Banner of the Damned (21 page)

Lasva scarcely heard the last part.
The babe was suddenly there!
Awe sent a chilly tingle through Lasva’s nerves. Somewhere outside of time in the world that babe had spent its eight months growing, between the moment the spell was spoken and the appearance of a new, live, human being. The thought of something so impossible becoming real gripped
Lasva by the vitals. One knew such things all one’s life and yet did not truly
know
until they became manifest. “I must go at once.”

Lasva ran to her inner chamber, bare feet skimming the silken bud carpet, where she had so recently lain with her beloved.

Alone there, she gently closed the lover’s cup inside a carved and gilt treasure box that fit inside another box. The inner one had a lock, which she turned, then secreted the key in the cleverly made pocket, among the branches of the hanging cedar that sheltered her bed.

Lasva walked to her bath and sank below the surface of the water, her long dark hair floating among the freshly picked herbs. Magic snapped and rippled over her scalp, her flesh, her teeth.

Dessaf stepped into the wardrobe beyond the bath and issued her orders in a rapid voice. Her staff, excited by the news—by change—rushed about to fetch gowns, ribbons, lace, a choice of fans. Slippers.

And so, when Lasva rose from the bath, hanging beside her dressing table were two moth-light layered morning gowns, both formal, appropriate for both Midsummer Day and a royal audience. One was many shades of yellow and forest green, touched with silver embroidery. The other’s main color was peach, with an array of contrasting or complementary emerald green and silver ribbons for the sleeves and waist.

No blue, though it matched her eyes. Today was a day of change. The babe would be robed in royal blue.

Lasva chose the yellow gown, the color of sun, of new beginnings. Dessaf gestured, and the dressers came forward to towel the princess. Lasva shut her eyes, her skin still sensitive to touch. Their hands were gentle but impersonal as they helped her into the most intimate clothing, then flicked her underdress over her head and twitched it to lie smoothly over her body, precisely fitting her shape. A pair of dressers brought the paneled overgowns and floated the layers of silk (called “cloud-gossamer”) one after another, to fall in ordered folds of pale yellow, shimmering gold, and then the last filmy layer embroidered in lily-patterns with forest green silk thread.

Lasva sat down, shutting her eyes as her hair dresser used a carved ensorcelled comb to stroke the wet from her hair and then brought the ruddy-gold-threaded dark locks up into the complicated knot of loops popular for morning in the summer.

Should she wear a white ribbon today, signifying before all the court that she was heart-given? She knew it would delight Kaidas. But the real delight would be to wear it for the first time when they rose together, before they left for Sartor, tied by his fingers.

The very idea made her shiver, causing Dessaf to scold the dressers for being slow. Lasva opened her eyes and said, “I am merely tired.”

Dessaf bowed. “Your crown.”

Oh, yes. Today she must wear a crown, for the Rising would also be Name Day for the new royal princess. Formality required the silver band of the royal family. The beautiful band of the heir’s gold—brought out in case only the day before—would be quietly retired to the treasure room.

Dessaf herself offered the silver band worked into the shape of ivy vines. It had belonged to some long-dead aunt, for it was a royal sibling’s crown, worn before going into the world to make a dynastic marriage, as custom decreed.

Lasva took up a fan of painted with orchids, then she left.

I had been waiting in case I might be summoned, so I was there when Torsu whispered to the new mender, “Turfed out of a crown. Did she throw things when they told her?”

“I don’t know. I think Marnda herself went in,” whispered the new girl, so new she still wore the yellow and gray of the palace servants. “Maybe to see if she had somebody handsome in the bed—”

Dessaf stalked across the room and slapped the new maid and Torsu across their faces, hard enough to sting. “You are inappropriate, Torsu. This is your last warning. Nereith, you are new, so this is your first. We never gossip.
Ever
. There are far too many who want to know what is said and done in these rooms, and always for the wrong reasons. Always.” Her voice lowered to a hissing whisper. “So if you still wish to remain in the royal service, then you will both remain silent until Martande Day. You will
not
go to Sartor. You will be given work here, which you will perform in silence.
No
word to family, to friend.”

She gave them the command direct, strengthened by the word “no.” Both dressers curtseyed in apology, Nereith with tears dripping down her cheeks. Torsu looked submissive, but her lips were white with fury.

L

Queen Hatahra’s mouth trembled, and the soft flesh under her chin quivered. “I did not think,” she began. “That joy could be so painful.”

Lasva sank down onto the hassock beside her sister’s chair. “Pain?” she asked.

“The realization that all my work will pass to these little hands. Who is she? Yesterday, I merely longed for her existence.” Hatahra bowed her head, and tears spattered on the soft robe, but the sleeping babe did not stir.

Lasva was amazed. She thought she knew all her sister’s moods—brisk, businesslike, sarcastic, blunt.

Not since the very first birth attempt, fourteen years ago, had her sister spoken on this subject. At that time it had all been plans for the future, and Lasva had been a child. Her sister’s consort then had not been Lord Davaud but the sophisticated, powerful Lord Mathias Altan, heir to a dukedom—already married with two children, although the marriage, once it produced an heir, had settled into a distant partnership.

He’d laughed after the queen tried the spell and nothing happened. Not out of cruelty, only mere carelessness, unexcited at the prospect of
another squalling babe (though he did like the idea that this son or daughter would inherit a kingdom) but all the while thinking his position secure. A mistake. Favorite though he was, by that night she’d unribboned him, and he was riding back to his estates, his belongings in wagons behind him. It was five years before she relented and permitted him to return to court, but by then he had been replaced by Davaud.

That was Lasva’s first lesson in the complexities of love when you wear a crown.

“Pain also because my courses ended two years ago. I wish I could nurse.”

“But surely the Healer knows a way…” Lasva tried to hide her surprise, but Hatahra, always observant, smiled wryly. “Perhaps. But the fact remains that I am too old for it to be natural. And I do not have the time. I assure you, the desire did not come to me until the babe was born. It will probably pass as quickly, especially if she wakens in the night, as several have said will occur. As it is, poor Pollar must have spent weeks selecting this year’s wet nurse.” Her chin lifted, and she said in a lighter voice, “Would you like to hold your niece?”

Lasva held out her arms, thinking,
Surely this will make it easier for me to ribbon Kaidas without the necessity for treaties, now that I’m not the heir?
But it was not the moment to ask. In the time it took for Hatahra to settle the tiny bundle in Lasva’s hands, Lasva consciously set aside her own joy, to more fully partake in her sister’s.

Lasva had never held a baby before. The royal princess was unexpectedly light. She smelled sweet, though it was a sweetness not identifiable with the scents of mere flowers. Her features were small, the head large, her body felt boneless. Her mouth made faint nursing motions, and Lasva smiled, finding the sight unexpectedly endearing.

But as Lasva watched, the little mouth puckered and then frowned. Then eyes the indefinite hue of a shallow stream opened, and they too puckered.

“Ah!” came a thin little voice.

“Pollar!” the queen cried.

Pollar, who was Marnda’s sister, bustled in with quick steps, and behind her was a cheerful looking young woman unlacing her bodice.

The babe was surrendered to the wet nurse. The servants departed, and Queen Hatahra got up from her chair—a small, square woman, her wavy, honey-colored hair still untouched by gray. (She’d finally given in and abandoned the silver hair as old-fashioned.) Hatahra’s maternal effusion seemed to depart with her baby. She moved briskly past Lasva, her light gaze acerb, a slight frown furrowing her straight brows.

Lasva followed Hatahra to the great table in the queen’s private withdrawing room, with its twelve bowed windows looking southward over the rose garden, and beyond, the royal canal. On the table lay an enormous fine-drawn map, detailed to the exact shape of each noble’s home, in tiny but proportionate rendition. Something only a king or queen could afford.

“And so,” Hatahra said, “today’s Midsummer Rising will be her Name Day, as is traditional.” She smiled wryly, waiting for Lasva to pick up her cue.

But Lasva stared down at the map as though her future lay there. Of course it did, Hatahra thought. Best to get it over with.

Lasva was observing the fact that her sister had told her nothing she did not know. Sometimes Hatahra introduced difficult topics by prefacing them with statements on which they already agreed.

Hatahra continued in the same wry tone. “All court will look their best. Right now they must be working out the most flattering congratulations in hopes I will be granting requests or handing out posts with the same freedom with which I toss flowers at the Martande Day regatta when you all return from Sartor.”

Lasva curtseyed, her fan spread gracefully in Expectation of Pleasure, which made her sister bark a short laugh, snapping her fan open and sweeping it over the great continent that stretched nearly two thirds across the southern hemisphere. “I do appreciate, even in my happiness, the irony that she comes in the very last year I was to try.”

Lasva said, “I did not want to say this at New Year’s, but our mother had me when she was seventy-nine. The Birth Spell came to her then. Surely…”

“And how long did she live past your birth? Not a year. Maybe I should tell you the truth about that day. For now, know this: I had decided I would not have a child past my next Name Day. To go beyond that, well, who can know how long one will live? I would not condemn you to the unwanted task of a regency, raising the one who would always have precedence of you. Oh, I know you would have done your duty, and with grace, but a regency is seldom a stable government, especially when you have ambitious nobles stepping on your hem. And you deserved a better life.”

Hatahra leaned on the map table, her gaze serious. “Lasva, you are now free to choose among the world’s kings and princes, either to court, or to be courted, as you wish. That much I can grant you.”

Lasva’s heart constricted. But she only curtseyed.

“We will very soon be receiving royal suitors, and I need the sort of treaty only a king, or future king, can bring. Altan and Gaszin are getting stronger. And while the Sentises stay aloof from the machinations, it is only because they are fishing in royal Sartoran waters—specifically, young Sentis wants to marry Adamas Dei, giving him equal rights of government. It is said they will even combine the names.”

“Ah-ye, it is such a romance,” Lasva exclaimed, hands open in Shared Joy.

“A romance, yes,” her sister returned dryly. “But Sentis ought to know better: marriage has nothing to do with romance when one’s person represents government.”

Lasva bowed. “I had forgotten.”

Hatahra smiled. “But the world hasn’t. Which is why every prince in the east—royal or not—will be haunting Alsais soon, but you won’t be courted by any royal princesses.”

Lasva had never before considered the meaning of what she’d grown up knowing: that dukes and royal persons did not have the freedom of those who were not regarded as living symbols of law. There could be a single queen, as had been for three generations. There could be single kings, as was Jurac Sonscarna. But no land had two kings on a single throne, or two queens, just as there was no kingdom populated exclusively by men, or by women.

Marriage between government figures seldom had much to do with love, or with lovers. They might never sleep together; they might not even make an heir together. If marriage there must be, it comprised a treaty between a man and a woman, as representatives of those who identified themselves as male and those who identified themselves as female. Government, according to Old Sartor, from whom most traditions descended, was more stable if represented with gender parity.

Hatahra was watching her sister closely. “There is enough unbalance in the world between the sexes. Some say that the Chwahir keep the sword in the hands of men. Where does that leave women? It sounds to me like they are overdue for a run of queens to inherit and balance things out. Or there will be trouble.”

Lasva bowed, chilled to the heart. The message was clear:
a princess cannot marry for love.

Hatahra snapped her fan open. “From the hypothetical to the specific. My dukes and duchesses want all the privileges of power, but one by one wish to discard the inconvenient responsibilities. Ah-ye! I can use that to break their alliance. Carola Definian has made overtures to me; she
wants, who knows why, the Lassiter heir, and I favor that because I’d rather avoid a marriage alliance between Alarcansa and either the Altans or the Gaszins. They’re courting her. I know it. Either of them joined with Alarcansa’s wealth and land would effectively control a third of Colend, which would press me hard to resist their demands.”

Lasva said, “You have never discussed these things with me before.”