Banner of the Damned (8 page)

His voice on the word “common” was like the snap of a whip, and Carola recoiled as if she’d been struck.

“Honor lies in our reputation. I will not have Definian besmirched by the noisome mirth that you would have stirred up had this thing been delivered. It is clear that you cannot be trusted in court. You will write an appropriate letter to the queen, regretting a summer illness. You will smile and exchange bows as we depart in the morning.”

Carola made it outside the room, though she had to stiffen her knees. When the door was closed, she leaned against the wall as black spots floated across her vision.

“Oh, was it bad, darling?” Tatia cooed. “Here, I will help you to your room. We can tell everyone you were taken by headache.”

“Illness,” Carola murmured. “Summer illness.”

“What?” Tatia asked, guiding Carola slowly to their end of the suite.

“Why should an invitation to a private picnic be vulgar?”

Tatia said, “My mother once told me that your father hates the Baron Lassiter more than anyone alive. Something about your mother. Maybe he’s visited that hatred onto his son. I’m so sorry, dearest darling coz, sweeter than a sister.”

Once she’d reached the safety of her room, Carola turned around. “I shall take a stick to Denra,” she snapped. “How
could
she be so clumsy as to let my father see her taking the letter? Or maybe she even gave it to him—in expectation of extra pay—oh, I will beat her senseless, and then turn her away.”

“And have everyone whispering?” Tatia raised her hands in Don’t Cross My Shadow. “You know that such an action would cause the exact sort of interest that you would despise. How people would laugh!”

Carola paused and turned to study herself in the mirror to see if she revealed any traces of her disgrace. “But she betrayed me. How else would he have gotten that letter?”

“It could be that Uncle’s own man was lying in wait,” Tatia said. “At any rate, you know you cannot trust her. Go on exactly as usual. You will just never again give her anything to whisper about. But really, darling, in the future, you must entrust such things to me. Who is better to guard Definian secrets than a Definian?”

“Oh, Tatia, you are so good.”

“Now, you just lie down. I will fix your favorite tisane with my own hands and see to your arrangements. You only have to rise, dress, and hold your head high on the morrow.”

Carola retired to her bed.

What follows is not Carola’s memory. Carola had no idea that after Tatia shut the door softly she gave orders to the waiting servants before she flitted down the hall to the formal chambers. There she made herself busy until at last the duke crossed from one room to another. He caught sight of her and beckoned. When she neared, he said, “You have done well, niece.”

“It was my duty, Uncle,” she said humbly, with a low curtsey. “Though it hurt me, oh-so much, for Carola is dearer than a sister. But I am a Definian, and our name is even dearer.”

The duke smiled tight-lipped and walked on.

Back to our servants’ table, and the gossip that the duke deplored.

“
Zalend
,” one of the servants commented.

Garsun said, chuckling, “And doomed to exit through Willow Gate because her veins don’t run with ice like her father’s.”

Not that the ducal party would depart through the Gate of Silver Willows. The duke would see to it that they departed through the Gate of the Lily Path, as was proper, even though it was located on the west
side of the city nearest the palace, and Alarcansa lay directly east. The Gate of Silver Willows was used for mourning corteges, or for those signifying a wrong done them. When mentioned in conversation, the Willow Gate inevitably meant grief, sorrow, or tears, most often for badly ended love affairs.

This matter taught me three things.

First, that you might “whisper,” that is, entrust a privacy to a confidante about a third person, but your listener might not feel the need to keep the secret if they feel no loyalty to that third person. In fact, it might be regarded as a weapon.

Secondly, that I now understood the look I’d seen on Lady Carola’s face the day she watched Lord Kaidas Lassiter: it was
zalend
. The storm-love.

Third. It was identical to the look I’d seen on King Jurac’s long face as Princess Lasva demonstrated the brush-and-step in the gallery of her ancestors.

I was to discover that shadow trespass is specifically a Colendi convention. Even as children at play we are taught not to step upon someone else’s shadow when we are indoors, for if the space was not well lit, to blend your shadow with another’s was to request or declare intimacy, or to challenge another for place. The only time one is safe from shadow etiquette is when one wears a shrouding domino veil, which means one is regarded as invisible.

All Colendi, even the most poor, try to light their rooms in all four corners.

Lighting from a single source can be startling, dramatic, full of expectation. A popular game among youth newly come to the years of interest is to walk amidst a circle of your friends gathered in a dark room where a lamp swings freely. Whomsoever your shadow touches, you must kiss.

The gesture for shadow kiss—sycophancy—was a forefinger held up, as I have said. In court, the fan closed and held upright.

But the courtiers also had the moth kiss, (forefinger touching the lips) was regarded as the highest style in insult—far above the clumsiness of what the rest of us called south-gating. The moth kiss appeared to be flattery, but its purpose was to humiliate the victim, exposing him or her to the amusement of the group.

Lady Ananda Gaszin and her brother, Young Gaszin (as the heir was
known—nearer thirty than twenty, he favored the nod to his fleeting youth), aspired to begin the season at their father’s Dance of the Spring Leaves, which was held on Flower Day, the day the sun rose at Daybreak and set at the Hour of the Cup. The game was that everyone would be seen assiduously obeying the queen’s injunction to be friendly to the Chwahir king, to mask a courtly moth kiss.

Lady Ananda was so confident of triumph that her outer robe was made of sheerest moon-glow silk, woven in curled-leaf patterns, with the tiniest gems caught in the gossamer fabric, like drops of rain, her sleeves draped in the then-popular fan shape. Her first underrobe was pale green, her innermost underrobe a darker green, its sleeves, neck, and hem visible a ribbon-width at the edges of the pale green; her nails were tipped with tiny emeralds.

That hint of dark green was considered presumption by many, as it was the custom at this dance for the royal family to wear the color of spring and the court to wear shades of white and silver, symbolizing the crown’s liberating the season of warmth from winter’s isolation. Although Lady Ananda’s intent was to highlight her incipient triumph by mocking the Chwahir forest green—which Jurac invariably wore—most saw her gesture as arrogance, presuming on the royal prerogative.

All this Kaidas Lassiter saw at a glance when he arrived at a ball he’d very nearly skipped. He was only there because Young Gaszin insisted that he join the game by making a very expensive wager on Jurac of Chwahirsland’s ignorance of Colendi dance. Wagers were always fun, and it was even funnier that every dancing master in Alsais had been hired away by the Gaszins.

Purely on whim, Kaidas wagered… against Young Gaszin.

He arrived late to find everyone in motion. There was Ananda sporting dark green, there was Young Gaszin, uncharacteristically paying assiduous court to the queen.

And there was Princess Lasva waltzing down the middle of the room with King Jurac.

“When’s he going to fall down?” he asked Lord Rontande behind his fan.

Lord Rontande laughed silently; he followed Young Gaszin because the latter was powerful. Rontande enjoyed Ananda’s flushed face, her modulated laugh that rang the false note to sensitive ears, causing her urbane father to send a long look her way. And he especially enjoyed Young Gaszin’s failure to distract the queen, who had proved time and again to be distressingly observant.

“He isn’t,” Rontande said, the diamonds braided into his silver hair shivering as he suppressed laughs. “Someone taught him to dance.”

By then, while Lord Rontande gloated at the fall of his clique’s leader, Lord Kaidas had taken in the entire room. His circling gaze returned briefly to the besotted Chwahir king, who appeared to be utterly unaware of his near brush with ignominy, then stayed with the princess, whose smile, whose laughter, rang the true note of merriment and fun.

SIX
O
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ONEYFLOWER
W
INE
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-B
READ

S

everal mornings later, Birdy came straight from the baths, his hair still wet and pressed flat against his skull. He seemed more restless than ever. Out came the silken bags. He’d sent the salt bowl tumbling and nearly overturned the entire table in a lunging dive to keep a bag from falling into the butter rolls when I said, “Birdy, I apologize for sounding ill-natured, but must you do that now?”

Birdy turned scarlet, nipped up the bags with far more dexterity than he displayed when juggling them, and said contritely, “I didn’t think you minded.”

I took refuge in quotation, as people will when they want to say something but find it necessary to mask personal intent with someone else’s words. “I am weak, and my serenity is easily disturbed when I can’t anticipate the next assault upon the dishes.”

“Assault! Oh. Queen Alian the Second.” His smile was pained, but present. “And why she did not like picnics.”

“The diving of bold birds is an apt comparison to the swooping of your silken bags,” I said. “But if I have to point out the analogy, then it is clumsy.”

“I’m the clumsy one. It’s just that… we leave tomorrow for Chwahirsland,” he said, as abrupt as any of his bags’ attacks upon plates, glasses, and bowls.

“I thought you wished to go.”

“I do. But—” He pressed the silken bags in his fingers, so that the sand bulged against the fabric as he gave me a comical look of regret. “but… Chwahirsland.”

I opened my hands in Heartfelt Assent, not wanting to say that I would loathe going there or to anyplace like it. “I hope it will prove to be fascinating, and that you are so valuable that promotion comes swiftly. Will you write to us?”

“Us?” he repeated.

He made The Peace and bow over his hands, but he remained silent as more of our friends arrived. He left without speaking—without eating, even—and I did not see him for the rest of the day.

Next morning I discovered through casual talk by his sister that Birdy had departed with the ambassadorial staff who accompanied King Jurac. I found myself looking for him at fan practice, at meals, at the archive late at night where we went for extra study. Then I would remember that he was gone. He had not said farewell, nor had he said anything other than that “Us?” It made me think that maybe heralds were not permitted to correspond with scribes because of the secret nature of diplomacy.

The only thing I was sure of during the next extremely tedious month, as I reviewed every detail of royal etiquette and protocol, was that there was a Birdy-shaped hole in my life. I would even have welcomed the juggling.

In the wake of the Chwahirs’ departure, the whispers eddied out, the most common topic being how Jurac of the Chwahir had offered anything short of his kingdom to arrange a marriage treaty with the princess, to be turned down by the queen. But Queen Hatahra worked out a trade agreement for wood and sailcloth and, in turn, Jurac agreed to accept the ambassadorial mission in place of the old trade agents.

The month after Birdy’s departure, it was time for my formal evaluation.

At the Hour of the Quill, I presented myself.

The scriptorium’s formal chamber, used only for important matters (it was there that Scribe Halimas had exiled my shivering thirteen-year-old self to the kitchens), was formed of cool, slightly glistening moonstone. The senior scribes gathered on a wide bench carved of old rosewood. The only decoration was a tapestry that dated back to
Colend’s early days, depicting King Martande (then a herald scribe) with his pen. No swords or horses or bodies of dead Chwahir. This room was a testament to the power of the word.