The Seven-Petaled Shield (27 page)

Danar closed the door behind them and gestured to the end of the work table, where an assortment of clear glass disks and reed tubes were neatly displayed on racks. Tsorreh listened with growing interest as he explained that, depending on the shape of the lens, objects would appear to the viewer as larger or smaller.

“Father started on this project when his eyes got too bad to read. You can imagine how frantic that made him, and at that time, I couldn’t read anything but Gelone, so I wasn’t much help. With a lens like this, he could see even very small writing. Like men, the lenses strengthen each other when put together.” Danar held up a piece of smooth glass the size of Tsorreh’s palm, set like a mirror in a ring of silver, and one of the tubes.

Looking through the various lenses, Tsorreh was swept up in a exhilarating blur of light and color. Shapes rushed toward her, suddenly huge.

“This is wonderful!” she cried, delighted in spite of her earlier fears. She tried to imagine looking through the far-seeing tube from the heights of the temple, toward the line of brightness on the horizon that marked the Sea of Desolation. What more could she have seen, what strange wonders made clear to her sight?

“Is it some kind of magic?” she wondered aloud. “Like the tiny spirits of fire and water, only of air, that bring these visions?”

“Hardly magic,” Jaxar answered her from the doorway. Limping on his crutch, he crossed to take the tube from her hands. “This is based upon the principles of the natural world, which any reasonable person can understand. What you call ‘magic’ is superstitious nonsense. There are no tiny spirits of air, any more than there are of any other element.”

No matter what Jaxar said, she had seen the spirits of fire
and water, and she had seen Khored of Blessed Memory stand against the powers of Fire and Ice. For a dizzying instant, she felt herself astride two worlds, one in which only what she could see or touch was real, and the other, a place of unimaginably vast powers, a place that legend and scripture struggled to evoke. Khored would have had no doubt which world was real. But Khored had long since passed from the face of the earth, his people diminished and scattered.
Khored was glorious in his day, but his time ended. It is now the age of men like Jaxar. And Ar-Cinath-Gelon.

She said nothing of her visions, only commented that the priests who had built the temple in Meklavar used mirrors to bring light deep within the mountain.

“Yes, yes!” Jaxar said, plainly excited. “The same principles hold true everywhere! Can you draw it for me, this system of mirrors?”

They cleared off one end of the table, sat down with paper and sticks of charcoal, and spent the rest of the day discussing the properties of light. Servants brought in a mid-day meal, a cold soup made from cherries, bowls of spiced lentils and cucumbers, and unleavened bread.

The three of them talked long into the night.

W
HEN Tsorreh woke, she was in the laboratory, curled on the pallet that had been made up for her. Softness cushioned her body, and the stuffed pad gave off the faint scent of dried lavender. The coverlet was finely woven wool, dyed in a pattern of bright stripes. The degree of comfort had surprised her, for she had expected something thin and hard, a servant’s meager bed.

A hush filled the spacious chamber. Radiance sifted from the open door of the rooftop observatory and through the windows. By the angle and tint of the light, Tsorreh judged that it was morning. The enclosed space, filled with strange but curiously reassuring objects and the familiar smell of books and ink, created the sense of a place set apart. It was a place not utterly alien to the things and values she had always known, a place enclosed by walls visible and invisible.

From the rooms and corridors beyond the grounds of the estate came the sounds of everyday life. Footsteps, voices calling to one another—servants about their morning chores, she supposed. Once or twice, she caught a trill of birdsong from the garden courtyard. Within these walls, stillness held sway. Stillness and a blessed, fleeting solitude.

Since her arrival yesterday, Tsorreh had left the laboratory
only a few times. It occupied one corner of the second floor, down the hall from a small toilet chamber. A bucket of water, kept filled, served to rinse the porcelain facility. Where the soiled water went then, Tsorreh did not know. Gelonian sanitation was efficient, judging by the absence of smell.

She could not hide here, she knew. She must learn the layout of the compound, the house with its courtyards and garden, the grounds. She must get to know the servants and determine which ones might help her and which she must avoid. If possible, she must build the alliances that would gain her access to the city beyond.

And then what? If she escaped Jaxar’s custody, where would she go? Nowhere in Gelon would be safe. Could she evade being caught, as well as the many hazards of a woman traveling alone in unknown lands, long enough to make her way back to Isarre? To Meklavar? The prospect of such a journey, undertaken in secrecy and attended at every turn by fear of discovery and in the absence of allies and resources, was daunting.

Tsorreh got to her feet and stretched. Her spine popped and her muscles ached in relief. She’d been too long abed, she thought, and needed something active to sharpen her wits. She went to the nearest bookshelf, noting with dismay the thickness of the dust. The scrolls had been placed neatly in slots, but without a system of identification. She suspected they were in as great disorder as the bound volumes. She drew in her breath for a sigh of exasperation, then quickly swallowed it, rather than risk sending billows of dust everywhere. She could easily tell which books Jaxar consulted frequently, for the bindings were relatively clean and little avenues of bare wood amid the grayish dust marked where the books had slid in and out. Dust coated her fingertips from brushing against only a few.

She glanced around the room. There must be a rag somewhere, perhaps buried in one of the piles of odd objects, bits of wood and metal wire, and unspun wool.

The door opened with a faint click of the latch. Tsorreh
flinched at the sound. A girl, not much older than Danar, slid through the opening. Her nose was short and snubbed, and her black brows almost met in the center of her forehead in a single straight line. She would have been homely, except for the sweetness of her expression and the beauty of her hazel eyes. Her hair, a darker shade of chestnut than the usual Gelon red, had been tied in a single, severe braid, and she wore a knee-length white tunic, belted with a braid of brightly colored ribbons and pinned at the shoulders with little copper ornaments. Embroidered flowers brightened the neckline and sleeve hems. She carried a tray with a bowl of boiled millet, a pitcher, and a napkin.

A napkin! Perfect!
Tsorreh stopped herself before she could snatch up the scrap of cloth and begin cleaning.

The girl came to a halt and inclined her head shyly.

“Is that for me? Thank you. It smells good.” Mixed with the faintly nutty aroma of the millet, Tsorreh inhaled the subtle scents of apricots and honey.

The girl looked startled, as if she had not expected to be addressed in understandable Gelone. She handed over the tray and began to scurry back through the doorway.

“Wait!” Tsorreh cried. “I don’t know your name.”

“Astreya, lady.”

The name certainly did not sound Gelon. Remembering Jaxar’s emphatic statement about not keeping slaves, Tsorreh asked, “Are you a servant?”

“Yes, indeed! My mother is the cook here.”

Cooks often knew more about the doings of their households than did their masters. “I wonder,” Tsorreh ventured, “could you take me to your mother? And to a place where I might wash, as well?”

Astreya inclined her head again. “Eat the food while it’s hot. I’ll be back for the tray.” With a sideways smile, she slipped through the door.

Tsorreh set the tray down beside her pallet. A spoon of carved horn had been tucked beneath the edge of the bowl. She dipped it into the porridge and found the millet was still warm. The sweetness of the fruit and honey filled her
mouth. Her stomach rumbled, and she felt suddenly ravenous.

The girl came back just as Tsorreh was finishing the last tiny grains. She picked up the tray. “Come on, then.”

Astreya walked along at a business-like pace, indicating the direction of the family apartments in the wing that stretched to the south. The main building had been constructed as an open rectangle, with the central courtyard garden open to the sky. Apparently, Lycian had her own separate suite, with a balcony view overlooking the city. Lycian’s rooms, Tsorreh noticed, occupied the opposite end of the house from the laboratory. Tsorreh glimpsed the garden below, then followed Astreya down gloomy stairs and along a brief stretch of the shaded colonnade that ran around the courtyard.

The kitchen and bakery stood apart from the house itself, down a path of fine-grained gravel. A well and a large freestanding oven, rounded like a beehive, flanked the kitchen building. As they traversed the outdoor compound, Astreya pointed out servants’ quarters, gardening sheds, a little stable for Lady Lycian’s onager and Lord Danar’s horse, vegetable and herb gardens, and an orchard, the apple and pear trees pruned and espaliered for easy picking. The smell of sun-warmed herbs filled the air. Beyond the orchard, Tsorreh glimpsed the high stone walls she remembered from her arrival.

Astreya led the way through the wide open doorway and into the kitchen itself. The kitchen comprised a series of adjoining rooms, with areas for storage, preparation, and cooking. Piles of dishes, mostly metal pounded thin, were stacked in the washing area. Shelves held an array of pottery canisters, wooden boxes, and other containers. Braids of onions and garlic hung from the beams in one corner, as well as strings of sausages and what looked like wax-dipped cheeses.

A ruddy-faced woman bent over the iron pot that hung over a wide cooking hearth, stirring the contents with a long-handled wooden spoon. One girl chopped leeks and
carrots on the table, while another scrubbed pots at the massive stone sink. A half-grown boy maneuvered a yoke with two buckets of water through the back door.

The woman at the hearth looked up from tasting the pot’s contents. Beneath the flush, presumably from her nearness to the banked fire, her complexion resembled Astreya’s, and the line of her dark brows and curve of her lips left no doubt in Tsorreh’s mind that this was indeed the girl’s mother. Like her daughter, the woman wore a simple, loose fitting dress, but hers fell to her ankles, and the shoulder clasps were fashioned from black wood, polished to a high sheen, and carved like entwined snakes. A bibbed apron strained across her ample breasts. Clearly, she enjoyed her own cooking.

“Ah, you must be our new guest, the foreign lady,” she said, without setting down her spoon. “I’m Breneya, cook here, and I see my girl’s got you fed.”

“Yes, thank you,” Tsorreh replied. She found herself liking both mother and daughter. “The food was very good.”

“A sight better than you’d find in uncivilized parts.” Breneya looked pleased. “We’ll put some meat on your bones.”

Tsorreh glanced down at her body. She had always been slender, and the long, desperate flight through the Sand Lands and Isarre had pared her even further. The unbelted dress hung on her like a shapeless sack.

“Mamma,” Astreya said, “might I show this lady to the bathhouse?”

A bathhouse?
Despite the awkwardness of the moment, Tsorreh’s muscles went weak with longing. Hot water, soap that did not leave her skin scoured raw, a soft towel, and the leisure to enjoy them—the prospect was marvelous beyond words.

“So you shall.” Breneya put down the spoon, wiped her hands on her apron, and bustled Astreya and Tsorreh toward the door. As they left, Tsorreh heard the older woman muttering, “That dress! Not fit for a decent woman to wear!”

Heat rose to Tsorreh’s face. Clearly, Cinath had sent her forth in nothing more than a slave’s robe. These women,
free
women, showed their status by adding personal adornments. Jaxar had said nothing. Perhaps he had not even noticed. But Lycian had.

Paying no heed to her mother’s comments, Astreya led Tsorreh back toward the main house, then down a branching, rock-lined path. The bathhouse itself was a compact stone structure with high-set, unglassed windows and a roof of glazed blue tiles that curved up at the edges, giving the appearance of frozen dancing waves. Willowy trees lined the path. White, intensely fragrant blossoms covered their branches, but could not entirely disguise the faint sulphuric tinge to the air. Tsorreh sniffed, recognizing the reek characteristic of natural hot springs. No wonder the baths were situated some distance from the main house.

They went around to the entrance, a series of broad steps leading downward to a landing. Passages opened to either side, presumably separating bathers either by sex or class.

A statue of a woman occupied a niche in the wall; she held a jug on one shoulder, one leg bent as if paused in mid-step and the other hip forming a graceful curve. Fresh flowers, both the white ones from the trees and a scattering of brighter petals, had been mounded around the statue’s feet.

Tsorreh paused before the statue. A gentle, benign presence radiated from the sculpted face, and something in the softly lowered gaze of the marble eyes suggested compassion, or so Tsorreh thought. How she sensed this, she did not know. Perhaps some force, kindly and welcoming, inhabited the statue.

With a rustle of silk, a pattering of sandaled feet, and a flurry of attending servants, Lycian burst from one of the bathhouse entrances into the lowered courtyard. Rosy color suffused her face, and her bright hair fell in damp curls over the nape of her neck. Her gown followed the same basic pattern of women’s dress in Gelon, but the iridescent rose-and-yellow silk was gathered at each shoulder into tiny jewel-studded pleats and held by golden clasps in the shape
of flowering vines. Matching bands coiled around her upper arms and wrists. More gems winked along the hem of the scarf that fluttered about her shoulders. One of her attendants carried the little white lap-terrier, which began to yip as soon as it spied Tsorreh.