by G. Howell
I flushed and reminded him, “What about spring?”
“Only a few weeks of inconvenient erections,” he retorted. “Not all year long. Perhaps she knows that.”
Oh, Christ.
Perhaps Chaeitch noticed something because his ears twitched and he chittered again. “Smooth your fur. Joking. It’s just curiosity. You are something of a novelty after all. She was probably just nipping you to see if you’d twitch.”
“She wants to play those games then I’ll smile back at her,” I grumbled.
“Hai,” his head turned. “Be wiser not to. You know where that’s landed you in the past.”
I sighed and waved agreement.
“Anyway,” he straightened and swatted at a bug buzzing his muzzle, “time’s stalking. We’d best be getting ready. I’ve got to get my fur brushed out, and you should do the same. And try not to frighten the staff, ah?”
That wasn’t so easy.
Okay, so there wasn’t a lot of time and the staff were trying to respectfully hurry me along, but there were times they were a little overzealous in their duties. I tried to keep a reign on my temper as I tried to explain things to the groom.
‘Sir,” his ears were flat against his head, “I’m supposed to...”
“I don’t care,” I said, holding the towel with one hand and moving my other arm to block the bathroom doorway. “I’m quite capable of washing myself unaided.”
He looked from my arm to my face, wearing an expression as if what I’d just proposed was incomprehensible. “But sir, I’m supposed to assist you...”
“And you can do that by not helping.”
“Sir, your fur needs tending. Your back fur... you...” he trailed off, looking at my chest.
“Exactly,” I said. “I’m low maintenance.”
The servant looked utterly confused and actually upset. Dammit, he was just trying to do his job, and Chaeitch would have my ears if I teased him too much. “Look,” I sighed, “I won’t be long. Just lay your stuff out. When I’m done, you can do... whatever you have to do.”
“Yes, sir,” he acquiesced and reluctantly left me to my devices.
I shucked the towel and sank down into the hot bath. Animal-drawn vehicles might have their rustic charm, but they’ve also got the full range of dust and smells, lack of suspension or AC. It felt good to sluice that off, to sink down and dunk my head, washing away the grime of the day. It was also good to be alone for a while, although through the bedroom doorway I could see staff bustling around, sorting out armloads of varicolored cloth and murmuring amongst themselves with occasional glances in my direction. That was a reminder that I didn’t have time to linger.
As soon as I climbed out the chambermaids were there in force, armed with towels and businesslike attitudes. Rris fur required a lot of drying, so towels had to be expansive and absorbent. And since they also had to be made by hand, they were expensive beyond the reach of the average citizen. Out in Westwater Chihirae had never owned the like, making do instead with either air-drying or dishcloth-like swatches of cloth and a great deal of patience. The palace, however, could afford extravagances like those towels and in no time I was swathed in them, the attendants patting away at me as they ushered me through to the bedroom.
The Rris idea of formal clothing differs from what I’d been accustomed to back home. I’d been through occasions requiring formal garb before and I knew there’d be more in the future, so I’d wanted to get a proper suit tailored, something along the lines of a tuxedo. That idea, however, was shot down before it even got off the ground. They didn’t want something that looked like I’d just come down a chimney, they’d said. It had been explained to me that the clothing should suit the station; that just the cut didn’t cut it. Color was required, and texture and something that looked as if some effort had been made. Think baroque Victorian-era lush mixed with imaginative leather and metalwork, like a pileup in a renaissance crafts fair.
I’d brought several formal outfits with me, all custom tailored back in Shattered Water. They might not have approved of a black suit, but I can’t say I was that fond of some of their styles either. The kilts weren’t too appealing, and I was damned if I was going to be stuck with a pair of bloused breeches with a tail hole in back, or a Robin Hood’s Merry Men type of outfit like I’d been stuck with in the past. So we’d reached an uneasy compromise on the style. The outfits that’d resulted might’ve been acceptable at a fancy-dress ball back home and my hosts had considered them almost too austere, but they were acceptable on both sides. My hosts had picked out one of the few I’d brought along and it’d already been pressed and laid out on the bed. Red and black and silver featured predominantly.
I was slightly uneasy at the attention as hands toweled me off, others guiding me to sit on a cushion, lowering me so the groom could start on my hair and beard. I saw ears twitching, spasming with the effort to keep them upright and not lay them back down against their heads in a gesture that could be interpreted as insulting. They were all nervous and jumpy, but they worked smoothly, their hands gentle on the numb tissue around my scars. The groom working on my hair did so carefully, with practiced but wary movements, as if he were around a skittish animal.
There were a few instances where my physical differences caused them some problems. Brushing down the hair on my arms was a pretty fruitless exercise, as were attempting to trim and sharpen my claws, and sleeking back my beard in the style of Rris facial fur was just ridiculous. Apart from that, things went pretty smoothly. The clothes had been well attended to and fit comfortably, even if the material was pretty coarse. Back home the cut would have been called martial: red creased dress pants with silver frogging, a red and black tunic with a high collar and double button-over front with silver buttons and trim. The whole thing was quite garish and way over-the-top by my sensibilities, so it was acceptable to Rris eyes.
“You look good,” a voice behind me said.
I looked past my reflection in the mirror at Rraerch and Chaeitch. He was dressed in greens and browns: loose felt pleated breeches and a gleaming leather vest, intricately tooled and trimmed with gold. She was also in green, although her tunic and kilt were in tiny patchwork squares of more shades of green than I could immediately count. Wrapped around her torso, her arms, was gold filigree: like tiny curls of vines and ferns. Ummm. Green and red. It felt pre-planned.
“I feel like the very model of a modern major general. It’s not a bit... bright?” I groused as I adjusted my collar. An understatement, if anything. The red was almost a bright orange. To a Rris’ sense of color that would be red: they couldn’t see quite the same spectral range I could.
“It’s quite spectacular,” Rraerch said and I wasn’t sure if she was being honest or tactful.
“Tell that to Adam Ant,” I said in English and hefted the final touch, the eye-searing yellow and orange sash. “Gah! Do you think I really need this?”
They thought I did.
------v------
Doors swung open.
Crystal chandeliers hung from a ceiling glittering with golds and silvers, a heat shimmer haze rising from the hundreds of blazing candles. Below them shifted a chaos of colors and shadows: a crowd of a couple of hundred brilliantly costumed aliens, moving and orbiting one another in intricately interlocking patterns of influence.
I felt my heart rate start to pick up and sucked a deep breath. Both Chaeitch and Rraerch glanced at me and then at one another. I don’t think Chirét noticed as he stalked in ahead of us. When I stepped through and stood at the top of the sweeping staircase, heads were already turning our way.
That wasn’t too surprising. I suppose we were a sight: A Land-of-Water honor guard with weapons trust-tied escorting a couple of high-class Rris in their green and gold finery and a human in bright vermillion regalia looming a full long-haired head and shoulders ab
ove everyone else in the room. The noise in the room - the indescribable sound of Rris conversation like ocean surf on gravel mixed with coughs and rolling growls - that dimmed noticeably. Ripples of silence spreading outwards, the hissed whispers following right on their tail.
My boots were inaudible as I descended the pale marble steps and waded into the crowd.
Seen from above, the room around me might have resembled an exercise in Brownian motion. The Rris were particles, clouds of particles that filled the room yet thinned out dramatically in the area immediately around me. In that vacuum the occasional errant particle orbited uncertainly: approaching, curving away again, just watching. Lords and ladies, the wealthiest and most influential of guild houses and landowners and merchant families with their brushed fur and finery gleaming under the lights. All of them wanting to get in to try and secure an audience but not quite getting up the nerve to do it.
That caution wouldn’t last, I knew. I’d been through situation like that before, and I knew there’d be those who’d take this as an opportunity to try and skip the usual screening, to pick my mind, to ask questions and petition me. As I walked out into the sea of Rris I could already spot the wakes left by the sharks heading my way.
It was something I had to deal with as tactfully as possible. The next couple of hours or so were spent carefully fending and deflecting requests and offers and invitations. I’d been explicitly warned that accepting or committing to anything in such an informal setting would almost certainly lead to resentment and schisms later on. Behave myself and try not to frighten people, that was the advice Chaeitch had given me.
My escort hovered in the background, drifting in and out of the Technicolor crowd, occasionally eclipsed by bejeweled finery but always keeping me in sight. Always just there while I talked with the Metalworkers Guildmaster, was politely interrupted by the Weaver Guildmistress, moved a few steps to find a merchant I hadn’t met before wanting to talk business. Again and again, one after the other. Those hours were spent just getting across the room.
Food was laid out on enormous tables: long surfaces of beautifully finished wood, polished so the grain stood out like Jupiter’s bands. A continuous procession of servants replenished dishes and took empties away: silver trays and platters and covers and bowls. All sorts of breads and pastries, corn, potato wedges and spices and things I couldn’t identify. Meat, there was a lot of that of course: Rris still have predominantly carnivorous tastes. Slabs and strips and chunks and cubes were arrayed in artful displays: ground, minced, in pies and pasties and shish kebabs; smoked, grilled, roasted and of course raw. I eyed a spoked platter of grilled venison kebabs and their thick sauce covering uncertainly, then just took a warm bun and a handful of popcorn. Rris stared as I nibbled a mouthful.
“At least you’re not flashing your fangs this time,” a Rris voice at my shoulder said.
I turned to tell Chaeitch, “Go cough up a...”
It wasn’t him this time. Her ladyship was standing there, looking up at me with her head cocked slightly.
“Ma’am,” I swallowed. “I thought...”
“Ah Ties still dragging that carcass around, is he?” Lady H’risnth looked amused. “Ah Thes’its does draw that sort of reaction sometimes.”
Her attire was elegant, but light; in deference to the warm evening. Tan seemed to be her color, doing interesting things with her sandy and grey fur. A pale leather collar lay about her neck: a narrow V down to her clavicle. From that, across her front and back, hung cream-colored strips, a belted at the waist and weighted at the base with silver disks to form a loose kilt. Those disks were elaborately engraved. With what, I couldn’t quite make out. She’d worn that light tan and brown look the first time we’d met, at that formal night back in Shattered Water where. Back when I’d... I’d... She was right, that incident wouldn’t die quietly.
Her own guard was spread out behind us, forming a loose cordon that nobody seemed particularly eager to try and cross this time. But they were certainly watching her, and me.
“You might want to try these,” Lady H’risnth suggested, indicating some small pastries. “Quail. They’re really quite good. And should be quite safe for you.”
Rris do have some unusual ideas of what constitutes a good filling for some of their snacks. Really, no part of the poor animal is safe. I tried the proffered treats, gingerly. She noticed.
“The stuffing is goose liver [something],” she offered and looked amused.
Foie Gras. I’d had something like it before, at a very expensive function back in the other world. “It’s good,” I said, taking another bite. It was.
Her ears flickered again and I wondered if that was actually what was really in it or if I’d become the butt of a joke. “Come. Walk with me.”
This time the parting of the crowd before us was due to her guards. There were more than a few disgruntled looks, but nobody tried to interrupt as she led the way through the crowd. Over the heads of the crowds I saw a trio of mediators off toward the back, their utilitarian garments incongruous amongst the garish attire of everyone else. Had they received invites or were they gate crashing?
“You’re enjoying yourself?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” I said. Yeah, party hardy, dude.
She gave me a sidelong look. “From what I understand you’ve been talking business non-stop all evening. You really find that enjoyable?”
This time I hesitated, trying to think of a tactful way to phrase it.
She chittered into my hesitation. “I didn’t think so.”
The air out on the terrace was cooler. I hadn’t realized how warm the room had been getting until I stepped outside. Black and white tiles made geometric patterns in the light spilling from inside, out through the wall of widows. Lamps blazed along the balustrades: tall granite sconces spaced along the edge of the verandah filled with oil, burning like Olympic flames. Moths congregated, orbited, suicided into the light.
The Lady leaned up against the marble balustrade. “This is the sort of work you enjoy?”
These.... weren’t usual questions. Over the railing was the night, the fields under star and moonlight. “If it was enjoyable would it be work?”
Her eyes flashed a multihued shimmer of reflected light as she cocked her head, then chittered. “That was very good. Answering a question with a question. Those plays were right: your sense of diplomacy is a little different, a?”
She’d seen those? I felt a flush crawling up my neck.
“Huhn,” she looked me up and down again, then leaned back against a lamp support and slowly stroked down the fur of her chin and throat. The light from that angle did weird things to her features. “There was something I wanted to discuss: An artist, weren’t you?”
“Ma’am? I mean... yes Ma’am. Sort of... It was slightly different, but that would be the closest, I think.”
“Ah, I’ve heard some good things about your work,” she said, turning to look out across the starlit fields. “I’d like to talk to you about that. Would you be interested in a commission?”
“A commission?”
“More specifically, a portrait,” she said. “You’re interested?”
I nodded, then gestured a Rris ‘yes’. “I’d like to hear more about it before I could commit, but yes, I am.”
“Excellent,” she smiled. “I’m afraid this isn’t the place to discuss it. Monopolizing your time isn’t polite.” Her feline chin nodded toward the doors where guards politely kept hangers-on at bay. “There would seem to be plenty of others who’d gladly do that.”
“Perhaps I should charge them by the minute,” I said.
She looked thoughtful. “Interesting idea,” she said, then smiled again. “Don’t worry. I’ll send somebody to rescue you in another hour or so and we can talk somewhere more private. And I think there might be a good vi
ntage waiting to be opened.”
The tip of her tail flicked against my leg as she turned and stalked back across the terrace, her retinue following back into the ballroom room behind her until they were swallowed by the crowd. Immediately, that crowd started to spill back out onto the verandah, Rris nobility heading my way with a predatory gleam in their eyes.
------v------
Behind me the sounds of the function faded into the distance. All I could hear were the insect-spattering of my guide’s claws on the marble floors, rattling faintly in the dim corridors. Male or female, I couldn’t tell.
As her Ladyship had promised, it had been near midnight when the messenger had approached and stood respectfully off to one side while a Rris merchant talked at me about his idea of pulling ships around the lakes with huge ropes pulled by massive land-based steam engines. I’d managed to find a spot in his diatribe to acknowledge the messenger who’d offered me a respectful duck of his head and passed me a note. All that was on it was a seal embossed in red wax: her Ladyship’s mark. She was trying to keep it low-key. I’d begged an urgent appointment to escape.
As the messenger led me away through a side door I caught a glimpse of Chaeitch heading my way, looking panicked with ears back and eyes wide. Last I saw was Chriét intercepting him and speaking urgently before a guard closed the door. “Her Ladyship?” I asked when we were away.
The messenger waved an affirmative. “Sir, she said to tell you, ‘it’s a good vintage’.”
“A,” I said. It sounded a bit too much like trite cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it let me know this individual was representing her Ladyship. She was trying to reassure me.
My guide led the way through the darkened halls. There weren’t a lot of lights, not nearly as many as a human residence would require, so we were walking through a Palace of shadows. Statues peered from black niches, doors and arches led into foreboding darkness. In another long hallway, moonlight seeped in through skylights to wash across the wooden paneled and white-plaster walls, turning Rris paintings and tapestries to monochromatic renditions of daylight scenes. The occasional lamp was a welcome pool of warmth and color.
