Delia of Vallia (7 page)

High on one wall hung a portrait of Velda the Tempestuous. It showed her in the full regalia of white leathers, long-legged, scowling of face, the Whip coiled along her arm, the Claw extended menacingly. Her rapier and left-hand dagger snugged about a narrow waist. Her hips flared in her arrogant, menacing pose. Her long white leather boots were mud-splashed. This small touch had always to Delia brought the image of Velda alive, as though the sister could not be dead but ready to answer the summons to prayer, to be met in the refectory, to be engaged in discussion at any of the formal functions of the SoR.

The Sisters of the Rose were mindful of tradition, and looked to the future, and kept themselves secret in the world in which they labored.

Beside the head of the bed stood a heavy wooden chest on legs which, in that austere room, were incongruously carved into the likenesses of rose trellises. The doors in the front of the chest were locked. The top supported a few essential items of toiletries.

Now Delia took off her raggedy russets and threw them into the wicker basket by the door. Novices would collect the laundry by rota, and wash and repair her clothes. Once, she had labored on those duties here.

She went to the end picture of the row that hung beneath the portrait of Velda. Before she opened the picture on its hinge away from the wall, she stood, brooding on the line of portraits. Each was mounted in a narrow plain frame of varnished wood. There were fifteen. As always, she gazed at the face tenth along. That frame, like the first six, was surmounted by a small nosegay, a posy, of roses carved and painted. The face looked back with its brown Vallian eyes, gentle, sweet, stunningly beautiful. Delia sighed.

Life was brutal.

You tried. You attempted to make what you could of this puzzle Opaz had given you. Yes, her grandparents, represented in the first four portraits, were dead, and it was seemly that after full lives of better than two hundred years, they should be gathered into the Benediction of Opaz the Everlasting. And her father and mother; death had claimed them. As for the seventh portrait — a little frown dented Delia’s forehead. She’d left him after the Battle of the Incendiary Vosks in Hamal, unwillingly, but committed. No doubt he was off swinging his damned great Krozair longsword and adventuring in places she would rather not hear about until afterward.

As for her son Drak, in the next picture, he was being groomed to become the Emperor of Vallia and take over from his father. When he did so, Delia fully intended to speak rather intemperately to the mistress, and demand that she be allowed to join her husband in whatever nefarious goings on he was up to. They owed her that much, the SoR, surely?

She held the first picture open, still pondering.

The picture after Drak’s showed Lela who was known as Jaezila. Soon there would have to be a further portrait placed below that, a picture of Prince Tyfar of Hamal. And the quicker those two decided to marry the better and so put every one of their friends out of their tantalizing frustrations at the idiocy of two young lovers.

And so to the tenth portrait.

Below it, almost a part of it, had been fixed a much smaller portrait, practically a miniature. This showed a man with black curly hair bunched on his head, with a hawklike face, bold and arrogant, with two blue bolts for eyes. His chin was like the ram of a swifter. Delia had never met this man, this Gafard, Rog of Guamelga, the King’s Striker, Prince of the Central Sea, the Reducer of Zair, Sea-Zhantil, Ghittawrer of Genod. He had married her daughter Velia and their daughter’s portrait was affixed as the last in the row. This showed a babyish face, and Delia resigned herself to having a fresh portrait commissioned, for little Didi was growing up.

The small posy of red roses was echoed by a single rose fixed above the portrait of Gafard, the King’s Striker, Sea-Zhantil.

Delia swung the door that was the first picture back and forth. Still looking at the face of Velia, she reached into the space beyond the picture and took out a bronze key. The handle was cast into the form of a stemmed rose.

Next to Velia her twin brother’s face stared in powerful authority from the painted panel. This was Zeg, who had been called Seg in honor of Seg Segutorio. Now Zeg was King of Zandikar, and the face of his wife, Queen Miam, smiled from her own portrait. One day she and Zeg would have to visit Vallia, or Delia and her husband would have to make the long journey to the inner sea of Kregen, the Eye of the World.

As for the next portrait — and here Delia sighed in a way far removed from her patient long-suffering anguish over Velia — this was her daughter Dayra, ferocious, mischievous, led into evil ways. This was Dayra, known as Ros the Claw. She it was, surmised Delia, who was the cause of this summons to Lancival.

Dayra’s twin, Jaidur, known as Vax Neemusbane, looked out from the next picture, and with him his wife, Lildra. They were now King and Queen of Hyrklana. Jaidur had served the SoR very well on secret errands, many of them not even known to his mother. Now he was settling down nicely with Lildra in the island kingdom of Hyrklana. A touch of real responsibility had worked wonders for his wildness, a wild streak he shared with his twin sister and which she showed no signs of outgrowing.

The penultimate portrait, of Velia, a daughter born later, loved and named for the older Velia, again would soon require replacement, for Velia was growing up. Delia hoped the mistress would allow a visit with Velia here in Lancival, for Velia was being educated and trained by the SoR. It might not be possible. Discipline sometimes imposed a harshness well-nigh insupportable to a mother.

She held the bronze rose-key in her hand.

She knew — she had been told — that her dip in the Sacred Pool of Baptism in far Aphrasöe had conferred upon her a thousand years of life. She did not age. She had seen to it that her children and her friends and loved ones had also bathed. Like her husband, she had for the moment pushed aside the unanswerable questions this longevity aroused. If the time ever came for drastic measures, she, at least, would be ready.

Crossing to the chest with the rose-arbor legs, she opened the front doors.

She took out a silver-mounted balass wood box, the wood hard and black and shining. She opened the box. From it she took a thick, black, snakelike whip. This she put on the bed, quickly.

From its velvet bed she lifted her Claw.

Shining, razor-sharp steel, clawed with talons, the thing fitted up her left arm with steel splines. She turned it over. It shone with oil. With it she had been trained to rip a person’s face off.

She put it back, quickly, replaced the whip, shut the lid, and pushed the box back into the chest.

Despite what the mistress might say, Delia did not intend — just yet and so soon — to wear the Claw and carry the Whip.

“Not,” she said, half to herself, “not yet, by Vox!”

She shook her brown hair free about her naked shoulders. Then she picked up two fluffy yellow towels and walked along the corridor to the bathrooms. She left the door of Velda’s room open.

Steam engulfed her in the suite of bathrooms. Naked women walked about, took the steam, talked, swam in the pool. Delia was quick. At this time she wished merely to wash off everything she could of her stay in Mellinsmot.

She was not sure; but it seemed more than likely that Tandu had also written a note, sent by the icemen. He had expressed no surprise at her sudden determination on departure.

“Yes, my lady. We can do all that is necessary here until the sisters arrive.”

“May Djan go with you, my lady,” Dalki had said, looking up as the flier lifted.

They had called the remberees, cheerfully. Yes, Delia reflected, toweling herself briskly and bringing up the circulation, yes, it was almost certain. Her two Djangs must have said that the empress needed to be hoicked out of the plague spot at once. This was the only way she could be commanded to leave Mellinsmot.

But, all the same, she still would bet that Dayra was the cause...

Many of the women splashing about and gossiping and taking the steam were known to her. Many more were not. You could not expect to know every single girl personally who went through Lancival. And, of course, a goodly number of highly respected sisters of the SoR never went through Lancival at all.

She exchanged a few words with women if they talked first, giving not the Lahal form of greeting of the outside world, but the SheonFaril — the Sheonli in its usual abbreviated form. Two women near her under the hot air funnels which teased the hair into a glowing sweetness were wrapped up in each other’s news.

“Taken her off, my dear, without consent.”

“Did you have to castrate him?”

“No. I’d have liked to, but it was thought not necessary. The poor girl — well, she was only a Sister of Samphron, but they’re not too bad.”

“And her parents?”

“Everyone suffers after the Time of Troubles, although the new emperor has worked wonders. Oh, yes, they were only too happy to make a gift to the SoR. I think the mistress has dedicated that sum to some new curtains for the refectory.”

“We need some of the targets to be restuffed. The girls seem to knock them to pieces wonderfully quickly these days.”

“I know! It is these new bows. They are so much more powerful and accurate than our old ones.”

Delia smiled and let the warm air flow over her head, turning her shoulders to feel the grateful heat spreading down. Soon she was dry and her hair, carefully prepared by one of the superior novices, gleamed with its auburn tints through the Vallian brown. Naturally, she wore no jewels.

Walking back to Velda’s room she saw Yzobel waiting inside. Yzobel wore a rose-colored gown with a silver belt and dagger. She looked splendid.

“The mistress is waiting?”

“Yes, Delia. She says that she thinks you have had enough time to cleanse a regiment of Jikai Vuvushis.”

“If ever you become the mistress, Yzobel — and you might, you might — I trust you will be as intolerant. It tones up the muscles.”

Yzobel laughed.

Delia put on her underthings which were not of sensil, not even of silk, but of a plain smooth cotton. They happened to be scarlet. Had she been intending to wear her pale lemon-colored dress — in the color called laypom of which she was fond — she would have worn appropriately colored undergarments. As it was, when she put on the rose-colored gown, fastening it with bone buttons, what she was wearing underneath would remain a mystery.

Her sandals were flat of sole and heel, fastened by a mere three latchings of simple leather. Her belt, like Yzobel’s, was fashioned from silver links. Her dagger was the long thin dagger of Vallia. She took no other weapons of steel.

From a drawer in the chest she took out her two brooches.

One was the regular circlet of roses of the SoR.

The other was small and neat, a jeweled representation of a hubless nine-spoked wheel. Delia owned more than one of these brooches. She pinned it to the rose dress firmly.

She saw Yzobel’s little frown, a dint of her lip as her teeth caught.

“I know, Yzobel. But the mistress cannot deny my womanhood.”

“She would be the last to do that!”

Delia nodded her head, agreeing. “Do you really need new curtains in the refectory? I heard Keshni and Lovosa talking.”

“So you heard of Lovosa’s latest? She was most wroth they did not let her unman him. He deserved it.”

“Probably. I was not there.”

Again Yzobel’s lip dented under her teeth. “Yes, and we do need new curtains. A thousand orphans were discovered wandering in the Lower Mai Hills—”

“Wandering?”

“Yes. They fondly imagined they were a war-band ready to fight the invaders. Some of them were barely seven years old.”

“So they proved expensive.”

“That is one reason we are here. As for the curtains, we do need them. I, for one, do not care if the old ones fall to pieces.”

“Nor I.”

Going along the corridors and down the stairs, Delia was well aware that by saying that was one reason they were here, Yzobel did not mean that Delia had been summoned here by the mistress to contribute gold. Yzobel meant that succoring orphans was one part of the reason for the existence of the SoR.

One part, an old and original, of a surety, but in these days a part that had to share resources.

She was the empress. Well, for what that was worth when set beside the work these women did to the glory of Opaz and Vallia, she had already dedicated that part of her life. The mistress would be the first to explain that a sorority that did not exert every sinew to gather in revenue from everyone, high and low, rich and poor alike, would wither. The Empress of Vallia, in great fashion, could bestow a chest of gold. Had done so. But if every sister did not make her contribution, then the feeling of responsibility died. Unpalatable facts to some, these were, and Delia knew that. As for her own financial affairs, she had never considered herself to be a rich woman. Training with the SoR had engendered in her an understanding of the satisfactions of simplicity. That was just as well, considering the troubled times through which the country had gone and was still, by Vox, going through right now. Every copper ob they could scrape up had to go to the Treasury to pay for the upkeep of the country, pay the army, buy saddle animals, both of the ground and the air, pay for education, pay for a thousand clamorous demands of empire.

She put a hand to the plain white leather pouch on the silver belt. Among the items there — a comb, a kerchief, a few pins, odds and ends — could be found not a single bottle of scent.

Scent cost money. Perfume cost more. The SoR relied on gifts together with some income from their holdings in Companies of Friends to keep them going. The lands around Lancival within its mellow valley supported them in the way of most of the food they required. They did not squander their money on resources.

All the same, perfume was a vital part of a woman’s style; the SoR were not foolish enough to prohibit its use.

Natilma na Stafoing passed Delia in the shining hall leading to the lavender court. Natilma smiled. A remarkable woman, robust and yet elegant, with long hair done into coils, she wore hunting leathers and there was blood on her gloves.