The Returning (29 page)

Cam translated for her. The girl, Ii-yo, fussed with her robe and made no move to obey. Cam stared in surprise at the senior lady-in-waiting, for it was her role to discipline the younger women, yet she did nothing. Graceful still waited for Ii-yo to do as she had bid her, the red rising in her face again.

One of the other maids said, “My Lady, may I go instead? I have left my fan and it is so warm.”

So the situation was rescued.

 

MORNING AFTER MORNING Cam waited in that vast white room, while they did whatever it was women did behind the lattice. He counted the cushions, but never had the same number twice. (“They breed,” he told Gyaar.) At last they would be ready and would ramble outside.

The ladies sat on the lawn, on cushions against the damp, their chattering rising in the air, or they walked round and round and round, garden and pond, all of them slender and pliant as golden autumn grass and Graceful a great pallid lump. Cam saw the slumped shoulders, and downcast eyes, and knew that she knew.

She summoned him to her side. “Attling's Oldest, talk to me or I shall die, I am so lonely.”

He bent his head in a slight bow, the gravel of the path crunching under their feet as they walked about the pond. Cam thought they must begin to wear ruts there, they tramped the same ground so often.

Graceful stopped. “See Old Man there?” She pointed him out, a red-gold carp and huge.

“Old Man?”

“That is his name. He's almost sixty. He was given to the old Lord on the day of his birth.”

“Sixty?”

“Almost. And that one there, the Asagi?”

“Er . . .”

“Pale blue with red belly and fins? That is Blue Prince, given to Lord Gyaar on the day of his birth.”

Cam looked down at the water.

“They're given at the . . . the birth of a son.” Graceful blushed. “To make him strong and bold.”

Cam shifted his weight, looked up to the other side of the pond, beyond, to the keep. He could hear the sounds of weapons practice.

“You watch them,” said Graceful. “Watch, and your cares will swim away with them.”

Cam could not look at her, so ashamed was he for the grudge against her that he would not let go of, that came of nothing she had done. “How do you know all this?”

“My new maid-in-waiting, Diido, did tell me.”

Cam felt a little jolt—no, not little, but a huge stabbing.
She's not told me any of this, their names.

“Oh!” said Graceful. On the far side of the lawn, Gyaar had appeared, only to turn around when he saw them and vanish once again beyond the inner wall. “I have not seen Lord Gyaar since I arrived, except like this, at a distance. He does not visit at all. And all day, all night, all these women, yet hardly a one has a word to say to me.” She held him with a tug on his sleeve. “Please, Cam. He did tell me that you were his gift to me.
You can talk in your own tongue
, he said.”

Gift?
Cam jerked his sleeve out of her hand.
He gives me?
“Try your husband's language, if you would take part in his world.”

Hurt showed clear in her face. “You will tell him, that we were handfastened once, will you not?”

“Tell him? There is nothing to tell.” Cam said it in Uplander.

“You were kind to me, when you were in Kayforl. Why have you changed so?” Graceful made a sharp cutting motion with her hand and walked rapidly from him.

Oh Cam
, said Mam's voice in his head. He whirled in the opposite direction and Diido bounced from behind the curtain of trees, into his path.

“My Lady!” She shot past Cam, as if he were not there.

“Diido?”

“Lord Gyaar so loyal to you, and this is how you repay him.” She spat, then pelted up the track after Graceful.

Cam slumped against a tree, hand hooked in his belt. He could not even begin to figure what it was he had done wrong.

THE LADIES WERE scattered like great flowers across the lawn, but not the pale bud that was Graceful. Cam found her hiding in the moon-viewing pavilion, head bowed into her hands, weeping.

He hovered, going up and down the steps each time he thought of how he could deal with this. In the end, he slunk to the women's quarters and sought Diido out.

“Not here,” said Diido.

Cam was standing at the latticed entrance screen. He sighed. “Then outside, if you have not become too much the lady to talk to me now.”

Diido's eyes, when she looked at him, were as flat as a painted picture. Without a word, she stepped outside.

“I came to you for some advice.” Cam smiled, but it was like trying to reach the feelings of a rock. He felt the smile drop from his face. “I saw My Lady, hiding from her court, and crying.”

“I know.” Diido folded her arms tight over her chest and her lips tight over each other. “And I think they all do, those fancy girls she has about her. But she wishes to keep her tears secret, so everyone leaves her be.”

“It may be”—the thought was coming to Cam as he spoke—“that what she wishes and what she needs are not the same thing.”

“I tell you what she needs. Send that old sow packing, is what she needs.”

“Old sow?”

“Yes, the one who's the chief lady-in-waiting. All she does is snip at her, the day long.
Oh, My Lady, how odd, that color always looks so well on Lady Ryuu. Oh, Lady Graceful, what a shame your husband did not visit you again yesterday. I cannot understand it, for he was ever at the door to the women's quarters before he wed.
Nark, nark. And that puss-faced bit, Ii-yo. She deserves to be married off to some crusted old tuppincher, who'd make her cook his curds every night.” She snapped her fingers. “Lady Ryuu should've stayed. That would sort them out.”

“It may be,” said Cam again, “that Lady Ryuu did not come to Dorn-Lannet this spring so that Gra—Lady Graceful could find her feet.” One thought leading to the next, he added, “It may be that Lady Graceful would do better to win over her maids and ladies, rather than dismiss those who are giving her trouble.”

“How can she, when she has so much against her? And why do you say these things, anyway? You make it clear enough that you don't care.”

 

GYAAR CAME TO his room, a wine jug on his shoulder. “Cornered you! Come, let's talk, like old times.”

Cam opened the sliding windows wide. They dragged his desk to the opening, put their booted feet upon it, and talked arms, and dogs, and horses.

“Look.” Gyaar traced a line in the air, following that of the white wall of the keep on its march across the hillside. “Like a dragon's spine.”

“More worm than dragon,” Cam said. “Where is that wine jar?”

Gyaar laughed. “Here. But to drink from it, you must answer a question.”

“Ask, ask away.” Drunk already, Cam waved his arm.

“How does My Lady?”

Cam felt suddenly sobered. “That, you should ask her yourself.”

“Hnn.”

“Hnn.” Cam mocked Gyaar's sheepish look. “Gyaar, get rid of those ladies.”

“Which ladies?”

Cam told him of the old sow and puss-faced Ii-yo.

“I cannot interfere with those arrangements.”

“Bah. It was easier climbing the keep wall than it is playing nursemaid to one young woman.” Cam filled Gyaar's cup, pushing the wine jar closer to him, hinting for his own to be filled. “Why do Lord and Lady Ryuu not come? It is springtime.” Lord and Lady Ryuu always spent spring at Dorn-Lannet.

Gyaar smiled, but not at Cam—inward, at his thoughts. “Mother would not ever say it, but I think Grandmother Ryuu was . . . difficult, and Mother wished to spare her new daughter something of what she experienced, in the early years of her own marriage.”

“Oh.” Cam pushed the wine jar about the table. The clay squawked on the wood surface. “Gyaar? What is this business of a gift? Your lady mentioned it.”

Gyaar took the jar from him. “That is just how I told it to her, to make her feel . . . more comfortable.”

“And you tell me another way, to make me more comfortable, but”—Cam leaned across the table—“which is the truth?”

Laughing, Gyaar made shooing motions in the air, as if brushing Cam's words away.

Gift
, thought Cam. “It's not I who has a marriage yet to consummate.”

Gyaar set the wine jar down with great care. Something between them tightened until it snapped. “I will bid you a good evening,” said Lord Gyaar. He did not raise his voice, but it struck on Cam's ears.

Lord and dearest friend. Cam tried for words, but knew none that would fit, so he simply bowed. He straightened to find that Gyaar had gone.

Cam went into the garden, and was nearly at the fish pond when he remembered that he wouldn't find Diido there. He trudged back through the nighttime garden and shut his door on it, the evening, everything.

 

DAY AFTER DAY, Cam waited on the bench in the anteroom to the women's quarters, pushed about by cushions, and recalled his life before this service as something that had happened long before, to another, freer Cam.

On the trees the blossoms blew away, and leaves fuzzed the boughs, pale green. The summer-flowering shrubs were covered in buds. Day after day, Graceful wafted about the garden, and the only one of her ladies not to hold her always at arm's length was Diido.

Gyaar began to visit the garden, though never coming near enough to speak to the women, to Cam. He stalked the other end of the lawn, tall and Lordly. If Graceful began to walk in his direction, Gyaar retreated at once to the inner bailey, to the barracks and practice yards where the ladies could not go.

One day, when Gyaar marched out to take his air, Graceful turned and fled. Cam glared at Gyaar and shook his head. Coming to his feet, he cut through the woodland to the moon-viewing pavilion, looking for his charge, but Diido had beaten him there. She sat, a skinny red sentinel, on the stair that led up to the platform. Cam stepped over her. She grabbed at his coat, unbalancing him so that he had to stop. “Leave her be.”

“No. I can do better than that.” Cam pried her fingers from his jacket.

Inside, Graceful stood with her face turned into a corner of the room, like a naughty child. Elbows propped against a crossbeam, head tucked into the fold of her arms, plump, pale hands hanging prettily, she wept.

“What do you want?” It came all muffled from the cradle of her arms.

“I did hear you crying.”

“I repeat, what do you want?”

Cam sank down on his heels. “You are getting high and mighty.”

Graceful snapped her head up and stared at him over her shoulder, blotch-faced. “Is this how you behave toward your lady?”

“Aye, for that's how she's playing it, and my legs are stiff with standing about like a statue all day.”

She stood herself straight, pulled in a regal way at the ill-fitting robe. “Traitor,” she said. “False and faithless, and he gives you to me. He gives me those ladies—faugh! And he stands off, too proud to bend his neck even to say me a
good morning
.” She stamped her slippered foot,
pom
, against the floor.

“Do you push back, if you don't like where they shove you.”

“You have seen how they disregard me.”

“Why should they regard you, when you sit like a sack and cry all the day long?”

Great grass-green eyes stared astonishment at him.

Cam rose to his feet. “Be Lady Graceful, if you want me to bow and
My Lady
you. You have been learning this place—well, do you take charge of it.”

Cam watched Graceful come back to her women in the garden, eyes red, but not, this time, lowered. She hesitated at the closed circle, shot one desperate glance at Cam. “Tea.” Graceful went among them, and sat. Her cheeks were bright red. “Ii-yo.”

Ii-yo looked down, seemed surprised to see her fan in her hands.

“My Lady must find another messenger,” said Old Sow. “Ii-yo is—”

“It is kind of you to offer.” Graceful met the older woman's stare. She looked so very like to her father, thought Cam, when he was striking a tough deal.

“I do not think—”

“Tea,” said Lady Graceful Ryuu softly. “If you would please arrange it.”

Stiff-hipped, the old sow rose and made her way across the grass to the keep, glancing, more often than once, over her shoulder.

The other ladies all looked at each other, and away. Cam watched the corners of Graceful's mouth lift, faintly, in a smile.

 

GIFT.
CAM STILL could not stop rubbing that sore patch. He thought he might ask for an audience with Gyaar; then he thought he might not, for if he was turned away, then he would leave: post, keep, Lord, leave them all. Out of that thought, something came clear. He thought of Kayforl in that gold-lit, always-summer time; the war, blood-washed; and now, here, this green time, a growing time—and what he did not want was the one thing he had always wanted: to seek, to go. Not now. He poked in his mind at the yearning, with care not to stir it into life again. It did not. He tallied up the people already lost to him, and those that would be, if he gave up his service to Gyaar. What else would he lose? And where would that drive him? Wandering ever?