by Doris Egan
There were two, both dated yesterday afternoon: one from Ran, the other from Stereth. I accepted them both.
Should arrive home by noon tomorrow. Hope you're feeling better. Where are you?
Ran
Your market sorcerer named Moros isn't named Moros. He used to be Bril Savin, but the Savins disowned him. He had a hut outside the city, on the west bank of the river. I hope this knowledge provides more certainty in your life.
Stereth Tar'krim
The one from Ran was characteristic. I would hear about that "where are you" when he returned. And good old Stereth and his provisions for certainty in my life. I wouldn't count on it, old friend. His message was intriguing, as messages from Stereth so often are. Presumably the hut was abandoned when Moros died. No mention of any wives or children… disowned persons rarely find mates. It had been days since his death, and there was no reason to believe anybody would be there now, even assuming they knew where he lived. No harm in poking around a bit… Damn. I'd have to do it before Ran got home. He'd be quite capable of calling up three more cousins from out of town to keep me within the city walls till I lost interest.
I told myself there was no reason to follow up Stereth's information, except curiosity, powerful in itself, and a desire to get Loden out of trouble and out of our lives. Speaking of out of our lives— I woke the boy up, fed him, and told him I was throwing him out before my husband got home. He accepted the phrase as though it were one he'd heard before.
"I want to see you later today, though," I told him. "So start working on your story now." He nodded, looking sheepish. At least he didn't seem to be as harrowed as he'd been last night. "I mean it, Loden. The carriage stops here."
"I know," he said. He went off down the front steps and into, I thought, the gods knew what further trouble.
Good heavens! I hope Ran didn't feel that way about me.
It was nearly the fifth hour. I ran upstairs and awakened Kylla, where she lay sprawled over the bed in my room. She had her family's way of taking all the mattress space. "Ky, you've got to get up. We'll be late. Ky!"
She squinted at me blearily. "What time is it?"
"An hour till Eliana's party."
"Oh, gods, no." She let her chin fall back on the pillow. "It can't possibly be. I've barely slept!"
"You've been out since the reign of the last emperor— out like a light, I might add. I figured you'd want the time to paint over any circles under your eyes, before you see Eiana."
This call to war got her attention. "Ohhh… why, why, did you let me drink that whole bottle of Ducort?"
"You insisted, Ky. You told me you could handle it."
She dragged herself out of bed, moaning as she did. "Can't you see how I'm suffering? At least you could take the blame."
"Yes, Ky. I'm sorry I forced you to drink all that wine last night."
"That's better." She tottered to the bath and locked the door. I went to get ready myself, knowing she'd be at least half an hour.
I changed into one of my best robes, thought about it, and took the jade and caneblood necklace Ran had given me last Ghost Eve from its box underneath the bed. This was a social call, after all. I'd check with Kylla on whether it was too dressy for daytime, but with discreet earrings it might work.
I took it out of the box, remembering that Ghost Eve. I looked into the mirror as I held it up, and saw my eyes had gotten visibly misty. "You should be taken in hand, girl," I said to the reflection there. Then I went to the upstairs office and left a Net message for Ran, telling him I'd probably be having lunch at the Poraths' when he got back, and pointing him toward Stereth's message for what I intended to do after. Manipulation works two ways, you know. At least I'd have companionship in ransacking the hut, since I had no doubt at all Ran would show up there to make his displeasure known.
I was reassured to see the silver arc in the Poraths' garden. The last time I'd seen this garden was two nights ago in my card-driven hallucination, and my statue had bled rivers where the arc now gleamed with such a reassuring lack of organic properties. Ran was right, I thought uncomfortably, that had been my own fault; mixing up the stories of Kade and the Poraths and my worries about the Cormal-lon council, leaving open-ended questions floating around in my head. Keep that up, Theodora, and you'll be almost as good with magic as the late Moros was. The Poraths' house loomed ahead of us, full of family, servants, cats, and lizard; not at all empty or abandoned. Do you good, I told myself, to spend a little time with quiet, respectable people, after the excitement of yesterday. Folks here may get murdered, by the gods, but they're always courteous.
Kylla and I were heading for the central porch, wearing our finest—including the caneblood necklace, by the way— when the tall jinevra bushes around the blue pool rustled.
A head looked out at us. "Hello, Theodora."
"Coalis! What in the world are you doing in there?"
"Ah, excuse me for not stepping out. I just wanted to mention, I was out on business with Stereth last night, and he asked me to let you know he's left a Net message for you."
"I know," I said, puzzled.
"Well, when I told him you might be visiting today— since your sister-in-law was coming—he said to tell you it's about your market sorcerer. He said he thinks you sometimes don't read his messages."
"It's kind of you to pass this on, Coalis. May I ask what you're doing in the jinevra bushes?"
Shouts came from the direction of the house. Coalis winced. "Please let this matter by," he said.
The shouts were louder now. It was Jusik's voice. The front door was flung open and Lord Porath emerged, in white-hot temper, hands in fists. You could practically see his veins throb from here. "Where is he?" he cried. "He's still in the compound, don't tell me he's not! The gatekeeper didn't pass him out!" He strode down the steps,
followed by Leel Canerol, Auntie Jace, Eliana, the steward, and three others I didn't recognize. They poured through the door and over the porch after him, like a scared litter of kittens.
Coalis' voice came urgently from somewhere below my ear: "Move away from the bushes!"
Jusik was stalking across the garden. I looked at him, looked back at the bushes, and then hastily stepped away.
Too late. I'd drawn his attention, and there must have been some movement behind the leaves. "There! Don't move, you fool, you disgrace, or I swear I'll beat your organs out of your skin! Don't you dare move!"
He was at the bushes in twenty strides, and yanking Coalis out by the arm. There wasn't really room between the thin branches of jinevra for him to exit on this side, but Jusik paid no attention to that. The recently created First Son of Porath emerged branchwhipped and scratched.
He at once threw himself into the dirt at his father's feet, the way they tell me the Six Families do when they need to impress the emperor with their sincerity.
"You vermin!" yelled Jusik. "You river toad! Disappointment of all our hopes! Get up!"
Coalis scrambled immediately to his feet, still saying nothing.
"Out all night! Drinking and gambling, I have no doubt! But what do you care? Why should it matter to you if the House of Porath depends on you? Do you think being first son confers the right of pissing away your time and money?" He paused for half a second, as though waiting for Coalis to convict himself further, but no one spoke. The other members of the household had gathered around in a half-circle, with identical appalled looks on their faces. "If only you were more like your brother! I wish to heaven it were you in the canal, and not him! Do you think anybody would have missed you?"
Coalis continued to stare at the ground. "Enough!" yelled his father. "Against that tree! Now!"
Coalis walked to the tree where Ran had once stood and waited for me to finish with Stereth. He placed the palms of his hands against it. I now saw that a leather strap dangled from one of Jusik's tightly clenched fists.
"Take off that robe!" cried Jusik. "Do you think to fool with me?"
Coalis str
ipped off his outerrobe and pulled down his white cotton shirt.
I thought that he would make some protest—shout back, at least, since meekness was getting him nowhere—but he didn't. And appalled though the rest of the family looked, no one made a move to interfere. Obviously they didn't want that temper turned on them, but even so—
The strap hit. Coalis's back arched and a sound came out of his mouth—not a scream and not quite a groan—a sound that convinced me that even though I'd never seen or felt a whipping before, it was an exquisitely painful event.
I was horrified. I was rooted to the spot, grotesquely fascinated, but mostly horrified, and not just by the pain. There is no corporal punishment of minors on Pyrene, and it is strongly disapproved of on Athena. This was stepping back into some kind of dark age, a stage-lit theater event somehow dropped into real life, but even worse, this was a thing so clearly taken for granted by my contemporaries.
The strap struck, and struck again. And nobody moved. Jusik was the First of Porath, he could beat the hell out of his son if he wanted to.
Alien. I became aware of Kylla standing uncomfortably beside me—embarrassed at her presence at a private family moment, sympathizing with Coais, disapproving of Jusik— but without that extra layer of repulsion, of incomprehension, that I was watching through.
Eight strokes. I wasn't counting at the time, but I can still hear the slap of the strap reverberate. Eight strokes, not even cruel by some standards. He could have beaten Coalis to death and not been held legally accountable.
He raised his arm a ninth time and threw the strap past the tree, onto the ground. "I want you in my library tomorrow morning! I want to hear you recite the Twenty Lessons of a Dutiful Son, and you'd better not have a word wrong! Studying, that's what you should be doing, not out on the street mingling with all the riffraff of the provinces—" He choked in a couple of breaths with difficulty, trying to keep himself from working up to another crescendo of anger. He stepped back from the tree, and Coalis immediately threw himself to the ground again in dutiful fashion—more dropped than threw, this time. Jusik made a disgusted sound, turned away, and stalked back into the house.
Everyone else at once ran to Coalis and tried to help him up, murmuring comforting sounds and inspecting his back. Auntie Jace was sent to the kitchen for wet cloths, Leel Canerol had him turn around for her as she tsked-tsked and gave him advice about keeping his shirt off till tomorrow. Eliana sniffled and kissed him.
Kylla and I exchanged looks. Should we walk on into this? We were more or less being ignored anyway… maybe this would be a good time to slip away.
Eliana looked up and met our eyes. "Our guests," she said to the others, like a hostess reminding someone to serve the canapes. Kylla and I came forward.
Coalis was facing us, so I couldn't see what the strap had done to his back. There was a fine grain of dust on his cheek from where he'd pressed it against the bark of the tree, with tear tracks cutting through the dust. His eyes were still moist and his skin was paler than usual, but his expression was no different than it had been ten minutes earlier in the jinevra bushes. I searched his face, looking for something I could get hold of, but there was nothing. He didn't, quite, look calm … he looked held-in, self-contained.
"I'm sorry," I said, meaning that I was sorry for calling attention to him in the bushes.
"That's all right. It's bound to happen, from time to time."
Auntie Jace ran back with her handfuls of dripping cloths. Coalis was made to sit, and she knelt behind him and helped Leel Canerol in applying them. Water ran down Coalis's back onto the dirt. He winced whenever Leel touched him.
Auntie Jace was muttering. "What's gotten into your father, anyway? He never used to beat you."
"Co, here, never used to spend his nights out," said Leel dryly.
"It's not that." said Coalis. "Ow!"
"Sorry."
"It's just that I've got to expect that with Kade gone, he'll be… giving me a lot more of his attention. After all, he used to beat Kade all the time. With me, he probably never thought it mattered."
"So now you're important enough to correct," said Leel. "Lucky you. I'm glad I'm a provincial commoner."
Eliana said, "It's so unfair. You weren't out spending House money—you were making it."
"Will you keep your voice down?" said Coalis, frowning. "If we're going to start letting Father in on everything we do in our spare time, I know a few things I could share with him."
His sister made a face—but dropped the subject.
Kylla stirred. "We seem to have intruded at a bad time," she said. "Perhaps we should postpone our visit for another day."
Eliana straightened up. "No, please… if this is when Father asked you to come, we'd better stick to it. I'm sorry things are so—disorganized." She put a hand on her forehead and seemed to be trying to recall what she would be doing for an ordinary visit. "We only just got the table set up," she apologized. "Father didn't tell us he was inviting you, the messenger only mentioned it in passing this morning, so we've been running around trying to get things ready."
She considered this and seemed to feel it lacked a certain graciousness, for she at once modified it. "Not that you aren't both very welcome. I just want to excuse our lack of preparation. Really, we're very happy you agreed to come." She sighed. "This hasn't been a good morning. Let's try to start over again."
"We're happy to be here," said Kylla, who knew what was expected of her. "Is there anything we can do to be of help?"
"I'll be all right," said Coalis. "I'm just going to lie down for a while. Don't change anything on my account."
"He'll be fine," agreed Leel, looking up from her cleansing of his wounds. "Why don't you go on upstairs, and I'll be there in a couple of minutes."
Perhaps it was a trifle over-direct of me, but I hadn't had a good morning either, so I went ahead and asked: "Did your father have any particular purpose in mind? Anything he wanted us to discuss during this party?"
Eliana took no offense. "We wondered the same," she said frankly. "But he's been upset ever since he found out Coalis was away all night, and we really didn't think this was quite the time to inquire."
I wouldn't have brought the matter up, either. We followed Eliana upstairs to her room, where a small black table had been set up with a deck of playing cards in the center. Cushions surrounded it. The mattress had been taken off the sleeping platform and leaned against the far wall, and a portable tah burner with pot and cups had been set up in its place.
We filed in and sat down, to rather an awkward silence. "Leel will be up in a moment," said Eliana, who knew as much about that as we did. I looked around the room, the first daughter of Porath's world. No different from last time; clean, small, well-tended. A flute sat on the window-sill beside a stack of notepaper.
"You play?" I asked.
"I'm learning," she said. Auntie Jace made an embarrassed movement.
Fortunately Leel arrived before the conversation languished, and we could begin arguing about what game to start with. Sometimes I think card games and dinners just give us something to pretend to do while we all figure out how we stack up against each other in the human social web.
But as I'd said to Eliana on the Net, I don't know many Ivoran games. "I know how to play Sleeping Dog," I offered.
There was a strained silence at this; apparently it was considered a vulgar game. I'd learned it from some Sector outlaws the previous summer.
"We can play Flush," Eliana announced.
"It's always Flush," said Leel Canerol. "It's the most monotonous game on earth."
"We'll play Flush Thirty-Six," said her mistress, with a trace of temper. "That's not monotonous, it's the most complicated game there is. You can keep score, Lely. Since you find it so easy."
Leel Canerol made a face, but stretched her lanky frame against the wall until we all heard something crack, then grinned and walked over to the windowsill where she retrieved pen and paper. The paper,
I noticed, was a textured,
pastel kind, that came in short sheets, suitable for young ladies' personal notes.
Leel pulled out a stool and threw one leg over it. "Shoot," she said.
"Would you care to deal?" Eliana asked Kylla.
"Many thanks," said Kylla. She took the deck, an old-fashioned one of red and black oval cards, shuffled them grimly and dealt out seven cards to Eliana, Auntie Jace, and me.
I said, "Uh, excuse me, but somebody's going to have to show me how to play."
Kylla and Eliana were staring at each other, expressions of determined courtesy on their faces. I don't think they heard me.
Auntie Jace threw down two cards and took two from the pile. Eliana smiled prettily at Kylla and said, "I'll stand pat with what I have, dear."
I decided my best move would be to blindly participate, so I traded in one card.
Kylla took two without any comment. We went around several times doing this, then Auntie Jace said, "Flush," and put down her cards into three sets. They made no particular order that I could discern. We all put down our hands then and Leel Canerol walked around examining, counting, and writing.
It went on like this for about an hour. I kept a low profile and stayed away from the less understandable moves, as when Eliana suddenly laid a card at right angles across the discard pile and cried, "Block!" Fortunately, nobody seemed to expect me to do anything. Of course my nose started to go critical about forty minutes into play, and I kept my handkerchief in my fist, transferring the cards from one hand to another as I sniffed and blew as quietly as I could. Auntie Jace gave me some funny looks from time to time, but the others were too well-bred to take official notice.
Auntie Jace turned to me after one round and said, "Why in the world didn't you declare? You had a perfect hand!"
I shrugged, hoping I looked coolly above it all. Leel said, "She doesn't have to declare if she doesn't want to. Maybe she's working on a strategy." In fact I was. Keep my head low and hit the floor if the shots started to fly.