by Marc Secchia
She had thanked him, burned her dress in frustration, and had to return to her chambers to change.
Maybe she should be a Dragoness. She’d eat that entire flock of skulking windrocs and scatter their fang-cracked bones across ten thousand leagues of Cloudlands!
Should she eschew Jakani? Halt the work which had seen one hundred and seventeen healings so far, but a far greater number of failures? She tried not to discriminate between the castes. But as the weeks rolled on, she became more and more aware of her father’s scrutiny. It seemed everywhere she looked there was another House functionary or spy, attending to her sister’s harp lessons, watching when she entered or departed the House, finding excuses to travel with her or her sisters, and she soon uncovered evidence that even the maidservants in her chambers were checking her scroll work and reporting back to father.
The pressure mounted on all fronts.
Tytiana made up her mind. Should Fra’anior smile upon her, she would find herself a suitable Young Master at the Ball. A week before the event, she told Jakani as much. He received the news in stoic silence, congratulated her success in a voice that groaned like a body freshly exhumed from the grave – matching her feelings perfectly – and took his leave of her, staggering away like a man wounded.
She did not see him again after that.
Her dreams were a hodgepodge of craziness that week leading up to the Ball, but she reserved the worst for the night before. She dreamed of eloping in blissful happiness with Jakani and living in a cave beneath Sylakia Island, of all places, parleying with the pirates to destroy her House, changing into a Dragoness and eating her father alive, and Zihaeri turning around and slaying her Dragoness-sister with an infeasibly long Dragon lance. Having woken from that medley of madness in the early hours, she sternly told herself to go to sleep again and promptly had an endless nightmare of running away from a monstrous fenturi spider who had her father’s face on top of its grotesquely hairy body. She screamed and screamed for Jakani, but no help came.
She awoke feeling just marvellous. Muzzy head. Sore throat. Fire pounding relentlessly behind her temples, so much so that crimson flames flickered around the edges of her vision. She had never experienced that effect before.
Must be stress.
Or a lack of Jakani, her discharge point? Great Islands, how was that a fair assessment of his utility to her? Fra’anior, without him I should die … but she must carry on.
Then Sariaki came in and threw the biggest temper tantrum under the suns about not being allowed to attend the Ball.
Tytiana stormed out of her bed, grabbed her sister by the throat – and stopped herself. No, no, no! This fire would not rule her. Instead, she kissed Sariaki who thankfully had not understood the thoughts pounding through her enflamed mind, and held her, and wept inside of herself. Accursed fires! How could it be good for a person to burn like this?
She would end up killing someone she loved.
Endless preparations consumed the day. She, Zihaeri and Quiraeli had a bevy of maidservants fluttering about to primp, coif, polish and otherwise irritate the living spiders out of the three Choices for hours and hours and hours on end. Nothing short of perfection would do. At last it was down to donning the dresses. Tytiana wore a very traditional and, in her opinion, laughably staid set of full-length undergarments, the under-corset and sliplet, and then over that went the profusion of hoops and petticoats, then the main dress itself, and finally the jewellery and headpiece atop her hair that for once, had suffered itself to be wrestled into a presentable style – piled high beneath the hairnet in waves, with burning orange ringlets tinged with her signature gold cascading over her right shoulder and down her back to her waist.
To accomplish that feat had only taken three hairdressers four times longer than all of her sisters combined.
Zihaeri said, “You look amazing.”
Tytiana grimaced and said in a thick pretend-lamko accent, “Aye, I’ve packed me man trap and me manacles. I’m ready.”
They all hooted with laughter.
The carriage ride to House Alagar, the Orange, would take just over an hour. The family took two carriages since the three ball gowns could not possibly be squeezed into just one carriage. Their father and Quiraeli drove ahead, while Tytiana and Zihaeri came after, plus the inevitable cortege of servants and soldiers.
The evening was cool but beautiful, purples gathering in the eastern sky while the west grew radiant with a crepuscular firestorm that appeared to emanate from clouds that bracketed the lowering Yellow Moon. Wow. Incredible. Driving the two miles down to the Gatehouses which had become so familiar to her, they then passed into the newer part of the estate. The lamko houses were set back well out of sight, but they passed two ‘craftsmen’ villages before the main road cut away toward the Western shore, steadily climbing a headland until they were afforded a panoramic view of the suns setting the Cloudlands afire with rose and crimson, the thick streaks of light like living, burning bullion crossing the sky to set the fenturi fruit agleam like silver stars amidst the fiery burgundy orchards.
Tytiana touched her chest. Oddly, she felt a stretching sensation. Was that a sense of him, perhaps settling down for dinner in his hut, as they left his tiny village miles behind?
Let her fate be. Few Helyon Islanders married for love.
Her eyes became blind to the suns-set, and the beauty all around her, as the carriage raced away into the gathering night.
* * * *
Jakani stared at the egg. “Tonight’s the ball.”
Was the white shell becoming thinner? It seemed indestructible. He could not imagine why a dragonet would tarry like this, when it clearly seemed to be quite busy inside that shell from time to time, tapping or even making tiny, almost inaudible chirping sounds.
“What do you think of that, eh? Wish I could dash over there and rescue the girl. They’d only shorten me by a head. A painless and permanent solution to my problems, to be sure.”
The egg, set before him on the watchtower platform, was silent. He lay up here on his stomach with his chin cupped in his hands, watching the suns-set. Melancholy. Despairing. Wondering if he should not be happy for Tytiana. Tonight, she would work out which of her peers she would marry, and the High Master would be content, and the heaviest of hands would lift from her life. He knew what it was like to carry a duty of care for his siblings. In some ways, given Sokadan’s limitations, he had been required to function as the older brother over the years. At least Quiraeli had continued to treat Sokadan without apparent distaste, having met him two further times. She had glanced at his legs once or twice, but most people did that. He had glanced at Tytiana’s wooden foot, hadn’t he?
Qui seemed so kind. Please, o Fra’anior, let it not be just for show. He could not even give voice to hope; but that he carried such a burden for Sokadan, it was as if he ached to bear those wounds for his brother. To be his shield and his substitute, impossible as that might seem. What courage it must have demanded of Sokadan to pursue his art. The stakes had never been higher.
For him, the game was already lost.
From this perspective, the egg looked huge. If he lowered his head enough, it covered half of the Island-World. Interesting. Yet the backlighting of the suns had not revealed any of its inner secrets.
He should return home for supper. His parents would be worried. Everyone would be sympathetic and gentle with him and he wondered if he could handle their love in a gracious manner; he must, but he was weak and hurting, and this dull ache of unfairness was all his heart knew.
At least he had a family who cared about his dreams, impossible as they might be. Tytiana did not enjoy as much with her father.
Over the egg’s sparkling rim he saw a flight of Dragons patrolling the Island – tonight, they would be on high alert as an attack at the Ball could be devastating. His head swivelled as he scanned the horizon. Nothing out there.
Nothing but heartbreak.
* * * *
Secur
ity at House Alagar was heavy. A double ring of armed guards and soldiers extended right around the formal gardens and lawns. In the middle of the garden stood an architecturally gorgeous pavilion, painted in her opinion a perfectly ghastly orange with ochre undertones, open on all sides, which was the centrepiece of this year’s Ball. One walked through the tall columns to the dance floor, where a thirty-piece orchestra played traditional Helyon maskals, denni-blues and lyroms for the dancers. Tytiana saw further guards standing to attention beside the columns, wearing the liveries of many Houses. The man-drawn carriages rolled up to the front steps of the main House, however, which again was built in a hexagonal shape around a central courtyard, two stories high in a new outmoded wood-beam Helyon style. The building would be over three hundred years old. Each corner had a taller turret, some seven stories high, which in olden times had been manned by archers. Doubtless some men might be stationed up there tonight, despite the Dragon guard up in the skies.
The first order of the evening was to join the receiving queue to greet the High Master of the House, and naturally, to look as pretty, marriageable and expensive as possible, whilst remaining approachable. No problem. She had trained for this all her life.
The House was as opulent as she had expected. Every last square inch had been dusted, cleaned and polished to the highest standards for this event. Everyone wore their finery in the signature House colours – formal double-breasted jackets and jewelled neckerchiefs for the men, with slightly flared long trousers and gleaming boots, while the women wore a feast of colours and jewellery, in styles ranging from elegant simplicity to her own extravagant, artistic masterpiece – surely the most eye-catching of all.
Thank you, Ahlyaza.
The High Master and his four Young Masters, two of whom had the good fortune to feature on her list of potential victims this evening, greeted Juzzakarr and complimented him on his beautiful daughters, and then Zihaeri, Tytiana and Quiraeli took their turns working their way down the receiving row. The four Young Masters were all tall, blonde and handsome lads, and she made sure her deep genuflection, as snidely ordered by her father, showed sufficient cleavage to make eyes widen in appreciation, but after they had passed along and the herald called the next family’s entrance, she heard someone whisper, ‘No. That’s the lamko-lover, boys.’
She was so shocked she glanced back over her shoulder. High Master plus four royally ignored her. Her own family did not appear to have heard anything. Had she imagined the slight?
No. Her evening turned into a succession of snubs, open or subtle. The Young Masters passed her over for dance after dance. Even scions of those Houses directly allied with her own did not take offers to dance. One or two came over to converse and were gracious enough to apologise, but generally, everyone acted as if she had the caroli plague. Only Faran’s intervention to whisk her away for a dance number – at Zihaeri’s very unsubtle prompting – saved her from complete humiliation. The one glance she dared to take at her father showed a face blacker than thunder.
Was this planned by him? Or not?
She felt as numb and unfeeling as her wooden foot, and far less useful.
For her sisters, the evening was nothing short of a rampaging success. Quiraeli had more offers of dances than one girl could manage in a lifetime – at one point the Young Masters came close to starting a brawl over a disagreement as to who would take the next dance with her – while Juzzakarr and High Master Faran made their big announcement at the traditional time, after the seventeenth dance of the evening. Rapturous applause! Young Masters and Houses lining up to offer their congratulations! Faran blushed and laughed and bowed fifty times or more. She stood with her family and smiled prettily until the queue of well-wishers calmed down. More dance numbers. More waiting upon the sidelines. Her stupid artificial foot had decided to pretend to ache this evening.
How was that even possible?
What a perfect fool Tytiana felt now for imagining how much like a grounded windroc Jakani might feel in this, the highest strata of Helyon society, for tonight she knew what it was to be a pariah.
A flame drowning in a sea of beautiful, rich people who cared not a jot for her.
She felt queasy. Realising she might just be hungry, Tytiana snagged Zihaeri between dance numbers and they raided the snacks table together.
“I’m sorry, Tyti,” her sister said. “I had no idea it would be like this.”
“I wrapped my own bolt of silk, didn’t I?”
“Aye, you did. But this smacks of a concerted campaign. I don’t like it.” Zihaeri added, “Father wouldn’t have done this tonight, at the hour of his triumph. I just don’t understand how it could have been arranged without us catching wind of something foul – are you alright?”
“Not feeling very well, actually. I need some air.”
“We’re outdoors, sis.”
Now that it was fully dark, torches had been lit all around the gardens and lamplight spilled over the busy dance floor. The band had struck up an energetic maskal. Couples paired up as if by magic, even out amongst the gazebos, tinkling streams and by a pretty pond fringed with miniature trees. Suddenly, Tytiana could not face it anymore. The painted faces. The snide comments and sly glances. It felt as if every person present hated her, even though she knew some did not.
“I … think I need the bathroom. Icky stomach.”
“Want help?”
“I’ll be alright. This is your night and I don’t want to spoil it for you. I’ll come back smiling as if nothing happened.”
“Smiling on your way to the dungeon?”
Tytiana knew her smile looked sickly. “Aye.” And then father would take it out on the lamko. That communal whipping would be nothing compared to the wrath of a High Master scorned. He would make sure she knew it was all her fault for reaching out to them.
Oh, Jakani. I can’t touch anything without burning it to cinders.
“I’ll come back and try again. One of these Young Masters must be amenable.”
“Or drunk enough,” Zihaeri agreed.
She strode off with indecent haste. Had to, or she would have hit her own sister. Tytiana walked blindly until she found a servant, and asked for directions to the cloakrooms. There she would find servants to help with intractable dresses or makeup disasters, gossip galore, and a quiet corner perhaps to catch her breath and her wits besides. She had to think. Think and react. Maybe snagging a drunk one was actually a sensible idea. She could dump the chump later.
How drunk was drunk enough on this night of her disgrace?
A whole first floor of a tower just inside the main house had been set aside for the needs of the ladies attending the Ball. The first room was far too busy with important women of the Houses doing business, and she received several frosty glances besides as she glanced through the doorway. Right. The women would be even more vicious than the men. Tytiana swept along the corridor, watching herself approach a huge mirror. What a waste of an unforgettable dress, for the person within was worthless. Slighted. Ridiculed. About to sink without a trace.
What would those meriatite mines be like? Surely no less frozen than this reception.
“Tytiana?”
“Nanny! Oh, am I glad to see you.”
Nanny Lyriana was just the tonic she needed. Tytiana poured out the story of her evening to a sympathetic ear as Nanny whisked her away to a quiet room. She helped Tytiana with the dress and hooped skirts. One could not even sit down in these hoops, so trying to use a chamber pot without first getting undressed would be an exercise in embarrassment. Even the jewelled bodice had to come off. At last. She sat in a private stall, just her and her thoughts, and wondered if tears would not come. They did not. Instead, she was stonily furious. This miserable, slithering coven of titled snobs could go throw themselves in the Cloudlands as far as she was concerned. The whole revolting caste system could take the same leap, too. She had done right. Nobody could take that away from her.
Odd. What was that sound?
“Nanny?”
No reply. Well, perhaps she had gone to find that goblet of water Tytiana had asked for. Finishing up, she laced up her undergarments and tucked her silken sliplet back where it belonged before stepping out of the stall into the main chamber. Now she had to face the process of putting on the dress – her absent dress? The room was completely empty … or?
What?
Tytiana had just begun to cast about in puzzlement when a hand attached to an arm roughly the dimensions of a prime leg of ralti mutton grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides. Sharp metal pricked her ear. “Not a sound, Choice.”
She screamed, but only inside of herself. Too panicked to make any sound. Disbelieving that this could be happening to her. Where was Nanny Lyriana? And where by the stars above was her dress? The man stank of alcohol and sweat and a sickly sweet tobacco or smoke she could not identify, a body odour as overpowering as his huge size. Struggle she might, but she was going nowhere and she might earn herself a slit throat in the bargain.
Then, another man appeared from behind the stall and pressed a stinking rag to her mouth and nose. “Time to say nighty night, girlie,” he sneered.
Fight! Burn them! Be a Dragoness! All she could think was that Nanny must be a traitor, or she was lying somewhere, knocked unconscious. Then the peculiar smell wormed its way up her nose and into her brain, and the room began to whirl around her.
She began to shriek, Jakani! Help, Jak –
Darkness sucked her down like water spiralling into a plughole.
* * * *
Kerblam! He walked straight into the door. “Ah … oh!” Jakani felt his nose. “How did I –”
His family were all laughing at him. “Mind the door, genius,” Sokadan called. “Not that wood’s any harder than your head.”
“Jaki alright?” Airi worried.
“I …” He was not alright. His throat burned as if he had quaffed a goblet of molten lava and his heart felt as if it would gallop straight out of his chest. Unbearable heat made his limbs feel as heavy as lead. “Tytiana! She’s in trouble!”
