The Ordinary (23 page)

“Since he died.”

“Yes.”

She studied the drawing again, and then herself in a mirror that had been wheeled in by two of the house staff, along with the parcels. “We have stories, where I come from. Fairy tales. Where people like me are given fantastical garments like these. Look at this little vest. Are these diamonds?”

“Yes, and pearls, of course.”

“This outfit must be worth a fortune.”

“That's the point,” Arvith said.

She sighed and got to work. He had sent for a tray of food, and she found herself starved when it arrived; fruit and pastries stuffed with various meats and greens, very flavorful. Several dishes of various kinds of pickle, which were all delicious, and some quite pungent. A flask of cool wine, light and sweet. She sipped the wine as Arvith filled a bath for her, behind a screen in the corner of the room. Water flowed into the tub from a sluice in the wall, cold and clear, from a cistern on the roof, he said. It would be cold, she thought, till he ran his hands along a line of carving in the stone. She had stuck her finger into the water and could feel it warming.

“Be careful not to touch the tub till the water's hot.”

“I don't know how to take a bath in this thing,” she said. “What do I do, lie down in it?”

“Haven't you ever lain in a tub of water before?”

“Why would I?”

He smiled. He was testing the water temperature, pouring in a fluid with a scent that reminded her of the smells in the gardens. “You take off your clothes and you soak in it. This is a cleansing additive, made from the hearts of flowers.”

She did as she was told, feeling no more modest than he appeared to be. The tub was comfortable to lie in and the hot water soothed her skin and muscles, drawing her into itself like a warm bed. The scent of the oils infiltrated her head, opening her sinuses. Arvith handed her the glass of wine and she sat up against the back of the tub to sip it. “All right,” she said, “I suppose I must admit this has certain satisfactions.”

“Your customs are very different, I suppose?”

“Is a manner of bathing a custom?”

“Why wouldn't it be?”

She splashed her hands a bit. She liked that Arvith could stand and talk to her completely without discomfort; so many men were prudes and would have felt it necessary to fake some sort of lust. “Where I come from, using this much fresh water to bathe would be considered a hopeless extravagance, the sort of thing for Orminy lords in operas. The same sort of luxury as burning wood for heat.”

“But water and wood are abundant.”

“For you and your people, maybe. But if you can wrap your head around it, try dividing your wood and water—and land and everything else—by thirty billion or so.” They were speaking Erejhen; she had to pause to get the numbers right, since numbers must be precisely sung. “Did I do that right?”

“The number? Yes. Quite well.”

“Numbers in your language make me nervous.”

“I must say I felt the same in studying your own system for speaking numbers; your mathematics must be rather odd, being so imprecise.”

“So it's true you sing calculations, too?”

“We follow a system the Tervan use, though ours has grown away from theirs a bit. Himself studies the mathematics with a Tervan scholar of much repute, one of the women with whom you'll be dining this evening. She was the chief engineer of the gate, in fact. Or will be, rather.”

“How do I know when I'm clean?”

“You decide you are, then you stand up, and scrape away the residual oil from your skin with this.” He offered her an implement that looked something like a blunt-edged knife with a curved handle. “I'll be happy to do it for you, if you like. Or, if you wish to use the southern custom, you wipe away the bath oil with a cloth. And afterward we rinse you and dry you.”

“I think the cloth suits me better, I might take off skin with that thing.”

“Your choice,” he said, and shuffled out of sight. “Are you ready, then?”

“How long till dinner?”

“You have plenty of time, though you need to practice moving in the coat.”

“Then I suppose I'm ready.”

When she was dry and the tub drained, he layered her shoulders and neck with three kinds of scented oil, a drop of each on her shoulders and neck, which she spread smoothly into her skin. The scents were wonderful, a kind of spice, a hint of flower, and something much deeper, earthier. “Blossom, tree, and hearth,” he called the oils. “Just enough to rise through the layers of your clothing.”

“Another custom?”

“Yes, at least for where you're supposed to come from.”

“Tell me about that place.”

He smiled. “House Turissa is now one of the adoptive houses, meaning it has no real blood link to himself; he being childless and the last member of the house dead a good long while before he was born, before the war. The house title was granted to one of the King's loyalists in the King's day, and holds lands in the west moors beyond Arroth, but also farther north, near the Svyssn land, where folk live who have ways similar to ours but who speak different local dialects of the older tongues. You're costumed as one of those northerners.”

“What if someone asks where I'm from? What should I say?”

“Say your home country is in your heart, as we do, and say no more than that.”

This was an expression she had often heard herself, though she had never understood it for the evasion that it was. “And my name? Let me guess. I should tell them my name is Kartayn, like all the women do to strangers.”

He laughed, a raspy sound that ended in a cough. “You'll do,” he said, “with that sort of attitude. Kartayn is the modern spelling of Malin's mother's name, did you know that?”

She looked at him and waited.

“The Twice-Named Lady Kiril Karsten, or Karstayn, or Kartayn, as it has become in usage. The man's names usually given by strangers, Kirith or Kirin, were the King's names, of course.”

“She had two names. In the old days, when that meant something.”

“Yes. She was Queen of a city called Drii, where live a people who have been our allies for a long while. Lady Malin is half Drii.”

“I didn't think the Erejhen could breed with other races.”

“Only with the Drii, who are very like us.” He had lain out a line of undergarments, some rather elaborate, including a sort of frilly halter to contain her breasts, and stood aside for her to start to climb into them.

“Why can't I wear my own underthings? Do you think someone will inspect me?”

He smiled. “One never knows.”

“How do you people ever get anything done,” she fussed, climbing into a pair of bloomers that tied at her waist.

“Don't tie that so tight, you'll regret it later when you cant reach the waist ribbons anymore.” He helped her to adjust it. “Don't worry, they won't fall off.”

“What a lot of bother.”

“I'm sure that all fashion on your own world is logical and sensible.”

Moreso than this, she wanted to say, but honesty prevented her, since she doubted it was true. The dressing continued, first a few layers, the trousers and blouse, then the coat for practice. Why drag yards of fabric in a train to start with, she wondered, but soon enough was lost in the concentration required to master the movement. She had no real anxiety about fooling anyone; this was not her game, after all, even if she had a stake in it; but always in her head was the instinct that she should be able to do whatever was required.

“You're getting the hang of it. It's perfectly all right to move the train by hand but you mustn't look at it; feel the weight of it and move the weight as you need to, but don't look behind you.”

She rehearsed and dressed as the storm continued, mostly rain now, sheeting the windows in a constant wash. After she was dressed came the descent to the ground floor where Arvith and another householder helped her with the protective over-garments and then into a carriage waiting for her in the anteway. The animal pulling the carriage was smaller than a horse, and the carriage was large enough only for Jedda and her piles of fabric; Arvith stood behind on a runner; she could feel his presence through the shuttered window as the carriage pulled away.

She had a moment of disorientation in the moving carriage, almost like dissolving into the rain herself; who was she and where was she going? What were these clothes? What was she supposed to be? And why so trusting of Irion? Why was she letting him completely beguile her?

There was a good deal of traffic on the palace road; she fixed her attention on the people, secluded from the rain in so many ways, including what could only have been a group of Prin making their way along the foot-walk beneath a transparent dome into which the rain did not fall; the image reminded her of Karsa and Kethen in the storm that swept over Arroth. She thought of them frozen in that moment as if time were suspended, waiting for Jedda to return. Nonsensical to picture it that way but she could not shake the image from her head.

She had expected the carriage to drive her to the welcome hall again, for some reason, as if she could only enter the formal palace through the front door; but instead the carriage pulled into a narrow space between the third hall and the second. The shadow of a roof appeared overhead and the noise of rain ceased all at once, a relief. She felt the carriage shift on its shocks as Arvith swung himself down to open the door. He took her hand and stepped her onto a mat of rushes, where she glimpsed the rain again, beyond the entrance to the carriageway. There flowing by came the group of Prin under their clear protection, the sound of their singing making a harmony with the drift of wind.

“Come in, lady,” said Arvith, his voice more formal than in the apartment. He had pulled down his dripping hood and looked at her with a twinkle in the eye. The theater was beginning, she supposed, and smiled.

As the householders unwrapped her rain garments to reveal the really splendid spectacle she made, she admired herself in the mirrors in the small room. She felt like a princess in a story for just a moment before she snorted at herself, and Arvith caught her eye. “Madam?”

She shook her head and gestured with the slim, sheathed dagger he had given her to carry. She could feel the haughty upturn of her chin; he had advised her that a sufficiently arrogant silence would get her through any number of awkward moments, if she preferred not to speak, so she intended to practice a bit here with this smaller audience.

After a spell of this, Arvith gave her an approving nod and signaled her train bearers that she was ready to be conducted to wherever dinner would be held. Arvith gave her a Hormling two-fingers signal, used among intimates to wish luck on happy occasions; the sign itself was not Jedda's style of communication though she acknowledged him, wondering where he could have learned it. She tilted up her chin and, when the doors were opened, swept down a stone corridor to a stairway that led to another corridor, through more doors into more public parts of the house, where she began to see traffic of the sort she could imagine as part of this occasion.

Arvith spoke into her ear quietly before a set of doors carved with an intricate pattern of flowered vines; the wood, polished and scented, looked soft as velvet. “When these doors open you're in public and more or less on your own. You'll be announced and taken into the greater hall, where himself will greet you and hand you off to Malin. No one will try to talk to you directly unless you leave Malin's company, at least until the dinner is laid.”

“Your customs are a bit formal, are they?”

He shrugged. “We like our privacy. The guests will all be paired off for early conversation; the custom is for the pairs to separate and switch, though that's only an option, not a requirement, and Malin always does as she pleases. Most of the guests are here to see himself, anyway, so they won't be worrying you. If you're paired with someone you're not comfortable with, simply refuse to speak. You're dressed as someone of a rather high rank, higher than any of the other guests excepting Malin herself. And she hates these sorts of occasions and may not allow you out of her company at all.”

The thought of that made Jedda curiously happy; was she really so afraid of a dinner with strangers? No time to work it out, as the doors opened almost immediately, and her bearers moved her forward through the room.

A voice rang out, “Kartayn of House Turissa, cousin of Irion,” and she was moving forward through a throng of people almost as grandly dressed as she. The crowd parted as if in deference to her and she felt a thrill at the stir, as if she were indeed this person who could inhabit such clothing, as if her status accounted for this behavior. What game was Jessex playing with her? What could he intend? Her cloak bearers moved forward with her and she found the grace needed to look the part of whatever rank of person she was supposed to be; she donned an expression that felt like arrogance and followed Arvith, who carried a staff of what was supposed to be her house, into an even larger, grander hall, though this one was quiet and empty of any persons whatsoever except for Irion himself, Malin, and their attendants.

Arvith called out, “The Lady Kartayn of Turissa, in respect of the Lady Malin and the Lord of the Woodland.” He struck his staff on the stone floor and Jedda's attendants knelt; Jedda, as Arvith had taught her, waited till the rest were kneeling and bowed her head. Irion held out his hand for her and she stepped toward him.

“Welcome to Inniscaudra, daughter. Come and join our daughter, Malin; I wish her to show you my hall Thenduril, which I call Trinithduril, after the King.”

He stood tall and splendid on his dais, and suddenly she wondered why she had ever thought him plain; his face was beautiful, a skin like porcelain, hair dark and thickly curled, a neck long and slender like some exotic bird, simple clothing and jewels arrayed on him; and beside him stood Malin, who took Jedda's breath, radiant in clothing of equally simple layering, her stark white hair arranged in a net of silver studded with white gems and pearls, her gown cut low across her shoulders, her pale bosom rising and trembling as she breathed. She had the same long, slender neck as her uncle. Her beauty cast a glow around her, all the oddity of her height suddenly swept away. The light of many lamps colored her face and pale, graceful arms. Her skin glowed a dark, dusky silver. She was moving off the dais now, toward Jedda, with a smile that seemed formal at first. She took Jedda's hand.