House of Shadows (23 page)

The prince’s friend, Jerinte, presented Moonflower with a more
costly ring, gold and set with an expensive black opal, though presumably this one came without valuable attachments. Taudde had guessed this would be a rich party where every gift given would be expensive. Now he saw he had reason to be grateful he’d prepared for it. He gave the girl one of his own rings: silver wire woven to encage a single fine pearl.

Miennes’s smile held an element of smugness, no doubt because he could well afford this game of generosity. He gave the girl an earring that held a sapphire precisely the color of her eyes and was certainly worth more than all the other rings together. Jerinte glanced at the older man with dislike, but Koriadde only looked amused.

Moonflower stared at these gifts and blushed.

“Take them,” Summer Pearl said to her, in a kind tone. “You won them fairly.”

“But—”

“You did,” Rue said, smiling, and patted Moonflower’s hand, which the girl had put out cautiously to touch the sapphire earring. “No one will tell a story to rout that one. Never tell me if it was not true. I will like to think of you on the deck of that ship, with the dragon rearing up out of the sea as high as Kerre Maraddras.”

“But it
was
true,” the girl said, blinking. “I thought all the stories were supposed to be true?”

“A well-told tale has a truth of its own,” commented the prince. “But of course yours would be unexaggerated.” He was smiling. He seemed both pleased and a little proud, as though he took the young keiso’s shining performance as a credit to himself.

Moonflower looked up at him and dropped her gaze again at once, blushing in delightful confusion.

The prince laughed a little. He plucked a single hair from his head and threaded it around a simple ring of gold wire before presenting the ring to the young keiso. The pause this time was rather fraught. Koriadde and Jerinte exchanged a swift glance, appearing both pleased and uneasy. The prince’s bodyguard merely looked resigned.

Summer Pearl had the indulgent look of an older person watching young love blossom. Meadowbell and Featherreed looked amused and a touch envious. Rue had a slightly calculating expression in her dark eyes.

Servants brought in sticky nut candies and bowls of rose-scented water so they could wash the stickiness off their fingers, and Bluefountain began to play again, a warm, light melody that broke the mood and made everyone smile. Rue rose to her feet and went out into the center of the room. She moved with a new kind of grace, and there was a general settling around the table as the company prepared to watch her dance.

The music lifted suddenly and Summer Pearl and Meadowbell both joined Bluefountain. Summer Pearl’s knee harp drew a light, ethereal descant about the deeper, burring sound of the kinsana, while Meadowbell’s pipes tossed glittering notes out at seeming random and yet fit perfectly into the piece. It was a variant of a Miskiannes dancing song, Taudde realized, doubtless chosen in his own honor. Rue was preparing to dance, and Taudde was suddenly ashamed that he’d assumed the subtle calculation he’d seen in her face had been due to Moonflower’s success.

The dance Rue performed did not use the set of strict forms Taudde would have expected from a Lonne-trained dancer. Instead, Rue seemed to float through the dance, always on the verge of drifting into a form and yet never quite letting her steps resolve into the expected pattern. This lack of resolution created a tension that was wound tighter with every form Rue did not quite carry through, and in only a few moments no one in the room was looking anywhere but at the dancer.

Rue drew the dance to an end that did not conclude and yet somehow was still satisfying. At that moment, while she made her bows, every man in her audience would have sworn that Rue was the most beautiful woman in Lonne, little Moonflower notwithstanding. And this, Taudde thought, with no deliberate effort on her part to beguile. She had only given herself to the dance.

The prince began the applause, a soft tapping of fingertips
against the polished surface of the table, and the rest of the gathering joined him.

“Beautiful. Very lovely and unusual,” Taudde said to Rue. He added sincerely, “Indeed, I do not recall anything I have ever seen to rival it,” and went on, “Truly it is said that one must come to Lonne in order to live! I hope you will accept a small token of my regard, forgiving any imperfections of taste a foreigner might have shown in its selection.”

Bringing out the packet he had set aside on the sideboard, biting back a sharp reluctance to do so, Taudde unwove the cord that bound it. He set out on the table the items he had brought, each wrapped in its own fine suede cloth and bound with a little cord.

Not being personally acquainted with any of the keiso, nor even being certain how many keiso would be present, Taudde had simply bought a selection of small gifts for them. Understanding that ostentatious generosity was expected—indeed, a keiso House, almost as much as high-class but ordinary prostitutes of other cities, must surely depend on the generosity of its patrons—he had made certain the gifts were expensive, for all their small size. He chose for Rue a bracelet of copper and amber, judging that it would set off her coloring well. She accepted this gift as her due, with a slight inclination of her head.

To Summer Pearl, he gave a ring of silver and Enescene jade, and to Meadowbell and Featherreed combs of mountain cedar inlaid with abalone shell. To Bluefountain, with a bow to acknowledge her skill, he gave a deceptively simple little flute of black wood that he had found at the Paliante and loved immediately: He had expected at least one of the keiso to be a true instrumentalist. All the keiso accepted their gifts with graceful exclamations of happiness, and Bluefountain blew a soft trill on the flute and closed her eyes in pleasure at the clean, pure sound.

To Moonflower, he gave a fortuitous trinket: a finger-high sculpture of a sea dragon carved of expensive red inda wood from Miskiannes. To Koriadde and Jerinte, Taudde gave graceful thanks for the pleasure of their company and small practical knives with sharkskin
hilts and deadly edges. The sheath of one was set with small cabochons, the other with tiny pearls. Both young men seemed pleased.

To Jeres Geliadde, he gave a completely unadorned knife, of the kind meant to be carried unobtrusively in the boot for emergencies, and received in return a curt nod.

To Ankennes, Taudde gave a drinking cup whimsically carved to resemble a mage’s scrying ball, and the mage laughed and claimed he would see more truth in a cup of liquor than any true crystal. Taudde only hoped his own smile looked unforced. He had used a triple-bladed tuning rod to weave deadly sorcery into the cup, so that any wine poured into it would become inimical. Lest someone other than the mage might fall victim to the poison, Taudde had also limited the sorcery so that the enspelled malice of it would wear away over the course of a few weeks.

He would be shocked if the mage actually drank from the cup in the meantime. That spell was not very subtle. But, though Taudde would be delighted if Mage Ankennes did drink from it, its “loud” ensorcellment was meant merely to drown out the far more subtly enspelled items Taudde had brought to this banquet. Ankennes would, of course, know these, too, carried sorcery. But Taudde hoped to prevent him from determining the exact details of how that sorcery would work.

To Miennes, with a significant look, Taudde gave a set of twin pipes made of horn and bound in silver. To the prince, with a deep bow of extravagant gratitude for the honor of his presence, and with a deepening reluctance he worked hard to conceal, he gave an even more beautiful set made of sea ivory and bound in gold. As the prince touched his set, Taudde felt the familiar whisper of sorcery waking. He found himself gripped by a sudden intense urge to snatch the ivory pipes back, break the waiting enchantment, render the pipes harmless. But it was far too late for second thoughts. Taudde slowly lowered his hand to the table.

“How lovely!” Bluefountain explained, turning to study first the pipes made of horn and then the set made of ivory. “What exquisite work! Are these from Miskiannes?”

The prince smiled and offered his set to Bluefountain so she could examine them more closely. Several of the other keiso peered over her shoulder as she turned them over in her hand and then, with a glance at the prince for permission, brought them to her lips and played a single note. It swelled in the room, mellow and pure, and Bluefountain closed her eyes and lowered the pipes again, smiling with delight.

The note seemed to Taudde to echo with shadowy grief, and he had to pause a moment before he could lie smoothly. “I bought them in Miskiannes. But I believe they were made across the sea, in Erhlianne. They do fine work there.” They did, but not as fine as the work Kalchesene bardic sorcerers could do. But he did not say that.

“Lovely,” agreed Mage Ankennes, smiling blandly. “Certainly more than the equal of my cup. May I?” He leaned forward to examine the prince’s set more closely, then sat back again with a murmured, “Masterful work indeed. Lord Miennes, yours are very fine as well. If I may?” He took the horn set and examined them curiously.

Taudde tried to match the mage’s bland smile, but suspected he’d failed.

The mage gave the set back to Miennes and nodded to Taudde. “Lovely work, indeed,” said the mage. “ I commend your… taste, indeed I do, and the craftsmanship that went into this piece.”

Taudde murmured appreciation, wondering just how much of the complex working Mage Ankennes had perceived. That the mage had given the pipes back to Miennes was surely a good sign… probably a good sign… Just how subtle
was
the mage?

“They are so beautiful, and such a pure sound! I have never seen anything to match them,” murmured young Moonflower, putting out a tentative finger to brush the carved ivory of Prince Tepres’s set. Her glance rose, Taudde thought by chance, to catch the prince’s, and she blushed and looked away. The prince smiled. The rest of the company hid smiles of their own, or in the case of the prince’s bodyguard, a frown. But at least the young keiso
had drawn everyone’s attention away from Taudde. He took the opportunity to covertly trade the plain ring Jeres Geliadde had given Moonflower for a narrower ring of his own that was roughly similar. At least it seemed unlikely the child would have any call to try to use it to solicit aid from any guardsmen. At least not soon.

Miennes accompanied Taudde to his carriage, of course. On passing out of Cloisonné House into the night, Taudde felt again that odd jarring dissonance he had perceived on arriving. The sensation startled him. He had almost forgotten his earlier feeling that the keiso House was a fraction aslant of the ordinary world. He hesitated in the doorway, half inclined to go back into the house and see whether he might find Leilis, compare the dissonance that clung to her to the sensation that occupied the doorway. Study, even unravel, the strange spellwork that had been imposed on her… She had at least seemed a naturally reticent woman. He would have to find an excuse to see her later. He would have liked to find her now.

But Miennes, of course, was present. Interfering in small ways and great. Miennes, at least, deserved the fate Taudde had crafted into those pipes. But Taudde found his angry regret growing only sharper. He had needed Miennes to step into his own trap, and the lord was dangerously perceptive and clever. So Taudde had baited his trap with truth, and Miennes had taken that bait. And yet…

Taudde knew he could have thought of a way to deal with the Lonne nobleman that would touch no one else. Or at least, a way for himself to get free of Lonne. Well, he hadn’t wished to leave Lonne and he had been seduced by the vengeance forced into his hands, and it was too late to regret his choice now. Taudde told himself that he was glad to comply with Miennes’s demand. What was the saying in this city? Something suitably coastal: to catch two fish on the same hook? Something of the kind.

But at the moment he could not be glad of anything. Even thinking of Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes’s coming grief and despair brought him no pleasure. Taudde tilted his face up to the sky. It was very late, not in fact far removed from dawn, and the air was
crisp with the approaching winter. But lights glowing all about the candlelight district drowned the darkness, and no stars were visible. Music played somewhere nearby, and a girl sang… a long slow lament that somehow seemed to contain in its cadences the rhythm of the tides and winds. The music rose above the girl’s voice, crying like the voices of seabirds.

The prince and his close companions had departed first, the prince giving young Moonflower back into the care of her elders with obvious reluctance. Koriadde and Jerinte had implored Meadowbell and Featherreed to accompany them to a nearby theater, a plan to which the two keiso had acceded with pleasure. The prince had not opposed the idea, but also had not shown any sign of wishing to join them. He had headed back toward the Laodd, his bodyguard trailing at his heel. Taudde hadn’t seen Mage Ankennes go, but the mage, too, had departed, thankfully without seeming to want to examine Miennes’s pipes more closely.

Miennes himself, of course, had lingered. He drew Taudde a few steps from their waiting carriages. “Well?” he demanded, his low, mellow voice edged, to Taudde’s ear, with a hard and ugly undertone.

“He took the pipes,” Taudde said shortly. Then he stopped and took a breath. Needing Miennes to believe him and doubt nothing, he layered truth and impatience and arrogance into his tone over the anger he felt. All of it was real, so there was no reason for Miennes to doubt anything he heard. Taudde continued, “Play the set I gave you, and you will draw his life from his body and leave only a husk. What you do then, or whom you do it to, or for, is your business. I have no interest in the politics of Lirionne.” Which was decidedly not true, but he layered sincerity through the statement.