Royal Airs

by Sharon Shinn

  A smoker car growled up the road and the three of them tensed, but it passed without pausing. Zoe smothered a laugh and turned to face Corene and Josetta.

  “Darien told me I could confront Alys if I wanted to, but I figured I was safer if I was out of sight,” she said.

  “Maybe Alys will be safer,” Josetta retorted.

  “Right. That’s what I meant,” Zoe said with an unrepentant grin. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like a woman of power and influence. She was tall and lanky, with straight dark hair and no sense of fashion, and the only jewelry she usually bothered to wear was the bracelet holding her three blessing charms. She liked servants better than most of their masters, abhorred any kind of grand social gathering, and could hardly bring herself to spend a quint-gold, remembering the long poverty-stricken days in exile. But she was coru prime; she could call water to a dry well, bid waves to dance on the ocean. She could flood the Marisi or prison it in its own banks, refusing to let it pour through its accustomed channel. She had done both of those things, in fact—once to save Corene, and once to save Josetta.

  She had a robust and outspoken dislike for a hefty percentage of Chialto’s finer families, but she absolutely despised Alys.

  “Shhh,” Corene breathed, waving them to silence. “I heard an elaymotive.”

  They strained again to decipher noises coming from the front of the house, and were rewarded by the sound of a brisk knock. Even before anyone could reasonably have answered, the knock came a second time, quick and impatient.

  They all held their breath as they peered through the crack to watch Darien cross the kierten with an unhurried stride. He opened the front door and a small redheaded woman swept in.

  Even at this afternoon hour, she was exquisitely dressed, in a sleeveless beaded tunic over diaphanous trousers so sheer they were merely wisps of fabric. She wore a flimsy printed scarf across her shoulders and no overtunic, leaving her more bare than Josetta had ever seen anyone in public. Anyone who wasn’t as delicate and well-formed as Alys would have a hard time carrying off such a revealing style.

  Normally she sashayed into a room with a swaying, seductive step, well aware that her very presence would draw all eyes, but she never bothered trying to charm Darien anymore. So today she just strode in and stood there, her arms crossed and her face showing exasperation.

  “Now what is it?” she demanded.

  Darien offered her the formal bow that anyone, even the regent, must give to a queen. Josetta studied his face as he straightened and looked down at Alys. He was wholly in control of his emotions; he wore a hunti man’s mask of stone. “I just wanted you to know,” he said in a perfectly calm voice, “that Corene won’t be returning to your house. Please have her belongings sent here.”

  Alys dropped her arms and stared up at him in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous. Why would you say that?”

  “Dominic Wollimer tried to assault her a couple of days ago when they were alone in a car. Therefore, I am removing her from his presence. Send her clothes and other things here.”

  Now Alys’s face flushed with heat. “How dare you accuse Dominic of misbehavior? He’s my husband!”

  “And as such, I hope he makes many trips to your bedroom and satisfies all your carnal desires, which heretofore have been insatiable.” Darien spoke the insult in an absolutely uninflected voice. “But I won’t have Corene exposed to him again. She’s never returning to your house.”

  Another moment, Alys stared at him, and then she loosed an angry bark of laughter. “Because he—what? Tried to kiss her in the car? I’m sure he was just trying to show her affection. Maybe he was clumsy about it.”

  “She was afraid of him, and with good reason,” Darien said. Josetta wondered if he suspected some of the things Corene had shared with the blind seer. Certainly she wouldn’t put it past Darien to have spies in the Plaza, carrying information to him the moment the sisters acquired it.

  Alys tossed her hands in the air. “‘Afraid’! The minute a woman knows a man wants her is the minute he’s utterly in her power. She should have been glad he took an interest in her. She could have gotten him to do anything she wanted.”

  Beside her, Josetta felt Corene grow stiff and brittle, heard Zoe stifle a gasp of indignation. Darien’s face still kept its impassive expression, but his eyes showed a murderous rage.

  “She’s seventeen years old. He’s forty—and your husband. Surely you would not condone any physical contact between them?”

  Unexpectedly, Alys laughed. She came a step closer and laid her palm against his cheek. “Oh, Darien. Such a prude. Or is it that you’re such a romantic? What do you think is so magical about the act of sex? It’s bodies doing what they’re meant to do. A woman who understands how to use her body has far more power and far more potential than a woman who doesn’t. Corene shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with hers.”

  Darien calmly wrapped his hand around Alys’s wrist and pulled her fingers from his face. “If you want to speak with Corene, you come to my house and speak to her under my supervision,” he said, each word so cold it was practically coated in frost. “If you attempt to talk to her at any public function, I will have you removed from the event. If Dominic Wollimer tries to speak to her in public or in private, I will have him arrested. If he touches her, I’ll have him killed.”

  Alys blazed up in fury, wrenching her hand from his hold. “I hate you!” she cried. “How can you threaten me like that? Even you—even you, Darien, prancing around as regent and playing at politics and thinking you can force everyone to do your bidding—even you can’t go around killing people just because you want to!”

  “I think you’ll find that I can,” was his cool response.

  She hit him, a quick strike on the shoulder with her balled-up fist. He didn’t move to avoid it, didn’t react when the blow fell. “Someday,” she panted. “Someday, Darien, it won’t be you pulling all the strings. My time will come.”

  “That may be,” he said. “But it’s not your time now. Are we clear?”

  “I hate you,” she said again.

  “I don’t think you could possibly hate me as much as I hate you,” he replied. “Are we clear? Do you understand me?”

  “Oh, I understand you. I’ve always understood you,” Alys said grimly. She stalked toward the door, flung it open, and paused for a single parting shot. “Your mistake is that you’ve never understood me.” With a final flick of red hair, she was gone.

  Josetta pulled back from her crouch at the doorway, feeling sick to her stomach. Zoe pushed the door closed with a faint click, then leaned against the wall.

  “That wasn’t as entertaining as I thought it would be,” Zoe said.

  Corene shook her head. Her expression was tight, her whole body coiled with tension. “Dealing with my mother usually isn’t,” she said.

  Zoe reached for her, and Corene flinched away. Zoe pushed herself from the wall and put her hands more insistently on Corene’s shoulders. This time Corene held fast, but her eyes were focused on the floor.

  “You have to listen to me,” Zoe said in a quiet, intense voice. “She’s your mother, and if you want to love her, you can go ahead and try. But she’s not a good person. She doesn’t have your best interests at heart. She’s selfish. She’s ambitious. She’s ruthless. And I think she will use you—use anybody—to get what she wants.”

  Corene’s voice was muffled. “I know all that.”

  “Just because she would throw you away doesn’t mean you’re worthless,” Zoe added. The word made Josetta wince, made Corene jerk her head up. Oh, but Zoe was right, Josetta could see it in Corene’s eyes. Worthless was exactly how she was feeling.

  “I am,” Corene whispered. “I’m not a princess anymore. I’m not the heir. My mother doesn’t want me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.”

  Josetta came up behind her,
wrapped her arms around Corene’s waist, laid her head on those fiery curls. “I want you,” she said fiercely.

  Zoe lifted one hand to brush it across Corene’s cheek. “Oh, and I want you,” she said in a soft voice. “You’re my daughter’s sister, my husband’s child. The blood that runs through their veins is the same that runs through yours—I can feel it when I put my hand on your skin. You’re a Serlast, one of the proudest families of the realm. And you are—magnificent. Beautiful. Clever. Brave. My daughter is going to want to be just like you, I know it already.”

  “Although maybe not quite as dramatic,” Josetta said against Corene’s hair.

  She felt Corene shake with a tentative laugh. “I can’t help the dramatic part,” she said. “It seems to just happen around me.”

  Zoe leaned forward to kiss Corene’s cheek, then for good measure she threw her arms around Josetta and Corene and gave them both one good squeeze. Corene squealed in protest as she was crushed between their bodies, and they were all holding back smiles and tears as they broke apart.

  “So my prediction is that she won’t send any of your clothes and things over here, what do you think?” Zoe asked.

  “She’ll do it,” Josetta said. “She won’t want to give Darien an excuse to come to her house and start rifling through it.”

  Corene shook her hair back and pasted a defiant smile on her face. “I say, who wants those old tunics and trousers?” she said. “Time to buy a whole new wardrobe.”

  • • •

  Josetta stayed at Darien’s house through the end of the nineday, but only because she was still worried about Corene. Otherwise, she’d have been gone shortly after Alys made her memorable appearance. Her life had grown so unadorned in the past quintile or two that she was no longer comfortable with opulence. She couldn’t help thinking about how many people down at the shelter could have dined on the leftovers from each of their meals. She couldn’t stop imagining the wide hallways and gracious drawing rooms organized into makeshift beds and infirmary rooms.

  Zoe was the only one who really shared her interest in working with the poor, because Zoe had been homeless herself, though never entirely without resources. During the rest of that nineday, they spent many hours playing with the baby and talking over plans for expanding the shelter. Buying a new facility to hold more beds, perhaps. Maybe even setting up banking facilities for a few of the more ambitious souls who wanted to start small ventures that might help them buy their way out of poverty.

  “But it all takes time, and I keep running out of it,” Josetta said with a sigh. “And then Romelle will be coming to town, and I promised Darien I’d attend all the events. I think he’s just trying to find ways to keep me away from the shelter, even though I told him he’d never be able to do that.”

  Zoe laughed. “Oh no, you don’t understand. If Darien can’t get you to do what he wants, he’ll do something else to achieve his desired end. He’ll work around you, but he’ll still get his way.”

  “Then I can’t wait to see what he has in mind.”

  She found out on firstday when she and Foley gathered up their things, slipped out of the house before anyone else was awake, and caught an elaymotive omnibus to take them down to the southern edge of the Cinque. Of course, there was no public transportation through southside itself, but there wasn’t much danger at this hour of the morning. They walked briskly through the nearly deserted streets, stepping around mounds of trash, mosaics of broken glass, and the occasional snoring drunk lying in the middle of the road. Now and then they passed a tumbledown building where the doors or windows were open, or a tired woman was sweeping debris off the stairs. But otherwise, this part of the city could have been uninhabited.

  The shelter was one of the few buildings that showed tentative signs of life, with moving shadows visible through the windows and the faint scent of baking bread escaping from the kitchen in back.

  It was a long, narrow, two-story structure that at one point had housed six small and horribly rundown apartments. Josetta had plowed more money than Darien thought was reasonable into buying it, rebuilding it, and adding amenities. Now, on the ground floor, there was a sizable main room laid out with five long tables where meals were served. Shelves against the walls were stocked with food and clothing and medicines that anyone could have simply for the asking. There was a large kitchen, a small office, and an infirmary with six private cubicles, each with its own narrow bed. On one end of the building was a public bath; on the other end, a small temple. On the second story were two dormitories, one for men and one for women. They had to be accessed by separate outside entrances to reduce the possibility of commingling. The upstairs level also held four small bedrooms for Josetta and the rest of the staff; these were served by a private interior stairwell of their own.

  Since the place had opened, Josetta had never had fewer than ten people staying overnight. She generally dished out between twenty and fifty meals a day. She’d lost count of the number of people she’d treated for broken bones, knife wounds, and lung diseases, and she’d never paid attention to how many tramped through the baths.

  It had been Zoe who suggested the baths, as well as an exterior spigot where people could fill water containers. The canal and a complex aqueduct system carried water to most parts of the city, but many of the underground pipes that served the slums had broken long ago, never to be repaired. Of course, lack of water was never a problem when Zoe was around. She had located, or created, an aquifer below the cracked streets, and drew its contents upward to a private well. Josetta sometimes thought that the easy availability of water was the single most important gift she had been able to offer the community she served.

  “Looks like the place has stayed intact while we’ve been gone,” Josetta observed to Foley as she stepped up to the heavy front door.

  “You have good people working for you,” he said.

  More people working for her than she realized, it turned out. The minute they were inside, she was greeted by Callie, the thickset, no-nonsense, middle-aged woman who functioned as housekeeper and chief cook and nurse and tireless assistant. She and her two children had been the first people Josetta had ever housed at the shelter, one cold Quinnelay night when the youngest boy had a fever and the older one was half dead from exposure. The oldest boy had signed on to a merchant ship a quintile ago, but Callie and her other son, Bo, were two of Josetta’s most reliable workers.

  “Who are these men? How long are they going to be here?” Callie greeted her as Josetta stepped into the main room. Callie had just carried a large platter of eggs and meat out from the kitchen and set it on a sideboard buffet. There were five or six patrons sitting or standing by the long tables, waiting to serve themselves, and they shuffled toward the food as Callie strode over to Josetta.

  “What men?” Josetta asked, eyeing the people in the food line. Two were male, but they looked like the shelter’s typical visitor, a little stringy, a lot ragged, not entirely clean.

  Callie jerked her thumb toward the far end of the building. “Cleaning sinks and showers. I told them if they were going to hang around here, they’d have to work, or I wasn’t feeding them. Or letting them spend the night, either.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Josetta said.

  “They told me they were here for you. I thought you’d know.”

  Josetta glanced over her shoulder to exchange a look with Foley. “Let’s find out who they are,” she said, and he followed her down the cramped hallway that led to the bath area. It was a large, utilitarian room of inexpensive stone floors and head-high stone dividers, offering up to a dozen people privacy at any one time. The best part about the room was its steamy warmth, a temperature it maintained even on the coldest day. Because Zoe had managed to tap a hot underground spring when she had gone rummaging around looking for water.

  Despite the fog, it was easy to spot the two newcomers
who were wrestling a hose in place so they could, yes, scrub down some of the stone stalls. They were both barefoot and stripped of everything except their dark trousers, but those trousers looked to be fine and well-made. Josetta was even more baffled as she approached them.

  “Excuse me,” she called over the sound of the jetting water. One of them reached over to turn off the spray, and they both turned in her direction, bowing their heads in respect. “Who are you? Why are you here? I mean, I’m happy to have you volunteer, but—”

  Behind her, Foley spoke in a low voice. “They’re Darien Serlast’s men. I recognize them.”

  “Darien—”

  “That’s right,” one of them piped up. “The regent sent us here.”

  “Why? For how long?”

  The men exchanged glances. “It’s our permanent assignment now,” one of them said helpfully. He looked to be about Foley’s age, in his early twenties, still young and enthusiastic about the notion of defending the crown. “You know how some guards serve at the palace, and some serve at the regent’s house, and some patrol the Cinque at night? We’re here.”

  “Half a quintile at least, because that’s how long an assignment lasts,” the other one explained. “After that, we might be moved somewhere else and two new guards put in our place.”

  “Or we might stay,” said the first one. “If you like an assignment, you can ask to stay on. I like it,” he added.

  The other one waggled his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t think we’d have to be mucking around in the showers. Or doing laundry. But she said that was part of the job.”

  “She” must be Callie, who was obviously going to get full value out of any able-bodied man who showed up on her doorstep like a gift. “I didn’t ask the regent to send me guards,” Josetta said. “It was thoughtful of him, I suppose, but—I’m going to send you back.”