Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (25 page)

“You must forgive
my son,” Tullus said with a thunderous brow. Marta sensed not only his anger
but
embarrassment. “This is his first acquaintance with
Shallanie wine. He has been overzealous in its enjoyment.”

The young prince
said nothing, only glowered into his cup.

She nodded politely
as the king asked after her family and how she was enjoying her first festival.

“Might I beg a
favor of you, sire? I have to find Paul, but I’m a bit frightened of wandering
through all these people by myself. Do you think Scearce could come with me?
Just until I find that brother of mine?”

Tullus agreed
readily, commenting sagely about the disreputable-looking thugs who always hung
about any festival or market fair.

The young man rose
without protest. She could have sworn there was an insolent gleam in his eyes
as offered her his arm.

“You don’t have to
be so nasty about it,” she said haughtily as soon as they were out of earshot.
“I’ve a good mind not to give it you now.”

“Give me what?”
His words were crisp. He towered over her, sidestepping a ragtag swarm of
children.

“I thought you
were drunk. You’re not, are you?”

“You’re terribly
rude. But no, I am not yet drunk. Though I hope to be by nightfall.”

Marta felt him
looking at her and knew he was comparing her to Lillitha. What did her sister see
in this scrawny, arrogant, wine-sodden boy? Sorrow, like a slow contagious
fever, seeped into her hand as it rested in the crook of his elbow. She jerked
her hand away, doubly angry that she found herself feeling sorry for him. He
was a miserable as Lillitha, and being a man, even more pathetic. She was
angrier still to realize that Tomack would never pine for her like this.

So this is love, then? Sweet Mother Leah, spare
me.

But neither would
Tomack try to drown his love in a bottle. That was a coward’s choice. Beneath
his gentleman’s exterior, she thought, Scearce was deeply flawed.

“What are you
going to give me? Or not give me? No matter. Suit yourself. I thought we were
looking for Paul.”

“I have a
something for you.
From Lillitha.
Though at the moment,
I can’t for the life of me figure out why I should give it to you.”

The change in his
features and demeanor was astounding. He seemed to pale and flush at the same
time. He grabbed her arm, more roughly than he’d intended, perhaps, but she
cried out just the same.

“What is it? Give
it to me!”

She pulled away
and rubbed the bruise on her forearm, frowning petulantly at him until he
remembered himself.

“I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to hurt you.” He swept sweat-dampened hair back from his brow and
licked his lips. “But please, for the love of Oman, tell me—”

She put a hand
into her pocket and drew out the locket of hair tied with a ribbon. She thrust
it at him.

“There. She wanted
me to give you this and bid you forgive her for the trouble she has caused
you.”

“Trouble?
What—” His features cleared and he seemed on the edge of laughing with
relief. “You mean all those questions from the cadia? Oh, that was nothing!
Tell her I would suffer a thousand such interviews with the Shallan himself for
another moment in her company!”

He pressed the
severed curl to his lips, then put it to his nose and inhaled deeply. Marta
thought she might be sick.

“So you love her,
too?”

He did not even
hear the weary disgust in her words.

“I can think of
nothing but her, it’s driving me mad— do you mean to say, she loves me as
well?”

Marta nodded, her
lips pursed tightly.

“I had never
hoped— oh, Marta, you’ve made me so happy!” To her surprise, he swept her
into his arms and swung her around as if she were made of straw, planting a
kiss on her forehead before he let her go once more.

“You’re a mad man,
that’s what you are.” Marta straightened her skirts as she glanced around to
see if anyone had observed his strange display. “Stark raving bonkers.”

“Why?” He grinned,
white teeth catching the slanting sunlight. “Because I love your sister, calla
Marta? Or because she loves me?”

“Because it
doesn’t matter one whit whether you love each other or not. Don’t be a dolt.
She’s still consecratia and you’re still betrothed to someone else.”

“How did you
know—
”

“Oh, never mind.
It’s in the back of your mind, plain as day. Someone named
Toyva
that you’re supposed to meet tomorrow.”

“It’s not settled,
not yet,” he murmured. “That was something arranged before. It doesn’t matter
now. I’ll have no wife if I cannot have Lillitha.”

He tugged at his
left hand and pulled off a thick ring of gold.

“Give this to her.
Along with my love.”

“Aye, I’ll give it
her. For all the good it will do either of you.”

Chapter 14: The Sisters of the Shadows

Excerpt from
The Secret Histories of the Cadia
by
Thorie
Lugay
,
Ph.D.R
.

     
Modern readers
have shown an insatiable interest in the Cadia Nicte, or the Sisters of the
Shadows, but records about this secret sect are few. The Nicte’s history was
purely oral, never written down, and has died with them.

     
We do find
scattered bits of information in the personal journals of the dedres; to no
other person or persons did the Nicte answer, and even then it appears that
their original charter allowed them to function nearly autonomously.
Cadia-dedre Kara, who served from the 45th Bear until the 53rd Dove, was
responsible for the origin of the secret branch after an attempted
assassination on both Kara herself and the shallana
breda
.

     
“The bene priests
have their spies and warriors, while we have only ourselves,” Kara wrote. “It
is time we sharpened our own blades rather than wait patiently for others to
defend us. That womanhood has become synonymous with frailty and victimization
is an abomination not to be borne.”

     
Kara
hand-picked
seventeen women of sharp intelligence and
superior physical strength. Among them were several guilty of murder. Though
these women had only killed in battle or self-defense, their families or
sovereigns exiled them to the order. The dedre was an outspoken opponent of the
Omani custom of casting out women who took a life, even if the consequence of
not doing so would have resulted in their own rape or murder.

     
The first leader
of these sisters—the Prima-Nicte—was Nelwyn of Sealles. The cadia
literally saved Nelwyn from being staked as a witch. Having been violated by
her stepbrother when she was but fourteen, Nelwyn spent the next three summers
studying folklore and herbs to find an excruciatingly lethal poison with which
to exact her revenge. When it looked as if her violator would miraculously
recover from the poisoning, she took up a sword and ripped him open from neck
to groin while he still lay in his sickbed. She also killed the two men who
tried to stop her, one of them her stepfather.

     
Nelwyn’s mother
handed her over to the Vidor of Sealles. The records of Nelwyn’s trial include
her mother’s testimony that her daughter must have been bewitched to do such
treacherous violence. The cadia persuaded the vidor to place the young woman in
their charge, with the understanding that she would never set foot in that
province again.

     
Under Nelwyn’s
leadership, the Nicte studied the physical differences in strength between men
and women. Eventually they developed the now-familiar
jaharal
techniques of hand-to-hand combat, which are today taught
to all girls beginning in their first summer of grammar school.
 
In its infancy, however,
jaharal
was practiced in great secrecy;
the
very idea that these techniques enabled a woman to stand
against all but the most powerful man would have been viewed as some kind of
sorcery by the general population
.

     
The Nicte studied
poisons as thoroughly as the apothecas studied healing herbs, though there is
little to suggest they ever made much use of this knowledge. The purpose of the
Nicte seemed to lie in preparedness rather than overt action. They forged a
network of spies throughout the realm, siphoning information back to the cadia
in Omana Teret. They studied military campaigns and battle strategies, weapons
and their construction, geography and languages. In short, they studied all the
things men had studied over the centuries. Only they did it in secrecy.

Eleven members of
the cadialana, including Osane, sat in chairs and on couches scattered around
the dedre’s study. The twelfth, Berene, sat behind the dedre’s desk; as
secretarie to the assembly, she was bent over her papers, recording the minutes
carefully, and rarely spoke. Koesta, too, was present, as the Prima Nicte was
always privy to the meetings of the cadialana. The twelve women in this room
were the only ones who understood her real purpose.

The informality of
the gathering was deliberately misleading. A formal announcement had been
posted stating that the cadialana’s caucus would be held tomorrow evening in the
Great Hall, a ploy that Osane hoped would keep the chancellor’s spies and even
the bene from snooping around this too-small meeting place on this night. Such
games wearied her, but they were necessary if truth were to be spoken.

“So will we meet
again tomorrow night?” Neska of Tira asked; she did not see the rolling of eyes
from those seated behind her. The young cadia was a philosophe, after all;
everyone knew the philos could debate the meaning of human consciousness for a
thousand hours in ten languages, but they couldn’t navigate their way across
the Bridge of Omana Teret without a map. “Otherwise, they’ll know we tricked
them—”

“By tomorrow night
it won’t matter,” Koesta said patiently. The cadia-nicte appeared crow-like in
her black robes, perched upon the edge of a straight-backed chair that had been
dragged in from another room just for this meeting. “Our business will be done.
And they can hardly accuse us openly of tricking them when the only way they’d
know whether or not the announced meeting actually occurred is if they were
spying on us, now can they?”

Osane, comfortably
slumped in her favorite armchair beside the fire, smiled. This particular
misinformation had been Koesta’s idea. She had a fine mind for subterfuge and
no love for the bene or the chancellor, so it gave her great satisfaction to
play such pranks on both.

Neither Osane nor
Koesta really thought the bene or Paglia’s spies would be fooled, but that was
no reason to make their snooping easier. Tonight had been chosen for their caucus
because the bene were occupied with the Shallan and Shallana’s reception for
the consecratia. Thanks to Chancellor Paglia’s ill-considered spite earlier in
the day, the bene had their hands full. Even Paglia’s hired eyes would be
pressed into service over in the Great Hall.

That morning
Paglia had swept into Varden’s chambers to find the dedre already there.
Annoyed, he had requested that the cadia be excluded from the reception, since
he, the bene and the other members of the High Council were always prohibited
from the cadialana’s dinner for the consecratia. Osane had bitten back her
laughter at the childishness of his request. And the fool actually thought
Varden’s acquiescence was a victory in his favor! Who did he think would cook
and serve his food and beverage, if not cadia-chatels? When he had arrived in
the kitchen to supervise preparations that afternoon and found not a single
chatel in sight, he’d thrown a tantrum of mythic proportions.

“Why, my Lord
Chancellor,” Osane had exclaimed with mock surprise, “
when
you requested our absence I naturally assumed you meant
all
the cadia. Have you changed your mind?”

Osane’s study,
nestled deep in the cadian wings, would be a hard place for any eavesdropper to
reach unnoticed or lurk undetected. The room was inspected daily for signs of
tampering; walls, ceilings and floors all received close scrutiny. Sisters well
aware of their real purpose continually occupied the libraries on either side
of Osane’s study.

“I do wish I could
see what they’re doing over there,” Ofred said with a sly grin. “It would be
right jolly sight, seeing those bene tripping over each other amongst all those
pots and kettles.”

“I just hope they
don’t burn the place down.” Laughter broke from Saluda of Shallanie’s pretty
little mouth. A general merriment rippled around the room.

“Let’s get back to
the matter at hand.” Osane fought a yawn. It was already well past moonrise and
she’d been up since before dawn. “We have the votes from the secratarieas?”