The Keeper of the Mist (6 page)

“Nevia,” Tassel said thoughtfully before Keri could ask anything about the apartment or reassigning staff. She lifted an eyebrow at the older woman. “The wardrobe, eh? I imagine the, ah, selection of ladies' clothing is probably fairly extensive, isn't it?”

“Oh, yes,” Nevia agreed, stepping toward Tassel with dismaying eagerness, as though believing she'd found an ally. “Yes, indeed.” Turning, she looked Keri up and down with concentrated interest. “The Timekeeper was kind enough to send us word before he left the House—but even so, we have had very little time. We shall do much, much better in the future, I promise you, but I do think some of the items we already have will do for now. I only need a few measurements, it won't take a moment—”

“I don't need anything,” Keri said, repulsed by the idea of touching, much less wearing, anything any of her father's mistresses had ever worn.

“She needs everything,” Tassel interrupted. “Keri, now, don't fuss. You're the Lady; you need to look the part. Really, Keri, think of everyone you must meet in only the next day or so!” She gave Keri a significant look, then, having clearly won that argument, continued to the wardrobe mistress, “Nevia, she needs everything but the very plainest sorts of gowns. I suppose this, ah, this upcoming appointment is quite formal? Not to mention, Keri, if you find yourself entertaining foreign guests later! Nevia, Keri—I mean, the Lady—will want something in, say, amber. You can see, with her skin, she needs autumn colors. Dusty green, tawny brown—”

Nevia was nodding. “Yes, yes, and copper and bronze, nothing silver.”

“Exactly,” Tassel agreed. “Stop scowling, Keri, and trust me!”

“Foreign guests?” asked one of the girls, Linnet.

“The Bookkeeper is pleased to jest,” Mem said repressively.

Keri and Tassel exchanged a look and mutually decided not to go into complicated details.

The gown Tassel eventually approved was an old-gold color, with extremely full skirts and a blouse with a high, stiff collar. Both skirts and bodice were stitched about with tiny beads of amber and topaz, and the matching soft-soled slippers were also embroidered with amber and topaz. Nevia even brought out gold-and-amber earrings before discovering, to her voluble surprise and dismay, that Keri's ears were not pierced. The wardrobe mistress put the earrings away and found an amber pendant instead.

Whoever had originally ordered or worn this gown, Keri had to admit that it was altogether the most beautiful dress she had ever put on in her life. It was also the least practical. Except that any girl who wore this must surely look like a proper Lady, no matter who her mother had been. Any man, even an arrogant Bear Lord, must surely think so, too.

The gown's sleeves each had dozens of little buttons, which had to be done up by Nevia, as Keri could never have managed them by herself, and the lace that fell over her hands would be terribly inconvenient if Keri was put to any task more demanding than lifting a pen or a cup of tea. Keri gazed at herself in a long mirror and knew how ridiculous the gown was. But…she loved it anyway. Even the ridiculous lace. Even the preposterous buttons. She gazed at her own image and found herself, against every expectation, tempted to let Nevia pierce her ears, as the wardrobe mistress had already offered.

“You look wonderful!” Tassel exclaimed when Keri turned around at last and posed for her. She actually clapped and bowed to Nevia with a flourish. “Wonderful!” she repeated. “With Nevia to advise you, you may do well enough even without me. Turn, turn, and let me see the back. Yes, excellent, and it will do even better once the underskirt's hem is let down a touch. But it will do splendidly for now. And just as well! Mem has informed me only this minute that we'll have to dash to get to the Little Salon on time.”

On time for the meeting with Keri's brothers. She had been laughing, half at herself and half at Tassel. But she could not laugh, or even smile, after that reminder.

Mem stepped forward in that brief, frozen moment. “I will show you the way, Lady,” she said, inclining her head. She added to one of the girls—Callia, Keri was almost sure—“Show the Bookkeeper the way to her own apartment and see that she is comfortable there.”

“Wait!” said Keri, startled. She put her hand on Tassel's arm.

Mem turned, took this in, and paused. Her eyebrows drew together, if not in disapproval, then at least in impersonal dismay. “Forgive me, Lady,” she said with stiff courtesy. “I believe it is customary for the chosen heir to meet privately with those displaced from the succession.”

“Really?” said Keri. “Because I think that's silly.” She thought she needed all the support she could get. She certainly didn't plan to meet all her half brothers
alone.

“I shall certainly accompany the Lady,” Tassel said. Her narrowed eyes and the set of her mouth made it plain that she would be happy to defy Mem, or anyone else.

“This is not proper,” Mem said coldly. “There are traditions. There is a proper way to manage all these matters.”

Keri hardly cared. Except that she did, she found; more than she had expected. She did want to do things properly. She wanted everyone to see that her mother had raised her properly, even without any of the advantages her half brothers had had. And besides…“I want you there,” Keri told her friend. “But, listen, Tassel, I want you to see if you can't find me a book. About Tor Carron, maybe. Or just…” She shrugged significantly. “Things.”

“Oh, yes,” Tassel said. “Things. Yes. But I can't leave you alone….” She gave Keri a concerned look.

“The Timekeeper is supposed to be there. He said he would be.”

“Well…,” said Tassel, studying her face. “I admit I'd definitely like to see what I can find out about…things.”

“Whoever is coming, we must leave at once to arrive at the appointed moment,” Mem stated. Without waiting for a reply, she turned to lead the way out of the wardrobe chamber and toward the outer door of the apartment.

“Mem,” Keri said before the woman could reach the door.

The woman turned back, her eyebrows up in disapproval and surprise.

“I'm coming,” Keri told her, but gestured around at the room and by extension the whole apartment. “But when I return, I don't want to see anything red left anywhere.”

“Lady—” Mem began.

“No red,” Keri said, her voice rising. She looked around once more. “I don't care what you do with all these things. Hide them in rooms where I won't see them, sell them, portion them out to the staff, chop them up for kindling, I don't care. But get rid of”—she waved her hand at the room again—“everything.”

Nevia said worriedly, “The color may be a little overwhelming, Lady, but truly I don't know where we'll find such nice things for you on short notice.”

“The things you find don't have to be wonderful,” Keri said quickly, flinching a little at the idea that someone else's room somewhere might be stripped of nice furniture because of her dislike of her father's…focused artistic taste. “I don't care. A cot and a camp stool would do…” She hesitated and then finished plainly, “…so long as they are not red, and
so long as my father never laid a hand on them.
”

There was a brief, frozen silence. At last, Nevia said, “Yes, Lady.”

“Good,” said Keri. She felt that changing the furniture and accessories over to something her father had never seen or touched would be in some strange way a magic spell, a way of telling Nimmira that she was here and willing to be herself, determined to be different—better—as Lady than her father ever had been as Lord. She felt she could deal with even her half brothers, even her father's supporters and advisors, even a failure of Nimmira's protective boundary magic and the incursion of foreigners, just so long as she did not
also
have to deal with the lingering presence of her father in these rooms that were supposed to be hers.

So she nodded firmly to Mem and stepped toward the door, taking the lead herself rather than letting the older woman have it. “Coming?” she said to Mem over her shoulder. “Which way is it?”

The Little Salon proved to be fairly far from Keri's rooms, up a wide staircase and down a long corridor and then around three turns of a spiral stairway with treads polished so smooth that she had to hold carefully to the carved banister and then down a hallway of stone arches with all the windowsills and shutters painted red as blood. First she felt a flash of anger about those shutters, anger that was like fear. Then she almost wanted to laugh. But she doubted she would ever have found the Little Salon at all except for Mem's guidance.

The Little Salon was not particularly little, being nearly large enough to engulf Keri's whole shop, but she supposed that somewhere there was a Big or Large or Grand Salon that dwarfed it. This room was intimidating enough, though at least it was not red. It was a stiff, formal room of white plaster and pale maple, filled with white upholstered chairs and couches that did not look very comfortable and spindly tables cluttered with delicate glass sculptures that would obviously break if you even looked at them closely—they must be extraordinarily difficult to dust—and the biggest, most ornate harpsichord Keri had ever seen. She guessed it was the harpsichord that made the room a
salon,
although she could not imagine, looking at the polished bone of its keys, that anybody was ever actually allowed to touch it.

The Timekeeper was already present. Keri was glad to see him. He occupied a chair next to a door opposite the one where Keri stood, one that was made of wide glass panels. At the moment, the panels had been opened up to let in air and light from a west-facing balcony. The afternoon sun picked out all the embroidery on the Timekeeper's coat and made his buttons glitter like gold, but it also mercilessly limned every line on his bony face, cast his colorless eyes into shadow, and made it particularly impossible to read his expression.

The Timekeeper was sitting perfectly still, his long, narrow hands folded on his knee, so still Keri might almost believe he had been replaced by a life-sized and skillfully painted sculpture of himself. The tall clock that dominated the wall beside his chair seemed in an odd way to possess the vitality the Timekeeper himself lacked. Its polished brass weights swung back and forth as steadily as a heartbeat. Its face was leaded glass backed by brass. The black numbers painted on its face were stark and angular, and its hands, also black, ticked quietly but audibly as they counted off seconds and minutes.

Here in this room, with that clock standing at his right hand, the Timekeeper looked not merely old but ageless, not just immobile but immovable. A shiver went down her spine at the sight of him, but Keri was relieved at that reaction: if she felt that way about the Timekeeper, she could surely be confident those Bear soldiers would respect him, too. And because of him, they would respect her, and Nimmira. She hoped they would.

The Timekeeper might not be a friend, but he was at least familiar, and an ally of sorts. Probably. As he had been responsible for bringing her here in the first place. And she needed an ally to deal with the Bear soldiers and also, right here, in this moment, or at least she felt she did, because her three half brothers had just come in, all in a group.

Brann, in the forefront, carried a glass of deep-ruby-colored wine in his hand. He turned a look of well-bred, faintly disdainful patience on Keri, as though he were an adult called away from important tasks to deal with a precocious child who had to be indulged. She could not tell whether he—whether any of them—knew yet about the foreigners from Tor Carron coming into Nimmira, right into Glassforge. It had been more than an hour, but she thought they did not yet know. She suspected they might have been waiting for this meeting with her, and no one would have thought to tell them anything. That would explain Brann's look of contemptuous boredom.

Domeric, at Brann's back, gave both Keri and the Timekeeper a heavy glower. He stepped around Brann, stalked to the far side of the room, and turned to scowl impartially on them all, crossing his powerful arms over his chest. He did not look patient or bored at all. Anger—Keri could see that. But maybe he just always looked angry.

Her infamous player brother, Lucas, was completely different from the other two. He was smiling, as though he found the outcome of the succession an occasion for hilarity. He was not smiling at Keri herself so much, she thought, as at the whole mad situation. He said, the first of them all to speak, in a tone of cheerful satisfaction, “Sister!” He crossed the room, took her hands in his, and bent to kiss her cheek. Then, straightening, he stood smiling down at her.

Keri stared at him, wondering what kind of role he thought he was playing and whether she should be offended. She thought he would enjoy it if she were. But she also thought he would enjoy almost any reaction he got, as long as he got a reaction. She did not try to pull her hands away, nor did she step back. She gave him her best withering look, the one that she used when a dairyman tried to sell her cream that was half soured or the miller thought he could insist that unsifted flour would do for fine cakes.

Lucas did not prove easy to wither. He gave her an even more delighted smile, released her hands, stepped back, swept her a low bow, and declared, “So you are our new Lady! Good for you, and I for one am delighted and pleased to welcome our father's unexpected heir! All I could think when I heard was how terribly grateful I was that it wasn't me! Kerianna, is it? I heard there would be flour in your hair and sugar syrup sticky on your fingers, but you look perfectly civilized to me. Tell me, are you likely to come over all spatulas and spoons and dash down to the House kitchens to make fancy pastries? If you do, can I have one?”