Banner of the Damned (16 page)

Heedful of my parents’ cautions, I reminded myself that I was a scribe, asked to observe. I was not a
spy
, who tries to winnow out secrets to carry to those who will pay to possess those secrets. I would observe if asked, but secrets must stay secret, whoever they belonged to.

Therefore I did not tell Lasva that Tiflis, who interrogated me on all the court chirps she overheard from the hopping birds in Alsais, had said that Lissais was sent away because she had fallen in love with the princess. Her family did not want the trouble of an unrequited grand passion: she was the fourth so sent, three lords having departed summarily for Sartor, or Sarendan, one family having sent their heir all the way north to Lascandiar, on the north continent.

Lasva faced the window, hands stroking the butter-colored cat, who purred and stretched. “In my dream last night, I floated down a canal. The voices in the reeds whispering poetry were those of Lissais, and Calres, and Demiran.” She named three of those sent away. “I float out of reach of their voices, though I try to linger, to catch their tone and their words.”

She turned from the window, and reached down to stroke the butter cat and the smaller black who twined about her feet, tail high. “But I cannot seem to catch a friend. I think I am done with Readings in the Reeds. They only give me bad dreams.”

The glance of interest, the speculative smile: it happened again. Warily, I returned the smile and moved on to the storage rooms of the Wardrobe, where former Lirendis had stored their favorite clothes. Lasva was attending a century party, and all must be as it was one hundred years before.

“Will you hold this length against yourself, scribe? As you seem to have nothing else to do.”

That was Torsu, the newest clothes dresser. I’d already noticed her sense of style—not that Lasva’s gowns were ever less than perfect. But Torsu had a way of standing back, sturdy arms folded, her eyes narrowed. Then with a twitch the fabric would drape perfectly. The newer styles had opened the overrobe all the way up the sides, and the underrobe was more of a gown now. It did not wrap but followed the line of the body. The two long lines of the overrobe complemented the shape beneath. Some wore lengths of gauzy silks in loops and swoops over all.

I took the length of heavy silk, loving the luxurious hiss, the cool sheen. The rules were that I was not to be ordered to do others’ work, but I was mindful of my arrogance to Kaleri so long ago, and so I stood there as Torsu walked around me and the green silk. The staff bound their hair up simply, usually wrapped with thin ribbon, but Torsu’s straight dark hair was artfully bound in blossom knots at each side of her head, to make her face into the heart shape. So complicated a style meant that she either had friends or influence with the hair dressers in the staff.

“Who comes and goes from her rooms now?” Torsu asked.

“What?” I replied witlessly. “The cleaners, or—”

“Who is she sleeping with now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come, you are not sightless. I only want to find out what his tastes are—or hers. Does she like the women?”

“I don’t know.” The question—Torsu’s tone of intimacy, of knowing—made my nerves tingle.

“A lover’s tastes can be charmingly added to a gown. Just a hint.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

A rustle from behind was all the warning we had.

Torsu looked up, quick as a bird, and Marnda was there, her lined cheeks mottled. “Thank you, Scribe Emras, for your forbearance.” She cast me a glance of rebuke before turning on the dresser: I should not have taken the silk.

“If you wish to stay in the princess’s service, you will spend the next year as a mender, Torsu,” Marnda whispered, her voice tremulous with anger.

Marnda held out her arms, and I surrendered the shimmering lengths of spring-colored silk to her. Beyond her shoulder Torsu glared at me in reproach—my profession of ignorance had protracted the conversation long enough to catch Marnda’s ear. I may as well record here that she never spoke to me again, and the intimations that I conspired with her are not only false but absurd.

The interested eye was so dark it was black, the better to reflect light. Framed by curling lashes. The smile curved lips already enticingly curved. Black tight curls, the faintest scent of cinnamon. Silver blue nail lacquer enhanced her beautiful hands as she noted the return of the ivy gown.

“Thank you, Scribe Emras.” She knew my name.

Lady Carola Definian stood at the sidelines at a horse race. “Look at him ride.” Carola sighed.

Her cousin Tatia sent a quick look her way. “And so?”

Carola breathed in, exerting all her control to hide that burst of laughter that burned behind her ribs every time she thought of her father found sprawled on the floor between his bed and the door. Sprawled like a drunken peddler, only dead instead of drunk. She’d had to go inside her clothing storage and bury her face in her old gowns so she could let out the shrieks of laughter at his utter lack of
melende
in death.

Alarcansa was hers. And oh, the joy of giving orders instead of getting them!

Tatia mistrusted that smile. “So Handsome Lassiter rides well. What of it? You can hire better riders. You can bed them afterward. Then dismiss them.”

Carola snapped her gaze at her cousin. “You do not want to see me married?”

Tatia raised her hands to ward shadow trespass. “Ah-ye, darling cousin, I live only to see you happy. I just thought….”

Carola scorned to ask what she thought. Hirelings—even well-trained hirelings—were nothing to the sight of these high-born courtiers, rich and wanton, matched with horses equally high-bred and striking. And at their head, his long body tight, hands loose, smile free, his hair wind-streamed like the mane and tail of his horse, rode Kaidas Lassiter.

It was whispered that he was as good a lover as he was a rider. It was whispered that when he found a lover who could match him ride for ride, before he galloped on he painted them a lover’s cup—a fragile round cup with no handle, that it might be shared between two.

Carola remembered her father’s excoriating diatribe about the vulgarity
of her infatuation with an indigent baron’s son who could bring nothing of worth to Alarcansa.

She turned her angry gaze on her cousin and whispered in her father’s deadly tone, “I want
him
.”

It was easy enough to find her name: she was Shuras, First Scribe to the Wardrobe, under the Grand Seneschal.

I made an excuse to return—I had “forgotten” the jeweled shoes that went with the ivy gown. Shuras gave me a spray of starliss and one of those smiles.

I had come to understand that Tiflis’s craving for “chirps” was bound to her work—her livelihood depended upon knowing the very latest chirpings of the little birds busy pecking and fluttering around the edges of court, for the booksellers were always trying to figure out what might become popular.

Chirps
were gossip, what courtiers called
whispers
, a term descended from the days of the spywells. The bird metaphor used in Alsais came from the Heralds’ tradition of crying the news in the city squares at the Hour of the Bird just after Daybreak in the morning. The most entertaining chirps usually found their way to the plays.

Tiflis’s journey scribe’s project, a book depicting famous loving cups with each illustration’s story told in poetry from the time the cup was made, had earned her a position as clerk. I’d hired Delis to make her a splendid set of lily-frosted queen-cakes to celebrate her promotion, knowing that Tif would glory in the display before her new peers.

“They say that not two weeks after the death of the Duke of Alarcansa, Lady Carola Definian, the new duchess, rode all the way to Estan for the point-to-point.” Tiflis’s eyes widened with enjoyment. “Ah-yedi! She laid out fantastic amounts in entertainment, and wagers on Handsome Lassiter’s garlanding the bucks, and on his animals when he did not race. All to catch his eye—before she even came before the queen to swear fealty!” She waved in the direction of the palace, where the Duchesses of Gaszin, Altan, and Sentis had united to give a flower-filled, expensive party in welcome of the new duchess.