Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (26 page)

Berene looked up
and nodded. She motioned to a stack of small envelopes, their wax seals already
broken and their contents tallied in her ledger.

“Yes.” The
secretarie cleared her throat. “From the Techas, Apothecas and Luminas:
Lillitha of Kirrisian. From the chatels: Iafrewn of Gezana. From the
Philosophes and the Cadiasecratia: Oilival of Corellia.”

“And the Nicte?”
Osane looked to Koesta for an answer. The cadia-nicte, or sisters of the
shadows, was not organized along the same lines as the other branches, for good
reason. Their existence was scarcely known outside the cadialana, their purpose
a mystery to any but the Nicte themselves and the women now present.

“My sisters and I
stand on opposite sides in this.” Koesta’s lips formed a tight line. “So it is
under protest that I offer the Nicte’s choice of the Kirrisian girl.”

Osane ignored the
murmurs though she was as surprised as the others. For Koesta to enter her
sisters’ vote under protest meant she harbored strong feelings about Lillitha’s
unsuitability. She had expected the Nicte—and Koesta in
particular—to endorse the Kirrisian because of Yannamarie’s association.
The Nicte had evinced an interest in the child ever since the House Kirrisian
announced her dedication. They had specifically requested one of their own
placed as Lillitha’s techa. The Nicte had given no reasons and Osane did not
ask.

“Speak, sister,”
Osane said. “We are listening.”

“Her aura, my
lady. It disturbs me.”

“That’s all? Just
her aura?” Osane’s brow wrinkled. It was unlike Koesta to be so vague, but then
again the Nicte were a suspicious lot. The cadia paid great attention to the
spiritual vibration humans gave off; Osane herself had been given pause by the
darkness of the emanations coming from the girl, black and red touched with a
hint of yellow.

“That’s ridiculous,”
Ofred of Oneonata interjected. “The child has just lost her techa and that
close on the heels of her brother’s death. I would be concerned if her aura did
not contain a great deal of grief.”

Several of the
women nodded their heads. It was obvious that the majority favored the
Kirrisian.

“Tis not the grief
that concerns me. It is the anger and the fear I see there, too.”

Ofred waved her
hand dismissively. “Complex emotions are a sign of a highly developed mental
capacity. Again, I find it very natural. To her credit, in fact.”

“Am I to take it
that you are ready to cast your vote in favor of the Kirrisian?” Osane asked,
craning her head to look at Ofred who was sitting behind her.

“Yes. I think
she’s the obvious choice.”

“Do you take the
responsibility of her sponsorship, then?”

Protocol required
that each candidate having reached serious consideration should be championed
by one cadia. The champion’s duty was to argue in that girl’s behalf, making a
case for her selection as eloquently as possible while refuting any objections.
Ofred, a large-boned woman of some sixty summers, nodded and rose to her feet.

“The House of
Kirrisian traces it lineage back to Martel the Warrior, who fought with Belah
throughout his campaigns from the very beginning; not, as I might add, as some
of the other noble houses, who only came to Belah’s side after his second or
third victory—”

This was a direct
snipe at Oilival of Corellia, the second contender. Kittanning of Corellia
stiffened in her chair, one sharp eyebrow raised as she glared at Ofred. The
Corellians had been the last to join ranks with Belah. Osane sighed. Two
hundred summers had passed and still provincial grudges flared, even among the
cadia.

Ofred continued,
ignoring the Corellian’s stare.

“Her family genealogy
is impeccable—”

“Do you dismiss
then her drunken grandfather and rogue of a brother?” Wrendala of Bann spoke.
Her face was expressionless. Osane wondered if she truly objected or if she was
simply playing opposites.

“Her grandfather
served valiantly in the Legions for more than ten summers before a near-fatal
wound returned him to his vidoran and the comfort of the bottle,” Ofred said.
“The chief of the First Arm awarded him the Gilded Palm for bravery. As for the
brother, he was not yet a fully bearded man. We can make no conjecture about
how he might have turned out had he the chance to outgrow youth’s folly, now
can we?”

“Your point is
well taken,” Wrendala said, lifting her palm as a sign of her surrender.

“Thank you,
sister. Next, Yannamarie’s record of her studies shows a keen curiosity and
above-average intelligence. She is currently on her sixth language—”

“The others are
barely out of their fourth,” Gevalini whispered with a proud smile.

“She scored the
highest on the written examinations of scripture and not even Bene Geraud was
able to stump her in the verbal. Any objections to her qualifications as a
scholar?”

The cadia glanced
at each other, some of them shrugging.

“Well, her
scribing is less than perfect,” Berene, a lumina and prone to notice such
things, pointed out. “And she’s very slow at it, too.”

Osane almost
laughed at the petulance on Ofred’s face. Neska, the baby of the group, did
laugh, then put her hand over her mouth guiltily.

“Well,” Neska
exclaimed, gazing around the room, “it’s not as if the
breda
has to write, is it? Honestly.”

“Indeed,” snorted
Belfoya of Gezana. “Why are we bothering with all this foolishness anyway? A
hundred summers ago, it might have mattered whether the
breda
was a noble or a scholar. Here and now, we desperately need only one thing.
Fertility. Will she bear a male child?”

 
Thick silence fell over the room. Several
eyes darted warily to the dedre, who sat for a moment as if turned to stone.

“Yes,” Osane
finally spoke. “Thank you, Belfoya, for pointing out the obvious with such
tact. And as soon as you have another petal of wisdom for us, I’m sure you’ll
speak up.”

Osane looked
slowly around the room. “Do the rest of you feel the same? Should we dispense
with tradition? Perhaps we should simply let Varden rut them all and see which
one conceives before we make our choice?”

Belfoya’s
eyes were bright in her flushed face as she
blinked at the floor. The woman’s humiliation crept through the room,
communicating itself to the rest of them until they all felt like rebuked
children.

“I beg your
pardon, sister-dedre.” Belfoya held out both her palms toward the heavens and
spoke in the high tongue, using the ritual form of apology. “I spoke out of
turn and without thought.”

“Oman grants your
pardon, sister.” Osane rubbed her eyes. She despised herself for being so harsh
but the last thing she needed was the eleven of them locked in a pointless
debate. “We are all tired. Let’s get on with it.”

 
“Hum...uh, Lillitha’s family on both
sides shows a long history of good health and fertility. No barrenness within
ten generations. Her mother has borne five children. The two who did not
survive still made it through the first summer...”

Ofred reeled off
names and progeny for several minutes, concluding finally with the results of
Lillitha’s physical examinations, which showed her to be in fine health.

“Lastly, I would
make a plea on behalf of the House Kirrisian. I realize it’s completely beside
the point, but we are all well aware of the dire circumstances of the family. Even
is she is not selected
breda
, I move that Lillitha be
accepted as a novice with full scholarly rights. It would be a shame to lose so
fine a mind to the life that awaits her in Kirrisian.”

Kittanning stood
and spoke on behalf of Oilival, though it seemed to Osane that the rest were
merely being polite. It did not speak well for the Corellian girl that the only
one who would champion her was of the same province. Such a breach in etiquette
smelled of collusion in spite of Kittanning’s good reputation.

Pinday of
Mannishulo stood up for Iafrewn. Her lack of enthusiasm was plain.

“I must confess I
take her sponsorship out of duty to the memory of her great grand aunt,
Shallana Silsbee,” Pinday said. “And the Gezanas are a fine house.”

Finally it was
time for the dedre to speak her mind.
 

“Thank you,
Kittanning, Ofred and Pinday. You have spoken and we have heard. Forgive me for
not standing but my feet are killing me—”

There were smiles
and soft laughter.

“I think we will
all agree that Iafrewn is simply not cadian material. She is immature and a
poor student, on both counts badly suited to life on the Isle. Also, she and
Varden are third cousins. I know that is technically acceptable, but still a
bit too close for my liking. The most favorable thing about her is the amazing
procreative abilities of her mother—”

Again there was
smiling and a few laughs.
Good,
Osane
thought. No one was seriously considering the Gezana child anyway. The chatels
had chosen her simply because of Silsbee or perhaps because Iafrewn looked like
an easy mistress.

“Which leaves us
with Oilival and Lillitha.” Osane motioned for Berene to bring her the tallies.
The secretarie scurried over with the heavy ledger and laid it across the
dedre’s lap, who studied the book for a moment and sighed heavily.

“As I suspected,
the endorsement of the philosophes and cadiasecratia is weak at best. Oilival
took the votes of both branches by a slight margin. I point this out to be
fair; I do not want any bickering among the branches about favoritism.”

At this last, she
looked pointedly at Cossit of Bethosa, a philosophe, and Kittanning,
a lumina
. The last time around, the cadialana had been mired
for days in a contest of wills between these two branches, who had been
violently opposed to each other’s choice purely out of some imagined slight
during the championships.

“Oilival falls
behind Lillitha in every category. She’s a fair student but not a well-rounded
one. In every subject but philosophe she has little real interest. There is
also an instance of barrenness in a cousin only once removed to consider and I
cannot ignore a stubborn streak of independence in her nature which I suspect
could prove troublesome.”

Osane held up her
hand quickly as mouths opened. “I know—I know that sounds contrary to the
order’s beliefs and my own, but no one can deny that patience must be a large
part of the shallana’s nature. Oilival would be miserable once the gilding of
her position has worn off.”

Even Kittanning
was forced to nod in agreement. Oilival was obviously enamored of the title
Shallana Breda; she had asked many questions about superficial things like
clothes and private chambers, how many personal servants she would have, all
ill-considered questions that caused the girl’s techa great embarrassment. But
her responses to questions about how she might fill her day-to-day reality had
shown a distinct vagueness.

On the other hand,
Lillitha had smiled for the first time when asked the same question. The girl
outlined a number of things she hoped to study, expressed a passionate interest
in the palace libraries and asked if she might be allowed to weave with the
luminas.

“What is your
general opinion of the girl, sister-dedre?” Koesta asked. “You met with her in
private, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I wanted to
find out what she knew about Yannamarie.
A beautiful child,
doubtless, but more than that, profoundly intuitive and empathic.
She
seems unaware of this capacity or perhaps she believes everyone has the same
talent. I say intuitive and empathic, not
tadomani
,
though genealogy shows all three should run heavily in her family line. Her
intuition is untrained, of course; Yannamarie’s notes spoke of it as well as
her determination to keep the girl moving along the path slowly rather than
risking too much knowledge, too fast.”

“You think the
bene will accept her nomination?”
This from Saluda of
Shallanie.
“They’ve already been arguing about her.”

“Yes and it’s
stupid.” Osane frowned.

“What?” Neska
asked, her childish face wrinkling. “Have I missed something?”

“Really, Neska,”
Koesta sighed. “You are going to have to work on paying more attention. There
is a faction among the bene who think that Lillitha is simply too beautiful.
Leave it to them to find the most irrelevant issue and argue it to death.”

“Oh, dear,” Neska
said. “You mean Bene Geraud has gotten off on
Talibat’s
Principle of Balance again? I thought they settled that nonsense summers ago.”

Bene
Talibat
, long dead, had postulated at length about the
meaning of beauty. In the end, he concluded that too much of anything led to
jealousy, envy, lust and covetousness. While he made some valid points about
seeking balance in life, the cadia disregarded most of his teachings as
simplistic.
 

“I think some of
them are just afraid of her,” Gevalini interjected. “Beautiful women are always
threatening to men who doubt their own self-control.”