Treason's Shore (21 page)

“He did, But—”

“But nothing. Don’t think about the differences. Think about how each side had to figure out who would meet whom and where, if they wore weapons. What each would do. They had to discuss it all and agree before the meeting, did they not?”

“Well, yes.”

“So these rituals are all the results of discussion. If everyone performs his or her part, the other side knows what to expect. Negotiation can take place between enemies—well, between people with very different goals, let us say, because of those rituals. Do you see it now?”

Jeje pursed her lips, thinking back to the glimpses she’d had of courts at Nente. And the whispers about that cousin of Joret’s, Lord Yaskandar, who broke all the rules. “Not-quite-violence?”

She would think about that later. “I guess I’ve got it. So how do those rituals relate to me and you right now?”

“Because I think Kliessin is afraid of what kind of threat Barend’s appearance brings. Don’t think about what you know from experience, think about what your Fox Banner Fleet’s reputation has been. Those rituals are the only weapon I have to save Barend’s life.”

“What?”

Wisthia brushed her hand down her robe. “And I am convinced that you must be the mode of delivery. As an envoy.”

“That’s what you said before. I can see the purpose, but I’ve never worn one of those fancy dresses in my life. Wouldn’t know how to!”

“Never mind that right now. You come from Iasca Leror, you have the same accent Barend does. You also appear to be connected to my son.”

“Your son?” Jeje stared. “Do you mean Evred?”

Wisthia smiled. “You see the resemblance, then? And everyone always said he looked like his father. People believe you connected with him, or rather to this mysterious young man Inda who, rumor reports, commanded the battle that sent the Venn back north. Something the rest of the world was unable to do during the last ten years. So we will use your reputation—and your connections—to our advantage.”

Jeje grimaced. “How?”

“What if Inda sent you as envoy to meet me, let’s say by a different route than my nephew? Yes. One over land, and one by sea. Thus the three of us may unite in representing Iasca Leror’s interests in trade now that the southern world is emerging from the Venn yoke. Everyone in the southern half of the world is wondering who will dare to restore sea trade and what will happen. Let’s take advantage of that.”

“Me?
Envoy?
I don’t know what to do!”

“There’s nothing like practice. First the clothes. No lace and frills, you’re from Iasca Leror. You’ll have a robe like my daughter-by-marriage Hadand wears . . .”

In a newly redecorated mansion along the lower level of Nente’s terraced city, a baroness drew a slow, deep breath of pleasure.

This affair is going to make me famous. Not just here in Anaeran-Adrani’s court, but in Sartor, and maybe even beyond
.

She savored it all, the words, the social triumph, and not least, the two beautiful creatures—beautiful without the arts of magical illusion—beginning a dalliance right under her guests’ eyes. Because the gossips all agreed, no one ever turned down the mad, bad Lord Yaskandar Dei of Sartor.

It had taken six months to lure a brilliant flutist down from her mountaintop, and another six months of kingdom-spanning diplomacy and patience to coax her into the idea of combining her skills with those of the celebrated harpist from Sartor. But was anyone paying attention? The baroness smiled inwardly at the irony, when the rustle of silk and a faint, familiar scent of vanillin and musk warned of the approach of her chief rival.

The song ended amid a soft cascade of frescha petals. The guests stirred, many of the younger ones holding out cupped hands, and one young man throwing his head back so the silken petals would fall on his face.

A warm breeze lifted the petals, spiraling them into the air. A melody, patterned in dancing thirds, commenced a rise through the chords, minor to major, as the petals danced and swirled then looped and whirled toward the far arched door and away. There they were swept up by the silent servants who had spent all the previous day out in the conservatory along a high terrace, picking apart the carefully nurtured blossoms and carrying them down the mountain layered in silk so they would not bruise.

The baroness was done with them; she did not know or care that her chief steward would pass them to her own daughter, who would dry them and sew them into little bags, selling them as sachets to use when winter clothes were laid away until next year.

Instead, the two rivals watched the petals dance around the pair in the center before whirling away toward the far door, driven by the skilled hand of the theater mage the baroness had hired for a stiff fee.

Then the duchess said, “I always appreciate a petal cascade.” The word “always” drawled with faint emphasis.

The baroness enjoyed a thrill of loathing. So many things she could say!
You pretentious fool, everyone knows you married your position thirty years ago, but I was born a baroness
. Or,
Yes, Colendi cascades have been done and done again this past five years, but what else is there when the illusions of our young years are out of fashion, and everyone and everything now has to be real? We are limited to real decorations and to our real faces
.

The baroness’s mouth soured. “I miss the days of illusion.” She kicked a stray frescha petal, which promptly stuck to her slipper. She stepped on it, relieved the duchess had not looked down; a little story over morning chocolate about the baroness kicking and stomping would not ruin her prospective triumph, but it would make her look absurd. The baroness was already sensitive to the barely hidden smirks just because she was short and solid, her dark hair thin, forming a superficial resemblance to that horrid young sailor woman who’d sent the court into gales of laughter just weeks ago. “It was so much more exciting back then, never knowing what anyone would be.”

“Or who,” the duchess responded, flicking her fan out to catch an errant petal. It lay on her matte black fan, a perfect oval of creamy white with a touch of buttery gold at the edges. “Remember the night everyone came as the king and queen? They were prince and princess then.”

“And beautiful, both,” the baroness said on a sigh. “That was memorable.” More memorable than a room full of the same two faces was her beloved at the time guised as the princess, and going off with one of the princes to enjoy a relationship everyone but the baroness had known about.

No, she would not be young again for the world, and she had never been beautiful. This new fashion for only the real—whom did it flatter but the attractive?

“Parties in our day were never boring,” the duchess drawled, mellow in reminiscence. “I loved never knowing when I entered a ballroom if it would resemble the sky atop a mountain or a morvende cavern covered in jewels or a pirate’s den.”

“Assuming pirates ever had the wit or taste to combine ancient Toaran tapestries with Venn vases and Colendi porcelain.” The baroness chuckled, remembering that wild night. Odd, how taking on the semblance of the dregs of civilization had led to behavior that . . . well, best be forgotten. “The only limitations were one’s funds and one’s imagination.”

The duchess pursed her lips and puffed across her leveled fan. The frescha petal spun into the air then began to fall; the doorway glimmered as the hidden mage wove another net of magic to gather the last petals, and send them dancing on the air out the door. “So we are left to Colendi cascades.”

The baroness opened her fan, but inwardly gloated: her party would be talked about forever as the night the wicked Lord Yaska met Joret Dei Shagal, Princess of Anaeran-Adrani, at last.

He’d been stalking her with delicate patience for weeks—accepting no invitations, but arriving to make calls just after her visits, or riding in the gardens when the ladies were out strolling.

Was it possible the duchess did not see it yet? Triumph prickled through the baroness as Yaska leaned toward Joret. He was dressed in muted gold to match the color of his eyes, the lining to his paneled robe the exact dark, dark brown of his hair, its golden highlights picked out in the candlelight. As a song ended and everyone stirred, he lounged forward to pluck a goblet from the tray being carried around, then resettled, his long hand resting near the princess.

Yes, the duchess saw. The baroness and her rival watched every single young person in the chamber track the movement of his hands.

Except for Joret Dei. She sat on her hassock in the center of the room, her back straight, her expensive silken skirts ruched forgotten around her, as she rested her chin on her fists, her steady blue gaze on the harpist as though the answer to the world’s dilemmas lay just behind the music.

The duchess drawled, words etched in acid, “You realize he and his fellow raptors stooped on us only because Sartor has become untenable.”

“I know.” Below another song began, this one a slow, plaintive ballad in a Toaran counterpoint.

Yaska turned toward Joret, presenting a perfect profile.

“Until Servitude Landis dies and Lissais the Hypocrite re-establishes a bearable life for Sartor’s court, the young courtiers have nowhere else to go,” the Duchess continued, amused.

“There is an entire world outside of Sartor,” the baroness kept her gaze on that motionless profile.

Prince Valdon was not present—the word was the king had sent him to see to something or other at the harbor. Was it accident that Yaska had finally accepted an invitation? Of course not.

“Their world—” A swoop of the duchess’s fan toward Yaska. “—is court. In Sartor they are made to be servants to servants. Sarendan has no court, they’re all fighting one another, or about to. Khanerenth’s court is made up of merchants and the military pretending to have rank. The west is impossible, the rest of the east is too small and boring, except for the Land of the Chwahir, which has nothing we would recognize as a court, and he can’t go to Colend.”

Secure in the knowledge of her triumph, the baroness pretended she was not aware of the duchess’s insult in telling her what she knew quite well herself. Her son, sent to Colend for seasoning, had reported in a private letter how angry King Lael had been to discover that his carefully selected garden of beauties had been competing for Lord Yaskandar Dei’s attention right under the royal nose. Lael had suavely invited his honored and distant cousin to leave. She smiled. “I know.”

“And anyway,” the duchess finished, “Joret and our Valdon made a ring marriage last year, speaking vows of eternal exclusivity. We were all there. You heard them.”

“I know.” The baroness laughed. She liked young Valdon, and Joret Dei was astoundingly self-effacing for so beautiful a girl raised from foreign barbarity to a step from a civilized throne. Not self-effacing in a meek way. She was strong in a way that no Adrani courtier really understood, with her steel daggers, and riding around on horseback accompanied only by that grim, armed maidservant. Joret never raised her voice, nor was she rude, but somehow she had caused the entire court to superficially accept the presence of the sailor woman Jeje sa Jeje, peculiar as she was—and if they laughed, it was behind closed doors where the sailor Jeje (and Princess Joret) could not hear them.

A song ended, and Princess Joret tapped her fingers lightly against her palm in applause. Lord Yaska smiled down at her, whispered something, which won a smile back.

The baroness smiled. Really, young people would be young people, and the important thing was that everyone would be talking for years about how the affair began at her musical party.

Her hostess book lay ready to collect their charming scrawls on their way out, if the evening were memorable enough.

Now that is fame,
she thought as Yaska leaned forward again to murmur soft words to Joret, his long hair brushing her shoulder.

Chapter Twelve