. She had told Darien that she needed a little time to organize herself—assemble the rest of her wardrobe, for instance, and engage servants who would accompany her to the palace. Not at all to her surprise, Hoden had refused her invitation to come to Chialto. “I do not leave the house,” he said. “None of us do.”
“I suspected that,” she said. “I will look for other people.”
The people she had in mind were ensconced in their tent on the river flats, happily watching the rain dimpling the water. “Zoe!” Annova exclaimed when Zoe stuck her head through the flap. She rushed out into the wet weather to throw her arms around her visitor’s neck. “Look at you! So finely dressed! Have you taken up with a wealthy man who showers you with gifts?”
Zoe laughed. “Oh, my tale is much stranger than that. Can we get in out of the rain? Calvin, how are you?”
Once they had exchanged greetings and settled on mats—quite close to each other in the cramped confines of the tent—Zoe told her story. Both of them made suitable exclamations of surprise, but she could tell neither was really astonished. People came down to the river flats for all sorts of reasons. She was not the first wealthy or well-connected person to hide herself among the squatters—indeed, nearly everyone who lived on the river had an interesting past. Even, she would guess, Annova and Calvin.
“So I will be living in the palace for perhaps a quintile,” she finished up. “I am expected to bring attendants with me—and you are the only two people in Chialto I trust with my whole heart. Winter is coming. If you have nowhere else to go, and you’re willing to play the parts of my servants, I would love to have you with me for the next season.”
Calvin was tickled. “Me! Living in the palace! Wearing fine livery and ordering footmen to do my bidding!”
“It’s a generous offer, and both of us have held such positions from time to time,” Annova said, confirming a suspicion Zoe had had for a long time. “I would be happy to live out of the wet and the cold, and I don’t mind acting as your maid, but I don’t know that I’m fashionable enough to be of any benefit to you.”
“My cousin Keeli will advise me on my clothes,” Zoe said. “You would just be there to h
elp me get into my clothes and make sure everything stays clean and mended. And Calvin would carry messages and run errands—and maybe lurk around palace doorways and listen to what the wives are saying about me,” she added with a laugh.
“I suppose the two of us would need new clothes as well,” Annova said thoughtfully.
“Yes. The Lalindar colors are predominantly blue with a touch of green. I thought we could get each of you some formal attire.”
“Might get a little pricey for you,” Calvin objected. “You realize we cannot afford to make such purchases ourselves.”
Zoe laughed. “You have no idea how much money I control now! I can buy chocolates every day if I feel like it—and anything else I desire! And you realize, of course, that you will get salaries, as well as your bed and board.”
Calvin thrust his hand out. “Then we’re hired!”
“If you’re certain we’re the right ones to see you through this,” Annova said doubtfully.
Zoe reached out to clasp Calvin’s hand, and Annova laid hers on top of their interlaced fingers. For a moment, Zoe’s blood reacted to the chemicals in theirs, busily decoding and defining; by now, she found the sensation soothing rather than strange. “You’re the only ones,” Zoe said. “I will feel so much better knowing that friends of the river are beside me.”
Annova said, “Friends of the heart.”
On her third day in the city, Zoe accepted an invitation to have lunch with Keeli and her mother, Christara’s daughter Sarone. She had to ask directions to the house, a sprawling three-story building that had once been Christara’s. Zoe’s memories of it were much hazier than her memories of the house on the river; her parents had rarely brought her there and rarely stayed for long. But as she walked up the wide stone pathway from the street to the house, she was struck with a sudden mental image of racing across the yard, being chased by her cousins; the pathway, laid out from river rocks, was the secure zone where no harm could befall you. For a moment, on this chilly Quinnasweela day, she felt the humid air of high summer, the relentless overhead sun, her gasping breath tumbling against her rib cage as she collapsed within the margin of safety, one step ahead of Keeli. Then she blinked, and the sensations were gone.
Keeli answered the door. “Oooh, look at you, that dark blue is a very good color,” she approved. “Come on in—it’s just my mother and me, and she can’t wait to see you.”
Keeli tugged her impatiently through the house, but Zoe dragged her feet, glancing around, trying to take in as much detail as she could. Yes, she remembered that room, with its dark, heavy furniture and velvet curtains, but that room must have been completely redone. The arrangement of archways and doors was eerily familiar, as was the way a slant of sunlight threw a prism across one wall at just this hour of day. She heard a faraway splash and remembered that the house’s grandest indulgence—an indoor water feature that resembled a woodland pool—was just down that corridor to her right.
But Zoe didn’t recognize the small room Keeli eventually delivered her to, a cheerful place of many windows, blue-and-white furnishings, and a view of a busy city street. Sarone came forward to greet her, hands outstretched and face lit with a smile, much happier to see Zoe than her brother Broy had been. Sarone had that Lalindar look—golden, blue-eyed, full-bodied—though her face was warmer than Christara’s had ever been.
“Zoe,” she said, first clasping Zoe’s hands and then dropping them to take her in an embrace. “I had given up all hope of ever seeing you again.”
As soon as Sarone touched her, Zoe felt that shock of recognition in her blood, the quiver of acknowledgment that here was someone closely related to her. She felt herself involuntarily flinch against Sarone’s hold, and then she raised her arms to cling. Sarone had enough of the look and feel and smell of Alieta that for a moment Zoe could imagine that she was hugging her own mother.
Sarone obviously had felt Zoe’s strong reaction, because when she pulled back, she wore a quizzical look. “Do you have that ability, too?” she asked. “To identify a blood relative just by touch?”
Zoe was relieved to have such a thing spoken of aloud; it made the power seem so much less unnerving. “Yes—can you feel it, too?”
Sarone shook her head. “No, but my mother could. It was quite remarkable—even more so because it extended beyond her own family. She could go into a roomful of fifty woman, all strangers to her, and discover which two were sisters, just by touching a hand to each of them in turn. She also used to claim she could hear the heartbeat of every person in the city, but that one was harder to prove.”
“I can hear heartbeats, but only at the river house,” Zoe said with a smile. “To tell you the truth, I am a little glad that ability hasn’t followed me down the mountain.”
“No, I imagine it would be very distracting.”
“I think it would be awful,” Keeli put in. “And then what if a heartbeat suddenly stopped? You’d know that person was dead!”
“Though I can imagine some situations in which that would be a useful skill,” Sarone said. She had stepped back but was still studying Zoe, as if trying to match the new image to an old memory. “You look so much like your father,” she said. “I remember you as small and dark and well-mannered until someone made you angry, and then you could throw a tantrum to bring down the house. Just from the outside, you don’t look like you’ve changed much at all.”
Zoe grinned. “I haven’t had occasion to throw a tantrum in quite a long time, so I don’t know about that part of it,” she said. “I suppose I won’t know until I’m actually incensed about something.”
“Let’s have lunch while you tell us everything about yourself,” Sarone said, ushering them over to a broad table loaded down with a selection of delicacies. A fountain played nearby, the sound of running water soothing to coru sensibilities. They filled small plates with a variety of foods—breads and baked fish and roasted vegetables, which Zoe imagined were particularly expensive here out of season.
“Keeli tells me your father is dead,” Sarone said as they settled in to eat. “I’m sorry for the grief that must have caused you.”
Not, Zoe noticed, I’m sorry he is dead. “Soon it will be a year since he died,” she said. “At times I still find it hard to believe he is no longer in the world.”
“Yes, I’ve rarely met anyone with a stronger personality than Navarr Ardelay.”
“You didn’t like him,” Zoe said outright.
Sarone hesitated. “He seemed to go out of his way to alienate the Lalindars,” she said at last. “He was always arguing with someone. It didn’t help that his politics and my mother’s were so different. They both served as advisors to the king, and no matter what counsel my mother gave, Navarr was certain to contradict it. It infuriated her.” She glanced at Zoe. “And perhaps it infuriated him that her views were so contrary.”
Zoe smiled. “No, I think he enjoyed putting her in a temper.”
“He must have been the only one in the kingdom,” Keeli observed around a mouthful of food. “Everyone else was always so careful not to make her mad!”
“Except my sister,” Sarone added. “Alieta and our mother had some bitter battles.”
“I was never certain,” Zoe said. “What was the final argument between Christara and my father? Because I know she’s the one who spoke against him so strongly to the king.”
Sarone lathered jam on a thick slice of bread. “Well, there was the public fight and the private one,” she said thoughtfully. “Publicly, it was a dispute over a proposed marriage between the king and a girl from Soeche-Tas. One of the viceroy’s daughters, I believe. Your father distrusted the Soechins for various reasons, but my mother favored the notion of a wedding. She rallied the Frothens and the Dochenzas and together they challenged your father. The Serlasts stayed neutral, though I believe Damon felt much as Navarr did. The king ultimately sided with the stronger coalition, though no marriage ever occurred.”
“And the private argument?” Zo
e asked.
Sarone gave her a level look. “Evidence had come to light of one of your father’s infidelities. My mother was angry that he was unfaithful to Alieta, and she wanted to make him pay.”
That widened Zoe’s eyes. She vividly remembered arguments on that topic from the days her mother was still alive. How can you think so little of me that you betray me with a woman like her? And of course, even while they lived in exile, Navarr had indulged in dalliances. There had been at least three women in the village whose company he sought out on a regular basis, as well as women in nearby towns.
But. “My mother was dead at least a year before my father’s fall from grace,” she said. “He might have been seeing another woman, but at that point he could hardly have been considered unfaithful.”
Sarone nodded. “I remember saying that very thing to her, but apparently—oh, it’s been so long and the details escape me! Apparently she learned in some mysterious fashion that your father had been carrying on this liaison while my sister was still alive. My mother was enraged . She came stalking into the house—I will never forget it—flinging things in front of her, knocking pots and furniture to the ground. She was so furious that the water in the fountains all over the house started bubbling up over their basins. I’m not making this up. The pool overflowed. This room flooded. Her bedroom flooded. Water was dripping through the ceiling and ruining the floors and the rugs. And she just splashed through the halls shouting, ‘How dare he? I will ruin him!’ And she did.”
Sarone fixed her gaze on Zoe. “She had disliked him long before this, of course. When my sister died, my mother offered to take you. Actually, that’s not strong enough. She demanded that Navarr give you to her. She had already determined that you would be her heir, apparently, so she wanted to raise you in her house. But he refused to turn you over. I think one of the reasons she was so bent on ruining him,” she added, “was that she believed the king would award her custody of you once Navarr was in disgrace. But he was too wily for her. The day before his assets were seized, he disappeared, taking you with him.” She shrugged. “No one knew where you were. Until word came from Christara’s house that you had reappeared, we didn’t have the faintest idea where you could be found.”
