Banner of the Damned (17 page)

“Did she get a lover’s cup?” I asked.

“Not that I heard. Handsome Lassiter hasn’t deigned to paint one for anyone in this kingdom since Lady Talian of Deshlen got one, and he found out that she straightaway put on her outer salon mantle, where all can see it—like a trophy garland after winning a race.”

By now I had refined my comportment in these meetings with Tif. I reacted enough that I could see my cousin react to my reactions—like mirrors distort the infinitude of reflections between them.

If a chirp might be harmful to Lasva, I’d sit unmoved, for I’d discovered that Tif would then denounce it as mere rumor. If the chirp did not relate to Lasva, or couldn’t harm her, I’d press my lips against a smile—or smooth my robe over my wrist—if I had heard it was true. And off it would go, chirping its way into Alsais and beyond.

Was I breaking the First Rule? Was that influence? I wondered as I walked back to the royal wing one warm, rainy evening, as Lasva danced at a ball given on the marble terrace of the new ducal wing—watched by Kaidas Lassiter, as Carola in turn watched him.

No, I decided, for I never whispered, and this was only my cousin, not some powerful court figure. And I was not a spy, for
I
did not chirp, nor was there any material gain.

Shuras’s rooms overlooked the Grand Skya, off which breezes flowed. She had aromatic flowers to sweeten those breezes and wine mulled with her own hands over a tiny brazier. Her touch was like silk, but when it became ardent, again, my interest froze, and I found her too close.

She smiled the more, read me passionate poetry, offered to brush my hair, and when I was relaxed, she murmured, “Do you share any tastes with the princess?”

“I do not know,” I said, and said so again and again when the drifting talk circled lazily back to Lasva.

I got up, thanked her for the lovely evening, but as soon as I reached the hall I wept, for
I
had not been courted. It was Lasva’s scribe who had been courted by one of Tif’s chirping birds.

“What did you see at my party, Emras?”

“I saw The Garden Arch,” I said, referring to the gaze named for the arc a flower makes in following the sun.

Lasva sighed. “I felt it, though when I spoke each smiled and deferred, and I believe those new cakes with the tiny sugared bluebells were lauded by all. They certainly ate them. But yes, I was aware of all eyes following not me. They followed…”

“Lord Vasalya-Kaidas Lassiter,” I said.

“Yet he did nothing to draw their attention,” she responded. “Not that I could detect. He’s not even all that handsome. Rontande is far prettier, especially with his hair dyed that shade of lemon, though I prefer his hair black. Young Gaszin catches the eye as well, if you like them chiseled. There are a dozen men who have better clothes, or finer features, or more grace in their movements. Martande of Ranflar makes us all laugh, and he know the latest music from Sartor. Yet when this Kaidas gets up to fetch the fan that he so carelessly dropped on the window sill, they all watch him, man and woman. What does he do to draw the eye?”

I had not said—yet—that her own gaze had become The Garden Arch. Maybe I would not say it. “He moved,” I said instead, groping my way, as if in an unlit room. “But the way he moves causes the eye to linger.”

She clasped her hands. “Yes. The way he moves. He laughs inside his own body, as it was said about my famous forebear. Any man may pick up a fan, but the way he does it makes my skin curious for the warmth of his touch.” She tipped her head. “Here is what I ponder: whether he does it consciously. Is he collecting lovers like others collect garland trophies or gems? Ananda talks on about those lovers’ cups he paints.”

Tiflis had reported:

Lasva said, “Is there a competition to gain them? Who is collecting whom?”

“You would think,” Lasva said, her brows lifted, “a parting gift from a lover would be kept secret, like a pillow gift. Unless you parted with him. In which situation, why would anything he gave you keep value? Or why would you part?”

“Here’s what I do know: I will stay far away from him,” Lasva vowed. “Even if my sister didn’t despise his father, I don’t intend to become his latest trophy.”

I was glad I’d said nothing more specific about The Garden Arch.

“What did you see, Emras? Was there something amiss in my manner? In my words? The play was one Carola said she liked. The musicians promised they knew all the songs popular in Alarcansa.”

Queen Hatahra preferred what we call the formal plays—all old, usually set during important times, most often in verse. The words are poetry, the movements stylized—everything expressing
melende
… and often quite dull.

I have since realized that many were not dull when first written, but in fact were much like today’s city plays, which comment obliquely on current events that are eventually forgotten, leaving only the pretty words and the high-minded version of incidents the writer wishes remembered.

Most courtiers had to memorize pages of the old plays during their early training, so they all knew them. Courtiers might arrange extemporaneous versions of famous scenes, in honor of one another.

Lasva had gone to great trouble to hire the best players and pay for new costumes, and she had made a request for regional music from Alarcansa. All this as an offering of friendship to Carola, who returned Lasva’s friendly overtures with diamond-precise politeness—and as much warmth.

I had watched Carola instead of the play. When Lasva asked what I’d seen, I replied: “I saw politeness.”

Lasva sat down on a hassock, the strong morning light catching in the blue of her eyes—a pretty contrast to the shades of pale apricot in her overrobe, slit up the sides to the waist sash in the new mode, the underrobe
of deep forest green. Forest green ribbons tied the filmy moth-gauze above her elbows and at her wrists, making graceful drapes of the sleeves. “Is that all?”

“I saw…”

I remembered Carola’s straight back, her small hands so perfectly placed and as empty of expression as her face below its high-piled corn silk hair threaded through with rubies and diamonds. Her gown was moon-gauze and silver over so deep a crimson it was almost black. She wore many diamonds all about her person, so she glittered even when she breathed.

“I saw…”

When Kaidas rose, beckoned by Young Gaszin, Carola turned her head. And when he strolled back, he’d passed by Lasva’s chair, smiling at her, though she was talking to someone else. Light flashed along the diamonds on Carola’s gown as her muscles tightened.

My instinct insisted that she was angry, but after the play she used none of the hasty movements, the brittle words of anger. Reason said courtiers did not get angry—
melende
did not permit the distortion and discourtesy of anger. Anger was destructive, and angry nobles before the days of civilization had caused wars.

“I saw how she watched, when Kaidas greeted you.”

“All he did was walk by.”

Lasva let out a long breath, then got to her feet and moved to the window to look out over the Rose Walk. There was no use in saying what we both knew, that she had been aware that he was there.

That next morning, at the Hour of Reeds, several men crossed through the fountain room bearing fans with poppies sketched on them in compliment to the crimson of the lovely new Duchess Carola of Alarcansa. Young Gaszin’s fan was scarlet.

Kaidas Lassiter’s alone was neutrally plain.

Lasva and Kaidas turned and turned again, sun and moon in opposition, just as the court, like the brilliant stars in the summer sky, turned about them both. The sun is oblivious to the flowers that arch their faces in its path: the Garden Arch no longer captured the mode any more than the word “flirtation” expresses the breathless intensity of those brief interchanges—never more than a single question, a word or two in response in the time it took to walk past one another.
Theirs were the fast, slanting glances across the entire width of a ballroom.

Neither ever danced with the other at court parties or balls.

The Colendi have the word
rafalle
—as always, our three syllables come from a pairing of Sartoran words, “re” for “sun,” “va” for “water” with the added pun of “al” meaning “bright.” Light and water are always beautiful together, but sometimes, if the sun and the water and the viewer are all in the right place at the right time, the water coruscates into “white fire.” The term was understood by us Colendi to mean that nearly palpable attraction between lovers whose passion so matches the other’s that they always know—whether their gazes meet or not—when the other is nigh. And when their gazes meet:
rafalle
. They feel it. Others see it.

So it was with those two, all the remainder of the year.

And every time their gazes met, even briefly, Carola was watching.

The New Year’s ball was usually a small gathering, given for the queen’s particular friends and others she wished to honor, without distinction of rank. I was invited, at Lasva’s wish, so I postponed by one day my yearly visit to my parents.

The elderly Grand Seneschal was there, as was the Chief of the Kitchen, and a couple of musicians with whom the queen was pleased, as well as a number of us scribes. Since I was not there on duty, I exchanged my beloved scribe’s cloud blue and white for a gown of heavy brocade in layers of green, yellow, and amber.