Blackveil (37 page)

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Authors: Kristen Britain

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #fantasy, #Epic

BOOK: Blackveil
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When finally she came to her rest day, she awoke mid-morning and lounged in an armchair before the fire in the Rider common room still in her sleeping gown and wrapped in a blanket thinking she’d be more than happy to spend her entire day this way. She was exhausted. There would be one more day of preparation for the journey, then the morning after they would depart.
“Well, someone looks like she’s been out carousing all night.”
Karigan looked up from the fire to find Connly and Captain Mapstone standing there and gazing at her. It had been Connly who spoke. She probably should have at least put a comb through her hair before stepping out of her room, but it had seemed like too much effort.
“No carousing,” Karigan said. “I haven’t had the time.”
Connly nodded and smiled to indicate he’d only been joking.
“Best that you get some rest while you can,” Captain Mapstone said, “since you are leaving so soon and have a big night tonight.”
“Big night?” Karigan said, puzzled. Then it began to dawn on her.
Captain Mapstone raised an eyebrow. “Surely you didn’t forget tonight is the masquerade ball.”
“Oh, gods.” Karigan groaned and sank deeper into her chair. The masquerade. She
had
forgotten. She pulled her blanket over her head. Maybe if she hid, it would all just go away.
 
Sometime later she still sat there before the fire unable to make herself move.
Stupid ball,
she thought.
I don’t even have a mask.
Mask? Did she even have anything to wear? A mask was the least of her problems. She flung her blanket aside and dashed into her chamber. She threw open the doors of her wardrobe and gazed at all the green hanging within. Green uniforms, some pieces of plain clothes, and one battered, ripped, and soiled blue dress. Despite all her wishing, a suitable costume did not magically appear before her.
Her plaintive wail of despair brought Mara and Tegan running to her room.
“What is it?” Mara asked.
Karigan held the dress in her arms. Her father had sent it to her in the fall to impress Braymer Coyle, but then after her disastrous encounter with the Raven Mask at the Sacor City War Museum, she’d used the dress to learn swordplay while formally attired. She’d neglected to have it fixed or cleaned.
“Masquerade ball,” Karigan said. “I must attend the masquerade ball tonight and I’ve nothing to wear.”
Mara and Tegan glanced at one another then stepped out into the corridor to confer. Karigan sank onto her bed, the crumpled dress still in her arms. Maybe she would not attend the ball after all, but the words of Captain Mapstone about supporting her king kept running through her mind and this ... this might be her last chance to see him.
Mara and Tegan stepped back into her room.
“We have an idea,” Mara said. “Get dressed. We’re going into the city.”
 
The two costume shops in the city—the only two worth patronizing anyway—were, as Tegan predicted, flat out of attire except for some mismatched oddments. Apparently everyone else attending the ball had already been to these establishments a while ago and cleaned them out.
“Now what?” Karigan asked, full of despair as she exited the second shop.
Tegan smiled. “Follow me. It’s a short walk from here.”
“What is?”
“The Magnificent.”
“The magnificent what?”
“The Royal Magnificent Theater,” Mara replied.
“You’re taking me to the theater?”
“I know someone,” Tegan said, leading the way, with Mara prodding Karigan from behind.
The Royal Magnificent Theater occupied almost an entire block in the artistic district of Sacor City, and rose high above the street. A sign lettered in gilt and flanked by carved masks and the royal symbol of the flaming torch announced its presence. It was frequented by all the elite citizens of the city when there was no party to attend at the castle or elsewhere. Karigan had never had the pleasure.
Plays, operas, and concerts were presented here. There were a few other theaters in the city, but they were much smaller affairs with correspondingly humble entertainment.
The great doors to the Magnificent beckoned, but to Karigan’s disappointment, Tegan led them right by the entrance, around the corner of the building, and down an alley littered with crates and refuse. Karigan thought they might use a side entrance to the theater, but Tegan instead stopped at a battered door on the building across the alleyway. Blue paint flaked off as she pounded on it.
Karigan began to wonder just what sort of person this was that Tegan knew when the door creaked open and a mouse of a girl peered out at them.
“Hello, Nina,” Tegan said. “Could you tell Madam Leadora I’m here to collect on a debt?”
Nina said nothing but receded into the building and closed the door soundly after her.
“Apparently not,” Mara muttered.
“Oh, Nina doesn’t talk much,” Tegan said. “She’ll be back.”
“What is this debt?” Karigan asked.
“Nothing nefarious, I assure you,” Tegan replied. “I did a favor for Leadora once. Introduced her to a friend who had a friend. Upshot is that she got this position with the Magnificent’s theater troupe.”
“What position?” Karigan asked, but before Tegan could reply, Nina returned and beckoned them inside with fingertips that flared with silver. At first startled, Karigan shortly realized the girl wore thimbles and they’d caught in the light leaking through the door.
The entry was dim and smelled musty. A corridor led back a way, its broad plank floor bare of carpeting or ornament. There were two stairways. One led up, and the other descended below street level. Nina led them up the stairs in silence, holding her skirts with one hand and using the other to balance herself against the wall as she climbed, for the stairway was narrow and lacking a handrail. The Riders followed just as cautiously.
“Huh,” Tegan said. “Usually we go downstairs.”
When they emerged into the space above, Karigan was immediately reminded of the sail lofts she’d been in down in Corsa Harbor, only instead of grizzled, ruddy seamen bent over lengths of sailcloth, there were several girls and young women studiously sewing bright pieces of material together.
The loft was vast and much light flowed through windows at the front of the building, softening the starkness of the rough wood floors, beams, and support columns. Bolts of cloth in dazzling hues and patterns were stacked haphazardly on shelving and strewn across tables. Lengths of material were draped over mannequins and hung from hooks on the wall. Much of it shimmered with sequins and beads and metallic threads.
There were boxes of feathers and long ruffled scarves, and a mound of mismatched shoes. Caps and hats and the papiermâché head of a horse were piled in a corner.
The seamstresses never looked up from their stitching to see who had entered their domain, nor did they speak to one another. Their concentration was palpable. Among them paced a tall lady in a flamboyant purple gown, a measuring stick in her hand tapping on the floor with each stride. Her hair was coiffed and coiled into a perfect pile on her head, and her cheeks and lips were attractively rouged.
“Tee-gon, my dear!” the woman exclaimed when they all reached the top of the stairs, and she hastened over to them and placed her hands on Tegan’s shoulders and air-kissed each cheek.
“Hello, Leadora,” Tegan said, grinning.
“Tee-gon, where you been all this time, eh?”
“Oh, you know, working for the king.”
Leadora clucked her tongue. “He write so many letters? You do not come to the thee-ator and it will wither your soul.”
Karigan found Leadora’s accent strange. She could not place it.
“My employer takes my service very seriously,” Tegan said. “You know how it is.”
“Yes yes yes.” Leadora swiped her hand through the air dismissively. “And who are these?” she asked, glancing at Karigan and Mara. Karigan caught her quick double take when she observed the burn scars on Mara’s face.
“Leadora, meet my friends Mara Brennyn and Karigan G’ladheon. Mara and Karigan, meet Madam Leadora Theadles, head seamstress for the Magnificent’s theater troupe.”
Leadora’s gaze sharpened as it fell back on Karigan. “G’lad-hee-on? Of the cloth?”
“Er, yes,” Karigan replied.
Leadora clapped her hands together. “Very good cloth. Very fine quality.” Then she waggled her finger at Karigan. “But
very
expensive! Too expensive for stingy troupe manager.”
“Leadora,” Tegan said, “why are you up here? It’s nicer, but why have you moved?”
Leadora put her hand to her hair as if to claw at it, her expression one of misery. Karigan began to wonder if the troupe’s acting occurred only on stage.
“Most terrible!” Leadora cried. “It was a flood.”
“What flood?”
“That terrible, terrible cellar we worked in. It leaked. The snow, the rain, the freeze, the melt. One morning I come in and our shop, it is full of water. We move into this nicer place, eh? Was shop and storage for another tenant—cabinet maker, but he move.” Then Leadora scrunched her face. “He leave all his sawdust and wood chips. We must sweep and sweep.” Then she sighed. “So now we are much busier. Most all our cloth and costumes wrecked by flood. Gone! Worthless, destroyed.”
“Uh-oh,” Tegan said.
“Yes. Is very bad. We try to make new for the next production. We must make everything from—how do you say?—from scratch. The girls work very hard now.”
“So much for that idea,” Tegan muttered.
“Idea? What is this?”
“Well,” Tegan said, “Karigan here is in need of a costume for the king’s masquerade ball tonight, and seeing as you owe me a favor, I thought you could maybe help out.”
“Oh my dear Tee-gon!” Leadora started pacing about spouting a stream of incomprehensible words.
“
Where
is she from?” Mara whispered.
“I’m not actually sure,” Tegan said. “But I kind of suspect she’s from right here in the city.”
Karigan and Mara both stared at her.
“She’s a brilliant seamstress sure enough, but the rest?” Tegan shrugged.
“Aha!”
Leadora’s exclamation made them jump. She tapped her measuring stick on the floor. “I may be able to help. Then debt repaid, eh?”
“If you can supply Karigan with a proper costume,” Tegan said, “yes, it is.”
Leadora smiled.
MAD QUEEN ODDACIOUS
U
pon their return to the castle, Tegan took charge of Karigan’s preparations for the masquerade ball.
“I will not wear the wig,” Karigan said.
“But it’s part of the character,” Tegan replied. “And I think black hair will suit you. Besides, the crown won’t fit without it. At least give it a go, and maybe try being a little less grumpy about it.”
“You’d be grumpy if
you
had to wear this ridiculous thing.”
She gazed down at the dress with its garish red and white diamond pattern, highlighted with silvery threads. At the bottom of the skirts among the frills were sewn the images of playful cats. On her left sleeve was a great big velvet heart. Panniers made her hips jut out in a style not seen in several generations. The material was a poor quality of satin that appalled the textile merchant in her. It undoubtedly shone well enough in the stage lights and likely satisfied the troupe manager’s stingy wallet, but closer inspection clearly revealed its inferiority.
She just knew that, in contrast, the nobles in attendance would be wearing nothing but the most elegant styles, their costumes constructed from only the finest materials. None of them would deign to wear so clownish a costume as this.
If the garishness of her costume was not enough, it smelled of mildew and there was some yellow staining located in an embarrassing spot on her backside. It had not, evidently, entirely escaped the flooding. Leadora supplied a train that she hoped would conceal the stain.

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