The Ruins of Ambrai

by Melanie Rawn

  “Oh, I’ll do that first chance I get. In private, Telo!” she assured him, laughing as his brows arched. “It wouldn’t do to cuss him up one side and down the other in public. After all, he’s the brains behind the Family Business.”

  “So he keeps telling me.” Smoothing the complex webbing of yarn across one knee, Telomir frowned at it and tugged a strand or two back into place. “I hate this damned stuff. Never stays flat. Word is that the Council is favorably disposed to your petition, by the way. You’ve done good work here, Sarra. Those who were wavering came over to your side after meeting you.”

  She gave an irritated shrug. “It’s nothing to do with me personally. Most of them have eligible sons and nephews.”

  “Granted, but you’ve been playing them off against each other like a seasoned politician. You have the right instincts. Agatine will be pleased to—”

  Without warning, Elomar Adennos strode into the room. He didn’t even glance at Telomir Renne, instead fixing his gaze on Sarra.

  “If you are given to expressing shock, Domna, do it now. You must reveal nothing when you enter the Great Chamber. The Feirans, daughter and father, are here at Ryka Court and will attend today’s petitioning.”

  6

  Glenin was not a member of the Council or the Assembly, and so sat with the other court notables in the balcony above the Great Chamber. Garon was in attendance—on his mother, not her, though he had escorted her most tenderly to her seat, sent a page to fetch an extra pillow for her back, inquired if she felt up to a long session, and detailed Elsvet Doyannis to keep watch over her.

  “You’re so lucky,” Elsvet whispered after he had left them. “He absolutely adores you, Glenin.”

  She gave a little smile and a shrug, hiding mingled satisfaction and annoyance. Yes, he absolutely adored her now—body, heart, and soul—and would for as long as he drew breath or until she canceled the spell. His smothering concern was tiresome, but it was preferable to the alternative. Anyway, she told herself, better now than later, after someone had noticed he was cooling. It was easier to believe devotion renewed now, after the sorrow of losing a child, than after a period of near-indifference.

  She and Elsvet were seated front row center in the gallery. The Council had not yet entered; all fifteen plain pine chairs with red velvet seat cushions were empty. The Council would come in through a door on the left, where Auvry Feiran stood ceremonial duty wearing the bemedaled dress whites of Commandant of the Council Guard. Garon was beside him, dressed as a lieutenant. Strictly honorary: soldiering bored him. Along two sides of the triangular white marble table, Guards of lesser rank were carefully placing paper, pens, small crystal pitchers of water, goblets, and, for Flera Firennos of Cantrashir, a bowl of fruit lozenges to soothe her chronically scratchy throat.

  The Council met in the Great Chamber only on occasions such as this. Their regular sessions were conducted in a room half the Court away, where they could all look at each other across a wooden table made of planks from Grand Duchess Veller Ganfallin’s flagship. The marble slab they would sit at this morning had been a present from the now-defunct Channe Blood ten Generations ago. Likewise the white marble plinth of the Speaker’s Circle had come from the Channes, but unlike the stark table it was carved with the sigils of all the Saints.

  Hanging from the balcony rails and around the walls were the colors of every extant Name on Lenfell. The banners were each a foot wide and three feet long, and appeared in strict alphabetical order with no precedence given the (former) Bloods—one of the changes made when, for Glenin’s wedding present, the Council had abolished the Tiers. The sigils stitched on the banners of former Bloods, Firsts, and Seconds were the sole indication of rank. The flags of each Shir were draped in luxuriant folds behind the chairs where their Council members sat. With all that color screaming at the eyes, the plain white marble of table and plinth and floor was a relief.

  “Have you met this girl yet?” Elsvet murmured.

  Glenin shook her head.

  “My husband says he can’t understand the fuss. She’s a shocking flirt with outrageously bad manners. Oh, I suppose she’s marginally pretty in a washed-out sort of way, but nothing at all fashionable.”

  By all of which Glenin instantly understood that men were panting and Elsvet’s husband was one of them, the girl’s manners were charming, and she was a mere breath short of gorgeous.

  “There’s a reception after,” Elsvet went on. “Are you up to attending?”

  “I think so. You’re sweet to worry about me, Elsha, but it’s not necessary. I’m quite recovered—in all but my heart.”

  “Poor darling,” her old schoolmate sympathized, patting her hand. “I was so looking forward to watching your little one play with mine. Did I tell you I’m pregnant again?” She placed a protective hand over her belly.

  “Congratulations,” Glenin said, smiling, wanting to slap the smirk right off Elsvet’s mouth.

  “Well, one day soon, I’m sure. You’re young and healthy, and so is Garon.”

  “Yes,” Glenin said, and then: “Shh, here they come.”

  The Council entered the Chamber in strict order of seniority and took their seats. The chair at the apex stayed empty, reserved for Anniyas. The ten women and four men were dressed in plain white robes that billowed to the floor, with stiff standing collars to the ears. The robes were open at the front to reveal clothes in the colors of each Council member’s Shir. Someone had proposed once that they should remain standing—and so should the spectators—until the First Councillor’s entrance. She had flatly refused to countenance this, although Glenin knew the suggestion had originated with Anniyas. From this Glenin learned that honors were on occasion most effective when turned down.

  Glenin’s father and husband flanked the open door, and in a hush more potent than the blaring of trumpets the entire Chamber waited for Avira Anniyas, First Councillor of Lenfell.

  Down below the gallery were all the members of the Assembly, ten from each Shir; the Ministers of Mining, Agriculture, Commerce, Roads and Public Works, Census, Ports and Shipping, and so on; and the Prime Justice and as many of the Itinerants as were in residence at Ryka Court. Glenin could see the first four rows and the two seats that were still empty, reserved for her father and her husband. Garon had no title but the “Lord” that had come to him on his marriage to a First Daughter, but he had been allowed to sit with the officials since his twenty-first year.

  Auvry Feiran nodded once to the Council. Garon extended his fist to his mother. She placed her beringed hand atop it and entered the Great Chamber: short, plain, unimpressive—a curious guise for the most powerful woman in the world to wear, but Glenin knew full well that her very innocuousness was a strength. Who would believe that the source of so many lethal schemes and secret murders was this smiling little woman who waved one plump glittering hand to acknowledge the crowd’s cheers?

  Being nondescript and unremarkable was not an option available to Glenin, though she understood the advantages. Her own guise was more effective the more she used it. Her advantage was that one day, when she became the most powerful woman in the world, she would look it.

  She didn’t listen as Anniyas spoke an ancient formula summoning petitioners to the Speaker’s Circle. Instead, she watched the Council. They were seated according to years of service, an invisible line of descending rank crisscrossing the table as if it were a loom:

  Glenin had an excellent view of all their faces. A portrait of Lenfell, she thought sardonically. Edifying, if occasionally nauseating.

  Sharp-eyed, silver-haired Tirri Mettyn, First Daughter Prime and great-great-grandmother, had worn out five husbands and eleven official lovers in her eighty years, over half of which she had spent on the Council. Elected in 926, she was senior to everyone, including Anniyas. They loathed each other and whichever way Anniyas voted, Tirri Mettyn voted the other from sheer habit.

  Seventy-four-year-ol
d Kanen Ellevit was another fossil and had been on the Council since 935. He had three interests in life: Bleynbradden, money, and pretty girls. In defense of the first, he was at times so tigerish that the Council often capitulated to spare the old man an apoplexy. His concern for the second had helped his Blood double its fortunes in the last fifty years. Regarding the third, at his age he was relegated to looking. It was asserted that Sarra Liwellan had his vote purely because of her looks. But Kanen Ellevit undoubtedly saw her as helpful to his other two interests: Bleynbradden had extensive ties to the Slegin Web, and these ventures were highly profitable.

  Veliria Doyannis, Elsvet’s mother, had held the Ryka seat since long before Elsvet’s birth. She was limned in shades of gray: eyes the color and chill of steel, a formidable pile of iron-gray braids, a will of granite, and all the personal warmth of week-old funeral ashes. Her vast Name—almost as numerous as the Ostins—swarmed all over the island and most of North Lenfell. Her sources of information were envied even by Anniyas, whose wary ally she was. Proudest and most reactionary of Bloods, she hated the lower Tiers and had it not been impolitic would have hated Glenin for being the reason the system was abolished and the lower orders enfranchised. Sarra Liwellan’s Blood was the only thing Veliria Doyannis found in her favor. Allowing Agatine Slegin to designate her as heir was too shocking to contemplate—yet here Lady Veliria was, forced to contemplate and even vote on just that. In simple terms, she was not pleased.

  Flera Firennos ought to have retired years ago. She was seventy-two and almost completely deaf—though she would never admit it, for Bloods were emphatically immune to physical infirmities. When her thoughts wandered, the twin granddaughters who were her assistants explained her abstractions as “concentration on higher matters.” When she addressed remarks to Council members dead twenty years, it was, “Incisive irony to remind colleagues of similar circumstances in her long career.” When she nodded off during sessions: “Subtle commentary on the discussion.” Whether or not she heard, let alone understood, today’s proceedings—or anything else that happened in Council—was immaterial; the granddaughters would decide her vote as usual. Not being in their confidence, Glenin was unsure which way the vote would go.

  Jareth Feleson was ungrayed and unwrinkled at sixty-five: a direct result of never having made a single decision about anything at all. He was husband to Marra Feleson, his distant cousin and publisher of Feleson Press, the only broadsheet still distributed worldwide. Though the Press claimed strict impartiality, it was taken for granted that it printed Anniyas’s line. In Council, Jareth cast his vote as Marra told him; she found the Council less congenial than the luxurious Ryka Court offices of Feleson Press. Her feelings about the Liwellan girl were as yet unknown, but Glenin guessed the vote would be with Anniyas.

  Solla Dalakard’s elder brother Risson had engineered their Blood’s victory over the Lords of Malerris—for which Glenin detested the whole family despite knowing it had been necessary. Fifty-nine, Solla admitted to forty-six and believed lavish use of cosmetics and lurid red hair dye made the lie plausible. She detested men in general and in particular any who dared call himself a “Lord” even if he was married to a First Daughter, and was eternally grateful that being a fifth daughter excused her from a duty to bear more Dalakards. She swore exclusively by St. Sirrala the Virgin—Court wags had it that she’d vote in the Liwellan girl’s favor because of her name alone—and each year proposed that all male Saints be removed from the official calendar.

  Glenin’s lips thinned once more as she contemplated the woman beside Feleson. Ambraishir had been represented by Glenin’s family for fifteen Generations. The seat was now occupied by the skinny posterior of Lirsa Rigge. The first non-Blood on the Council, she had been seated the year Ambrai was destroyed. Her election had come by default. The Shir’s three Bloods—Ambrai, Alvassy, and Desse—had been tainted by rebellion; of the Firsts, Feiran was extinct except for Auvry—who had other duties—and Garvedian was the Name of the late Mage Captal. Among Second Tiers, Rigge was the only one certifiably lacking traitorous ties. Their lands were in the far north of the Shir and they attended the Octagon Court only when ordered. After sixteen years on the Council, Lirsa Rigge still voted with prevailing opinion and still looked startled at being allowed to vote at all. Now that Glenin thought on it, though, perhaps astonishment was the only expression one could manage with eyes that big in a face that thin.

  Semal Nunne, forty and never husbanded, sulked across the table from Lirsa Rigge. Nunne fancied himself a military expert. His knowledge of matters martial began and ended with a fascinated interest in men wearing uniforms. He was known as the Bloody Blood, for his initial response to any crisis, large or small, was a demand to send in the Council Guard. The resentment now on his handsome, moody face was directly attributable to the fact that the Ryka Legion in all its splendor was at formal drill on the parade ground, and he was stuck inside. He might vote against Sarra Liwellan from sheer spite.

  Representation of The Waste had been problematical for a century and more. Of the Shir’s two Bloods, the Ostins shunned politics and there was only one Pelleris left: the infamous Scraller. Branches of the Renne, Halvos, Somme, and Grenirian Bloods living in The Waste had all provided Council members during the preceding century. But in 964, after Glenin’s wedding present opened the Council to all, Fiella Lunne had been elected—to the scandal of half Lenfell. She was not merely a member of a former Tier, but of the Fourth Tier. That her father was an Ostin and her grandfather a Grenirian counted for exactly nothing. In four years she had been snubbed often, and most often by Veliria Doyannis, who never addressed a single word to her in public or private. Fiella Lunne was a sturdy and stubborn fifty-three, well past the age when humiliation could cut personally. But on behalf of her Shir she demanded respect—and one piercing look from those hawk-green eyes set in a deceptively mild face ensured it in most cases. Childless, since the death of her adored husband in 946 she had mothered and mentored a dozen young nieces, several of whom had followed her into government service. One of them was now Minister of the Census. The Slegin and Renne ties to the Ostins, to whom the Lunnes were closely related, guaranteed Fiella’s vote in favor.

  Piera Senison, not yet forty and three times divorced (her short attention span was often exhibited in Council as well) was about as closely related to the Tiva Senison who had married Lilen Ostin as Glenin was—which was to say scarcely at all. Senisons usually supported Slegins, but Piera had a grudge against Agatine: she’d wanted Orlin Renne for herself. Her golden-brown eyes flickered constantly to the door where the Liwellan girl would enter as if she could hardly wait to humiliate Agatine’s proposed heir.

  Lean and predatory Granon Isidir was, at only forty-one, the darling of the proudest family in South Lenfell. The Isidirs had for ten years resisted the best that Veller Ganfallin could throw against the walls of their city, and they had never let anyone forget it. Granon was Anniyas’s most vocal opponent for the sheer delight of the opposition. His name had been linked with many women, but he had never married; his devotion to his Name, his city, and his Shir was such that no woman could compete. His formidable grandmother allowed him to remain unhusbanded; a truly valuable male was never wasted in marriage to another family who would then have the benefit of his talents. In the Assembly since his twenty-fifth year, Granon’s election to the Council had come with an unprecedented ninety-six percent of the popular vote.

  Deiketa Fenne was nearly Anniyas’s age, looked twenty years older, and had known her for the forty-odd years of their mutual public service: Fenne in the Assembly, Anniyas on the Council. They were the closest of personal friends and the staunchest of political allies. Deiketa was one reason Anniyas had wanted the Tiers abolished, so her old friend’s status as a First would no longer prevent her from taking a Council chair. It had been briefly rumored years ago that one of the Fenne granddaughters was being considered to husband Garon, but shortly after Glenin Feiran ente
red the scene the girl had died. Garon never knew what exactly had happened to the charming twenty-year-old he’d been half in love with. But Glenin did. So did Anniyas.

  Last on the left was Gorynna Bekke. She held the seat through special appointment after her aunt (also a Bekke, and also a Gorynna) changed her mind about government service and resigned shortly after election in 963. The Bekkes owned what parts of Brogdenguard the Rennes did not, and their partnership was the envy of all Lenfell. What one produced, the other marketed. Yield from Renne mines and Renne vines was shipped on the Bekke merchant fleet; glass from Bekke factories and grain from Bekke farms were distributed through a Renne consortium, and so on. Gorynna had spent her twenties learning and her thirties chairing the Bekke’s hugely lucrative ceramics division (tableware in one hundred and thirty patterns; bathtubs in five styles, eight sizes, and sixteen colors; twenty-seven models of commode; and countless varieties of industrial ceramics). Now in her forties, she viewed government as a business, its profits measured by a surplus in the treasury. Because Sarra Liwellan was the fosterling of Orlin Renne, and Orlin was Agatine Slegin’s husband, the transfer of the inheritance was more or less Bekke family business; so Gorynna was firmly on the girl’s side.

  Youngest of them all, and least in seniority, was the darkly gorgeous and utterly ruthless Irien Dombur, a playmate of Garon’s. He had been elected two years ago to replace a cousin killed in a carriage accident. Rumor had it that this had been no accident; that his branch of the Domburs had designs on emulating Veller Ganfallin’s conquests, only they would do it with money, not soldiers; and that Irien found the Liwellan girl so delightful that he had hopes of becoming her husband. Glenin, knowing Irien well, knew he was attracted not by the girl’s person but by her Slegin-augmented purse.

  And yet as Anniyas finished her invocation and the center of attention walked alone and calm into the Chamber Glenin considered revising her opinion. Sarra Liwellan was radiantly blonde, delicately made, elegantly clothed, and undeniably lovely. Creamy skin, dark brown eyes, a wide mouth that tilted slightly up at the corners—Glenin’s discerning eye noted that her nose tilted a bit as well, and a too-wide brow spoiled the otherwise perfect oval of her face. Her gown, high-necked and sliding down her slim figure to the floor, accomplished several things Glenin saw at once and most of the Court did not: that the cut and the thin vertical stripes of Liwellan blue-and-turquoise and Slegin blue-and-yellow artfully disguised a short-waisted figure, and that the unfashionable length hid high heels that added two inches to her scant five feet of height. But who would notice imperfections when captivated by that glory of curling golden hair cascading down her back?