Hello! Want a taste of Cursebird On A Wire before you purchase? I do it all the time. Here’s a sample of the novella for you to try:
Ibram rose early the morning of the party and shook out his clothes where he’d left them to air near the carved window screen that looked out onto the kitchen garden. The air smelled like warm bread and only faintly like the acrid stench of burnt sugar. It wasn’t unpleasant, truth be told. He could just about hear the kitchen staff bustling down below. Most of Halfrey’s male guards were still asleep, but when he glanced about, the beds of the night shift were empty.
He took a moment to stand there, in nothing but his underlinen and stockings, and breathe, even though his skin tingled in the cold. The silence felt deceptively peaceful. It almost seemed unreal, though he supposed after tonight he would know who to ask about that. Seven long months he’d spent keeping his head down and his mouth civil, working off the Halfreys’ ‘generosity’ in allowing him out of their cells. He’d provided them with their pretense to approach Lady Azadiya and gain a foothold in Lityen. Cangsa, he’d even tried to catch the cursebird with the Halfrey’s actual guardsmen when it had started battering itself to bits in the family courtyard.
He grinned down at his feet and wiggled his toes. The young Lord Halfrey had been driven mad by the cursebird and all its antics. Its malaise had spread itself thickly in three days. Small accidents at first, but every annoyance built over time. Clothes had been ruined, food burnt, and carefully packaged goods spoilt. Rot had consumed an entire root cellar since its appearance. Ibram had even taken a particularly long tumble down two flights of stairs—during a night patrol, but in full torchlight. Still, he didn’t mind the bruises so much. Ama always said there was nothing like a bad fall to teach you how to land.
Ibram drew up his thick grey woolen breeches. Around him, the others began to stir. He threw on his cotton shirt and tucked it beneath his waistband.
“Still around, then?” his closest bunkmate Pall asked through a jaw-cracking yawn.
“My last day,” Ibram said.
“You’re the worst arm-for-hire I’ve ever met,” Pall snorted. “You’d think a man as hungry for coin as you are might be able to recognize a windfall in your lap.”
Laughter rippled out amongst the guards. Ibram shrugged. He could admit that soft work with a minor noble in a rich village was an attractive prospect no matter who you were, and even Ibram felt its pull. But folk who worked outside the imperial boundary set around alchemical sects never truly understood what living there meant for those inside it. He was only an arm-for-hire in the barest and most importantly legal sense of the term, after all. But Ibram kept his mouth shut. He’d spent the better part of their seven month journey not explaining the details of his erstwhile hiring; he wasn’t going to come over all confessional now.
“I like to travel,” he said, because he liked a good half-truth in place of a bald lie.
Pall sat up and stretched with a groan. Ibram walked to the communal glass nailed to the wall. He brushed through his thick reddish-brown hair with both hands, curling the ends back behind his ears. He made a face and rubbed sleep out of the corners of his eyes and dragged his thumbs along his high cheekbones. He tilted his chin and scrubbed the back of his hand under his jaw. He never had much worry about a beard like Father, but he lived in hope. Twenty-three was as good an age to begin shaving as any.
Ibram returned to his cot. He picked up his heavy brown tunic, slashed with rust red at the shoulders and over the chest, and brushed the back down firmly with his hand. He’d been wearing it through the journey, but all it had needed last night was a good beating for dust and an airing. He shook it out before him and groaned; behind him, Pall laughed.
“Another unfortunate incident?” he called out in a fair imitation of Marshal Steward Pherick’s choppy northern accent.
“I’m not upholding anyone’s family honor in this.”
Ibram held the tunic out before him and nodded. Pall laughed again. His clothing was perfectly fine, of course. Ibram took a closer look at his buttons. The knots that should have held his tunic closed on Ibram’s right side hung loose on their threads. The night before they’d been as tight as the day he’d brought the garment home from the tailor’s.
Ibram breathed out through his nose. He dropped the tunic onto his cot and then rubbed his thumbnail against his eyebrow. The damned Ruckus had done that, and on the day—Well, it couldn’t be helped. A cursebird would have its way.
He frowned, standing still while all around him the Halfrey guards ran out the door to the sound of Cook’s bell calling them to breakfast. The party was to begin late midday, and even if he wasn’t of the household, he had to look better than a vagrant. Lady Azadiya would be attending, after all; he wanted to present a good impression to make up for his failure in the North.
He frowned. His belt wouldn’t cover this, and he didn’t have… He looked back towards his cot and the leather bag peeking out beneath it. He might have enough pins in his mending bag to hold the tunic together from the lining, but he could just imagine himself wincing every time he had to bow and a pin jabbed him for his trouble. He’d be bleeding out as soon as they opened the gates. Ibram sighed.
Five minutes later, with his old green and brown leather quilted gambeson in place and his broad leather belt wrapped around his stomach, he ran down the rickety wooden stairs where the guardsmen lived above the kitchens and across the servants’ courtyard. Marshal Steward Pherick already had his little notebook in front of him and was scratching items off with the stick of red pigment he kept in a pouch.
He raised his eyebrows and ticked something off his list. “You’re out of uniform, Ibram,” he said curtly, and made an obvious survey of all the other guardsmen, resplendent as loafs of bread in a bakery.
Ibram bowed with his hands over his stomach. Marshal Steward Pherick was taller than him, which rankled, but many folk were. His slate grey hair hung in ragged layers over his narrow head and dangled past his shoulders. He, at least, had managed to put on his feast day best clothes, a long rust-color tunic and brown breeches edged in complicated golden thread. The marshal steward huffed and waved him up. Ibram placed a hand on his sica to stop it swinging against his leg.
“Yes, Marshal Steward,” Ibram said. He tugged on his woolen sleeves. “I had…a bit of an accident.”
He whistled a short birdcall, and Marshal Steward Pherick winced. Everyone had been made uneasy when the Ruckus had screamed about the manor, a small red bird made of bleeding bell petals and rusty iron splinters with eyes that dripped ink. It had beat its wings against the walls and its head into the doors until it collapsed in a sulfurous stink and disintegrated. The general consensus was that the cursebird had been sent by a competitor, but the small noble houses in Lityen were more cautious than in other parts of the province. They lived in the shadow of an alchemist sect, after all, and had learned to measure success in different ways. Yet small accidents had begun to pile up almost immediately and guard duties had been doubled. Lord Sans had decreed his exhibition would continue regardless.
Marshal Pherick sighed heavily and tapped his pigment stick. “And this was unrepairable?” he asked.
Ibram nodded. “It was fine in the night and ruined by morning,” he said.
Lally, one of the lowlanders they’d picked up on the way down from Halfrilat, noticed him. She grinned widely, showing off her gold tooth. She slapped the shoulder of the guard next to her and gestured in Ibram’s direction. Ibram pretended not to notice.
“He won’t like it,” Marshal Pherick said.
“I’ll dip in the back, sir,” Ibram said. “It won’t matter once the guests arrive.”
“You know perfectly well you’re placed in the reception hall,” the Marshal said, in as close to a peevish tone as Ibram had ever heard from him. They were only a small grouping, barely forty in all, and even with all the recent hires, it was the barest respectable minimum. A party like this meant all hands to the pump, including Ibram. Well, no one had asked him, to be sure, but it had been heavily implied. Everything had to be just so for Lord San’s introduction to Lityen society.
Ibram spread his hands. “I’ve got a bit of brown on me, though, haven’t I? And I’m only employed for today. Stick me behind a stack of presents and no one will notice the difference.”
Marshal Pherick pinched the bridge of his nose and then waved Ibram off. “Go and eat your breakfast,” he muttered. There were red fingerprints to either side of his nose, but Ibram kept it to himself.
He sat down to eat his bowl of brown butter quash and his cup of unsweetened, unstrained black shay while Marshal Steward Pherick stood at the head of the long trestle table and ran through their security duties again. Lord Sans was nervous about everything from the food to the crockery to the new servants to the possibility of anonymous rogue competitors sabotaging his delicacies, especially the ice wine and the alchemy which protected it. The Ruckus hadn’t helped his paranoia. The young lord had lost half his wardrobe and a full third of the household goods his father had put in his pack train. Ibram chewed and swallowed his mush carefully and kept his eyes down. Repairing the damage would take a chunk out of the common budget.
There was grumbling from the others when Marshal Steward Pherick loudly reminded them that Ibram was to guard the lordship’s presentation table during the entry processional. It was an honor usually reserved for household guards, and Ibram was merely an arm-for-hire. Lally thumped him for it, presumably out of Northern solidarity, since she was to be at the table alongside him. Ibram merely elbowed her back, and ate his breakfast while Marshal Steward Pherick continued. As the morning led on, they assembled for what Pherick called his “fools’ trials” with all the servants who were going to be serving in the public courtyard and those ferrying food and drink from the kitchens. They each lined up to practice for the party, carrying trays and offering the guards chosen to play guests fake cups of wine. The new servants were mostly locals, though none that Ibram recognized, and hastily employed for the business. It took a lot to get a proper merchant’s showing up and running, and they’d lost a great deal of time.
The practice was lively, and smooth walking for the first thirty minutes. Then two full trays of wooden bowls fell to the ground as if the servants carrying them were pushed, and no one would own up to it. The guards grew watchful even as they tripped on the increasingly churned up ground, and a washerwoman lost an entire tray of melon spoons to the mud underneath the walking platform that lined the courtyard; no one was small enough to get them out. Ibram accepted an empty cup from a sweating waiter, and smiled encouragingly. Behind him, something rather large crashed to the ground.
“It’s fine!” Lally yelled in her thick Northern croak. “It’s just the linens!”
The servant turned pale and rushed past Ibram, who turned at the waist to watch them all scurry. He saw half of the cloth meant for the dainty mouths of Halfrey’s guests crumpled on the grass before the entire table was overtaken by a swirling mass of brown robed servants. He chuckled into the back of his hand and then shrugged when some of the other guards glared.
He turned back around in time to see Marshal Steward Pherick sigh heavily and look over his notebook.
“Again!” he called out, and guards and servants—those not running for the laundry—took up position.
***
The guards were soon released for morning patrols, so Ibram spent some time in relative quiet, patrolling the outside of the manor and making sure no stall seller attempted to set up shop again. At near midday, he sat along the high second walkway with the other guards. Staring down into the six-sided courtyard was like peering down into the beehive it was named for; servants dispatched huge platters of milk bun puddings and bowls of honey out the doors, and collected tray upon tray of all the fruit that could be taken from the market: star-shaped syah berries, bowls of cubed melon in syrup, and glass apples piled up in great glimmering pyramids. A gigantic basket of rolls made Ibram’s stomach grumble in yearning. There were yellow grain salads studded with nuts, platters of clarifying bowls of broth, and even six entire wheels of cheese that had been cut into scenes of Northern life.
Lally nudged his shoulder. “Let me see your sica,” she said.
“I’m not that kind of boy, young mistress,” Ibram said.
Lally groaned and held out her calloused hand. “Disgusting,” she said.
Ibram drew his sica, and handed it over hilt-first. “Careful,” he said. “That was a gift.”
Lally held the inwardly curved dagger so that the blade caught the light. She whistled. “It’s a wicked thing,” she said, and tossed it in her hand.
“Westerners are all wicked,” Ibram said. “The only difference between us and Easterners is direction.”
Lally snorted, and pointed with the blade down below. “I think that one looks like the compound at Halfrilat,” she said.
“You’ve never seen that,” Ibram muttered.
She handed him back his sica. “Well, am I right?”
Ibram sheathed it. He squinted at the serving platters. “It looks like a mound of shredded cheese next to a pile of little toasts.”
Lally sighed extravagantly. “You have the imagination of a tarmap.”
“Fine enough.” Ibram rolled his eyes. Northern manors were built like rounded hills attached by tunnels to keep in the heat. “It looks like a haystack which might—somehow—remind me of Lord Sans’ ancestral home. It’s not as tall, though, and I don’t think I’d enjoy sleeping in it.”
“I take it back,” Lally said. “A tarmap would make a better storyteller.”
“They make better eating, too,” Ibram said.
Cook rang the bell twice, and they rolled to their feet along with the other guards to head down the stairs. Staff lined up around the trestle tables for dinner, sour buns filled with dripping and mushrooms and a mug of small beer. There was no room around them to sit this time, with almost the entire household prepping for the night’s festivity.
Ibram wandered off to sit on the wooden platform for a bit of elbow room and some air. His stomach fluttered, but the beer tasted all right, and the roll was soft. He chewed and swallowed with his eyes on the eaves of the wooden portion of the roof. Here in the servants’ section, there was no protective glass ceiling, and the main grounds were exposed to the open air. The wind felt good on his face when he tilted it upwards.
He blinked at the grey sky. It might be the Ruckus made it rain, next, or cracked the ceiling so all the wine decanted for the party spoiled with drips. He licked his lips and took another bite. Probably not—well, possibly yes—but the Ruckus was more annoying than anything, nothing but an irritant, really. He’d had non-alchemical bad luck that was worse. It was the party that had everyone on edge. Lord Sans had been ordered by his father to encourage trade, after all, and he couldn’t become the toast of Lityen society without a party.
Gravy seeped onto Ibram’s hands. He licked them clean and then bent down to dry them on the grass. Around him, the whole house was bustling into party order, servants gathering up the rented serviceware and last trays of food and guards finding their patrolling partners. A stray knee knocked into him from behind and he tumbled down off the platform.
Ibram tucked his head and rolled into a clear patch with a groan as his boots thudded into the dirt. He pushed himself to his feet. “Kivan the Red take you!”
Lally cackled as she ran by, closing her thin blonde braid into a bun with those jeweled clasps the Northerners favored as she disappeared into the family courtyard. Ibram straightened his clothes as he brushed himself off, and then bent down to pick up his plate and cup. He knocked dirt off his low-heeled boots against the walkway and walked over to drop his dishes into the communal tub at the end of the trestle table. Ibram rolled his neck along his shoulders and then gripped his shoulder where his half-cloak connected to his gambeson. He stopped and stared back up to the male guards’ room. He’d forgotten his half-cloak.
A servant stood up, hefting a massive tray full of delicately stacked glass bowls for the fruit wines, and wavered on the steps up from the huge wash basins set out on the kitchen garden. She tottered sideways, glass tinkling alarmingly, and then right as the glittering tower leaned heavily left. Ibram lunged forward with both hands raised and caught the stack. They both froze, wide eyes staring at each other over the dessert dishes. The laughing servants around them stilled.
“Slowly,” the servant mouthed, and Ibram nodded.
He braced the bowls as she took a step forward and then another careful step until the tray and glass dishes were again in full balance. At her nod, Ibram let his hands drop. He breathed a sigh of relief.
The tray wavered, the servant shrieked, and Ibram snatched a tumbling bowl out of mid-air. The other top three shattered with an alarmingly musical tonality.
He held the survivor up by the rim. “Does it need to be washed again?”
“Olla!” yelled Cook. Her broad florid face was turning a worrying shade of maroon. “Get over there and help your sister! I swear, I’m carving every plate you break out of your bones!”
Another servant girl ran up from the wash tub and grabbed the end of her sister’s tray. Ibram stretched himself upwards and replaced his captured bowl on top of the stack; he stood to one side as the servants carefully made their way up the steps to the right-hand side of the wooden platform. A cough burst out to his left; he turned and there stood Marshal Steward Pherick. Immediately, Ibram’s back went stiff.
He bowed with his hands on his stomach. “Apologies, sir,” he said.
Marshal Steward Pherick sighed as Ibram straightened. “No need,” he said. “If that’s the worst of what we get during this event, I’ll take it and be glad.”
Ibram nodded dutifully.
He stood back and tucked his left hand around the hilt of his dagger where it was strapped to his waist. Marshal Steward Pherick sighed again; he was a man for long faces and schedules. He ticked off another mark on his list, and the pigment snapped in half. Ibram bit both lips together and swallowed back his laughter while Pherick grumbled and held both arms out, pad in one hand and crumbling pigment in the other.
“Oh, hang…here, take this,” Marshal Steward Pherick said, and thrust the paper into Ibram’s chest. Ibram fumbled the pad, caught it, and held his arms out stiffly so that no crumb of pigment smeared his gambeson. Marshal Pherick carefully poured his broken stick into his pouch and clapped his hands over the railing; red crumbs flew into the air. He jerked his head towards the servants’ door and walked off. Ibram followed.
He handed the marshal back his property as they stepped from the rough planks to the painted wood of the family courtyard. Ibram winced a little to look at it; the servants hadn’t been able to clean the place after all. The garden in the center of the courtyard here was for pleasure (and medicine, as he recalled it; the Lady Vo Messyn had been a well-respected doctor), but he doubted Lord Sans had much use for it. He was a small man in every sense of the word except height, with shining blond hair and wide-set eyes. He’d spent the first day of their occupation decapitating honey-lamps until the whole border was raw stems. Now, he paced up and down the stone path, throwing bits of bread into the drained fountain splashed with red dye (and still vaguely smoking for some reason) while a servant followed behind with a tray. At least all the young lord’s buttons looked done up.
Marshal Pherick and Ibram stepped down the little stone staircase and bowed before Lord Sans, who tossed the remains of his meal back onto his servant’s tray and held both arms and palms out at his waist perfunctorily. He curled his hands closed, and they unbent.
“Is everything prepared?” Lord Sans demanded. He frowned. “Marshal Pherick, you’ve got…” he trailed away and gestured vaguely at his face. “Is it paint? Are you ill? Clean your nose, man, we’re trying to make a good impression!”
The Marshal Steward’s face went slack, and his hand jerked up to his face. He glanced at his fingertips and then narrowed his eyes at them. Carefully, he withdrew a handkerchief and cleaned his face and hands again.
Lord Sans waved away the servant at his shoulder and rocked back and forth on his heels. He pulled down his gambeson and brushed down the front. “Trida tells me we lost the use of the linen. What are my guests to use instead? The table sheets? The—what are you wearing?”
Ibram tucked his arms behind his back. To be fair, he thought his green and brown made a prettier sight with his grey breeches than Lord Sans’ house coloring. Rust and brown wasn’t the ugliest combination Ibram had ever seen, but it was high in the lists, even with a fancy example in front of him. That high up in the mountains, you’d think they’d want a little more color in their lives.
“There was a small problem with the laundry, lordship,” Marshal Pherick answered for him. “But nothing to disturb the course of the festivities.”
Lord Sans groaned and shook his open palms to the sky. “What did I do to deserve this?” he muttered.
He twisted on his heels and began walking. Ibram looked to the Marshal Steward.
“Yes, my lord,” Marshal Steward Pherick said as he gestured to Ibram to come along. He glanced down at his pad. “I’ve been through the lists with the cooks as well as the guards. Even the recent hires have practiced their roles.”
“And the food looks well?” Lord Sans asked. He turned the corner near the walking platform and began to pace on the graveled walkway. “The wine has been decanted? The ale?”
“I oversaw their placement myself, my lord,” Marshal Steward Pherick said. “Everything is in order.”
“And the centerpieces? What about the ice wine?”
“What with all the disturbances, I thought it best to give it its own guard, my lord. It’s still within the casks, but they’ve been placed nearest to your doorway so that the guests may anticipate their taste.”
“And if they don’t?” Lord Sans sighed with his entire body and looked up towards the glass roof that covered the courtyard. The young lord was nineteen if he was a day, the bird-like third son in a family of ten, each one of whom more closely resembled a rachtbear than the last. Ibram felt a little sympathy for him, if only just. It was tough work to make your fortune so far from home, but the lordship’s hard landing if he failed—if that were possible—was still a feather bed. Ibram looked around at the thick splashes of red ink that stained the family courtyard and wrinkled his nose at the spreading patches of orange grass near the walkway. The Vo Messyns’ land marshal was not going to be pleased when the family retook the manor.
“Lityen loves a party, lordship,” Ibram said. “Even more than the river folk. And no one’s been able to bring ice wine down this far yet. You’ll get a good payday out of this, mark me.”
Wines from the North were always bound to cause a bit of a stir; they were difficult to transport without spoiling. The grapes were started in underground springs with sun charms, then frozen when they were ripe. The stuff was too rich and sweet for Ibram’s taste, if he was being honest. Give him a good glass of apple cider or his ama’s homebrewed tolnic any day. Northern wines were difficult to acquire, though, which was like waving gold in an evening courtyard for nobility if Ibram was any judge. The Halfreys were the first family to try to make a go of the difficult journey in three generations. The ice wine alone would have brought guests to the party, given the rumors around what just one dram did for the constitution.
“It’s not just about the money,” Lord Sans insisted. “Not everything is about gold and silver, you know.”
That was true enough, Ibram supposed. Some things could be about copper, after all. He bowed because he couldn’t think of anything to say without laughing. He heard the clink of trays and glasses as the servants began walking along the upper walkways that led to the two doors into the public courtyard. As he straightened, he watched Marshal Steward Pherick make the conscious decision not to tell his now slowly simmering lordship about the little bumps in the road during practice.
He touched the little leather wallet attached to his belt where he kept his bells and dice to call upon Yilka the Green. There was no need to seek her aid, of course, but he’d fallen into the habit when the Halfrilat guards had stripped him down. They’d been returned with courtesy when Lord Halfrey had cleared the air between him and Ibram, but it had still been jarring.
“Then they all know what to do in case anything goes astray?” Lord Sans asked. He twisted the fingers of his right hand.
Ibram snorted and quickly turned it into a cough, covering his lower face with his elbow. Lord Sans looked back over his shoulder with a frown on his narrow mouth. Ibram tucked his arms behind his back and stood quietly. His toes began to tap in his boots, but he brought them under control.
“And you, Uncleton,” Lord Sans said. His pale green eyes narrowed. “You brought—you’re certain your…friend will be here? The Lady Hobon?”
Ibram didn’t roll his eyes, but it was very near thing. “Ucalegon, Lordship,” he said. “I gave her acceptance to Marshal Steward Pherick myself.”
Lord Sans scratched his carefully trimmed blond beard. The Halfreys had been very surprised a lowly arm for hire was in contact with an alchemist, much less a titled one. The discovery had sent him straight to the dungeon while they decided if he were a spy or not, but it had to be admitted that her employment had kept him from actually being convicted. Laumye the Blue turned all tides eventually, Ibram reminded himself.
The most gracious Northern lord, Lord Halfrey himself, had decreed that Ibram could keep all the money in his pockets and his very own wrists out of shackles for the price of a little humiliation and one noble invitation. Thus he could be considered paid for his ‘inconveniencing’ in Halfrilat, and as far as Lord Halfrey and his son were concerned, that was an end to hard feelings. Who was Ibram to say he knew better than they?
“And which preceptory is she from?” he asked.
Ibram grit his teeth to hold back a very loud sigh; they’d been through this so many times. “She is of the Preceptory of Yseult, Lordship. Their discipline covers the physical body.”
Lord Sans began to grin slyly, and Ibram fixed his eyes on the far wall of the courtyard behind him. What a lovely mural of…some kind of farming procedure. “There are seven such preceptories within the sect,” he attempted to explain yet again. “Mariae, where sits the Lord Preceptor. Afsoun, who seek to understand the transmutation of objects. Bedris—”
“Perhaps I should have sent my own message,” Lord Sans muttered. “A written invitation from someone far closer in status…”
“She wouldn’t have accepted,” Ibram interrupted right back, but softened his tone. No need to remind anyone that any Lady Hobon was so far above a young lord birthed in a snowdrift that she’d have to squint to see him. “She’s a Merrilian.”
Well, he could hint.
Lord Sans squinted at him; he still didn’t recognize the province, even though Marshal Steward Pherick had spent half their journey from the Bright Broken Peaks down to the garden provinces grilling Ibram on the main houses and persons of note in Lityen for Lord Sans’ edification. With a blank face, Marshal Steward Pherick began to climb Mount Ignorance again. “She’s of the West, my lord. Introductions to strangers are complicated.”
Lords Sans nodded. Ibram glanced at the Marshal Steward, who inclined his head in slight approval. It was important for the young lord to know these things, even if he seemed incapable of remembering it most days. To be…fair, Ibram supposed the confusion wasn’t totally Lord Sans’ fault. Lityen, for all its imperially restricted size, was a fairly traditional alchemists’ domain, and thus a bit of an oddity compared to the rest of the Vissilian Empire. The high and the low mixed together, the shops and stalls crowded with petitioners, and all brought within touching distance because of the alchemists atop the living mountain.
“The West,” Lord Sans scoffed. “Such…” He puckered his lips and eyed the trail of servants as they scurried by. Young Olla tripped again, but recovered, and he winced. “She won’t eat with her fingers, will she?”
Ibram clenched his jaw and forced himself to relax again. In only a few small hours, he would be free of this petty noble and his family’s machinations. He just had to keep himself calm in the meantime. The West had been the last of the conquered lands before the Grassland Expansion, and its customs remained a bit farther from the Imperial Vissilian norm than many found strictly comfortable. The North had been among the first, and the great houses had done enough intermarrying that you could throw a pebble and strike some castoff Imperial cousin lurking in the family bloodline.
Marshal Steward Pherick coughed. “The Western practice is family-oriented, my lord,” he said. “Amongst strangers they use cutlery.”
“I doubt Lady Azadiya will forget whose party she’s at, Lordship,” Ibram said.
Lord Sans frowned.
“My Lord,” Marshal Steward Pherick said, smoothing his hand down his velvet robe. “Perhaps we should move into the receiving room?”
Lord Sans looked startled, which wasn’t very new, but eager, which was a rather recent development. Ibram had spent hours riding alongside his carriage, carefully naming all the great houses in Lityen so that Marshal Steward Pherick could make note of their importance. Lord Sans had spent that time asking about the evening courtyards in the village, and naming various ‘facts’ about barbarians he’d learned from traveling shows. If he was successful, Ibram figured the young lord was counting on becoming an upstanding light of Lityen’s social life as its shining Wit.
“Yes, yes, they’ll be arriving soon, won’t they?” Lord Sans tucked his long blond hair behind both ears and straightened his satin tunic. His flat cheekbones were flushed, but the rest of his face was pale. He flapped his right hand irritably and walked off.
They followed Lord Sans, and the servants tucked themselves against the walls to avoid obstructing the lord’s path. Each courtyard was connected by four doors, two at the ground level and two on the upper level. The Vo Messyn manor was of recent construction, not built for defense; instead of enclosed towers for archers, the upper level was bracketed by open-air staircases and delicate balconies. The terraces that led further into the apartments and sitting rooms were equally dainty. As they walked past, Lally detached from her station on the wall and fell in at their rear.
It was a bit like being surrounded by sunflowers. Lord Sans and Marshal Steward Pherick wore their hair long and loose to their shoulders, held back at the ears with bejeweled iron clasps. Lally’s more practical braid was tucked into a bun. Ibram had never adopted the fashion. He was smaller than all three and wore his dark hair short, as a Southerner might, but not shorn so close, a compromise between his Western mother and Vissilian father. They passed through the elaborate double doors that separated the family’s apartments from the public courtyard, and Lord Sans sighed.
“At least it didn’t attack here,” he said. “I think Father would have damned me to oblivion if the entire manor was a loss.”
“Yes, my lord,” Marshal Steward Pherick replied.
Lally fell back to Ibram’s side and raised her eyebrows at him. Ibram shrugged. He and the others had run from the family courtyard to the kitchen area and back again trying to catch the damnable little bird before it had exploded. The doors to the public courtyard, however, had been firmly shut, and the Ruckus had run out of steam before it could get through.
Ibram took careful stock of his surroundings as they walked. The public courtyard—far more elaborate and stately, with a cascading interior garden whose blooms hadn’t faced execution—did look untouched. Each little open-air octagonal pavilion was arrayed in a different selection of Halfrey wares, complete with food and enough spare serviceware to cover any mishaps. As they passed, a servant was restacking a pyramid of buns while another rubbed dirt off one with a clean rag. They bowed as they passed and the girl lost both rag and bread to a stray elbow. Ibram bit his lip as they walked on.
“Are we certain the gift is suitable?” Lord Sans asked as they reached the reception hall.
“It will soon be the Festival of the Founder,” Marshal Steward Pherick replied. “Considering that this is your lordship’s introduction to Lityen, your entire party may be considered a part of the gift. A certain simplicity in the final offering is required.”
Ibram stayed quiet even though that was absolutely untrue. The Festival of the Founder was the lessening of austerity following the Feast of the Sundered Legion; it signaled excess and dancing, and gifts without number. In the North, house gifts were typically food. The central provinces were usually more craft-based. In Lityen, house gifts were woodcraft, denoting the rich forests that crowded their half of the province. As an example of hopeful compromise, they’d decided on boiled wine sweets in small carved boxes. The trestle tables pushed to one side contained swirling pyramids of the things, more than enough for the expected throng, which was good since the first three batches of the candies had met fiery ends out the back of the servants’ courtyard.
They walked through the great double doors that guarded the one entrance to the public courtyard and into the empty reception hall, warmed through with candles on every available sconce and a few sailing lights that had drifted in from the public courtyard. Lord Sans arranged himself at the head of the nearest table on the small wooden dais with Marshal Steward Pherick on his right and Lally and Ibram behind the gifts, more for show than any real security. The gifts would be formally presented to the guests as they left. To either side of the elaborately carved entrance gate stood two other members of the guard and beyond that a platoon of servants.
“Where’s your half-cloak?” Lally whispered.
“Oh hang—” Ibram snapped his mouth closed as the filigree inner gate rose and the procession of guests began. He put his hands behind his back and stood straight.
As the reception line began, the hall grew hot. The early crowd was a bit larger than expected and hummed in anticipation. Several sly eyes glanced around to the rafters and the floor, and Ibram exchanged a quick look with Lally. Someone had absolutely spilled the water when the servants had been let out to gather food for the party. Ibram wondered who it was. He, of course, had been strictly discreet when running about his old haunts on his errands for the Marshal Steward. Lityen was a practical sort of place, and took curses seriously. After all, they made for excellent gossip.
Ibram saw several young lords and ladies from the more important families wander in with their assorted maids. He could see folk representing the Polis, the Tyal, the Vo Char and the Vo Wolly. The Vo Wolly were represented in force tonight; they had sent at least three of their largest boys. In turn, they were trailed by maids who all already seemed to be walking with sore feet and uncertain tempers. But then, the younger Vo Wolly set were like that. Ibram wondered how long it would take one of them to get lost in a hedge maze or upend a table.
He shifted on his own feet. Not everyone had followed the fashion of a short half-cloak on the right shoulder, but it was a close thing. He kept his face still and his eyes watchful. He didn’t recognize most of them—some he remembered as his own family’s customers—but from the satins and silks and snowy linen, he was certain their lines of Imperial credit ensured they kept a good cellar. The Festival of the Founder demanded it. Ibram smirked. It was practically a law to get drunk and toast to the old man’s ascendancy into…well, history, at least. Ibram didn’t quite see how inventing the imperial drainage system could propel an alchemist into the heavens, but he wasn’t in charge.
There wasn’t much to do but stand by the house gifts and look solemn. Guests walked past in a long train. It looked like the novelty of northern wine had drawn in a good crowd after all. The noise became louder in the antechamber as more guests began to arrive and their servants scuttled around to divest them of their coats and cloaks. Spring held full sway in Lityen, which meant rain and winds still edged with cold. Beside him, he felt Lally lean in more closely.
“Are we going to see your family here, young lord?” she whispered.
“I’m just an arm-for-hire,” Ibram whispered back as he kept an eye on Marshal Steward Pherick. “All I did—”
Marshal Steward Pherick cleared his throat and they shut up. Lally stepped back into her place further down the table as the contract men began to file into the room, following whatever house they served and ready to jot down their young lords and ladies’ preferences for consultation later.
Lords Sans nodded his head or bowed as the guests’ servants introduced their employers, while Marshal Steward Pherick made note of their names in his gilded ledger. Ibram twitched his nose at the sharp sugary odor of the wine sweets in their boxes in front of him. He idly listened to the snippets of conversation, guests remarking on the amount of presents and what they hoped the Halfreys had sent for trade. Some even openly speculated on what stabilizing charms they’d used to get the stuff as far as Lityen at all. As the noise in the antechamber decreased, the sounds of the party in swing began to grow louder. Lord Sans began to look irritable, and his bows grew more perfunctory as time stretched. Ibram watched the young lord turn and say something sharply to Marshal Steward Pherick that made the man’s entire face twitch.
“You get paid even if your lady doesn’t show her face, right?” Lally whispered.
“She’s an alchemist, not a puppy,” Ibram said and ducked his face in her direction. “I can’t just dangle a ribbon in front of her and get her to jump!”
“Don’t alchemists down South like to take a personal interest in the world?” she asked.
He watched the line of party guests weave out into the antechamber. It was already long enough that his feet ached in anticipation. The back of his head prickled; his toes began to tap in their boots. Lord Halfrey had practically slavered at the chance for an introduction to a ‘southern alchemist.’ In the North, they were ascetics, mostly concerned with the nature of alchemy and content to rest on their one achievement: cantrips of ice. It took a chisel to get them out of their preceptories. The further down a body traveled, though, the more involved in daily life an alchemical sect became. Lityen, the last true settlement before the Imperial road west, followed the alchemical calendar more closely than any directive from the Empire. Festivals took up most of the year, promising hefty trade for anyone willing to live there with the close eye the Empress, Gracious and Divine, kept on her most…ebullient subjects.
“We’re not in the South,” Ibram said.
“Close enough!” Lally said with a grin. “Don’t they drink? Even ours like a good ale now and again, and with all your talk, I thought it would be like watching two age-old friends running into each other’s arms in a tearful reunion or something.”
Heat crept up the back of Ibram’s neck. “I never said anything like that!”
“Well, don’t tell the Marshal Steward, he’s a romantic.”
Marshal Steward Pherick cleared his throat. They returned to their posts. Lally’s grin was entirely unprofessional, and Ibram resented it.
Partway through the reception hour, Lady Sebbina, the Imperial commissioner, made her appearance. It was almost as important for her to be seen at the party as it was for Lady Azadiya in Lord Sans’ estimation. No trade could be accomplished unless the Bureau of Commerce provided the appropriate seals and allowances, nor could Lord Sans stay in Lityen without the proper documents. He was lucky to be so far down in the line of succession back home, really. A minor noble house always had better luck in establishing themselves near alchemists.
Ibram supposed that, since she had accepted the invitation, the Halfreys’ application was soon to be authorized. Her presence certainly interested the other guests immensely. She was just as Ibram remembered her, if a little more bent with age. Her light brown skin was lined with wrinkles at the eyes and mouth. Her white hair was twisted up underneath her pink cap, which was embroidered with white and blue flowers with mirrors in their centers. Her dress, also a deep pink, was long enough to hide her boots and her silk over-gown was thick with embroidered green vines. The heavy thunk of her engraved walking cane instinctively made him stand taller, as if she were about to yell at him to stop playing in the road and let her carriage through. The empty spot on his right shoulder where his half-cloak should have hung tingled.
Her sharp dark eyes passed over the table, Lally, and then himself without pausing. Her lips pursed as she walked by, her two servants sweeping past in her wake, and Ibram took a slow deep breath in and then held it. Oh, if the Ruckus struck Lady Sebbina they were all going to be in a great deal of trouble. He rubbed sweat from his palms off on his thighs. Was it a good thing or a bad thing to be back, after all?
Marshal Steward Pherick made the introductions as the two nobles bowed to each other. Lord Sans’ hands were placed on his stomach, of course, while Lady Sebbina reached out with her arms. He turned his head at a sudden outburst of commotion from the antechamber, but nothing came of it except for a new influx of guests. Most of them were from the village, but Ibram saw a number of river and farm folk in their best lace and sturdy headdresses. Some of the guests were from the Western trading families down from Emerald Mountains, draped in clan beads and embroidered satins. A few older tradesfolk acknowledged Ibram with a short nod or by tapping a particular jewelry piece made by his family as they passed. He heard Lally snort once or twice, but Ibram didn’t let himself do more than stand and guard. Being too familiar wasn’t professional, after all.
The lights in the reception hall began to turn orange, signaling the approaching end of the hour. Ibram’s breath stalled briefly in his throat, and he coughed to clear it. He looked carefully out of the corner of his eye at the Marshal Steward and Lord Sans. The young lord’s face was beginning to flush unfavorably in the warming light. Ibram shifted his gaze back to the dwindling trickle of guests in front of him.
Well. If she didn’t come, it wasn’t like he hadn’t fulfilled his end of their coercive bargain. Lord Sans and his wares were out of the North safely with plenty of prospective customers amongst the guests tonight—Lady Sebbina herself liked a good cup at dinner! A tacit understanding was no kind of contract, and he hadn’t even bled on anything, so it wasn’t as if the Halfreys could claim he left a promise uncompleted. He rested his hand on his dagger as a pair of maids swept past behind Master and Mistress Tarsis.
He blinked. The Tarsises? He swallowed a laugh. They had actually come! He turned his head to watch them approach Lord Sans, who now resembled a piebald peach. Ibram elbowed Lally.
“Can you believe this?” he whispered.
“What?” she asked.
“They’re competitors,” he hissed in delight.
Her elbow knocked into his own ribs. “Why did they get an invitation, then?”
Ibram shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Must have been in that last batch they sent me out with. Do you think lordship’s face is going to be permanently that color?”
“Shh!” Lally said. The noise level hadn’t gone down far enough that they could hear the main dais without straining.
“Master and Mistress Tarsis, welcome,” Lord Sans said. They both bowed stiffly, though the Tarsises straightened only after Lord Sans. Mistress Tarsis’ red hair trailed over her shoulders in ringlets, held back with a gauze scarf tied at the nape of her neck. Her husband’s gold-embroidered skull cap twinkled in the light. They both wore blue sleeveless kaftans held closed by wide embroidered purple belts, following the Imperial fashion for married persons to complement each other’s clothes. Lord Sans’ brown and rust made him look like a cave sparrow next to them.
Master Tarsis touched his fingers to his lips and then turned his open palm out. With both hands, he signed to Mistress Tarsis and then nodded to Lord Sans. His wife—who was a lowland Northern transplant herself, now that Ibram thought about it—stepped forward.
“My husband hears, but cannot speak. We believe you do not sign, lordship,” she said, rather than asked, loudly enough that Ibram didn’t need to strain to hear her. Several other guests still to be greeted looked bemused.
Lord Sans cleared his throat. “I do not, Mistress,” he replied. Mistress Tarsis nodded, and Lord Sans shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I regret I must rely on your help.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Your surprising but gracious invitation gives my husband and myself a wealth of joy, lordship. We’re always eager to sample the simple joys of my childhood home.”
This introduction to local society was going brilliantly. A minor Polis hid her mouth behind her hand and ducked her head. Lally elbowed Ibram, and he elbowed her right back without turning around.
Lord Sans grunted. “As I hope to acquire some of your famous Southern vinegar.”
Marshal Steward Pherick’s face froze into blankness. Ibram kept himself from wincing, but only just. The South was famous for its red vinegar as it was for the thick heady wines that sprung from the same grapes, but there was no way anyone in the room thought the young lord wanted a sample of either. It was a bit of foolishness. Master Tarsis was from Vissilia itself, broad-bodied and dark-skinned, successful even without a house of any great note. Slowly, Pherick made an obvious note in his ledger, and then returned to staring out towards the entrance from over Lord Sans’ shoulder.
“How fortunate,” Mistress Tarsis said brightly, and stood to one side to speak while Master Tarsis signed his reply. She repeated: “Tomorrow, I shall have my maid return the compliment of your invitation with a selection of my favorite varieties. I delight in the discovery of new friendships as well as the opening of trade, and I would have you feel no less welcome than you have made us.”
They bowed with their hands on their stomachs, but rose far more quickly than Lord Sans could respond, and so he was mid-rise as the Tarsises took their leave to enter the public courtyard. He flushed, but said no more, and the next group of guests passed by without comment.
Ibram watched one of the sailing lights drift out into the public courtyard. From the sounds of it, the party was going well, no screams or indelicate shouting. Maybe the Ruckus had worn itself out? That seemed a bit far-fetched, but apart from a few tripped servants and lost silverware, it all seemed to be working out. He chewed a corner of his mouth.
Lord Sans was trying to stretch his back without appearing to be stretching at all; it made him look a bit like a man rubbing up against a tree. Ibram looked away to hide his smile, and peered at the interior gate. One of the servants stationed out in the antechamber ducked inside; she walked quickly forward to the dais and dipped into a bow.
“Just one small party, my lord,” she said. “And then the guards have told me the gates are closed.”
Lord Sans nodded and cleared his throat. “Very well.”
She stepped to one side. A brief swell of noise wafted in from outside and then fell silent. Ibram whipped both hands behind his back and stretched them behind him quickly, before letting them hang down at his thighs. A small pack of young lords—almost too young to be let out of their homes—and their servants appeared at the mouth of the gate and then moved to either side, making way with deep bows that did nothing to make them look older. From their green and yellow tunics, it looked like they were Ealers from Lilibrite, the town down the road where the orchards of Lilia trees grew.
Lally glanced over at him, and Ibram shrugged to hide the sudden fizz in his blood. He tucked the curl of his smile between his teeth and leaned all his weight up onto his toes. He craned his neck and saw the twinkle of gold on a dark head. His stomach turned over as Lally pulled him back down on his heels just in time to watch Lady Azadiya make her entrance.
She stood half a head shorter than her companion, some Attendant from the sect, and smiled as she walked forward with her arms swinging freely. Her eyes still tilted up at the outer corners like someone had just told her a good joke; her shoulders were still broad and her chin sharp. Her dark hair was held back at the crown in a low braided bun, pierced with two small gold hair sticks to the right and one to the left, while the rest of her hair hung loose down her back in thick waves, so heavy it barely curled at the ends.
She passed by the house gift table with a polite smile and a quirk of her eyebrows. Ibram took a deep, slow breath. She was out of uniform, as usual. The Attendant wore the knee-length quilted green gambeson closed at the neck and side, the wrapped grey breeches, and tall leather boots. Lady Azadiya wore a satin green vee-necked dress, sleeveless, with a near translucent cream robe, topped by an overgown of gold lace that trailed to the ends of her fingertips and the soles of her boots, clasped by a wide leather belt itself closed by a braided rope. Trimstone drops twinkled in her ears, and three silver rings made personally by Ibram’s father held pride of place on her right hand. Neither Lady Azadiya nor her Attendant carried a gar with them; it was a little funny to see them walk without hearing the accompanying thunk of their wooden staves. Ibram felt his smile slip free as he watched her walk to the front dais. The air turned heavy with her presence, as it always did, a feeling of pressure like the seconds before a storm.
Lally shook his elbow and he grunted. He wriggled himself free of her pinching grasp and stood apart. His heart pounded in his chest. He’d thought by changing the message Marshal Steward Pherick had dictated that she would be more likely to come to the party, but it did his confidence good to know his plan had actually worked.
“Lady Azadiya Hobon,” her Attendant announced. “Fourth Mentor of the Preceptory of Yseult of the Sect of Seven Fires.”
Ibram tilted his head; that voice sounded familiar. He squinted at the back of the young man’s head. He was solidly built, with a thick neck and hands like shovels. His hair was dark and tightly curled, but worn almost shorn to his skull in the Southern style, so his ears stuck out a bit too abruptly from the sides of his head. He looked young enough to have been a Learner when Ibram had left Lityen, but he couldn’t place him.
Lord Sans bowed deeply with his hands covering his stomach. Lady Azadiya extended her arms at her waist with her palms upward. As she curled her hands closed, Lord Sans rose.
“You honor my father’s—my house, ladyship,” Lord Sans said. He cleared his throat and smiled.
She ignored the slip. “And I very much enjoyed the surprise of the invitation,” she said.
Lord Sans stepped down off the dais with Marshal Steward Pherick behind him. The light was dimming quickly. The Marshal Steward waved his left hand once at the gate, and the guards began to lower it by ropes on either side.
“Will you join me in the courtyard?” Lord Sans asked.
Her head tilted slightly. To show up side by side with her might be considered an implication of preference on Lady Azadiya’s part. She coughed once and glanced behind her.
“I wouldn’t wish to tear you away from the rest of your guests…” she said.
Lord Sans looked behind her and slowly flushed. He’d forgotten the group of young men who’d preceded her into the reception hall, and who were now awkwardly standing in what Ibram assumed was their own order of precedence, waiting to be welcomed.
“I shall go through, lordship,” she said. “No party is complete without the host’s grand entrance.” She glanced over her shoulder and then waved her hand forward. “Ibram.”
The room paused. Ibram’s stomach turned over once more; he coughed and ducked his chin to his chest. Marshal Steward Pherick’s mouth disappeared into a thin white line. Lady Azadiya turned her back and her Attendant fell in at her shoulder. Lally made a sound like a harp with its strings cut as Ibram stepped out from behind the house gift table, and followed Lady Azadiya into the public courtyard.
***
A respectable distance from the entrance, Lady Azadiya paused and put her hands on her hips. She raised her chin to survey the interior gardens, where a crowd had gathered to watch Lady Sebbina as she admired the topiary, doubtless in the hope that she’d mumble something about the Imperial bureaucracy that could help their sixth aunt’s first cousin get hired by the currency office. The pavilions were attracting quite a few curious drinkers, and the water clock had drawn an interested crowd as it flowed with…steaming purple water. Ibram winced. At least it was merely aesthetic?
“You promised me wine and a curse,” Lady Azadiya said, looking at Ibram from the corner of her eye. “And where is your half-cloak?”
“We can start on the drinking portion immediately to your right, my lady,” Ibram muttered. “And must you mention that so loudly?”
She laughed as she led the way further into the courtyard, and Ibram rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. He eyed the troupe of circlers hired for the party. The vielle and citole players struck up a dancing tune, but no one seemed likely to take them up on it. The jugglers, also, were threatening to perform.
“Which part?” she asked over her shoulder, and Ibram diverted his attention. “And if you’re not going to wear the entire outfit, then what happened to your brigandine? You are still his guardsmen, aren’t you?”
Lady Azadiya stopped and turned around; her mouth pulled down into a considering frown. Ibram tugged down on the bottom of his gambeson, and a button loosened on his shoulder. He winced at it, the knot barely holding, and then tucked it under the flap. “I was never employed by him,” he said.
“So you were brought back to Lityen in chains?” she asked.
He shook his head quickly. “No, ladyship,” he said. “More of a go-between, really. Or a living travel compendium.”
She hummed and looked about herself again. “It seems a strung together affair,” she said, and waved her hand towards the garden.
Several other party guests, who clearly had decided to listen in, smothered their mouths and turned away. Lady Sebbina caught sight of them then; her mouth thinned in determination. A maid offered her something pink and steaming on a tray.
“Pray offer that to someone with an easeful stomach, girl,” Lady Sebbina snapped loudly. “I have business elsewhere.”
The maid withdrew, and another took her place, this time with a heavy tray of clear drinks. Lady Sebbina’s cane thunked on the ground. Ibram licked his lips and shrugged.
“Lord Sans wanted a show of ease and comfort,” he said, “less armor and more happy drinking.”
Lady Azadiya took a step back into the crowd, and shook her head. “If he’s got a curse on his hands, I see no reason for less security.”
Ibram raised his hands. “Ladyship, please, he doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“Half of Lityen knew by lunch, mark me,” she said, and began to move through the crowd again. “I had to beat off the offers of accompaniment with my gar.”
Ibram rolled his eyes as he followed her. “I’m sure it’s not such a great matter.”
“Fix your button.” Lady Azadiya laughed as she turned down the right-hand walkway. The public courtyard was, by tradition, the largest structure in a manor. At home, Ibram’s family sold their best creations there to only select clientele, and in this at least the North was no different. Lord Sans had ordered that the entire length of the main courtyard be opened for his exhibition, so that all the guests mingled underneath the sealed glass canopy and trod over the garden in the middle or, supposedly, admired the flowing stream bisecting the far right side just before the smaller terraces.
“Has it only been little things? Buttons and steam and such like? Did we get you in trouble?” the Attendant asked. “Only Mentor said she wouldn’t be able to greet you properly in the reception line.”
“A bit more expensive than that,” Ibram said. “Three batches of candies ruined because the fire roared without stoking. No one was hurt, but sugar costs, you know. Lost flatware, laundry to be redone…one of the kitchen boys collapsed a spit, and lost a day’s dinner. A few of us who got near it have had some trying moments. I took a bit of a spill down some stairs, the steps broke underneath my feet!” The Attendant frowned, and Lady Azadiya looked at him sharply. Ibram chuckled. “I was fine. As for the other…it was only until the party, anyway.”
“And now you’re home!”
The Attendant grinned at him, a bright flash of teeth in his deeply tan skin. He seemed so familiar. Ibram felt himself squinting as if that would help bring the man’s name into focus. The guests around them were mingling with one eye on the food and the other on their fellow partygoers. Someone’s glass crashed to the ground and a scattering of laughter bubbled out; Ibram jerked his head towards the sound of the breakage.
A Kilk woman dressed in bright silks tied and wrapped around her entire body, head to toes, walked on her beribboned hands along the handrail next to them. Her feet waved high in the air. Lady Azadiya raised her eyebrows but said nothing as she led them to one of the small pavilions, where the servants had arranged small plates of slivered white cheese and dried redberries to go with the dainty cups of Halfrey ale. Here, they paused, and there was room enough for a proper greeting. Before Ibram could do more than place his hands on his stomach and duck into a partial bow, she had raised her palms up almost as if she was going to cup his face. He swallowed; he could feel the heat of her skin against his cheeks. She beamed at him, and he could hear the small crowd at the table fall briefly silent.
“Ibram,” she said again. “Laumye the Blue has pointed you home. Your letters failed to note you have grown taller, but no wider.”
She laughed. He grinned as she curled her fingers back and dropped her hands down. Her clan bracelet slipped against her wrist, the carved beads of blue crystal and clear-flecked basalt, creamy bone and iridescent trimstone. Her palms and fingers were dyed a dark green, so she must have been at her research tables longer than she should have been.
“I put in everything else, just as you wished,” he said. “That my height grew as I aged, I thought you would figure out for yourself.”
She waved her hand. “Yes, yes, you were very good, but just because you are working as you go does not mean you are expected to run off and never come back.”
“So Ama said,” he replied. “But your contract was only for information you didn’t have, and how am I supposed to know what minor detail you might find important? Better to have it all neatly arranged so you can sort through it at your leisure.”
“Which of course I have in abundance.”
Ibram ignored that as a grown man might. Behind him, he heard a yelp and a thud, like feet on wooden boards. He glanced behind him; the contortionist had fallen to the ground and was now scratching her covered head with her toes, as if puzzled. He turned back around. “If all plans came together, I would be on my way to the East to see if all those stories about the Valantin are true.”
She sniffed. “Trust me, they never are.”
The Attendant briefly covered his eyes in mortification, and Ibram noticed his hands as well as ladyship’s were dyed green. He nodded and raised his right hand. “Is that why you were late, my lady?” he asked, and wiggled his fingers slightly.
The noise level in the little pavilion bobbled as they stood there. Ibram could feel eyes on him from all sides. The clasp holding his dagger to his belt loosened; he caught his hilt and reset the buckle.
“I was not late,” she protested. “The reception hour had not finished, and if the hour hasn’t finished then the timing of my arrival doesn’t count.”
“The wooly grass came in today,” the Attendant added. “It needed to be prepared for the next round of combat trials.”
“You were mashing up poultices in that?”
She shrugged and brushed her palms against each other. “Clothes wash.”
“Still, I have to wonder what Lord Sans thought of it,” Ibram said. “He’s not met many Westerners, you know.”
“I’m sure he found it a charming decorative addition to my outfit.”
“He’s probably going to ask why you never showed up to work with dyed hands, Master Ucalegon,” the Attendant said, and knocked their shoulders together.
Ibram blinked and let him. “I…suppose not.”
“Ibram,” she said with a smile. “Do you not recognize Ahksell?”
Ibram felt his eyes widen. “No,” he said, as a grin stretched his mouth. “Ahksell?”
“I told you he wouldn’t remember,” she said, and laughed.
The Attendant—Ahksell Solari of all the folk—smiled widely and spread his arms out. “I got taller,” he said.
Ibram shook his head and grinned. “And broader and bigger and—and—”
When Ibram had left, Ahksell had been the scrawniest thirteen year old Learner, too small for his hands and feet. He’d been more often found up a glass apple tree than at his studies, and Ibram had been specially deputized by her ladyship to return Ahksell to the preceptory or keep him locked in his family orchard depending on the time of day. Now, Ibram doubted there was a tree in the village Ahksell could climb without bending the trunk.
“And his voice broke,” Lady Azadiya said, “To the delight of everyone who had to listen to him learn his third range of combat.”
“Mentor,” Ahksell whined, and Ibram laughed.
“All right, there’s something familiar,” he said. “But it’s spring. What are you doing here?”
In the sects, education was split between the sexes. Boys were taught in summer and sent out to work in winter, and girls the reverse. It was as unchanging as the seasons themselves, and even the little town schools where the Preceptory of Bedris taught the unfortunate to read and number adhered to it.
Ahksell shrugged. “I came back early.”
“Well, it’s—it’s good to see you,” Ibram said.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Ahksell said. “It’s not half so entertaining to get chased out of the orchard by your mother.”
“Well, excitement keeps Ama young, so she says. Can you not buy your own glass apples now?”
“Where’s the cheer in that?” Lady Azadiya asked. “Ahksell, two plates, yes?”
“Mentor,” Ahksell said, and bowed before walking to the table where the crowd was slowly making inroads in the food and drink.
Ibram shook his head. “I can’t have been away that long,” he said.
“Five years brings a great deal of change,” Lady Azadiya said.
He ducked his head slightly. “You haven’t,” he said.
She smiled but shrugged. It was true, though; she appeared as ageless as she had when he’d gone off. Alchemists tended to either age so slowly it made no matter to bother about it, or die too young to care. If Ibram had ever been forced to guess, he couldn’t have put it more closely than that Lady Azadiya was somewhere in the garden of her thirtieth year and had been since they’d first met when he was all of ten.
Ahksell returned and handed her a small wooden cup of ale. He held a wooden charger of cheese and berries and a bowl of milk bun pudding—already half-eaten—above his left palm. Ibram raised his eyebrows. Ahksell’s skills had improved since he’d been away. Lady Azadiya sipped once, wrinkled her nose, and handed the cup back. Ahksell offered her the small plate of snacks, complete with a golden two-pronged fork.
“The curse?” she prompted, and speared a piece of cheese. She popped it into her mouth, paused, and then set the little gold fork on the plate. She swallowed heavily.
“Mentor?” Ahksell asked.
“I’m going to assume some form of rot was included in the language?” she asked in a strangled voice. She cleared her throat. “Water, Ahk-la.”
“Oh.” Ahksell’s eyes widened. He looked down at the plate and then back up to ladyship. “Yes, right back.”
He rushed off, and Ibram turned his back to the garden and its denizens. Lady Azadiya coughed and put her hand to the bare skin below her collarbones. She grimaced.
“Sorry,” Ibram said, and winced.
She swallowed a few more times and waved her hand at him, silently. “Was it a talisman?” she asked, and cleared her throat again.
“It was a cursebird,” he replied. “Made out of rust and flower petals, I think. Flew about the family courtyard, dived at anyone who tried to catch it, and burst into bad-smelling smoke after demolishing the interior water clock.”
“Yes, it does seem to have a problem with those,” she muttered, looking across the courtyard.
Ibram turned around. He spotted a familiar lordly head darting through the pack towards the disturbance, trailed by the larger, more sedate form of the Marshal Steward. The water clock on the wall was pouring forth a mauve smoke, swirling in the air and hanging like fog. Several guests were waving their hands in front of their faces with servants armed with fans darting around them like a school of fish.
“Did you get close to it?” she asked.
“I saw it flying around the family courtyard,” he said. “We all tried to catch it.”
He glanced around him. It didn’t seem like the guests closest to him were upset by the disturbance, but they were certainly beginning to crane their necks for a better view. Ibram felt his shoulders begin to hunch and forced them straight again. Beside him, Lady Azadiya was watching the running servants with a mildly amused expression. She lifted her hand as one of the maids began to trip on her hem and pushed her flattened palm forward by an inch. The maid recovered her balance and ran back into the frothing purple smoke with her woven fan raised for battle.
He sighed. “Oh no, ladyship,” Ibram said loudly enough to be heard by the gathering spectators. “That is, actually, a Northern…belching clock. The water, you see, turns to smoke on the hour.”
“How forward thinking,” she said. Her mouth twitched decidedly before settling once more. “And we are all still using gravity. Ah, thank you.”
Ibram glanced back. Ahksell had returned with the water in a heavy glass tumbler. Lady Azadiya took a healthy swig, and swallowed with a shudder. She stared out over the garden with widened eyes.
“Ahksell, this is sojin,” she said with a faint cough.
“Well, it was water when the maid poured it for me.”
“Impressive servants around here,” she muttered, and took another sip.
Ahksell looked wide-eyed at Ibram and nodded towards the ongoing melee. Ibram shrugged, and Ahksell chuckled. He popped a spoonful of milk bun pudding into his mouth and licked his lips.
“Well, I say it serves them right,” Ahksell said. “Seven months on the road back with a pack of snoops isn’t what I call a pleasant journey.”
He licked the honey off the back of his spoon. Ibram felt his eyebrows bow before his hairline, and took a quick look at the pavilion they’d just left. Most of the guests had begun to drift towards the next offering. Two servants now scurried away with a covered tray while another discreetly offered napkins. He stepped aside for another tray-bearing woman; she twisted to get through the crowd, and a small goblet wobbled off its perch. He bent down and thrust an arm out just as she went for it herself; they collided and the goblet smashed to the floor, splashing ale on Ibram’s boots.
The serving woman jerked back with a gasp and collided with a guest, who bellowed like a boar with a sore tusk. She jumped out of the way, naturally, and Ibram watched in a kind of slow motion as the tray of drinks came toppling down on his position. He threw one arm up over his head, hunched in anticipation of a solid drenching, and then the tray—drinks almost tossed and all—froze in midair. The servant gave a little shriek and covered her mouth with both hands.
“Oh well caught, Ahksell,” Lady Azadiya said. “That would have been quite a mess.”
“Thank you, Mentor,” Ahksell said, with strain in his voice. “Um, now…”
“Curl your fourth fingers inward and raise both hands, while sliding your left hand fingers-forward. And get up, Ibram, you look silly down there. Take the tray again, mistress. It’s fine, you’re not in any trouble.”
He heard the servant make a sound that reminded him dimly of assent, and figured that was as good as he was going to get from a Northerner. A local wouldn’t have been so mealy over a bit of physical alchemy. Slowly, Ibram rose as the tray veered away from the space over his head. He pulled down his gambeson, cleared his throat, and frowned. His boot was damp, and now he’d have to spend the rest of the day smelling of ale.
Ahksell had his hands outstretched: his left, palm up, was further than his right, palm-down. He had bitten his bottom lip bloodless, and breathed heavily through his wide nose. His eyes lay on the tray wobbling a bit in the air, but then he flicked them up to the servant, and grinned tensely. “Do you have hold of the tray, mistress?”
She winced as she grabbed the tray with both hands. “Yes, master,” she said grimly. It bobbled in her grip but the drinks stayed upright this time. She flung herself back into the pavilion, and Ibram turned away.
Lady Azadiya laughed lightly as Ahksell let his arms fall to his sides and took a deep breath. Ibram caught Ahksell’s eye and nodded in relief. The crowd buzzed mildly with approval, but soon returned to their conversations.
“Exciting,” Lady Azadiya said. “And very well done, Ahksell.” She looked over Ibram’s shoulder and then refocused on him. “Not too wet, I hope?”
Ibram shook his head. “Just my boot. Thanks to Ahksell.”
Ahksell shook his head. “A lucky catch,” he said. “I’m still learning.”
Lady Azadiya was watching something from far off, but turned her head at that. “Believe in luck on your own time, Ahk-la,” she said. “My Attendants never need it.”
Ahksell rubbed one hand over his cheek and grinned. “No, Mentor.”
Ibram thought he heard a familiar thump on the walkway, rigorously regular and followed by stiff footsteps. He cocked his head to the left and back.
“Now, this cursebird,” her ladyship said briskly. “Did it enter any of the other courtyards?”
Ibram turned back around. “Just the family’s and the servants’—”
“Show me at once!” she declared.
She swept right, down the lacquered wooden pathway that led towards the next pavilion, and further on to the smaller gardens. Ibram found himself once again dragged along in her current with Ahksell beside him.
“Lady Sebbina’s coming and our Lord Preceptor hasn’t been to a council meeting in months,” Ahksell whispered.
Ibram coughed into his shoulder to hide his grin. He chanced a quick look back over his shoulder, and caught Lady Sebbina’s sharp eyes just before she was obscured by a group of obsequious contract men in Tyal blue. Their loud, oily eloquence diverted the ladyship’s march, and Ibram turned back around with a shudder. He was only obeying a guest, after all.
“What does she want with Lady Azadiya anyway?” he whispered to Ahksell.
Ahead, he saw Lady Azadiya’s head twitch. Ahksell shrugged next to him. “I think it’s more that Mentor’s the closest one who’s deigned to come down the living mountain,” he said. “And since none of them will come down, then Lady Sebbina most certainly cannot come up.”
Ibram snorted. Diplomacy and politics had never been his study, but he could grasp the edges of it enough to know the tricks were mostly down to posturing and foolishness. Though, to be sure, now that he was back in Lityen, the terms of the bargain he’d made with Ama and Father had to be upheld. If the Sect of Seven Fires still wished to employ him, as it employed almost everyone else in his family, then he was its agent. And if he was its agent, then he would no doubt be seconded to Lady Azadiya’s staff, just as Ama had been. Best to know the general feeling of the sect in which he would be working.
“What keeps the rest of you penned up?” he asked.
Ahksell waggled his head from left to right. “Most of the rest of us are too busy getting ready for the Festival, you know. The Preceptory of Afsoun blew up their training ground to make way for a pond! There’s a rumor that they’re going to stage a recreation of the first, uh, pumping, as it were.”
“They’re going to recreate a sewage system,” Ibram said.
Ahskell nodded. “That’s the common thought, yes.”
“Not with actual sewage, though?”
Ahksell rocked his head left and right and then shrugged. “Probably not,” he answered slowly. “But it would be a pity if it were just water, after all.”
“Wine?” Ibram suggested.
“The First Mentor of Afsoun drinks nothing but shay,” Lady Azadiya said. “At best, we can hope for sweet cider, and probably at room temperature.”
Ahksell chuckled and nodded his head. Ibram gagged slightly, but recovered himself. Cider was his preferred drink, but even first rate cider was cloying when it was warm.
The crowd parted for Lady Azadiya without even seeming to realize it, readjusting themselves to one side or the other in the middle of conversations or even eating, and then coming together again with barely a blink. He saw the Tarsises watching their little group from across the garden.
“I’ve heard a rumor that Lord Sans has something special planned for the party,” Ahksell said.
Ibram nodded. “He’s got a lot of ideas, or, well, he likes the idea of ideas.”
“How philosophical of him,” Ahksell replied. “Just like the Sect Above The Clouds.”
“More like he enjoys changing his mind.”
“Don’t we all?” Lady Azadiya asked.
Ibram lowered his voice. “Not when we’re half-way down a mountain, six miles from the nearest bed, and someone wants to ‘experience the balmy air.’”
Ahksell laughed. Across the way, Ibram could see the regular guardsmen in their stations, posted at relatively inconspicuous points along the walkways. The sky behind the sealed glass roof had darkened. Lally was using one of the long, leaf-shaped fans to stir the air above the fountain and send a moored cluster of light ships back out to illuminate the rest of the party. Ibram breathed in and smelled the beeswax candles as they sailed forth.
The jugglers had placed themselves out on the lawn and were tossing sticks in the air. Four stubby painted clubs flew end over end in a dizzying pattern. The closest juggler drew a fifth one from his belt and let fly. Ahksell watched them with wide eyes.
“In light of all the—the business,” he said in what Ibram assumed Ahksell believed was an intimate voice, the approximate volume of a bullroarer. He raised his hands to quiet him, but Ahksell continued. “Is it wise of Lord Sans to have all these—these Kilk folks about?”
Ladyship shook her head. “It’s only the bendable one.”
“The circlers are perfectly professional, I’m certain,” Ibram said. “Even if they might—”
One of the jugglers dropped a stick and kicked it up high in the air for his partner to catch; it arched over the other man’s feathered hat and disappeared into the crowd. A startled yelp erupted; a crowd of young ladies clapped. “They should be fine.”
Ibram rubbed his eyebrow with his thumbnail. Ahksell shook his head.
***
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