Our Lady of the Islands (27 page)

“I … Thank you, my lady. Rest assured I will respect such confidences.” Freda gazed around the room again. “So, what do you and Cleone do here in this lovely room all day?”

“Well, the girl does have a great many hobbies, which she seems determined to involve me in at every moment, for fear I might grow bored and run crying to my cousin. But I’d be just as happy to sit and read a book from time to time, or gaze out at the garden, or even nap,” she said, wishing she had known enough to say so when Cleone had first arrived. “You need not entertain me round the clock, whatever Quatama may have led you to believe.”

“I see.” Freda considered her strangely. “I beg my lady’s pardon if this seems too forward …”

“Oh, ask anything you like,” Sian assured her.

“Then, if my lady will forgive the question, do I detect some small hint of …
dissatisfaction
with your cousin’s hospitality?”

Sian leaned back slightly in surprise. What an odd question. Especially from a maid. Freda
was
brand new, of course. And it was refreshing to be asked. Sian had seen this woman’s performance with Escotte at breakfast. She would certainly know better than to carry anything they said back to her cousin. … Unless … Could this whole sudden illness of Cleone’s just be another of his ruses? Was Freda actually some agent of his, sent in after last night’s altercation to find out what Sian really thought about him and the rest of this?

“Please forgive me,” Freda said when Sian’s hesitation stretched. She ducked her head in embarrassment, if not alarm even. “That was a dreadful thing to ask. I just …”

“No!” Sian cut in, still fearing some trap, but not wanting to chase off what might be the first honest person she had been allowed to speak with here. “There is no need to apologize. It’s just that … Cleone is not … so frank, and I’ve grown so used to being circumspect since coming here. But, please, feel free to speak your mind — with me at least. It would be so nice to have the company of anyone who does. I will keep your confidences, if you promise to keep mine.”

Freda nodded, as if still not completely sure of her position either.

They gazed at one another for a moment. Then, seeming to have reached her decision, Freda reached for Sian’s hand and said, “You seem afraid of him. Your cousin.”

“I am extremely grateful for his protection,” Sian said at once, still terrified of what might happen should she turn out to be wrong in trusting Freda. “As he told you, I have stumbled, quite unwittingly, into a great deal of trouble that I still hardly understand. In the past few weeks, I have gone from living a quiet, normal life to being … subjected to terrible attentions, from all sorts of people who should have no cause to know that I exist. All that stopped as soon as Escotte took me in.”

“And yet …?” Freda prompted her.

Sian gave her a helpless shrug. “You have already guessed, I think; to judge by your questions. When Quatama was explaining your new duties here, he must have explained about how much privacy you were to allow me?”

Freda nodded, gravely. “I thought he must be exaggerating, until we walked in here. But yes. He said that I was not to allow you out of my sight.”

“For my protection. Is that what you were told?”

“Yes.” She looked at Sian uncertainly.

“Do you believe it?” Sian asked.

“Do you?” Freda replied.

Sian could not find quite the courage to say ‘no’ aloud. She pulled loose of Freda’s hand, and went to stand beside the windows, gazing down at all the flowers growing silently in Escotte’s walled-in garden. “The Census Taker and I are family,” she said at last. “I have no idea what is really happening here, but … I cannot believe he means me harm.” She turned back to find Freda looking at her with the kind of intensity she had seen Reikos direct at tangled knots, or shipboard instruments in need of some repair.

Freda turned and went to stick her head out of the door, glancing briefly up and down the hallway. When she pulled the door closed again and turned back to Sian, her eyes shone with some new resolve.

“Sian Kattë,” she said, coming to stand before her by the windows. “I am going to put my life and the lives of those I love into your hands. If I am wrong … But I don’t believe I am, and there is very little time. My name is not Freda Machen.”

“What?” Sian took a step away, confused and frightened. “Who —”

“My name is Arian des Chances. Though I can hardly expect you to believe it, I am the Factora-Consort.”

Sian’s mouth fell open. Then, suddenly, she understood, and breathed again. “So it is finally happening!” She suppressed an urge to laugh for sheer relief. “But, if this is how we’re doing it, why did you and Escotte put on that little play at breakfast? Was that just to fool the butlers?”

Now Freda, or the Factora-Consort, rather, took a step back, looking puzzled. “I’m sorry. I don’t … How we’re doing what? What’s finally happening?”

Sian’s uncertainty returned. Could this haggard woman with dyed hair really be the Factora-Consort, she now thought to wonder, or had she just fallen into some even more elaborate trap than she had feared? “Haven’t you come to take me to your son?”

“Well … yes,” the other woman said in obvious astonishment. “How can you know that?”

If this was a trap, Sian supposed, then she was doomed already. “Escotte explained your situation to me on the day I first arrived,” she told the woman. “Your trouble with the Mishrah-Khote. The need to set things up so that I could heal your son without their ever knowing I had been involved. He’s been hiding me here until he could arrange all this with you. Is that not why you’ve come?”

The other woman brought a hand up to her cheek, then shook her head and closed her eyes. “Oh my poor, dear woman. How you have been tossed about.” She reopened her eyes and went to sit down on the edge of Sian’s feather bed. “There have been no negotiations or plans of any kind arranged between your cousin and ourselves. I am sorry to be the bearer of yet more bad news, my dear, but Escotte has no idea I am in this house. Civil war might break out if he did, or so I’m told. He has been hiding you, yes. But
from
us, Domina Kattë. Not
for
us. The Factor and I have reason to believe he is complicit in a plot to overthrow my husband’s government, and seize the Factorate for some third party.”

Sian stared at her in disbelief, shaking her head, and groping toward a chair to sit on before her legs gave way. “That … is not possible.” She collapsed onto a gilded stool beside the windows. “They are cousins. What you’re saying … Escotte would never … It makes no sense.” She looked more sharply at Freda, Arian, whoever she might really be. “How do I know you’re not the one who’s lying? You’re asking me to believe they sent the
Factora-Consort
herself on some … secret mission to infiltrate my cousin’s house? That the Census Taker just talked for who knows how long downstairs with his own cousin’s wife, and didn’t recognize her? The third most powerful public figure in Alizar?” Sian snorted at the idea’s sheer lunacy. “Who are you? Really. That’s what I will want know as soon as I have called my cousin’s guards.” She stood up, but so did the other woman, stepping out to block her path.

“Have you ever even seen the Factora-Consort?” the woman asked.

“Only from a distance,” Sian said through gritted teeth, “but she looked nothing like you.”

“I’m sure she didn’t,” said the woman. “Nor have I looked anything like her for many years now. You cannot imagine how many hours it takes each morning, not to mention what a fortune in cosmetics, to make me look like the Factora-Consort. I doubt that anyone besides my maids has seen my real face in ten or fifteen years. Possibly not even Viktor.”

Sian stared at her, trying to sort through what she’d just heard.

“Viktor is my husband. The Factor.”

“I know what the Factor’s name is,” Sian growled. “He’s my cousin too, though I doubt he knows it, much less cares. What are you trying to say to me? Speak plainly, or I’ll just scream for help if you won’t let me by.”

“Oh,
for all the sand in Alizar!
” the woman spat in sheer frustration. “I’ve dyed my hair and gone into the light without the mask my ladies paint on me each morning. That is all it takes for the Factora-Consort to go almost anywhere unrecognized by those who aren’t looking for her.
She
is a political invention.
I
am exactly who I’ve claimed to be: a mother, fighting for her son, who is days, perhaps just hours, from dying. It seems that there are people who would like him dead, and if Escotte has any notion that we’ve discovered he is one of them, it may drive this conspiracy he’s working with to who knows what disastrous acts of violence. So I and the tiny handful of others we can still trust have managed to sneak me in here to beg you, please, to help us save my son.” Sian saw tears gathering in her reddening eyes. “And to save my husband — and the nation he is trying so hard to care for. Viktor is your cousin too, Sian Kattë, and he is well aware of you, and of how very much you matter. To everyone in Alizar, it seems. Not just to us.” She was struggling very hard by now to rescue her composure. “Please, tell me how I can convince you.”

Sian stared at her, no longer knowing what to think. The desperation in this woman’s face and voice seemed very real. This was how Sian supposed she’d look and sound, if Maleen’s or Rubya’s lives were threatened.

“I chose to tell you the truth because I saw that you too fear your cousin,” the woman said, more calmly now. “Was I mistaken? Do your own instincts really tell you that the things I have accused him of cannot be true?”

Sian did fear Escotte. She had for some time now. That much was true.

“Don’t you wonder where your two friends really are?” Arian asked. “They are not on any ‘secret mission’ for Escotte. They’re in his dungeon, right here, below the Census Hall.”

“How do you know … about any of that?” Sian asked, already certain it was true. She had never believed they would just have left her here without so much as a note in their own hands to explain and say goodbye. She’d just been too afraid to face it. More and more afraid with every passing day here. Her cousin
was
a monster. And she’d known it, all along.

“I know this because one of
our
conspirators is here in Escotte’s house,” said Arian. “It was Sergeant Ennias who came to tell us what Escotte was doing.”

“The same officer who arrested us?”

“The very one,” the other woman said. “Now I’ve handed all our lives to you.” She stood aside, and waved Sian toward the door. “If you still mean to call for help, I doubt very much that I could stop you anyway. I’m at least as old as you are, dear, and in far worse condition, if the healthy glow you wear is any indication.”

“So you just came here without face paint,” said Sian, still reeling in confusion. “That was … brave.”

The Factora-Consort responded with a nearly silent humph of swallowed laughter, but remained otherwise silent, still waiting to learn what her fate would be, it seemed.

“What will he do with them?” Sian asked her.

“With who? Your friends?”

Sian nodded, her heart breaking to think of Reikos and Pino languishing down there in the dark, for all this time, while she’d been up here stuffing herself with pastry. “Will he kill them, do you think?”

“I do not know,” the Factora-Consort said. “But if I and my husband are defeated here, there will be nothing we can do to help them, or you.”

Sian nodded, believing at last that her new maid really was who she claimed to be. She dropped immediately into the best curtsy she could manage.

“Whatever are you doing?” the Factora-Consort asked.

“I have just spent quite a while threatening the Factora-Consort of Alizar,” Sian said meekly. “It seems wise to show you more respect, now that I am convinced you’re —”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” said the other woman, coming to pull her up. “And I’d prefer that you continue to call me Freda, please. We can’t risk slipping up in front of others. While I am here, it’s crucial that I be nothing but your maid, in every respect. Which means no deference of any kind. Is that clear? None at all.”

“As you wish, my lady.”

The Factora-Consort glared at her. “Did you hear anything I just said,
my lady
?”

“My apologies … Freda,” Sian said, still trying to come to grips with it all. “So, what is to happen now? Is your son nearby somewhere, or has some plan been arranged to sneak me out of here with you?”

“The latter. But first we must convince your cousin that you absolutely need to have a new dress sewn. Your maid has led me to believe that this request might not be too hard to justify?”

“My maid?” Sian asked, confused. “You mean, Cleone? You’ve talked with her?”

“Of course, my dear. Who do you suppose convinced her to fall so conveniently ill this morning? We had a long chat just last night. She was extremely helpful and informative.”

“Are your lives always filled with such intrigue?” Sian asked, aborting the
My Lady Consort
just in time.

“Not quite this much,” the Factora-Consort sighed. “Mostly it’s just piles of correspondence and dull paperwork.”

“My life as well!” exclaimed Sian. “Who would have thought it?”

“So, can you convince him that you need a seamstress — rather quickly?”

“That I need a
seamstress
?” Sian was no longer able to stop her laughter. “I will let you be the judge of that, my — Freda.” She walked over to the hidden closet’s panel-door, and gave its latch a shove. “Behold the wardrobe my dear cousin has supplied for me.”

As the door swung open, the Factora-Consort gasped, both hands flying to her mouth in undisguised dismay. “Oh, my dear. How simply … ghastly!” Her eyes grew even wider. “I remember that one!” She turned to Sian. “Víolethe! She wore it to a Factorate diplomatic ball. Two years after I was wed to Viktor, I believe!”

“These are all Víolethe’s,” Sian sighed. “Left behind. Some time ago, it would seem. I can’t imagine why. I do believe that I could use a seamstress, yes. If my cousin can be persuaded to part with what it costs to pay her, knowing, as he does, that there’s no one but you to see me in it here. May I ask why I need this dress right now?”