House of Shadows (20 page)

Taudde wasn’t surprised that a mage had built this house. He was more surprised that this detail was still remembered. The era to which the girl referred was more than two hundred years ago. A long time, by the energetic standards of Lirionne.

From what he could see, the residents had reason enough to be proud of their House, whoever had built it. The entry hall, spacious and serene, held no echo of the strangeness he had felt before he entered. It was decorated with little tables that each held a single pretty object. Taudde admired a little finger harp with silver strings and a frame of bone; the string he touched gave back an ethereal note, and he smiled.

The banquet chamber was intimate, meant for a small party. Decorative screens of fine wood and sea ivory closed off the balcony against the chill of the evening, but the room was well lit by a dozen ornate porcelain lamps hanging from the ceiling. A fire burned cheerfully within a broad fireplace.

In the banquet chamber, the girl turned Taudde over to a grave-faced young woman with remote storm-gray eyes and robes of subdued slate blue. The woman’s hair was so dark it was almost black, her nose small and straight, and her mouth stronger than the rigid standards of Lonne preferred—though certainly by Kalchesene
standards she was beautiful enough. From the plainness of her robes, she must not be a keiso—a little surprising, given her beauty. Well, despite the pretty picture of keiso life Nala had drawn for him, no doubt many women preferred a less, well, flamboyant life. But there was something else about this woman… something…

The woman offered Taudde a small, formal bow, interrupting his puzzlement. “I am Leilis,” she informed him, almost as though this was a title rather than her name. Her voice was low and a little husky. It was a good voice: attractive and compelling. Taudde thought she would sing alto, probably base alto. But there was something else in her voice, as there was something odd about her physical presence… some unexpected undertone he couldn’t quite understand.

“I have prepared lists of the courses that will be served and the keiso who will attend,” the woman continued, unaware of Taudde’s curiosity. “Please inspect these lists. If my lord does not approve of any dish, I will be happy to suggest substitutions.”

Taudde noticed that the woman didn’t offer substitutions if he didn’t care for one or another of the keiso. He smiled and shook his head at the lists. “I’ve no doubt everything provided by Cloisonné House will be perfectly suitable and of the highest quality.”

Leilis inclined her head in graceful appreciation of the compliment. “We have arranged for Bluefountain, our premier instrumentalist, and Rue, the finest dancer in the whole of the flower world, to attend your banquet. And we shall send in the youngest of our keiso. It will be her first banquet. She is a sweet child. I am certain she will please my lord’s guests.”

Taudde inclined his head in acknowledgment, though he couldn’t concentrate on the woman’s words. He was thinking instead of his… guests. The thought of approaching vengeance should have been satisfying, but in fact tension made him feel slightly ill. And the need to conceal everything he felt made the tension worse. He touched the small, heavy packet he carried in an interior pocket of his robe, wishing he found the weight of it reassuring. He only wanted to be rid of it.

“As I believe my lord is not from Lonne—” Leilis added, and paused for him to return his attention to her.

Taudde, glad to be interrupted from thoughts tending darker and darker, looked up, met her eyes, and made himself smile. “I would certainly welcome any advice you might offer.”

The woman gave him a calm nod. “It is the custom in Lonne for the host of a gathering such as this to present each of his guests with a small gift. If my lord should not have provided himself with suitable items, Cloisonné House would be honored to supply appropriate, tasteful gifts for the occasion.”

Taudde again touched the package he carried and answered, only a little too grimly, “Indeed, I thank you, but fortunately I was aware of the custom and I am thus fully provided with small gifts.”

The young woman accepted this assurance with graceful approval, though with a slight reserve that suggested she might have heard and wondered at the harshness in Taudde’s tone. But she did not, of course, comment. She nodded instead toward a sideboard of polished wood and said, “If my lord would care to place these items in the accustomed location?”

Taudde hesitated for a bare instant and then nodded in return and held the packet out to the woman. A slight hesitation before she put out a hand to take it suggested, a heartbeat too late, that she’d expected him to take the package of gifts to the sideboard himself. Distracted by his own dislike of what the packet contained, he hadn’t noticed her expectation. Then, as Taudde gave her the package, he brushed the woman’s fingers. At once, a powerful echo sprang up between them, wholly unexpected.

Leilis jerked back, dropping the packet, which Taudde caught, barely. With his other hand he caught hers, firmly, resisting her sharp attempt to wrench herself free.

An ugly dissonance echoed and re-echoed, splintering Taudde’s perception of light and sound. He set his teeth against a strong desire to let the woman go… for a beat and another beat of time, and then released his grip. Their hands sprang apart as though
propelled by some independent force, and they each took a hasty step to recover their balance.

Then Leilis took a hard breath, collected her dignity—no wonder she moved and spoke with such reserve, yes, that made sense now. She said with frozen disdain, “Your guests shall be shown in as they arrive, my lord,” and began a measured retreat. Not a rout, Taudde thought: nothing like it. “Wait,” he said hastily. “Please—wait only a moment. Allow me to beg your pardon. I had no idea—”

The ice thawed just a little. Though the woman didn’t turn back to face him, she at least paused.

“Cloisonné House itself has a strange depth to it. Have you felt this?” Taudde said, speaking not quite at random. He let his words come quick and unguarded. He wanted to hold the woman a little longer; he wanted a chance to perceive that strange blended enchantment more clearly. “As though its shadows are darker than the shadows of other houses, and its light clearer? As though in this house, voices and music and the slam of a door resonate in more than one direction? I think this may be in some way related to your—your—”

“Curse?” Leilis did turn, now. She gave Taudde a steady, neutral stare.

“Is that what it is? I haven’t… It’s some sort of… echo, or interaction, isn’t it, between a mageworking and something else…” His voice trailed off.
Something of the sea.
Or, if not of the sea, at least something similar, or allied. It was a unique sort of working, whatever blend of magery and other ensorcellment had created it… No wonder he found the woman so compelling. He himself was trying to achieve just such a blend. Though not for so cruel a purpose… He regarded the woman with redoubled fascination, wishing for the time and opportunity to examine the strange curse. He might learn a good deal if he could unravel it, see how it had been made… It would be a kindness to unravel it, if he could…

“You are a mage, then?”

“I?” Taudde was startled to realize how much he had given
away to this woman. “More a theorist than a practitioner,” he said, since he didn’t dare deny it entirely. “But I cannot claim great skill, and you are no doubt aware that Miskiannes lacks strong magic.”

“But—” began the woman.

“Leilis?” a servant leaned through the doorway, saw Taudde, and instantly assumed a more formal manner. “My lord—the first of our keiso is ready to attend you, if I may announce her?”

Leilis, her manner a perfect mask of impersonal calm, withdrew. She left Taudde merely with repeated declarations of Cloisonné House’s desire to meet any wish he might discover, but clearly did not include her own presence among wishes she was willing to fulfill. As soon as she had departed, the first of the keiso entered.

Taudde tried to collect himself. His part this evening was surely sufficiently complicated without adding the distraction of even the most compellingly ensorcelled woman. There would be time
later
for less urgent matters, if he could first break free of Miennes’s leash, free of the threat Mage Ankennes posed to him. Those concerns
must
come first.

The keiso who had come into the banquet chamber was not as young a woman as Taudde had expected. Though beautiful, hers was a mature beauty. She was a good deal older than he—at least his mother’s age. Her face was delicate in bone, but with an assured set to the mouth and a slightly sardonic tilt to the eyebrows. Violet powder extended the line of each eye and blended on the left side of her face into an intricate tracery of violet and blue that reached from the outside corner of her eye halfway along her cheekbone. This was a style Taudde had not seen before, and he blinked—and then smiled, for despite his nervousness the good-natured, ironic glint in the keiso’s eyes instantly put him at ease.

The keiso was wearing a blue overrobe traced with a complicated pattern of lavender and blue that echoed the pattern on her face. There was a comb of sea ivory in her hair, and she carried a knee harp in the crook of her arm. She set this on a small table near the door and swept into a low bow, her hands pressed together
before her heart. “I am Summer Pearl,” she said. Her voice was warm and lovely, with a slight burr to it, like the deepest tone of a set of alto pipes. “Welcome, my lord, to Cloisonné House.”

Smiling, Taudde returned her bow. Gesturing to her harp, he said, “You are an instrumentalist?”

“I play a little,” Summer Pearl answered, with a glint of humor in her dark eyes that mocked the modesty of her words. “Of course I will not match my lord’s skill.”

“Of course not,” Taudde said drily. He took his place at the table, to the left of the table’s head. He tried a nikisi seed from the bowl on the table. It was excellent, with under the sweetness an unexpected trace of heat that lingered on the tongue.

Summer Pearl came and knelt on a cushion across from him, on the inside of the
U
made by the table. “In Lonne, it is customary for the host to take the most honored place,” she said, with a nod toward the head of the table. She offered this explanation with a modest, diffident air, pretending mild embarrassment at proffering advice to a valued guest. Again, there was a touch of humor in the curve of her mouth, as though she invited him to share a subtle joke at her own performance.

It occurred to Taudde that the skills of keiso were more comprehensive than he had expected. He could not keep from smiling. “Not this evening,” he said, and rose to his feet as Prince Tepres entered the banquet chamber.

The prince was accompanied by Koriadde and by Jerinte Naliadde ken Miches—Taudde would have preferred Koriadde’s brother to the less-courteous Jerinte, but no one had consulted him—and of course by the dour Jeres Geliadde.

Taudde bowed, stopped from kneeling by the prince’s slight gesture. He caught a sudden reverberant echo of the earlier strangeness as the prince entered the room but could spare no attention now to consider the phenomenon.

Summer Pearl, clearly startled by the prince’s arrival, had risen gracefully and now began a deep bow of her own, saying warmly, “Eminence, we had no expectation—”

Koriadde, stepping forward, caught the keiso’s hands and prevented her from completing her bow. He said, “We are not formal this evening,” and kissed her hands, smiling down into her beautiful face.

“Cloisonné House is lovely tonight,” the prince said, also smiling at the woman. Summer Pearl smiled in return and bowed her head, taking the compliment as directed at herself, and the prince nodded to her. They were fond of subtle compliments in Lonne, as well as subtle threats.

The prince nodded to Taudde and walked across the room to take the place of honor at the head of the table. He wore an overrobe of black and jewel-dark purple. His fine hair was back in a single braid, bound off by a plain black band. The stark colors suited the prince’s rather angular features, making him appear both older and more authoritative than so young a man would likely otherwise have managed.

Though the authority, at least, seemed a natural quality. This young man had been the heir for… only for the past year, surely? The Dragon’s ruthless execution of the latest in his string of rebellious sons—which one had it been? Rette?—hadn’t that execution taken place only this summer just past?

The past year must have been a difficult time, surely, for Prince Tepres. A harsh education in power and its uses. There was something about him that suggested he’d grown very fast to meet the demands placed on him. Taudde felt his mouth tighten. He kept finding himself inclined to admire or like the young prince, which was disconcerting and not at all welcome.

He turned, a little too stiffly, to greet the prince’s two young companions and bow slightly to Jeres Geliadde. The young men bowed in return, hands over their hearts; the prince’s bodyguard inclined his head minutely, frowning.

“Do cease this sour manner,” the prince said to his bodyguard, frowning quickly in his turn. “I vow, you tire me with this refusal to be agreeable, Jeres. This is Cloisonné House, not some disreputable dock establishment.”

“Sit down and smile,” Koriadde advised the older man, following his own advice. “We are all friends here.”

Taudde tried to find the young men’s confidence amusing, but could manage only a biting sense of irony. He nodded to a servant to pour tea, which was of the kind most admired in Lonne: a pale crystalline green with a complex floral scent and no discernible taste. It was served in fragile cups like lacquered eggshells. Taudde lifted his cup, smiled, and nodded at the girl to pour for the other men. He meant to say something to Koriadde, something light and humorous. But Miennes arrived just then, smiling and affable, and Taudde lost the flow of his thought in his struggle to hide his revulsion at the man’s presence.