Wedding (4 page)

Eleonora led us into the great hall, and
introduced me to her husband, known as Josh Kaminsky. Dominic had
told me some of his story, just enough to make me nervous about
meeting him. He was ’Graven, of noble lineage on both sides; his
real name was Georgi Sakhalin-Chang, and he was entitled to the
honorific Sir. But he had been conceived in a seminary, born to
unmarried lovers from feuding families. All might have ended
happily except that, as occasionally happens, his third eyelids had
not been developed at birth. The families had rejected what they
saw as an ungifted, illegitimate child, and abandoned him to the
Terran social services rather than waste limited resources on an
embarrassment.

Josh’s life had been the reverse of mine; he
was the genuine displaced natural-born child that I was not. Once
Josh had returned to his own world, his ’Graven heritage had
emerged easily and instinctually. He had adjusted quickly to the
demands of seminary life and work in the
crypta
cells, and
was now a respected and accomplished seer. But with the
aristocrat’s sense of irreverence he clung to his outcast Terran
background, preferring the name he had known as a child.

Josh and Eleonora had married and continued
to work together, reestablishing the traditional system of
education and reviving the network of seminaries throughout the
’Graven Realms. They were here at Aranyi now only because of the
Eris rebellion, Josh to help Dominic with mustering the troops,
Eleonora to accompany the expedition as sibyl and nucleus of the
telepathic cell that would counteract the Eris weapon.

Knowing Josh’s past, I expected to find a
difficult personality, a contrarian who might sneer at my pitiful
attempt to pass for an Eclipsian. He greeted me neutrally, however,
with no hidden judgments or censure that I could detect. Perhaps to
offset the dislocations of his early life, he had adopted a
conventional and amiable public manner, and I felt more comfortable
with him than with Dominic’s sister.

That first night was mostly a blur for me.
Besides the usual hardship of traveling by horseback, there was the
problem of altitude to contend with. Eleonora herself showed me to
my room, guiding me through the maze of corridors and steps and
making light conversation. I was too weary to respond, and when we
reached the door Eleonora, recognizing my state, suggested that I
have supper brought in on a tray instead of coming back downstairs,
an offer I accepted with thanks. The food was already waiting for
me when I had finished in the bathroom.

After the family meal, Eleonora returned to
my room, standing silently in the doorway for a minute. She
appeared to reach a decision, coming forward and shutting the door.
“I gather your training at La Sapienza did not go as well as you
had hoped,” she began, “and that you have no desire to return. So
long as Dominic wants you to stay at Aranyi you will be welcome.
But I need to know one thing.” She studied me, much as Edwige used
to, although without her warmth. I felt that she saw my bruises,
despite the fact that they were almost completely healed and
covered by my clothing, and that she was boring into my mind in a
way that even Dominic did not dare. “Do you really think you have
changed him?”

I stared at her, my mind a blank, afraid of
trying to match her in furtive communion, outclassed by her
telepathic ability and years as a sibyl. If she guessed what had
happened in the shelter then she probably knew what the explanation
was, and that I believed it was not Dominic’s fault. Otherwise I
had no idea what she was talking about. After the journey and
supper, and with the warmth of the fire in my room, I was so groggy
I couldn’t stand up, and sank down on the edge of the large bed.
There was no way I was going to discuss any of this now. Eleonora
was waiting for an answer, and all I could manage was, “I’m sorry,
I don’t understand.”

Eleonora sat beside me on the bed. I think
she had wanted to haul me to my feet again but had restrained
herself. “I’ll spell it out, then,” she said, an icy edge to her
voice. “Dominic has fathered a child before, to fulfill his
obligations to Aranyi and to ’Graven. If he wishes to do his duty
again, I applaud him. But if you think that means he is no longer
vir
, you will be disappointed. Worse, as a Terran, you could
cause Dominic a great deal of unpleasantness if he should decide to
have the child legitimized. No half-Terran brat is worth all that
trouble. And Dominic has provided an heir for Aranyi.”

Well, now I understood her. She was waiting
for me to be conciliating, to tell her whether Dominic had made any
kind of commitment to me, and to promise I wouldn’t create
difficulties if I became pregnant. It would have been easy on one
level to say what she wanted to hear. Dominic had never spoken
directly of marriage or betrothal, and I had only a vague idea of
what I could claim from him if I had his child. There was little
danger of that. The birth control I used, that had so mystified
’Graven Assembly, was fail-safe, a subcutaneous hormone implant,
tailored to my body’s chemistry.

Simple as it might have been to comply, I
resisted Eleonora’s unspoken demand. I resented both her assumption
that I hadn’t thought about any of these things myself, and her
implication that I had latched onto a
vir
, and unmarried,
’Graven lord for my own advantage. “Dominic mentioned his
natural-born son, and that he has adopted Tariq Sureddin as his
heir,” I said. “He does talk to me sometimes. If there’s anything
else I ought to know, I’m sure he’ll tell me.” I yawned, not
bothering to cover with my hand. “Thank you for all your
hospitality. May we continue this conversation in the morning? I’m
afraid my Terran body isn’t used to the rigors of travel in the
mountains.”

Only Eleonora’s bright blue eyes, unshielded
in the dim light of the fire and wide with affront, betrayed her
feelings as she stood up abruptly and left the room, slamming the
door behind her.

As I lay waiting for sleep, I mulled over
what Dominic had told me and what I had already learned from my
coworkers at La Sapienza. Eleonora’s gift had been powerful at an
early age, and she had become a sibyl while still in her teens. She
had met Josh and married him soon after, and they had stayed on at
the seminary, working together while they waited for her to
conceive, much like Tomasz Liang and Alicia Molyneux.

It had been an act of great courage for
Eleonora, I imagined, remembering the women I had known at La
Sapienza and their conflicted thoughts, weighing the uncertain
pleasures of marriage against the prestige and autonomy of seminary
work. Thirty years ago it had been almost unheard of for a young
married woman to work as a sibyl.

Eleonora had thought of Josh as Terran when
she met him, although she had learned his real, ’Graven, identity
shortly afterwards. She must have had some of Dominic’s own
reservations, drawn to an alien, a Terran, the strong communion
overriding the doubts. I supposed that Eleonora was the same as
most of us. It was one thing for her to have married a Terran
husband thirty years ago, with thirty years of proof behind her
that he was as Eclipsian, and as nobly born, as she was. Her
beloved brother was another story. For him she wanted the best. A
Terran, and a woman, was not what she would have chosen for him if
she could.

Her words made me uneasy, no matter how I
tried to ignore them. Coming from a world of casual relationships,
I was not used to the forethought required to function in
Eclipsis’s structured society, especially here, at the top of the
hierarchy. To travel with Dominic, accompanied only by a few Aranyi
guards, and to stay at Aranyi Fortress with the at least outward
approval of his sister, was probably the equivalent of a formal
announcement of engagement. In my desperation to leave La Sapienza,
and in my newfound sexual awakening, I had not considered the
significance of my actions. Eleonora’s concerns were real, and if
she been tactless, she had years of anxiety for a troublesome
younger sibling as an excuse.

I passed a restless night in the unfamiliar
surroundings and woke early, tired and edgy, and with a sense of
being spied on. Apparently I had surprised some pranksters; a crowd
of young people, mostly girls, fled in both directions along the
corridor, squealing in terror, as soon as I opened the door and
headed for the bathroom. They dashed around corners and ducked into
empty rooms, peeping out again with lowered eyes to see if I was in
pursuit.

At least there was a lock on the bathroom
door. Inside, it was like a Terran luxury hotel, with soap and
shampoo, lotion and toothpaste all laid out in little jars and
pots. After a week in that wretched shelter, I couldn’t wait to
immerse myself in the enormous bathtub. It was disgraceful, I
thought as I lathered my filthy hair, how dependent I had become on
the help of my aide at La Sapienza. I had not had to wash my own
hair for six months.

When I emerged, clean and damp, wearing my
nightgown in place of a robe, only one of the loiterers remained in
the corridor. She curtsied deeply, straightening up with
difficulty, keeping her head bowed. “Can I help you, ’Gravina?
Someone should have been in to wait on you before, but we were
caught by surprise, not knowing Margrave Aranyi was bringing a
lady.” The voice was a girl’s, soft and tentative, the thoughts
diffident but also aggrieved.
’Gravina, the real thing,
she
was thinking.
Lady Eleonora said Terran, I swear she
did.

I began to get an inkling of what was going
on. “Is that why they ran? Because I’m Terran?” If the girl thought
of me as ’Graven she shouldn’t object to my addressing her unspoken
questions.

“No, my lady,” she said, confusion and fear
in her mind. “Of course not. It’s when they saw you were ’Gravina—a
lady—that they ran, afraid of giving offense.” She lifted her head
to meet my eyes. She wasn’t a girl at all, but a short, heavyset
woman about my age, with dark brown hair and eyes, and a smile that
had something sensual about it, despite her lingering nervousness.
“They meant no harm. It’s just that they’ve never seen a Terran.
None of us have. And when you came out, and they saw a proper lady
instead—”

After six months of living among my own kind,
I had stopped hiding my third eyelids and always kept them lowered
first thing in the morning. “Lady Eleonora wasn’t wrong,” I said,
hedging. This was going to be difficult. At least at La Sapienza
people had seen Terrans, knew they looked human. I offered an
explanation that might be acceptable. “I worked in the Terran
Sector, in Eclipsia City. Before I got the chance to go to La
Sapienza.”

That was a real conversation stopper. “Oh,”
the woman said. “I’m sorry.”
Poor little lady,
she thought.
Had it worse than any of old Lord Zoltan’s natural children.
Wonder who her father was, that he could leave her like
that?

“And I’m not ’Gravina,” I said. “You don’t
have to call me that, or curtsy. My name’s Amalie. Amalie Her—”

The woman laughed loudly and uninhibitedly,
as if I had told a suggestive story, opening her mouth wide to show
small white teeth, a pointed pink tongue and one blackened molar.
Won over by what she took to be a lack of pretention, she rewarded
me by behaving naturally. The transformation was complete, and
startling. “Lady Amalie, then,” she said, catching her breath.
“That’ll do fine.” Her voice was deeper and more confident now that
she had lost her initial fear, a woman’s voice to match her body.
“Nobody at Aranyi can afford to look down on someone just because
her mother didn’t wear her father’s brand,” she assured me with a
wink.

“Thank you,” I said, not knowing how else to
answer what had obviously been meant as kindness. “Thank you—Marg—”
I tried to be clever, to show off my gift that inspired such awe,
only to come up against a difficult Eclipsian name. “Maggie?”

“Ah,” she said with pleasure at being able to
place my origin. “You’re from the south. Magali. It’s a northern
name. Just ask for the housekeeper until your tongue gets the feel
of it.” The tip of her own tongue flicked the corner of her mouth
in her sensuous way. “Would you like me to help you settle in?”

I was embarrassed to admit that I did. “It’s
not really necessary. But could you point me in the direction of
the great hall?”

Magali had no patience with such coyness.
“No, Lady Amalie. You needn’t do without maid service just because
of other people’s mistakes.” She shooed me ahead of her into my
room, shook out my one clean change of clothes, helped me into it,
found my comb and, shaking her head over the shaggy hair, combed it
briskly into as much shape as anyone could give it.

“There,” she said when I was presentable.
“Please to come with me, Lady Amalie.” She curtsied again, not so
deeply this time. “And it’s not the hall you want, but the
breakfast room.”

As we walked along the corridor, some of the
people who had fled from my door waited in the corners and
doorways. They bowed or curtsied as I passed, their thoughts
guilty.
Forgive me, my lady,
every one of them was thinking,
certain I heard their apologies as clearly as if they spoke.
I
meant no offense.

I might as well be gracious. “None taken,” I
said over and over, watching them stand up, grinning and relieved
as if pardoned from execution, as soon as Magali and I had
passed.

We descended an expansive stone staircase,
made a sharp turn at the fortress’s entrance and came to a nook of
a room behind the stairs. “There you are, Lady Amalie,” Magali
said. “Still plenty of food left, and the kitchen isn’t far if you
need something.” She curtsied again, deeply, for the benefit of
anyone who might be watching, and hurried off to the kitchen, hips
swaying as she walked, her footsteps light and graceful.