The Pyramid Waltz (3 page)

“I don’t trust people who hide behind masks.”

Da lifted a hand. “Let’s not start that again. The girl has a right to choose her comrades.”

Ma shook her head but didn’t say anything else about it. “You’ll be at the Courtiers Ball.”

“Of course.”

“Any idea what you’ll be wearing?”

“My usual.” As her mother frowned, Katya hurried on with, “Suitably embroidered and outstanding. I’m not a complete novice to this game, you know.”

Da prodded her arm. “Lady Hilda still chasing you?”

“Yes, and my excuses for putting her off are getting pretty feeble.”

“A good-looking woman.”

Ma gave him a harsh look. “And ten years too old for you, Katya, as well as being what they’d call well used.”

“Court gossip,” Da said.

Ma gave him a harder look, and Katya had to wonder how her father had lived this long. “Oh, she’s had lovers,” Katya said, “but that should add to her appeal. Beautiful, experienced, and willing.”

“And a backstabbing snake who only wants you for the influence it will give her,” Da said.

They both stared at him.

“What? I’m not a moron, you know.”

“I knew there was a reason you survived so long,” Katya said. “Everyone knows Hilda’s intentions. If I gave in, I would be acknowledging that it’s only a string of pretty lovers that I’m after. That would add to the persona I’ve created, but…” She shook her head.

“You can still have your integrity,” Ma said.

“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t a normal conversation for a nineteen-year-old girl to have with her parents?”

Da shrugged. “To a nineteen-year-old princess in charge of a secret order tasked to protect the monarchy with magic and brawn, a secret which she can only share with a trusted few, normal conversations are coveted and often unfulfilled dreams.”

“Speaking of,” Katya said, “I’d better go. I’ve got to get cleaned up, laze around the halls for a bit, and then put together a plan of action.”

“Do you think Crowe will learn more from this Shadow?” Da asked.

“He’s the best pyradisté we have,” Ma said. “If he can’t learn anything more…”

“Then we’ll have to do it the really old-fashioned way,” Katya said.

Da rubbed his hands together. “Ears to the ground, eh? And once you find a source of information, you pound him into jelly until he tells you what you want to know!”

Ma grimaced. “Really, Einrich.”

“Sometimes, I envy you, my girl, truly I do.”

Katya had no intention of pounding anyone into anything, but her father’s exuberance was catching. “I won’t let you down, Da.”

“’Course you won’t. If you can evade Lady Hilda’s poisonous tentacles, you can do anything. I have all the faith in the world.”

Starbride wished for the hundredth time that she was anything but a courtier. The other young women clustered together with the young men, comparing fashion, talking of how exciting events at the palace would be, of the connections they could make, of the attachments court could bring. The palace at Marienne provided a host of future spouses, to say nothing of future lovers.

The thought of using another person for her own gain turned Starbride’s stomach as much as the current fashion—layers of petal-like, pastel, gossamer fabric, a trend credited to the current Farradain queen. Petite, thin women carried it off. Tall, slender women could wear it well. Even tall and curvy could manage, but the layers turned short curvy women like Starbride into special-occasion cakes. She fought not to cross her arms over one of her mother’s custom-designed dresses. At least there wasn’t a mirror handy; she didn’t have to see how much like a cupcake she looked. She blamed her mother’s sweet tooth as much as her mother’s fashion sense.

Starbride rolled her head from side to side, stretching muscles cramped from her long carriage ride as she waited for the tour of the palace to start. At least her dress was a soft cream color that complemented her reddish brown skin and black hair. If it had been one of the oranges or pinks that went with pale Farradain skin and hair, Starbride wouldn’t have gotten out of her carriage.

A middle-aged man and woman eventually emerged from the palace doors. “This way, young charges.” The woman gave them a smile that seemed a little wicked to Starbride’s eyes. “I am Adele Van Nereem, and this is my husband Claude.”

Together, the couple bowed and curtsied, and the answering greeting from the new courtiers was a gentle swish of skirts and fabric. “My wife and I are lifetime courtiers.” The wink of mischief in Claude’s eye matched his wife’s smile. “Like some of the nobles here in Marienne, we stayed in court instead of departing after our connections were made. We’ve dedicated our lives to instructing new courtiers in how the palace operates.”

Starbride heard a few sniggers around her. “If they’re not nobility and they haven’t left,” a nearby woman said, “they obviously haven’t gotten
anywhere
in the world.”

“Perhaps they’re
provincial
,” a man in the same group suggested. Those surrounding him tittered, and Starbride got a few snide glances herself.

Whether they heard or not, the Nereems didn’t lose their smiles, and it soon became clear that they knew what they were doing. The palace was a maze, and the Nereems seemed to take pleasure in confusing their young charges with a lightning tour. Perhaps their real job was to teach humility. Starbride wished she could tell them she understood, but she was having a hard enough time keeping track of their directions.

Here was the main hall with its many staircases and hallways; this way to the courtiers’ new rooms; this way to the dining halls or music halls or dancing halls; somewhere in that direction was the royal apartments; there the stables; there the kitchens; servants’ quarters scattered here and there.

Starbride didn’t catch most of what they said, and by the confused faces surrounding her, she wasn’t alone. The Nereems encouraged the new arrivals to mingle with established courtiers whenever they could, but Starbride dismissed that idea immediately. There was one other woman from Allusia in this batch of courtiers, and if the frosty reception they both received was any indication, their chances of political alliances were slim to none. Ah well, it meant more time to devote to the law books. Starbride hadn’t traveled so many miles into a foreign country just to meet people.

She ignored the Nereems’ words on courtly life and studied the architecture and tapestries, the small statues, and the representations of the ten spirits that were everywhere. She knew them already, though she hadn’t grown up with them. Like all aspects of Farradain culture, they had seeped into her homeland like a creeping tide of marmalade.

Allusia allowed Farraday into their land over one hundred years ago, to the mountains where the pale-skinned outlanders harvested the crystal to make pyramids. Some of the Allusian warlords had traded with them; others who attempted to drive them out were crushed by their army. The remaining Allusians organized to meet the Farradains on equal footing, learning more about these people, about their laws, but there was always more to learn. One hundred years hadn’t solved all their problems.

Starbride raised her chin and set her shoulders back. As the descendent of the founder of Newhope, Allusia’s trading capital, Starbride had every right to be at court. She lagged behind the tour, hoping to spot the famous Farradain library, but if it lurked behind any of the numerous doors, it didn’t make itself known.

Once the Nereems assigned their rooms, Starbride ducked into hers without a word to anyone. Dawnmother stood at the small wardrobe, unpacking the traveling valise. She’d tied her hair in a simple horse’s tail at her nape, not a black strand out of place. She pointed to a light snack that waited on the room’s one table.

“How do you do that, Dawn?” Starbride gestured at the snacks. “How do you always know where to find the food?”

Dawnmother shrugged. “The fruit is excellent. You don’t want to continue the tour?”

“Ha! They won’t include the library. Why should I bother?” She popped a berry into her mouth, and the sweet juice rushed over her tongue.

“How will you catch a spouse if you don’t deploy the nets?” Dawnmother asked. Her falsetto matched Starbride’s mother to perfection.

Starbride plucked at her layered dress. “I hadn’t thought of using this as an actual net. It would be more effective than as a dress.”

Dawnmother shrugged again.

“Don’t tell me you’re partial to this style! When the luggage gets here, you can have all of Mother’s cupcakes.”

“I think they look more like meringues.”

Starbride had to laugh, but when the luggage did arrive, Dawnmother started to unpack and then stopped. “Oh,” she said, and the one word hung in the air.

Starbride’s stomach curdled. “She didn’t.”

“She did. All the clothes you chose are gone, just like in your valise.” She pulled out another frothy dress, this one a light mint. “There’s nothing but these dresses.”

“No trousers?”

Dawnmother rummaged through the trunk. “No shirts, no bodices, and definitely no trousers.”

“That is
wonderful
! Now I’ll look ridiculous every hour of the day.” She eyed Dawnmother’s comfortable traveling suit, loose-fitting trousers and a high-necked coat. “What about your clothes?”

“I have a servant’s figure.”

“But you’re tall and thin; you’d look much better in these layers of spun sugar than I do!”

“We could have them taken in for me, but we have no material to let out the hips and bust of mine for you. Besides, you can’t be seen in something as poor as this.”

“I don’t care what—”

Dawnmother interrupted with an upraised hand. “My life for you and also the truth. You must appear as a Farradain to gain their respect, and as much as you hate your mother’s clothes, the dresses make you closer to them. You wish to do what’s best for our people?” She held up the mint dress again. “This is one of the ways in which to do it.”

Starbride bit her lip but nodded. “You speak sense, as always.”

“Thank Horsestrong you see it that way.”

“If I were Darkstrong instead, I would have staked you out in the sun for speaking the truth.”

“But you listened to the old tales and picked the correct brother to emulate. Now.” She cracked her knuckles. “Let’s repair your hair, and then we can split up to look for the library.”

Starbride shrugged in resignation, and gave herself over to Dawnmother’s fingers.

Chalk would have come in handy, or charcoal, anything to mark her way through the palace maze. Even if she had marked it, Starbride was certain one of the many people in livery would have scrubbed it off. Where in the world could all the rushing uniforms be going in such a hurry? How many of them simply endeavored to look busy? On her next exploration, she vowed to bring pen and paper and make a map.

Starbride turned another corridor and recited in her head the way back to her room: two rights, three lefts, second right. When she noticed that the carpeted runner in the passageway had changed, she moved to the edge of the hall, out of the way. It was such a little thing, but after the sameness of the hallways, it had to mean something. Perhaps she’d entered another wing. Servants hurried through the new area with the same single-minded purpose, but now there were leather uniforms mixed with the livery, and down the corridor, she smelled the stink of horses. Ah, she’d found the wing closest to the stables, the
last
place the library would be.

“Excuse me,” she said to a leather-clad man.

“Sorry, miss, can’t stop.” He turned as he spoke, never breaking stride, even while backward.

Starbride just refrained from one of her uncle’s favorite swears. She’d hoped the leather-wearing servants, guardsmen perhaps, would be in less of a hurry than the liveried servants who had given the same answer. She’d also tried one of the many housekeepers, the men and women in stern black who carried rings of keys at their hips, but all she’d gotten from them was “If it’s not my section, I can’t help.”

She wandered back the way she’d come and spotted a few courtiers gathered in the hallways, usually near large windows or perched on cushioned benches. They were always in little groups, little tittering clusters. One group parted to reveal the other Allusian girl alone in their midst. Starbride approached her with a smile, glad to see another person who looked lost, but the woman gasped when she met Starbride’s gaze.

“Sorry,” Starbride said, “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to introduce myself.” She laid a hand on her chest. “Starbride.”

“Jewelnoble.” She glanced to and fro as if afraid someone would overhear. “You didn’t startle…I mean, I’m just…I’m just waiting for someone I know.”

“Oh, I thought you might be alone.”

“No, I already know someone here.” She cast another furtive glance down the hall and then at a nearby gaggle of courtiers, male and female, who watched them with amused glances and many giggles.

Starbride couldn’t resist shaking her head. “I can’t believe these people. You’d think they’d never seen—”

“Look,” Jewelnoble said. “I have a friend coming, I told you, and she’s introducing me around.” She leaned forward. “The last thing I need is for the others to think I’m part of a…a…an
ethnic
consortium.”