Her father, on the other hand, was radiant joy in her imagination. Those few occasions that she was allowed to see him, her life gained bright flashes of experience, like the gray sun breaking through cloud-mass. And always, she kept that experience in the most private center of herself, for she used it to measure the flow of personal time that otherwise would be as dreary and pointless as everything else in her existence.
Barand was a master sculptor. When he came by, for yearly visits allowed by law, he would sweep her away into a shimmering sea of things, for he would take her with him to the Artisans Quarter.
Holding tightly the strong callused hand of the tall black-bearded man with warm eyes, the little girl, dressed in finery as a girl of her rank should be—and drowning in it—ran beside him as they walked by foot. That was the only time she was ever allowed to walk thus, unescorted, like a simple freeman’s child. For on that one visitation day she was her father’s, and no law could deny them this.
Light as joy and free was her mind, and she felt like skipping as they passed the lovely Outer Gardens of Dirvan along one of the gravel walks, then headed for the nearest bridge of sparkling paved stone, over the Arata. Underneath shone like fire the broken mirror shards of the running water’s surface, black as ebony in its opaque depths, yet at each moment reflecting the silver of sun and sky.
Ahead of them were the Markets. What joy, what noise, what haggling and babble! Imogenn glanced about her, wildly speechless, and her father read that fierce joy as plain as his own two hands, in that silence of hers.
“Imogenn, my young woman,” he said then, in all seriousness to the child. “Would you like a Candied Fool, maybe?” And he winked at her.
“Yes, Father . . .” she murmured, and in three breaths they paused before one of the countless stalls, and Barand traded some shining coins for a wonderful sculpted creation of sugar and dough, a figurine of a silly grinning man in a hat.
He handed it to her, saying, “What will you bite off first, love? His hat, I say—it’s much too ridiculous, and is probably the sweetest part of this mannikin!”
“Yes . . .” she managed to say faintly, but he knew that in her few words she meant to say so many more things.
Thus they walked farther, hand in hand, she nibbling on the candy, as they passed the Markets and approached the walls and the toll-gate of the Artisans Quarter. Here, her father’s demeanor changed, his bearing grew solid with pride, and he paused before the guards, giving only his name and trade. Immediate recognition came to their eyes, as they parted before him, and without paying any toll, father and daughter entered the Quarter.
They passed twisting alleyways, wider streets, and everywhere there were people, peculiar-eyed people with faraway looks of concentration, either working at their trade in the small open workshops, or else hurrying to and fro, loaded with materials and supplies. Smells and noises here equaled those of the Markets, and sometimes surpassed. Leather and dyes, pungent chemicals, perfume of fresh flowers, newly cut wood, all intermingled, until Imogenn perceived it as one great manifold Smell of the place—just as the ringing hammers, the hiss of plied incandescent metal, crackling wood, human voices, all came to stand for one Sound. Long afterwards, for weeks, would she carry it in her imagination, the Smell and Sound of the Artisans Quarter, and hence, the Smell and Sound of her father.
Barand took her through winding ways to his own spacious workshop, where he was Master, in charge of a half a dozen apprentices. A large, well-lit room, drowning in the soothing green glow of the monochrome, and piled with odd shapes, filled her with awe. Scattered everywhere, giant hunks of granite rock, walls and hoards of it. Everywhere, fluid green shadows, swaying in the light.
Some of those chunks had to them a distinct shape, a smoothness, an appearance of real objects, where the human hand had worked on them with hammer and chisel. These half-formed shapes loomed like islands throughout the room. And on the floor next to them, together with chipped stone, everywhere lay tools—chisels, picks, hammers, needles, and saws. Little Imogenn tripped often as she wandered staring at the incredible things that grew out of the rock. She glanced at straining human torsos, beasts at play, beautiful female goddesses.
Barand was famous as a master of human form, and without needing to know that, the girl sensed his perfection as an artist, in the flesh-and-blood limbs she saw everywhere, the haunting living faces that frightened her with their presence. She looked and she even blushed at the revealing anatomy of some masculine forms—something that a young female of her station was expressly forbidden to be aware of, under normal circumstances.
They are so beautiful, she thought, all of them. While I am like dust before them. Like those chips of rock, lying at the base of the statues.
And filled with momentary sad wistfulness—the only thing that came to intrude upon this day of happiness—she sometimes said to her father, “Sir . . . do you love those beautiful things you make? Do you?”
“Yes,” he said. “More than life itself.”
“More than me, sir, Father? I am not at all like them, they are so beautiful and perfect.”
And the Master Sculptor’s eyes grew dark suddenly, intense with a pain that was only half-tangible. “No!” he whispered. “Never more than you. You are my only love, Imogenn.”
And sometimes he gave her a quick hard embrace, until her head reeled with joy again. Indeed, she asked that question of him often, just to see that pain, and then just to receive the embrace like a sea of warmth. No one had ever embraced her like that, so intensely, so truthfully. She would remember it always.
When the visit ended, he took her back, walking quickly, and his eyes seemed darker than at the beginning of the day. Quickly, half-running, she came along, as they left the Quarter, passed the Markets, and strode along a bridge over the Arata. Sometimes, late in the day, a light rain came, sprinkling them like dew, as they passed through Outer Dirvan, to where the Olvan Villa stood in old eminence. There, at the gates, she was received by her mother’s servants, impersonally, and hurried within.
Her father was always left standing outside, rain on his hair, as though at a loss for words, yet proud in his silence. Only the look of his eyes said true good-bye to her, for he knew she would recognize that better than words.
And she would not see him until the next time, months and months later. Truly, Imogenn was aware of her age, kept track of it, only through those solitary yearly visits. Everything else was a dream of monotony and stolid pale silver. And she herself was as bland and monotonous as her existence.
Her father’s visits were always unannounced, unexpected, and somehow it made them more miraculous than if they were to have a regular yearly date set. Imogenn lived each day subconsciously expecting him to appear and wonderfully disrupt her life.
Counting by his visits, Imogenn thus grew to be sixteen summers and sixteen winters. Bland, small, shadowlike, she grew up half-noticed, into an insipid shade of a budding young woman. No one had ever predicted to her that she would be anything but what she was, ordinary and unbeautiful.
And only her father, the intimate stranger, had told her that one day, he saw it in her—as he saw future images of grace and perfection in hunks of granite—he saw her as the most beautiful, most unexpected jewel in Dirvan’s any given season.
Finally, the Family Olvan would bear a fine delicate blossom on its proper and ordinary tree.
A blossom fit for a king.
* * *
The carriage rolled like a ship in the darkness, so they could feel each bump on the forest path, each little stone.
Inside, Lixa Beis held on to the cushioned door handle with a bloodless grip of desperation.
She was in hell. Hell, and ripping darkness, and screams of assassins reverberating in her mind. Eventually hell must end. Rather, one kind of hell would supplant another.
Soon.
It was said that Lixa Beis had the shadow of red, the Beis color, in her hair. Supposedly, such “coloration”
was observed under the most powerful near-white monochrome in the City, with all her relations attesting to the fact.
Indeed, professing an ability to perceive color where there was none was a quaint tradition at Dirvan, akin to divination. Often noble children of a certain age were taken into a brightly illuminated room filled with witnesses, and were “examined” in a rather barbaric ritual of occult superstition. The practice was officially condemned, and yet the clandestine nature of this ritualistic nonsense appealed to the bored aristocracy.
Thus, Lixa carried, if not in her debatable colors, then in the solid forms of her face, the print of the Beis line. And yet she was the opposite of her mother, Molhveth Beis, widow of the late Lord Nadeh Beis—the old woman with the withered lips who now sat across from her in the swaying carriage.
Molhveth was herself a daughter of Vaeste, sister to the late Lord Rendvahl Vaeste, who had been the father of Elasand. In her exceedingly ripe middle age, Dame Beis was still beautiful, like an old angel, despite the wrinkled skin and faded hair which had once been utter luxurious darkness. She was also too kindhearted, gave alms to random strangers on the street who appeared poor, and retained servants who stole from her on a regular basis. This, Lixa despised—kindness was incompatible with nobility.
Lixa, stern and old-fashioned like her father, felt that she was, thank the gods, the better perpetrator of her heritage. Thus, she played the subtle superior, in contrast to her mother’s straightforward warmth, and avoided contact with those beneath their rank.
Both had lived, for most of Lixa’s life, away from the City—which her mother did not mind in the least—and the Court, called Dirvan by the aristocrat elite, as it was in vogue then to employ archaic terms for things. In her isolation, Lixa learned to harbor a very odd set of feelings toward the Court and the modern ways of the aristocrats. She loved and hated it simultaneously, hungered for it, yet pretended severe disapproval of the noble ways. Dirvan, and its lush brilliant decadence, drew her vaguely, repelling at the same time, and Lixa unconsciously looked forward to every visit to Tronaelend-Lis.
This particular visit held the greatest significance yet. Lixa was to be wed.
She had never met her husband-to-be. She was not even well acquainted with his Family which had been recommended to her mother, during their few visits to the City. Indeed, the only items of substance about him she had learned through subtle inquiry of a childhood friend. And despite her poise, her calm, her considerable theoretical knowledge of things and ways, she was not very well acquainted with men.
Truly, Elasand Vaeste, a cousin, was the only younger man that Lixa knew at all.
Yes, that same madman who now drove their carriage. . . .
Dame Molhveth had said, however, that Elasand was not representative of men in general. He was just too eccentric and perfect.
Perfectly mad, thought Lixa, He is perfect and mad. And he can fight like ten men—who would’ve guessed?
In the opinion of Molhveth Beis, Elasand, the only son of her sister, was not of this world. He was impossibly proud, and yet it was a pride so vaguely connected to any sense of heritage, or Family, or distinction, so pure and for its own sake, that it was incomprehensible.
Even now, he says nothing, thought Lixa. Well then, let him remain mute.
Elasand also adhered to a lofty and impossible ideal. Dame Beis liked to repeat that gods held high judgment, yet Elas held it even higher, judged more harshly, and his discrimination was impeccable. Lecture him as she might, he would eventually put a stop to all her reproaches with one rational absolute argument.
Elasand was thus extraordinary in his personal power, confident, worldly and aware of all possibilities. Most of the time, despite her critical banter, his aunt was secretly in awe of him.
But not Lixa. She was not in awe at all. Instead, she merely observed and studied him.
Innocently wise cousin Lixa.
But she did not know enough to compare. For, compared with most men, he was a beautiful aloof god. In some Families it was considered ill fortune for any unattached man to be aloof like him, and so the young daughters turned their longing eyes elsewhere.
She did not know that a quirk of his pride forbade Elas to ever pursue others. Instead, they all came to him, men and women, drawn like moths to a flame. He, meanwhile, never expressed a need for anything. Molhveth Beis even believed her nephew had no needs.
Lixa believed he was a subtle liar.
Lixa, having no one else to question, asked him about men and their nature. “I am to be wed, and I must know such things. What is the male essence, cousin?” she would say, her intense eyes holding his, so that Elasand always wanted to smile. She had that way about her.
“Gods only know, Lixa. What is the female essence? What is the essence of anything?” He loved to answer with other questions.
To this the young woman with a face cool like the moon would raise one fine eyebrow calmly, and smirk, saying, “If you want to remain vacuous, I’m sorry to have brought up the subject.”
“In that case,” he replied, “I must tell you something, I suppose.”
They were both so cynical at times, so perfectly harmoniously cynical, that no matter what the topic, they would smoothly come to a mutual understanding of things, endlessly mixing sarcasm with indifference. Indeed, one’s indifference prompted the other to be more obliging. Or, was it that serpentine Lixa had simply fathomed the correct way with Elas?
He leaned forward into the wind, giving the horses free rein, and forward they thundered, headlong into blind night, effortlessly pulling the carriage behind them.
How far was this infernal inn anyway?
Elasand had his own private business in the City. Besides accompanying his aunt and Lixa the bride to her uncertainly joyful destination, he was answering a Summons.
The Summons, in the form of an elegant silver-fringed missive, that famous regal parchment with a metallic border and wax seal, came from the Regents. The Double-Headed Lioness imprinted in the wax was from the coat of arms of the Family Grelias, representing the Regent and Regentrix. Normally it invoked unspeakable alarm and awe in its recipients, even those most securely in favor. Yet upon first seeing it, Elas did not even blink.
One must never refuse Hestiam Grelias and his sister Deileala. As Elas had broken the seal several days ago, when they were still at the Vaeste country estate, he knew that a trip to the City of volatile dreams, Tronaelend-Lis, was inevitable.
“Elasand-re Vaeste, you are required to present yourself at Dirvan for an Audience with Their Graces, the Regents,” said the letter, stilted, curt, and unspecific. At least they had remembered to include the lordly “re” ending after his name.
If he hadn’t been calm already at that moment, prepared for anything, Elasand would’ve let out a breath of relief. Their acknowledgment of his rank meant that he was not out of favor. He remembered the several known instances where a Summons to an aristocrat without the “re” ending was but an elegant death warrant, one which could not be refused in honor.
So convenient, he thought, I will attend both the gilded dross of Dirvan, and the traditional nonsense of my cousin’s Wedding. Both, achieved in one trip. For, I refuse to make a second trip to that luckless fools’ City within one month.
He would never voice any of this, of course. In addition to the strict idealism, there was that other side of him. Elas rarely communicated what he thought exactly the way it first came to him. His thoughts had to be modified, even to himself, before he presented them to others.
Both Dame Beis and cousin Lixa did not know it, but not only was Elasand Vaeste a lord of considerable position and bloodline, but he was a professional clandestine diplomat. His connections ranged from the Regents’ advisor circle to the most powerful Guilds, and extended out to the underworld. He was often a mediator between opposing factions, and had a talent for tactfully smoothing out all interactions and working together with Chancellor Lirr.
Elasand Vaeste, s
uave diplomat and righteous idealist, remained a mystery.
It had grown cold now. Sitting high up in the driver’s seat, Elasand wrapped his cloak tighter against the night.
What sad turbulent times these were. . . . They had set out to Tronaelend-Lis, as custom demanded, with only Lixa and one older woman relative attending her—for it was the bridegroom Family’s duty to make the splendid Wedding, while the Bride came traditionally as “pauper” to be exalted by the Groom, the “king.”
For this journey Elas had expected all simplicity. He had calmly excluded the possibility of any adversity. Yet in this one rare instance, he had gravely misjudged the situation. By traveling without an escort, he had thought to avoid bringing attention upon himself and his kin. Yet there was now a great deal of political unrest, and he was as always not as innocent of it as his kin believed.
I am a slack-minded fool, he berated himself mentally, outwardly cool as always, if only more grim, as his gloved hands fingered the reins of the carriage that carried his aunt and cousin. Both women were still in that terrified subdued state which was the result of having their blind trust in Elasand’s judgment undermined.
* * *
Postulate Five: Rainbow is Illusion.
* * *
Yllva Caexis sat in the cheerful opulent guest room, surrounded by a dozen of her friends. This was a small, comfortable gathering, unlike the usual crowds that would come to partake of the social charms of the Caexis Villa, and gleefully “plot the overthrow of Grelias” over a cup of fragrant tea.
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