Brood of Bones (25 page)

After Mister Obenji had introduced them to the guests, the Lord of the Feast turned to his companion.

“Now, my daughter, mingle but no
dining
.”

She leaned closer to him, running her long red nails over his throat. “Get stabbed and die, Father.”

The lady Feaster swept over the reflective marble floor, guests parting around her then trailing behind like papyrus scrolls caught in a winter gust.

The Lord of the Feast stepped beside me. “Is it not grand for one’s children to have your well-being foremost in their thoughts?”

“I would not know.”

I strode away from him, toward a dais fashioned after the one in my laboratory, although this one merely had clay tiles shaped in diamond designs. Standing atop the platform, I cleared my throat because, with the Lord of the Feast here, I had wakened enough to remember what I should have said at dinner.

Deepmand clapped his gauntlets together, and the smashing clang drew all eyes to me.

“I welcome you to Sunchase Hall, on the eve of the Flood Moon. Morimound will observe a month of silence in remembrance, rain being the loudest sound in the streets. Tonight, however, we will have music.”

While musicians plucked out some manner of racket, attention drifted from me and chatter resumed. A guest sauntered to the Lord of the Feast. “Ambassador, am I to understand your carriage broke?”

I worried how this conversation would progress.

“Were you trapped out at night?” asked one woman. “I’d be deathly scared.”

“I was deathly bored,” the Lord of the Feast said in his restrained tone, “and uncertain whether attending a ball would worsen that condition. Of course, I found myself surrounded by Feasters, which settled the matter. Nobody is more tedious than those who talk of nothing but their last meal.”

Instead of recoiling in terror, the women tittered, and the men slapped Tethiel’s back. I told myself not to be surprised that his flippancy tickled their infantile minds.

Although I tried to ignore the Lord of the Feast’s chatting, I could not take my eyes from the lady Feaster; men seemed unable to escape her, and clusters of them begged her to dance. Perhaps they misinterpreted her hungry smile and brazen stare. She might subliminally elicit a fight-or-flight impulse, which their base minds misinterpreted as arousal.

Her ostensibly enchanted gown no doubt drew them: Its jewels changed colors as she moved, from red to green to blue to black. The gems cycled hues in the opposite direction she spun, making them appear bright insects scuttling over her silk.

The neglected women clustered, whispering and smiling behind their hands while flicking their eyes to the Lord of the Feast. They touched their scarab amulets out of nervousness, some giggling, and approached him in groups. I wondered at their attraction; the curiosity and uniqueness of his mannerisms apparently overcame their inadequate minds.

“He rode in after dark,” one woman said as her group passed me on the way to him.

“And he didn’t look at all frightened. My Brendock would’ve soiled his robes.”

“He couldn’t be a Feaster, could he?”

“What a dreadful thought! I hope I’m the first he asks to dance.”

I judged that while the possibility of his being a Feaster appealed to the women, any certainty of the truth would repel them. Snorting at their childishness, I glanced at the Lord of the Feast. He possessed more than a fearless gaze, I granted. Slack shoulders aside, his features brought to mind portraits of kings, not the overfed and inbred variety but the pedigree
who
conquered lands with bands of dauntless followers and proclaimed themselves sovereign.

As two groups of women closed in on the Lord of the Feast, he protected himself by stepping to the center of a group of men and directed their conversation toward me.

“The Enchantress Hiresha surely can tell us,” he said. “Is it true ‘Morimound’ means ‘Hill of the Dead?’”

“Yes,” I said.
“In reverence to those whose lives ended in the six floods.”

His voice remained unassuming. “My children tell me you bury your dead within the walls of your homes.”

“Because we are civilized,” I said. “Rain torrents unearth any buried in the ground, and only heathens use pyres.”

“Still,” he said, “the perfume of the dead must linger.”

“It is the scent of mourning.”

“That strikes even me as rather macabre.”

From atop my dais, I scowled down at the Lord of the Feast and the surrounding foreigners. His circle included a Morimound merchant, who had already inebriated himself. The man kissed the boy mimicking his wife with entirely too much enthusiasm.

The Lord of the Feast interrupted this offensive display. “Do you ever fear the deceased will break through the bricks and rise up in your homes? I’m sure to have such a nightmare.”

“Do not answer him,” I said. “You will ask no more questions of that nature, Ambassador.”

“As you wish.”

A woman cleared her throat in prelude to introducing herself to him, yet he continued to speak to me.

“I also know, Enchantress, the meaning of your name. ‘Hiresha’ is ‘the queen of gems.’”

The Lord of the Feast surprised me not insignificantly, as few enough people in Morimound considered the meaning behind my name, and never foreigners. He must have had his Feasters creep around until they found its meaning.

“My father was a diamond polisher,” I said by way of explanation.

The sweating head of the Morimound merchant wobbled and rolled as he tried to focus on my gowns.
“Whysh no diamondsh?
Lots o’ color.
Lots and lotsh.
Too goodsh for diamonsh?”

“These yellow and green jewels are diamonds, as are these blue ones.” I touched my earrings.

“Yesh, but you aresh the Flawlesh.
You should haves flawlesh diamonsh.”

“I am merely an enchantress. And the color impurities grant the jewels metallic properties, increasing their enchantability.”

“Diamonds are like people,” the Lord of the Feast said, “only the flawed can be flawless.”

I glared at him. “Why must everything you say be nonsensical and offensive?”

“The truth, I fear, is ever thus.”

He appeared oblivious to his rudeness in distracting me. I should have been attending to the expressions of my guests.

A foreigner coughed into his hand before speaking. “Madam Enchantress, I have never heard of blue diamonds. Yellow ones, yes, but not blue.”

“They are rarer,” I said, scanning faces in the crowd. Salkant of the Fate Weaver detached himself from an adjacent circle of conversation and began listening to the group gathered around me. The priest had attended alone, without a woman mimic, as his wife had died in childbirth.

“Is blue the rarest color?”

“No,” I answered the foreigner. “Diamonds are the tears of the Ever Always, the hardest substance on Loam. They fall from the sky—”

Priest Salkant lifted an arm then made a fist. “And should falling diamonds pierce to the center of the world, the Fate Weaver would crush them in one of
Her
eight divine hands.”

“The force would turn a diamond pink.” I finished for him.

I had slept with a diamond in my hand, trying to change it to pink with massive internal Attraction. Sadly, my grip was weaker than a god’s.

“Silver diamonds are rarer than pink,” Priest Salkant said.

“True,” I said, giving up on checking faces for the moment, “yet I theorize that if the goddess holds a diamond longer, if more of her force channels into the jewel, it will redden. A red diamond would be the rarest.”

“Enchantress Hiresha, my heart,” the Lord of the Feast said, “when you speak of jewels, your eyes shine like diamonds.”

I turned, not wishing him to stare into my eyes. “That is impossible. Human eyes can never attain a diamond’s luster.”

No one before had ever compared my brown eyes to diamonds. Brown diamonds did exist, and I felt an urge for a mirror, to compare the hues.

A woman nodded to the Lord of the Feast and whispered to her friend, loud enough for everyone to hear. “If I had as many jewels and silks, he’d be fawning over me.”

“A lace chaser, to be sure,” the other hussy said.

They could have only meant to provoke him and draw his attention, and I hoped he would acquiesce and stopped pestering me. I worried what people would say if he stayed nearby the entire night.

“In distant lands,” the Lord of the Feast said to me, as if the women had not even spoken, “they believe when a dragon swallows a diamond, the furnace in its gullet bakes the gem red.”

“I had not heard of that.” I felt close to exploding with exasperation.

Forcing my gaze away from the Lord of the Feast, I examined those dancing with the boys dressed as women. My heart beat at over twice its normal rate, and I could read some facial expressions, although none were incriminating.

My attention continued to slide to the lady Feaster, at how the jewels on her gown sparked and shifted colors as she spun from the arms of one man to another. The gems had to be an illusion. She licked her lips at some of her partners; instead of repelling them, her vile behavior lured more.

I wondered how the men would react if they knew they were dancing with something more bones than flesh. They lifted her with ease yet gave no sign they
clutched
the sharp ridges of her ribcage, nor did they shrink back from the touch of her skeletal hand. To them, the illusion had to be compelling.

For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine that the same magic would banish my sleepiness, would turn me into the same affable dance partner. Swallowing, I set aside the idle thought.

My silence had caused the guests to disperse, and apart from Deepmand, the tiles surrounding me were empty space. The Lord of the Feast strode into the clearing to avoid a crowd of women. He said, “My daughter is well behaved tonight.”

I lowered my voice, hoping the other guests would not step closer to hear. “Have you not even a spicule of shame?”

He whispered, “I try not to indulge in shame.”

“There lies the weakness of your character.”

“Then I wish I was weaker.”

“You mean, you ‘wish you were.’” I made no attempt to hide my smugness at correcting the Lord of the Feast. My satisfaction diminished when he gave no sign of embarrassment. I realized that most everyone was watching, although at least they stood too far away to hear us.

“We do all have our failings. And yours, Enchantress Hiresha, is dishonesty.”

“I have no such problem.”

“Then why do you insist everyone call you ‘elder?’ You do the word injustice.”

I had expected to be offended, yet not in this manner. He had no right to speak to me this way. Although I might be younger than I preferred people to treat me, the matter did not concern him.

“‘Elder,’” I said, “is merely a title.
Of deference.”

The pale blue of his eyes, I decided, most closely matched the absorption spectrum of aquamarine: Not a particularly valuable variety of beryl jewel, I took pleasure in noting.

I swerved my attention back to the dancers, feeling increasingly agitated at the sight of so many engaged in this ritualized vulgarity. Whenever the lady Feaster held up her hand in protestation that she must rest to catch her breath, ten men pleaded for her next dance.

Worse still, the Lord of the Feast remained uncomfortably close to my dais, and the guests might misconstrue that I wanted him there. The thought locked my throat with humiliation. I braced myself to tell him to remove himself from my person, yet he spoke first.

“No point in putting it off any longer. We must dance.”

“Dancing is a pointless activity,” I said.

“Making it a necessity.”

He spoke the ridiculous statement with the utmost seriousness. My heart rate surged, and all the heat of those in the room, along with the humidity, threatened to broil me. I remembered Deepmand’s admonishment that every time I acceded to a request, I would have more difficulty refusing the next, yet I feared to give the Lord of the Feast a direct refusal.