Court Duel (25 page)

My idea was to transport everyone five hundred years into
the past as soon as they entered the portals. The building, of
course, was appropriate; I hired a ballroom near the Residence
that had not been renovated for generations, knowing that the
marble therein was more than five hundred years old.

As for the rest, I did not want to issue orders through
servants. I wanted to see the project through myself. What I
discovered was that in discussing my vision with each artist I
encountered, these artists altered from hirelings into
individuals—and conversely for them, I altered from a
faceless courtier with money into an individual with an
interest and appreciation for their expertise.

This, in turn, led to offers of cousins, friends,
relations—some so distant they were beyond our
borders—who were experts at this or that art. Over the
month in which I prepared for that ball, my own vision slowly
transformed into a much greater reality, one conceived in
willing collaboration with many minds.

I'd thought to have someone scout out enough
five-hundred-year-old tapestries from houses around town to
borrow for suitable wall hangings. When I mentioned this to one
of the palace servants Mora introduced to me, I was brought an
uncle who specialized in re-creating ancient arts.

"No, no," said this wizened little old man, his eyes
bird-bright. "Never tapestries for a ball, not then. Always a
chimerical garden, so arranged that the air always smells sweet
and fresh." His hands whirled around his head, reminding me of
wings, then he darted back and forth, showing me where this or
that herb would hang, and describing streams of water that one
heard but did not see, which would somehow help the air to
move.

One day, near the end of my planning, I traveled into the
city to hear the music of the time, and to help choose the
songs. In a low-roofed inn room I sat on the cushions set for
me, and the group picked up the old instruments they had
assembled and began to play.

At first the sounds were strange to my ear, and I marveled
at how music could change so greatly over the years. There were
no strumming instruments, such as the harp or tiranthe, which
formed the essential portion of any ensemble nowadays. Instead
the instruments were drums and air and sweet metallic bells and
cymbals, combining complicated rhythms with a light-edged,
curiously physical kind of sound that made one's feet itch to
be moving. The drums also, I realized as I listened on, caused
an echo in memory of those heard on the mountains from the
unseen folk there.

Recognizing that, I laughed. "I like it! That will be
perfect."

"Of course we'll have our own instruments laid by," the
group mistress told me. "So we can play any of the modern
dances your guests ask for. But for the arrivals, the start of
the event—"

"—we will make them feel they have stepped into the
past," I said.

And so it went, even with the mimery. It turned out that the
Court during that period had been fond of entertaining itself,
and more frequently than not had performed for one another.
Thus I bade my hired players to guise themselves as figures of
the period, that some of my guests might be surprised to see
themselves mirrored in art.

My greatest coup was when Mora brought to me her brother,
who with a few quiet words and a low bow, offered to take
charge of the food, from preparation to serving. I'd been at
Court long enough by then to know that he
was—justly—famous. "You're the chief steward for
the Renselaeuses," I said. "Surely you haven't left them?"

"I came to offer my services," he said, as blank-faced as
his sister. "With the full permission of the Princess."

I accepted gratefully, knowing now that the food and drink
would be the very best and perfectly served.

The morning of the ball dawned.

When I reached the ballroom for my last inspection and saw
the faces awaiting me, I realized I had fully as many people
working for me as there would be guests. I could feel the
excitement running high among performers and servers alike,
showing me this or that detail, all rehearsing their arts. As I
moved about admiringly, it seemed to me that my event served as
a symbolic representation of the kingdom: These artists, like
the aristocrats, came to be seen as well as to see; and the
servants, who worked to make all smooth, were unseen but saw
everything. Everyone would have a tale to take home, a memory
of performance, whether a countess or a scarf dancer or a
server of pastries.

But my preparations were nearly done. I went back to my
rooms to get ready.

As the bells for second-blue echoed from wall to pillar to
gloriously painted ceiling, then died away, I stood alone at
the midpoint of the ballroom to welcome the guests of honor.
Everyone was there, or nearly everyone. Only Flauvic was
missing, which did not particularly bother me.

Nee and Bran came down the stairs, arm in arm, both dressed
in the violet-and-white of the royal Calahanras family.

My own gown was mostly white and dove gray, with knots of
violet ribbon as acknowledgment of my role as Bran's sister.
But there the reference to the royal family ended, for my
colors in the ballroom were Remalna's green and gold—the
green of the plant leaves, and all shades of gold, from ocher
to palest yellow, picked out in the blooms. The focus,
therefore, was quite properly on Nee and Bran, who grinned like
children as they came to me.

I glanced up at the balcony, and a ruffle of drums brought
the quiet tide of murmurings to a cease. Then an extravagant
cascade of sound from all the instruments of the air, flutes to
greathorns, announced the ancient promenade, and all took their
places to perform the dance that their ancestors had
toed-and-heeled through hundreds of years before.

Backs straight, heads high, fingertips meeting in an archway
under which the honored two proceeded, followed by everyone
else in order of rank.

So it began. By the end of the promenade I knew my ball was
a triumph. I breathed the heady wine of success and understood
why famous hosts of the past had secreted knowledge of their
artists, sometimes hiring them exclusively so that no one could
reproduce the particular magic that so much skill had
wrought.

For a time the focus was equally on me as I made my way
round the perimeter and accepted the compliments of the guests.
But gradually they turned to one another, or to the
entertainment, and I remained on the perimeter and thus faded
into the background.

Or attempted to, anyway. For as I moved away from a group of
young ladies bent on dancing, I suddenly found myself
face-to-face with Flauvic. Could I possibly have overlooked
him?

Not likely. He was magnificent in black, white, and gold,
the candlelight making a blaze of his hair. His eyes were
brilliant, their expression hard to read, but I sensed a kind
of intensity in him when he bowed over my hand. "Beautifully
done," he said with an elegant lift of his hand.

"It was your suggestion," I reminded him—knowing full
well he didn't need to be reminded.

"You do great credit to my poor idea," he returned, bowing
slightly.

And because he did not move away, I invited him to stroll
with me.

He agreed, and as we walked around the perimeter, he
commented appreciatively—and knowledgeably—on the
fine details of my evocation of our shared past, until he was
seen and claimed by friends.

As I watched him walk away, I contemplated just how
skillfully he had contrived his entrance. He had managed, while
saluting me as hostess, to avoid paying honor to Bran and Nee.
One always arrives at a ball before the guests of honor, unless
one wishes to insult them. Great dramas had been enacted in the
past just this way, but he'd slipped in so quietly, no
one—except me, it seemed—knew that he had not been
there all along.

I watched him for a time, sipping at my wine. He moved
deftly from group to group, managing to speak to just about
every person. When I finished the wine, I set the glass down,
deciding that Flauvic would always constitute an enigma.

Realizing I ought to be circulating as well, I
turned—and found myself confronted by the Marquis of
Shevraeth.

"My dear Countess," he said with a grand bow. "Please
bolster my declining prestige by joining me in this dance."

Declining prestige?
I thought, then out loud I
said, "It's a tar-telande. From back then."

"Which I studied up on all last week," he said, offering his
arm.

I took it and flushed right up to my pearl-lined headdress.
Though we had spoken often, of late, at various parties, this
was the first time we had danced together since Savona's ball,
my second night at Athanarel. As we joined the circle I sneaked
a glance at Elenet. She was dancing with one of the
ambassadors.

A snap of drums and a lilting tweet caused everyone to take
position, hands high, right foot pointed. The musicians reeled
out a merry tune to which we dipped and turned and stepped in
patterns round one another and those behind and beside us.

In between measures I stole looks at my partner, bracing for
some annihilating comment about my red face, but he seemed
preoccupied as we paced our way through the dance. The
Renselaeuses, completely separate from Remalna five hundred
years before, had dressed differently, just as they had spoken
a different language. In keeping, Shevraeth wore a long tunic
that was more like a robe, colored a sky blue, with black and
white embroidery down the front and along the wide sleeves. It
was flattering to his tall, slender form. His hair was tied
back with a diamond-and-nightstar clasp, and a bluefire gem
glittered in his ear.

We turned and touched hands, and I realized he had broken
his reverie and was looking at me somewhat quizzically. I had
been caught staring.

I said with as careless a smile as I could muster, "I'll
wager you're the most comfortable of the men here tonight."

"Those tight waistcoats do look uncomfortable, but I rather
like the baldrics," he said, surveying my brother, whom the
movement of the dance had placed just across from us.

At that moment Bran made a wrong turn in the dance, paused
to laugh at himself, then hopped back into position and went
on. Perhaps emboldened by his heedless example, or inspired by
the unusual yet pleasing music, more of the people on the
periphery who had obviously not had the time, or the money, or
the notion of learning the dances that went along with the
personas and the clothes, were moving out to join. At first
tentative, with nervously gripped fans and tense shoulders here
and there betraying how little accustomed to making public
mistakes they were, the courtiers slowly relaxed.

After six or seven dances, when faces were flushed and fans
plied in earnest, the first of my mime groups came out to enact
an old folktale. The guests willingly became an audience,
dropping onto waiting cushions.

And so the evening went. There was an atmosphere of
expectation, of pleasure, of relaxed rules as the past joined
the present, rendering both slightly unreal.

I did not dance again but once, and that with Savona, who
insisted that I join Shevraeth and Elenet in a set. Despite his
joking remarks from time to time, the Marquis seemed more
absent than merry, and Elenet moved, as always, with impervious
serenity and reserve. Afterward the four of us went our ways,
for Shevraeth did not dance again with Elenet.

I know, because I watched.

The two tones of white-change had rung when the scarf dances
began.

To the muted thunder of drums the dancers ran out, clad in
hose and diaphanous tunics of light gray, each connected to the
dancer behind him or her by ropes of intertwined gold and
green. Glints of silver threads woven into the floating,
swirling tunics flashed like starlight, as well-muscled limbs
moved with deliberate, graceful rhythm in a difficult
counterpoint to the drums.

Then, without warning, notes from a single flute floated as
if down on a breeze, and with a quick snap of wrists the
dancers twitched the ropes into soaring, billowing squares of
gauze.

A gasp from the watchers greeted the sudden change, as the
gauzy material rippled and arched and curled through the air,
expertly manipulated by the dancers until it seemed the scarves
were alive and another kind of dance altogether took place
above the humans.

Then the dancers added finger cymbals, clinking and clashing
in a syncopated beat that caused, I noted as I looked about me,
responsive swayings and nods and taps of feet.

Why this gift, o pilgrim, my pilgrim, Why this cup of
water for me?

I give thee the ocean, stormy or tranquil, Endless and
boundless as my love for thee...

Now it was time for the love songs, and first was the
ancient Four Questions, sung in antiphony by the women and the
men, and then reversed. High voices and deep echoed down from
the unseen gallery, as the dancers below handed out smaller
versions of the scarves and drew the guests into the dance.

...
-why this firebrand for me?

Dancers, lovers, all turned and stepped and circled,
connected only by the scarves which hid them, then revealed
them, then bound them together as they stepped in, his corner
held high by the shoulder, hers low at her waist.

..
.just so my love burneth for thee

The music, flawlessly performed, the elusive perfume on the
scarves—all made the atmosphere feel charged with
physical awareness. In the very center of all the dancers were
Branaric and Nimiar, circling round one another, their faces
flushed and glowing, eyes ardent.

I scarcely recognized my own brother, who moved now with the
unconscious ease that makes its own kind of grace, and in a
dainty but provocatively deliberate counterpoint danced Nee. It
was she, and not Bran, who—when the gauze was overhead,
making a kind of canopy that turned their profiles to
silhouettes—leaned up to steal a kiss. Then they
separated, she casting a look over her shoulder at him that was
laughing and not laughing, and which caused him to spin
suddenly and crush her in both arms, just for a moment, as
around them the others swirled and dipped and the gauzes rose
and fell with languorous grace.