“As you know, our generous lord, High Magister Viyeki, has been given a great honor by the Mother of All,” said Khimabu. “All blessings upon her, the queen has put fortyfold soldiers at his command to watch over and guard his engineers and laborers.”
“It’s quite wonderful how the queen recognizes my master’s worth,” said Tzoja dutifully. Judging by the still-twitching nose and malicious little bead eyes, the ermine was not suffering from his taste of puju. This time Tzoja took an actual bite, doing her best to hide her dislike of its harsh flavor. “Do you know where he is bound?”
“By the Garden, no!” Khimabu made another graceful gesture, this one signifying that it was beyond her powers to know the counsels of the wise. “He goes at the queen’s bidding and is sworn to secrecy. It is clearly a mission of some importance, though, so we must bear the burden of his absence bravely.” She spread her hands in a double fan. She was changing the subject. “But you have already had to bear the sadness of your daughter’s absence, although that brings high honor to our house as well. Imagine—despite her . . . drawbacks, she is a Queen’s Talon!”
“She was very lucky to be chosen, but of course the queen is never wrong.”
“Never. And Nezeru so young!”
Tzoja had flicked a couple of shreds of the roasted waxwing into the ermine’s hunting range while concentrating on her puju. She did her best to watch without seeming to as the little creature approached, sniffed, and then gobbled them down. Another few moments, then if the animal survived, she could move on to eating some of the bird as well, which to this point she had only pushed around on her platter. “You have been very kind to Nezeru, Lady Khimabu. You have treated her with the kindness you would show your own daughter.” That was a dreadful exaggeration—Khimabu had never been anything other than coldly correct to her husband’s child by another woman—but neither of the two women were paying much attention to what the other appeared to be saying.
“Oh, it is only right to do so. Is she not my husband’s child? Have you not gifted us—gifted our entire household—with her birth?” The bland look on Khimabu’s face was indistinguishable from murderous rage, but that was usually true with the Hikeda’ya. “But you must fear for her, so far away.”
“I do, but I trust in the queen’s wisdom.” As Tzoja watched, the ermine coiled itself on Khimabu’s shoulder and almost seemed to be paying attention to the conversation. The animal did not appear to have been poisoned, though, so Tzoja began picking at her own bird with the scraping-fork the Hikeda’ya preferred to use on cooked meat, taking it in only in small quantities. “My Lord Viyeki once told me that part of the reason for our daughter’s swift advancement was your own family’s support of her, my lady. That was very generous of you.”
Khimabu’s gesture was a strange one, water on flat rock, which usually meant that all would be revealed in the fullness of time. The magister’s wife seemed to notice this herself only after beginning, because she quickly turned it into a more ordinary sign, one that represented a carefully prescribed amount of social gratitude. “That which helps my husband helps me and all my family. Not that my relatives are themselves overlooked or unappreciated. The queen has often been kind enough to take notice of them.”
“Your uncle is high in one of the orders, I’ve been told, but I have never known the details.” Tzoja had always assumed it must be the Order of Sacrifice, since that was the order that had taken Nezeru and awarded her with great responsibility. For once the conversation and her actual curiosity had dovetailed in an acceptable way. “Is it permitted to ask which?”
Khimabu’s eyes positively glittered with what looked to Tzoja like malicious amusement, although her face showed nothing that was not correct. “Of course it is permissible to ask, dear little sister. We share so much already. My uncle Inyakki is one of the chief clerics in the employ of Akhenabi, Lord of the Order of Song.”
A sudden chill ran up Tzoja’s spine. A Singer? Why had she not known that? Why had Viyeki never told her?
As she sat, temporarily dumbfounded, the ermine abruptly scrambled from Khimabu’s shoulder, down the lady’s sleeve and onto the pale leather of the couch beside her. A moment later, it made a little urp noise and began to vomit, spewing out a tiny pile of gristle and sludge and pale liquid.
Tzoja could only stare in horrified fascination, the meat in her own mouth suddenly unchewable because her tongue had gone dry as dust.
“Ah, my little companion seems to have had a bit too much of this rich food,” said Khimabu, a smile in her voice if not on her face. “Have you been stealing from our plates, tiny villain? Have you been making free with everyone’s supper?” She turned her masklike face toward Tzoja. “He is terrible, you know. He will eat anything and everything, without caution—he would poison himself if I did not constantly watch him! Why, what is wrong, Tzoja? You look quite pale for one of your complexion. Please don’t worry for him. He will be fine, soon. I’ll have a servant clean up right now if it puts you off your meal.”
“Actually, I’m afraid I am feeling a bit unwell,” Tzoja said. “I think like your pet, the food is a bit rich for me.”
“Familiar,” said Khimabu.
“What?”
“That is what we always called such animals growing up. Not pets but familiars. They are so much more than mere pets.” And as if to demonstrate the truth of this, the ermine looked up from its own pool of sick and stared right at Tzoja. She could almost have sworn it was amused.
She got up, her legs shaky. The bitch Khimabu had been toying with her all along—she must have seen everything. What a fool, what a failure I must appear to this beautiful, heartless creature, Tzoja thought—a cheap, shabby copy that some craftsman had thrown aside half-finished. “Please forgive me, Lady Khimabu. Your hospitality has been most kind, your conversation most enlightening.”
“But you are not unwell, are you? How sad!” She made the spread-hands sign of sorrowful condolence, exaggerated to make clear its insincerity, Tzoja felt sure. “We were just beginning to talk!”
“I do apologize. I think I need to lie down.”
“But of course. We will continue this at supper tomorrow night, then, if you are well enough. Now that my husband is absent, this is my chance to get to know you properly. I would not let anything interfere with that.”
Once she had backed out of the dining salon, Tzoja hurried back across the great house to her own chamber on shaking legs, her heart booming in her chest so that it seemed everyone behind the closed doors of the silent hall must hear it.
She will kill me. But she’ll play with me first, because she enjoys it. Tzoja could barely breathe as she fumbled with the latch of her door. I cannot stay here, but there is nowhere safe for me in this haunted country, or any way to leave it.
She closed the door behind her, locked it with latch and bolt, then forced herself to vomit the few scraps she’d eaten into her chamber pot before tumbling onto her bed, breathless with despair.
35
The Man with the Odd Smile
“Hurry up, child! The Duchess is waiting for you!” Even though Duke Saluceris was not present, his ancient valet Oren still considered himself chief among the servants of the Domos Bendriyan, the family palace built by the first Benidrivis some two hundred years earlier. Jesa sometimes thought stiff old Oren might actually have been there since the first stones were laid. He certainly acted like it.
“Her Lady said to clean and swaddle the baby, Master Oren,” she said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice but not succeeding. “And that is what I am doing.” She would not have dared speak back to a superior servant in her first years with the Duchess, but Jesa knew her place now, and also knew that it would take a fairly serious breach of courtesy for Duchess Canthia to turn against her.
“Her Ladyship, you swamp brat, not ‘Her Lady’. How can a servant in a great house not be able to speak correctly?”
“It is not even your tongue,” Jesa replied, somewhat daringly. “It is old King John’s tongue, and you do not speak it so goodly, either.” She was not satisfied with the swaddling, so she unwrapped little Serasina and began again. “And I am here for caring for the baby, not for making your ears happy.”
Oren shook his head. “This,” he said grimly. “This is just what I have said—even servants these days are insolent.”
“Not insolent,” Jesa said. “Just busy. Much busy.” Ah, if Oren only understood the Wrannaman tongue, how she would put him in his place! The language of her birth had many, many ways for a woman to correct a man who had set himself too highly.