Banner of the Damned (5 page)

Falisse Ranalassi, cousin through Carola’s world-traveling mother, was not to go to court. The Ranalassis were well connected, but Carola had so many excuses—the expense, the smallness of the palace suite allotted to dukes, the problem of servants—everything but the truth, which was that Falisse was as pretty as Carola, could dance as well, and she had a beautiful singing voice. Tatia was scrawny and plain, her chief skills shadow-kissing and scudding around noiselessly in her tiny court steps, spying on conversations, so that she could report them to Carola.

Tatia was indispensable, Falisse unthinkable.

A sly, triumphant glance from Tatia, that superior little smile when Carola’s light gaze met her own eyes in the mirrored inset, and Falisse could not resist observing, “I hear Princess Lasthavais is the most beautiful girl in court.”

Tatia tittered as she swiveled to Carola, who broke her gaze from the mirror. “That’s what everyone says about princesses,” Carola retorted, watching the shape of her mouth as she spoke.
Melende
required that she never speak a word that made her lips ugly. “It’s a convention. Father told me they said it about the queen when she first appeared, though she looked like a toad standing on its hind legs.”

Falisse flirted her fan in amusement mode. “From what I’ve heard, Princess Lasthavais is the image of the greatmother for whom she is named.”

I assume everyone knows the history of Lasthavais Dei the Wanderer, who at the age of thirty-nine came to the court of Alsais, dusty and travel-worn, and the king, notorious for his casual affairs, never looked at another woman for the rest of his life. He not only married her, but rebuilt most of Alsais to please her and then began expanding Colend, some say to remake the world around her.

This praise of the princess was not new to Carola. Far more irritating was Falisse’s glee. Falisse was a pensioner, her family too poor to keep their own house. Falisse was a dependent, but she never acknowledged it properly. And now? Now she was
gloating
.

Carola whirled and with palm cupped, wrist straight, and arm propelled from the shoulder blade, struck Falisse across the face.

Falisse gasped in shock, a hand rising to cover her throbbing cheek. Though Carola was in the habit of slapping her personal attendants (and Tatia, the rare times Tatia annoyed her) until now she’d respected Falisse’s mother, her quick-tongued aunt, enough to never strike her child.

Years of pent-up anger at Carola’s slights and sweet-voiced cruelties boiled up inside Falisse. What was the use of
melende
when she was never to go to court, just because she happened to be as pretty as Carola? She launched herself at Carola to claw that complacency right off her face.

Carola instinctively threw up an arm to ward, and with the other hand, caught hold of Falisse’s hair, yanking viciously to throw Falisse off balance.

Falisse screeched in pain and anger.

Carola shrieked, “How dare you! How dare you!”

The mingled screams echoed down the marble hall, reaching the duke in his scriptorium as he was giving his scribe last instructions.

The duke, accustomed to decorum in his household, entered the formal dining room to discover one of his four hundred-year-old lyre-backed chairs turned over, the table linens all askew, dishes lying in pieces on the floor, with food scattered about the crane-patterned Bermundi rug. Expensive parrots flitted from drapes to furniture, squawking, as his daughter and niece-by-marriage rolled about, kicking and scratching.

“What.” His voice was like a whiplash. “Is this?”

The girls fell apart, Falisse weeping with rage and pain as she fingered her tender scalp where Carola had pulled out a huge chunk of her hair.

“It is entirely Falisse’s fault, your grace,” came Tatia’s obsequious mouse squeak.

The duke ignored Tatia as his gaze traveled from the lock of hair on the floor to Carola’s angry face and disordered appearance.

“Carola. When you have restored yourself to order, you will attend me in my interview chamber.”

The door snicked shut. Carola whirled to her feet, her voice shaking with rage as she turned on Falisse. There was no thought of how her lips shaped each word now. “I will deal with
you
later.”

She had her explanation all worked out by the time she had changed her ripped gown and had her maid brush out and bind up her hair again in a fresh pink ribbon.

The only person in the world she feared was her father, though he had never raised his voice or his hand. But he made his disapproval plain in ways that hurt much, much worse. Her palms were damp by the time the footman let her into the formal room where the duke dealt out judgment to those whose rank preserved them from the more public office on the ground floor.

“Father,” Carola began, “permit me to explain—”

“The spectacle I was forced to witness is not just risible but offensive.”

She gulped, rigid with the effort it took not to exclaim at the unfairness. It was all Falisse’s fault!

“It appears I erred in believing that you understood the rudiments of civilized behavior.”

“But Father—”

He pointed his fingers at the floor in the sharp gesture that once preceded the deliberate stepping on another’s shadow, but now meant
Shut your mouth
. It was as shocking as a slap. “A Definian never forsakes
melende
. Even in death.”

Carola trembled, struggling to control her breathing.

“A Definian exerts authority through choice of word and precision of tone.”

Then the real blow came; the duke was irked, and wanted to teach his heir a lesson, but he also welcomed the prospect of postponing the tedium of introducing her to court, a place that had ceased to interest him almost twenty years ago. “We will defer this journey to Alsais until I am assured that you are able to conduct yourself in civilized company.”

Carola could only curtsey and retire. Her first impulse was to return to Falisse and claw her face to ribbons, but Falisse would only shriek again.

So. Whether her father postponed the journey a day or a year, Carola would still triumph, because she would devote every day she was stuck at home to demonstrating the perquisites of authority to Falisse, without raising her voice or touching her. With style, the outward form of
melende
.

She smiled.

W

After a year of very hard study, Scribe Halimas entered our history class one afternoon as usual. Instead of offering a topic to research and discuss, he said, “At the midday meal today, you were joined by a journey herald who insisted that Adamas Dei left Sartor for the west in 3391 when he discovered that he would not inherit the throne.”

He paused long enough for us to comprehend that what we thought was a conversation-turned-debate had actually been a test.

“It’s the same question we discussed in class the night before. During our discussion, you all employed admirable skills in politely confining yourselves to facts, without attempting influence, according to the First and Second Rules. But today, one of you used elementary diplomacy techniques to persuade: apparent agreement, then question, or apparent agreement then correction.”

Birdy flushed to his ears.

“Two of you did stay with the facts, but in attempting to avoid any imputation of influence, got bound up in a tangle of justifications and
qualifiers until no one could make sense of your point. It seems, including you.”

It was my turn to look down at my pen case, and I heard Nashande shuffling his feet.

“One of you escalated in emphatic statements, rude in tone, and finally in word. Yet in class, these statements, when repeated, were couched in language that can only be termed an attempt at flattery. As if a buttery tone and a smile excuses emphatic repetition.”

Shadow-kissing, in other words. Sheris looked away—and Tiflis looked startled, then uneasy. Faura just looked lost.

“And one of you thought it best to parrot the flatterer.”

Tiflis blushed.

Over the past year, Tiflis had responded to my attempts to get back to our old rhythms by being friendly in public, but any time I tried to talk to her alone I was cut short by the ever watchful Sheris. That had hurt so much I’d tried to bury myself in work, studying even during recreational times—especially when they all turned sixteen and went off to the pleasure house, where I couldn’t go yet, unless I stayed in the children’s rooms downstairs. So I didn’t go at all.

Now Senior Scribe Halimas surprised us further by saying, “You also did not know that this past ten days were your year tests. We have saved you a week’s effort in trying to gain knowledge that you should have spent the year accruing, and we have also saved ourselves a week of listening to what you think we want to hear.”

The others’ shock, commensurate with my own, revealed itself in tiny shiftings, the sighs of indignation.

The corners of the senior scribe’s mouth curled. “I am going to dismiss you to your Interviews, and thence to your new studies. Tiflis, you will attend me. Sheris, you will wait outside the door. When they are done, I will send someone to fetch the rest of you.”

Tiflis cast a triumphant smile at the rest of us, though her shoulders were stiff. I suspected she wasn’t quite certain she was being singled out first for a good reason.

The Interviews did not take long. Birdy and I were last.

He had been kindly, if distant, this past year. I fancied that he looked down on me from his great height, from the vast worldly knowledge of a sixteen year old who regularly went off to the pleasure house, while babyish me stayed alone at our dorms and studied.

Birdy addressed me abruptly. “My sister told me if you get called out first, it’s because you’re being sent from the royal scribe pool.” He’d
transgressed unspoken etiquette by referring to family, but it was acceptable if the family member in question was employed at the palace—a fellow scribe. Everyone knew that one of his twin sisters, who were older even than my brother Olnar, was a royal scribe, employed by no less than the queen. “I think Sheris is being sent away.”

“Sheris?” I repeated. I was used to thinking of her at the top, because she acted as if she were at the top. The rest of us had accepted her at her own valuation.

“Did you notice her nails?” Birdy asked.

“No.”

I looked back in memory, and yes, Sheris’s hands were always hidden, except when we wrote, and then everyone’s attention was on work. “She bites them?” I asked.

Birdy tossed one of his sandbags in answer. “Wager she gets sent to Archive. Not for herald training—she could never decide what is worthy of keeping—but as a scribe.”

“She’d be perfect there.” Neat, orderly details, ranks and rows of indexed books and scrolls. Facts. “Perfect.”

But it was no place for Tif. She’d hate that. Facts had always been her weakness. Her interest was in people.

We were called soon after, to discover that we were joining the very small pool of royal scribes in training. As I made my way to Housekeeping to order my new plain bleached-white linen robe of the journey-scribe, I began to suspect that the Interviews had been nothing more than a compassionate gesture keeping us out of the way so that those not chosen for royal scribe training could gather their belongings and go.

Sheris went to Archive, which meant she lived across the courtyard from us, and Faura to the public scribes. Her new dorm was on the other side of the palace, overlooking the city.

Tiflis was sent to prentice with one of the most prominent book dealers in the city, which meant she had to leave the palace altogether. I hid in the stairwell, ready to pop out to hug her, to commiserate, to say anything, if she even glanced toward me as she trundled her trunk along.

But she marched down to the canal, face red, mouth angry, without a look my way. Once again I crept to my room and wept, in spite of my promotion. When I got up, I resolved to bury feelings altogether. I was going to be the best royal scribe ever, even if I was the youngest in training.

Here is another of those coincidences that shape us, though we have no idea at the time.

Among our many new duties was the beginning of our training in sitting still for long periods. Scribes were expected to remain in the background, observing, ready at an instant to serve but otherwise separate from events.

Because of those long periods of sitting, the senior scribes now required us to choose a method of exercise. I loved dancing, but that class was already full. So I scurried to the class meeting down by the canal to learn graceful boating. When I recognized the back of Sheris’s head among those waiting to join the class, I backed away in haste, to discover Birdy waiting for me.