But here were—her eyes darted around, taking in twenty, forty, eighty, until the crowd of people became uncountable, too many, too many people.
And the noise. Voices buzzing, humming, chattering, music bellowing, heels hitting the floor over and over, all of it combining to create a roaring onslaught that filled the room and seemed to pierce her eardrums, just as the whirling, the candles reflected in reflections of reflections, the gowns of pink giving way to lavender to blue to pale yellow to pink again assaulted her eyes, and she couldn’t move.
She had come here planning something—what was it?—something to help her aunt and uncle, something to do with turnips—
There was a door, a small door, nearby—if she could just move—yes, yes, and her feet were taking her toward it as fast as she could go, and she was in another room, and thank the gods, it was small, much smaller, but everything was still people and noise, noise and people, but there, there was a window with a blue curtain, yes, she ducked behind it and finally, yes, it was dark and, if not quiet, at least quieter, and she began rocking back and forth and grabbed the thick edge of the curtain as she rocked and rubbed it between her fingers, the softness of the heavy velvet sweet against her skin, and as she huddled here, nothing was moving, and she could begin to breathe again.
The imposing entry hall of the house of Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, thought Kaab as she stepped through the front door, was a grand thing indeed.
Its black-and-white-checkerboard marble floor had been laid, its sweeping staircase erected, its high walls painted and gilded with one purpose: to intimidate. Kaab suspected that for any number of the other guests it performed its office admirably, but she was from the great coastal city of Binkiinha, whose chief temple alone could contain multiples of this curiously designed hall.
When she entered the ballroom itself, however, her breath was, if not taken away, then—suspended for a moment. Innumerable mirrors glittered on every wall behind innumerable candles, still greater hosts of candles flickered next to the food, reflected in the endless heaps of magnificent silver on the tables scattered around the perimeter of the room, dark green ivy swept the walls and windows in such profusion that the house seemed to be transforming before her eyes into a living garden, men in servants’ livery wove, unobtrusive, through the crowd, bearing shining trays of cakes in the shape of swans, or stood self-effacingly beside large mounds of pastries, and nobles everywhere wound paths around one another, talking, laughing, flirting, fanning, dancing heat into the air.
The Kinwiinik, however, presented no mean spectacle themselves. In their deep jewel-colored Local doublets, jackets, and gowns, they blazed against the pastel silks and brocades and lace of the Xanamwiinik aristocracy. The Kinwiinik were dripping with gold and flashes of jade, sporting feathers the like of which this city had never seen: iridescent quetzal, bright green cotinga tail feathers, the neck feathers of the yellow guacamaya, sweeping, graceful, at once fierce and gentle, besting the Xanamwiinik at their own displays.
As Aunt Saabim and Uncle Chuleb approached the duchess to greet their hostess, Kaab caught sight of Vincent Applethorpe in the crowd, his sword hanging at his side, intent on his quarry. She breathed a small sigh of relief. She was so unsettled by the news from home, she didn’t trust herself to bend sufficient attention to finding the man who threatened the woman she—well, the woman she cared for.
The letter had arrived late in the morning, as Kaab had been—ugh—playing with some cousin’s baby, and Auntie Saabim and Uncle Chuleb had been bickering, the thick smells of maize boiling with lime and sweet atole wafting from the kitchen, telling them that the afternoon meal was almost upon them.
“No, my morning star,” sighed Saabim in the tone of voice that meant I am willing to be patient with you, but if you persist in your obstinacy, that state of affairs is going to change very soon. “I am quite sure I wish to go to the ball.” She knelt on a reed mat, attending to the large packet of dispatches brought by the ship that had arrived from home the previous day. “I am pregnant, not stricken with the wasting disease.”
“It would be far better to behave as if you were stricken with the wasting disease,” said her young husband, his lips tight. “What if something happens there to hurt the baby? What if your headdress is not protection enough for your head-spirit from the night air?” He made a warding sign to the bright jade statue of Chaacmul in the niche altar on the south wall, offerings of fragrant cacao beans and fruit at its feet.
“Your uncle,” said Saabim to Kaab, as if air occupied the space where Chuleb stood, “knows much more about bearing a child than I do.” Kaab covered her mouth to avoid snickering. Saabim put a hand on her swollen belly to adjust her wide belt, embroidered with leaping jaguars, and opened another letter from the packet.
“Understandable, of course. I can hardly be considered an expert; I’ve only borne a few of them. Before his time, of course.”
“Uncle is jealous,” ventured Kaab, and Chuleb gave her a dire glower, his cheeks dark in the late-morning sun. “He’s worried some ant-egg-skinned lord will catch your eye and spirit you away.”
Saabim stood up suddenly. “Ekchuah guide us!” Horror was rigid in her face.
“What is it?” Chuleb was at her side in an instant. But Saabim simply continued to pore over the long, folded sheet of fig-tree paper she held in her steady hands. Kaab felt as she always did when Ahkin’s priestess revealed what she had read of the family’s fortunes in the book of days. Her head felt light and her liver heavy, and she couldn’t quite breathe.
Finally, Saabim dropped the letter on the floor. The blood-red and charcoal-black glyphs on the page seemed to darken the room.
“Awful news from home,” Saabim said, her dark eyes grim.
Kaab’s aunt was as prone to understatement as an eagle to flight; if even she was calling the news awful, then it must be truly unspeakable.
“The Batab, Ruler of the Territories, is besotted with his latest wife, a daughter of the Cocom family.” Chuleb’s brow lifted. “A third daughter, at that.” A derisive puff of air escaped Kaab’s nose. “They have taken advantage of his infatuation to petition him to cancel our monopoly on this continent and open the trade routes to them.”
Kaab’s eyes met Chuleb’s, and each saw fear. “Why not tell us that the Locals have discovered how to read the mysteries of the Four Hundred Siblings and are preparing to sail to our homeland while you’re at it?” Chuleb kept his voice steady. “I could hardly think of anything worse.” Kaab’s stomach clenched as if it were full of hot pitch. So far her aunt and uncle knew nothing of her slip with Rafe and Micah, who were now terribly interested in discovering precisely that information. She must make sure it stayed that way.
“Then your imagination fails you,” said Saabim, “for that is nothing compared to the rest. It seems that a Kinwiinik woman living in Tultenco became involved with a Tullan noble.” Would she glance in Kaab’s direction? No; her aunt spared her that embarrassment at least. “There was a dispute, and she killed him.”
No one spoke. The slap of tortilla dough on the griddle and the low murmur of servants’ chatter sounded from the kitchen, as if this changed nothing.
“The Tullan,” Saabim finally continued, “executed her immediately, of course. They sent a delegation to Binkiinha to demand reparations. As soon as they arrived, the delegation began talking war.”
Calamity.
A canceled monopoly would topple the Balam family from its prominence among the Traders of Binkiinha; a war with the Tullan Empire might see the Kinwiinik all enslaved or food for the crows before it was over, or led to the sacrificial altar. Of course the gods must be fed with the precious water that flowed through human veins, but no one in the civilized world seemed to believe them quite as undernourished as the Tullan.
“Now may Ekchuah guide us,” said Kaab softly. But there was only so much assistance the god who moved in the deep could render his children.
Kaab could do nothing about
the situation at home from the great Tremontaine ballroom, however, where Uncle Chuleb and Aunt Saabim (Kaab had known all along that there was no stopping her) were now leading the rest of the Kinwiinik company toward the Duchess Tremontaine—a figure of ivory resplendent in pale blue—to pay their respects.
All around, the fine nobles of the City stared at them. And then the whispers began, and the murmurs: shocked, amused, admiring, curious, impressed . . . There was no question but that the Kinwiinik Traders, in their gold and jade, their silver and pearls, their vivid feathered headdresses, had made a splendid debut entrance into the Duchess Tremontaine’s annual Swan Ball.
Having greeted the duchess, the elders of the family moved aside to allow Kaab to do the same. “Permit me to present,” said Chuleb, “my niece, Ixkaab, first daughter of the first daughter of the House of Balam.”
“It is a great pleasure to meet you, Duchess.” Kaab bowed with her hand on her heart, brown against the smooth yellow silk of her embarrassingly low-cut bodice. The duchess could not possibly recognize her; at their last meeting, Kaab had played the part of an unlettered servant, and people see, as her mother had often said, only what they expect to see.
But the sea-gray eyes in the face before her glittered. “And yet,” breathed the Duchess Tremontaine, “is it possible we may have met before? For surely I have seen your face, so striking, so bold. . . .”
Kaab swallowed. “I do not think so.” She must be very careful with this woman. “For I have not been very long in your stunning City.”
Diane sighed, a puff of regret tinged with self-incrimination. “I’m sure you’re right, then.” she said. “And the girl I’m thinking of had nothing of your bearing, your elegance.”
Kaab bowed her head. “You are too affectionate—no, excuse me, too kind.”
The duchess smiled. The effect was startling: the gray ice turned warm, like kind, sheltering shadows on a hot summer’s day. “I would like to be both. I wish to be a good, good friend to you and your people. And to know you better in particular, Mistress Balam, if I may.”
Kaab returned the smile, meeting charm with charm. In a graceful, confiding motion, Diane snapped open her fan, a confection of blue and gold. Kaab’s eyes flicked automatically to the lady’s slender ivory wrist.
And saw the locket.
The duchess was wearing the locket around her wrist, hanging from the worked gold chain of a bracelet.
The same locket Ben had brought back from his father’s deathbed, the same locket that Tess had copied so vividly on paper, an oval of gold ringed with diamonds, a jeweled swan resting, majestic, at the center.
Kaab and Tess had thought the locket gone forever, lying perhaps in the riverbed since the night poor Ben went uptown on the mysterious errand he had said would make his fortune.
Evidently, they had been wrong.
“I am inspired,” said Kaab carefully, “by the lovely . . . arm necklace? No—the bracelet! On your wrist.”
Was that a split second of alarm in the duchess’s eyes? “You like it?” she said coolly. “I assure you, it is nothing. A trinket. But,” she shrugged, “an old family heirloom. I wear it out of sentiment.” Just as at their last meeting: A nervous person always speaks too much. The duchess regained her footing. “Nothing, certainly, compared to the splendid jewels that adorn you and your family.”
So that was the game.
Kaab opened her mouth to make her next move—what it was she would not be able to say until it left her mouth; she was playing by instinct—but was forestalled.
Close by, there was a voice, pitched in a confiding murmur, but obliviously loud enough for those nearby to hear: “This is a new low. To see Tremontaine fawning over foreign tradesmen.” She jerked her head to the west to see a sneering older man in a white doublet looking at her askance. “Much less inviting them to a ball with the rest of us.”
Diane’s smile as she turned her head to look at him was beautiful. She nodded to the Kinwiinik. “Please do excuse me. I must attend to my other guests.”
“Of course,” said Kaab. This was exactly what she would have done in Diane’s place. Neutralize him before he offended the guests. A footman walking past with a tray of iced swan cakes obligingly cleared the path by stumbling—a thing Kaab had not expected to see in the home of the duchess—and when he recovered his balance, her hostess turned and glided off like a swan herself.
Kaab was beginning to like this woman.
Damn Karleigh. And damn Helena for being unable to restrain him. If Diane could have avoided inviting him at all, she would have done so, but such an open slight offered without provocation would have been deeply insulting and probably begun a series of hostilities for which she had at the moment neither the energy nor the patience. And so she had invited him and hoped for the best.
Fond hope. His attitude toward foreigners, a relic left over from a less enlightened age, was too strong a point of pride with him not to find expression. Only the girl had overheard Karleigh’s insult, though she was a sharp one; her performance two weeks earlier as a lowly servant had been masterly. Ahchuleb Balam’s attention had been elsewhere when Karleigh spoke, or at least seemed to be. But if Diane failed to contain the threat the duke presented, she might not be so lucky next time. And if the Kinwiinik refused the agreement she had proposed, then Highcombe would be lost, Tremontaine’s finances would never recover from the disaster of the Everfair, and—well, it did not bear consideration.
“Frederick! Helena!” she said, sweeping up to the pair. “I would be a poor hostess indeed, if I saw you bereft of punch and failed to rectify my error immediately!”
“Never mind that, Diane,” he said, stiff as ironwood. “What I can’t for the life of me determine is why you invited—”
“Duchess,” said Helena quickly, “you haven’t by any chance remembered Frederick’s weakness for iced cakes?”
She took Helena’s tiny hand in her own and applied the gentlest of pressure. Helena would interpret the gesture correctly as an expression of support and gratitude. This would be much easier with an ally. “How could you even think I would forget such a crucial detail? Both of you, please, come with me at once.”
It didn’t take her long to guide them to the room of tables groaning with food—a room empty of Kinwiinik, at least for the moment. “All is here for your delectation.” She made a grand sweep of her hand, indicating not just the cakes, the faint perfume of roses drifting from their icing, but also the filled pastry, the tender swan meat in citrus sauce—well, duck meat, but call it swan meat and who would be the wiser?—so much food even the assembled crowd would be hard-pressed to consume it all.
Out of the corner of her eye she spied—ah yes, a piece of luck indeed. “Sarah, I insist you come here at once and discuss with Karleigh the matter with which you were holding us all spellbound at last week’s dinner: your researches into the history of your family coat of arms and the questions raised by your discovery of the old escutcheon in the east wing of your home.”
There. That, she thought as the doleful Lady Perry approached them, would hold him for at least twenty minutes, and with Helena’s cooperation perhaps twice that. And then Diane would find something else to occupy his attention. Not only that, but Diane’s instincts about pastel at the beginning of the season had been unerring; in her light green gown Sarah Perry looked not just ill but actually like someone three days dead whom her family had unaccountably neglected to bury. Yet another triumph.
She turned and glided back into the ballroom, awhirl with dancing couples.
The clavier player looked at the violinist and rolled his eyes.
“I know what it is!” Andrew said quietly, as if seized with sudden inspiration, his hands moving over the delicate keys of the instrument in front of him. “He took up the viol only after a failed attempt at a career on the stage.” Jack turned a page. Andrew, for his part, played without a score. If he never heard the Boyce sarabande again after this season—a likelihood, t
he way people thought about music here on the Hill, fashionable one moment and worthy only of the trash heap the next—he’d be grateful; he certainly didn’t need to look at the sheet music to get the notes right.
Jack sniggered, his fingers moving deftly on the neck of the violin. “No, no! He’s actually gone deaf, but since he never learned another trade he’s just hoping nobody will notice.” Andrew hated playing with violinists who couldn’t talk as they fiddled. The music popular this season was less than inspired, to put it politely, and conversation allayed the tedium.
And there went the E in the third octave. “Damn this clavier. There’s another key stuck. How old is this thing, anyway?” He sighed and peered over at the violist. “He’s really a spy from Cham. He’s only been masquerading as a violist this whole time.” God, the harmonies in this piece were predictable. Here came the cadence again. Tonic, subdominant, dominant, tonic, as if Boyce were showing off something he’d invented. Ugh.
“Ah,” said Jack. “Modulation coming up in three measures.” His bow bobbed up and down in the air almost by itself. “Bet you my hat he flats the leading tone.”
“I wouldn’t take that bet in a million years. It’s too bad you’re not doubling him. You could just play louder and drown him out. Here it comes.” Andrew shut his eyes, cringed in anticipation, and winced when the modulation came. “Maybe he thinks we’re actually playing in C-sharp?”
“He couldn’t read the accidentals in C-sharp if his life depended on it.”
In fact, the musician about whom the two of them were speaking played his instrument no worse than either of the two of them played theirs, and occasionally better; Andrew was the most sought-after clavier player on the Hill not because he was the best, but because his shoulders filled his doublet so very effectively. But just three days ago Jack, released earlier than expected from a rehearsal because the soprano was too drunk for further work to do them any good, had opened the door to the small and dingy rooms he rented with the offending violist to find him in bed with Robert, their next-door neighbor. Even this breach might have been forgivable—the violist had been up until that moment, if not Jack’s sun, then perhaps his moon, or at the very least a not inconsequential star, and Jack was a reasonable man—but Robert, instead of being naked like a decent person as the violist took his pleasure, had been wearing Jack’s breeches. And as a result, Jack was now, as the saying went, pulling his plow unyoked. This gave Andrew, who had been disappointed in love, an opportunity for which he had been hoping for quite some time.
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