Delia of Vallia (8 page)

“Sheonli, Delia! How nice!”

Delia smiled and spoke for a few moments. Natilma was one of the more senior sisters, and was well spoken of in the line of accession to the mistress. As they talked with the radiance of Zim and Genodras, all a lake of rubies and emeralds, flooding about them, Yzobel fidgeted. Natilma observed, and smiled again, and went on talking.

Lansi ti High Ochrun came by, and stopped to talk. She, too, with her copper hair and heavy mouth, was high in the councils of the SoR, another prospective mistress.

Yzobel shuffled her sandaled feet.

Taking pity, Delia laughed, and said: “I must really go. The mistress is waiting.”

So, lightly, Delia walked out into the lavender courtyard into the radiance of the suns.

“If I were mistress,” said Yzobel ominously, “I wonder what I would do about those two.”

“Well, you are too young. And when you reach your hundred, they will probably not be here.”

Then Delia checked herself. It was extraordinarily difficult to reconcile herself to this unexpected longevity. She was not at all sure that she wanted it. When Yzobel reached her hundred she would enter the ranks of those sisters who might look, one day, to become mistress. She would look very little different from the way she looked now. Only by the tiniest marks could one Kregan judge the age of another.

And Delia would look the young girl she truly was until she was a thousand. Was that nice? Well, time would tell.

At least four of the women who happened to be passing and stopped for a moment to chat as Delia made her way to the mistress’s tower did not, she judged, happen to be passing by chance.

Yzobel clicked her dagger.

“Brazen,” she said, and her nostrils pinched in.

Yzobel could get away with outrageous behavior, and Delia knew it. In the normal way of the Discipline, no sister could speak thus of another without reprimand. But, there was something planned in the way the ranking sisters just happened to be walking meekly along as Delia went toward the mistress.

Nothing overt was said. Just making their marks, as it were. Delia fancied there would be more making of marks yet, before they ranked their Deldars and got down to the politics of the affair.

The mistress of the Sisters of the Rose could have her apartments in no other tower than the Tower of the Rose.

Thither Delia went.

The grey stone walls, ivy clad, appeared to her to shed a cooling benediction from the heat of the suns. The archway closed above her head. The rugs upon the floor were not all of Walfarg weave; there were many lesser carpets to cushion the feet. Up the blackwood stairs, a single sharp ring upon the bell, and the door opening and old Rosala smiling and beaming and stepping back to usher in the sister come to see the mistress.

“You are well, Rosala?”

“A touch of gyp in my left elbow, my dear. But I’m as chirpy as a cricket and shall be two hundred and ten next birthday.”

They went along the carpeted corridor whose walls were adorned with the trophies of various past deeds. The mistress’s room at the end looked just the same to Delia. Then she frowned. In one corner a curtain was half-drawn across a bed. It was a proper bed, as anyone could see with half an eye, not a day-lounger.

That bed was a new touch, an addition to the usual.

That did not, of course, mean it was abnormal.

Most of the drapes were of that pale sheer rose color that verged on the opalescence of a Zimful sky at evening, when Genodras had sunk below the horizon. When Zim sank first in the long cycles of alternations, then the evening sky held overtones of quite different natures. Against the walls and drapes the furniture stood as ever, the familiar pieces, polished, cared for, each one in its place and each one fulfilling its own duty. The desk, of balass wood, still angled across the curve of the southwestern tower window.

The mistress did not rise to greet Sister Delia.

She used one pale hand to gesture to the seat set four square before the desk. Delia sat.

Winsome to suggest this brought back vivid memories of herself as a young girl. Trite to suggest that, and trite to ignore the feeling.

The scent of flowers banked in their troughs along the wall brought back the memories! The flick-flick plant on a windowsill, set there to catch flies, would as ever have to be hand fed. A new tang hung in the air. Delia, gently, tested its meaning. Medicaments. Well, then, and perhaps now she understood a little more of the chance meetings and the markings of marks that were no chance.

“Faril Sheon, Delia,” said the mistress in all formality. Her voice breathed more memories; but the tone was weaker, the full bell-note fallen away. Delia sat straight, heels together, hands in her lap, head up. She looked at the mistress.

Here in the heart of the heart of the Sisters of the Rose there was no need for the small secret sign.

“SheonFaril, mistress,” said Delia.

“I am more than glad to see you. You have worried me.”

The mistress had once been able to lift a full-bodied man above her head and throw him up a flight of stairs. Now she could do that, perhaps, to a fair-sized dog. Her face, unlined, bore only the marks of wisdom and experience and pain engraved upon it in the planes and the shadows. Her eyes were as bright and brown as cobnuts as ever they had been.

Like Delia, she wore the rose-colored gown. Her belt from which swung the long Vallian dagger was of plain rope, untwisted, raw. Her hair, brown as a thrush’s wing, held her face in a composition at once peaceful, dominating, gentle and harsh, all in that puzzle of vaol-paol that is a woman’s face. In that eternal vaol-paol, the Great Circle of Universal Existence, was to be found more than mere philosophy.

“I grieve to have caused you concern.” Delia’s gaze lingered on the half-curtained bed in its alcove corner. “I apologize for my daughter Dayra. I assume that is why I am here.”

At the mistress’s expression, Delia added, annoyed at the tinge of alarm in her voice: “It is not little Velia?”

“No. Velia is a rose beyond price. Nor — this time — is it your Princess Dayra, who calls herself Ros the Claw.”

Delia felt the breath in her. If this was bad news, she must find the strength to bear it. She said nothing. She waited as the Disciplines taught.

“You have seen my bed. I use it, in here, rather than waste my meager strength retiring to my chamber in the evening and dragging myself here in the morning.”

“Mistress—”

“Wait, my daughter, wait. Once I was as you now are. But that was long ago. It is time I sought peace with Opaz. Time I handed over to stronger—”

“Mistress!”

“Do not grieve, Delia, who was Delia Valhan, and is now Delia Prescot, Empress of Vallia.”

“You know that means—”

“It means a very great deal. But I am going, no one and nothing can halt me, and you, Delia, are my chosen successor. You are to be the mistress of the Sisters of the Rose.”

Chapter six

“Take this gift away from me.”

“No.”

“You have been selected by me, Delia, to be the mistress. Your election will follow.”

“No.” There was no hesitation, no doubt, in her. This was not for her. “No, mistress. I am aware of what this means. You know I am aware. But I cannot.”

The mistress placed a plain square of yellow linen to her mouth. Her coughs were tiny scrabblings, as of nestlings.

“How can you refuse?”

“I do not know how. I know only that I must.”

One narrow hand, doubled over, ridged and veined blue, crept onto the desk top. That hand trembled.

“Delia—”

“I cannot — I feel pain, and shame, and dishonor — all foolish feelings, I know. But take this gift away from me.”

The mistress said: “Once I had a husband. He was all the world to me. But he died. Once I had children. One is still alive — somewhere. All you will need of husband and children you will find here, in Lancival.”

“That I can believe, yet cannot—”

“Once I was called Elomi the Shining. I was born in Valka. Did you know that?”

“I knew.”

“Valka is so beautiful it can break the heart. Yet Lancival is—”

“I cannot be the mistress, mistress. Do not ask it of me.”

“And if I—?”

“You would not command. It is not in—”

“But if I did?”

“You will not.”

The mistress sat back in the wide-armed overstuffed chair. She appeared to shrink. “No,” she said in that forlorn whisper. “No. I would not.”

For a moment, silence enfolded the two. The mistress looked across at a side table where stood a crystal parclear set, the glasses sparkling. Instantly, Delia rose, crossed to the table and poured a glass of parclear, the sherbet drink fizzing in crystal abandon. The mistress sipped, and then drank. Her neck looked fragile as she swallowed.

Delia made no move to pour parclear for herself until the mistress nodded.

A moment later, the fizz stinging her mouth, Delia was ready to battle on against an unwanted fate.

Like any general swinging his troops across a battlefield to search out a fresh opening for an advance, the mistress took up a fresh subject.

“Your husband is well?”

“When I last saw him. We had just won a great battle—”

“A disgusting business of Incendiary Vosks. We heard. The SoR must do all we can against these Shanks that raid us and seek to enslave us.”

“That is one of the great aims in our lives that prevents me from accepting.”

“Are there not secret societies of men? They may not lay claim to our prestige. But they exist.”

“That is true. My husband has never belonged to any of them in Vallia—”

“I hear differently, Delia!”

Delia smiled. This tack would not take the mistress far along the road to converting her.

“You mean the Kroveres of Iztar? Men said, when the KRVI was formed, that my husband was too proud to join one of their already existing secret orders, but must create his own. That, I need hardly say, was not true.”

“No. I imagine not. And Zena Iztar would not be fooled by mere men.”

“Assuredly not!”

“I have grave news concerning new Orders. There is a new Order that troubles me.”

“I would have thought we women had enough already.”

“In view of the new one, I agree. In some of the continents of Kregen women are not regarded in the same way they are regarded here in Vallia. In some places women have to find themselves, understand their rightful place, think of themselves as people, grow in understanding. In some places they are not treated as equals.”

“Yes.”

“You chose to take your husband’s name when you married. You need not have done.”

“I wished it. My husband is as much a Valhan as am I.”

“That is true. In some places women have only a given name until they marry. They are locked into a way of thinking about themselves that — in our eyes — demeans them, and yet which they, themselves, fail to grasp. When women in those places revolt, the consequences can be ugly. Of course, in the end, it will come all right. But the learning process is painful.”

Delia knew the mistress was saying this as a part of her tactical advance. She listened dutifully.

“They overreact, hate everything that is male, and carry on in ways that, while ugly, are perfectly understandable. That is the nature of revolution.”

Delia found herself saying, “We have had experiences of revolutions.”

“Two, at least, involved women. There was Queen Fahia of Hyrklana. And the Empress Thyllis of Hamal. The SoR played some part there.”

“I know and joy in it.”

“I wish first to speak to you of your friend, Jilian Sweet-Tooth.”

Delia waited.

“She is a sister. She is a consummate artist with the Whip and the Claw. She is a good friend to you and your husband and those of your children she has met. Yet she sorely worries me.”

‘Tell me, mistress.”

“I will! Do not deceive yourself on that! This new order of which I spoke. Jilian is being drawn to it. Most of the sisters composing this Order come from the SoR. There are a few from the Sisters of Samphron, the Sisters of the Sword, one or two others. Even the Little Sisters of Opaz have been sucked in. This could prove a most grave crisis.”

“If they adhere to our principles—”

“That is a matter of conjecture. They are taking a new and hard line. They call themselves the Sisters of the Whip. They place the symbol of the Whip above all others.”

Thinking of that thick black lash of vileness safely locked in its box, Delia felt the ominous forebodings.

“You know, mistress, I prefer the rapier and main gauche, the bow, the terchick — and this new sword my husband and his armorers have developed, the drexer.”

“Yet your friend Jilian is very apt with the Whip.”

“Very — apt”

“We shall not cease from teaching the disciplines of the Claw and the Whip here, at Lancival. But the Sisters of the Whip...” The mistress stopped speaking and put her narrow doubled-up hand to her side. Her face remained unmoved. Delia stood up at once. She could see the mistress was in great pain. Without hesitating, Delia crossed to the desk and rang the silver bell.

Rosala hurried in, cackling and clucking.

Delia called as she might call an order to her soldiers in a bloody affray.

“Yzobel!”

When Yzobel ran in, between them they carried the mistress to the bed and made her comfortable.

“Send for all the needlewomen!”

“Yes, majestrix.”

From her tone of voice, Delia might have expected the swod’s cracked-out answer of: “Quidang!”

After that it was a matter of arranging affairs, of seeing to protocol, of making sure the mistress was given every attention and left in peace.

She would recover, for her time was not yet. Delia did not believe this was a cunning scheme to attract sympathy and sway her to the mistress’s wishes. These women were above petty schemes of that contemptible nature.

Mind you, some of the schemes of the ladies who wished to become mistress would frizzle the hair. Delia firmly intended to have her say in all that. But that time, also, was not yet. There was so much to do in Vallia and in all of Paz that at times she felt as though she was shut up in a box of feathers.