Dragon Rose (Tales of the Latter Kingdoms)

by Pope, Christine

  So I took little note of his absence, save for a wistful desire to be out with the wind and the sky instead of cooped up in the workshop, which always seemed stuffy and over-warm. And since we were at the peak of the summer’s heat, it seemed sultrier than ever. I grimly rolled up my sleeves and pulled a set of bone hairpins from my pocket, fixing my hair in a messy knot at the back of my head and no doubt ruining the careful curls that had been achieved by means of sleeping with my hair up in rags the night before.

  The pieces awaiting paint before their final firing sat on a shelf next to my worktable. I picked up a bowl, sat down with my back to the door so I wouldn’t block any of the light, and got to work.

  The challenge for me, as always, was not to faithfully reproduce the pattern of ivy and forget-me-nots that Elder Macon had prescribed for his new dishes, but rather to keep that pattern consistent from piece to piece. I would much rather have altered each one, not hugely, but enough to give the dinnerware some interesting visual variation. But variation was not what the Elder wanted, so instead I made myself concentrate on churning out uniform leaf after uniform leaf, consistent flower after consistent flower.

  When I worked, I paid very little attention to what was going on around me. My father sometimes joked that I wouldn’t even notice if the house caught fire, if I happened to have a paintbrush in my hand at the time. I’m not sure how true that really was, but I did tend to let the world close down to only me, the brush, and the surface I was painting, whether it was a piece of stoneware or a leaf of paper.

  So I vaguely half-heard a door somewhere slamming, and feet rushing across the wooden floors, but since no one came in to see me, I paid those sounds very little mind. The light coming in the window also did little to inform me of the passage of time, as at that season of the year, full dark didn’t set in until very late. Six o’clock in the evening was just as bright as three, or four, or five.

  It wasn’t until I heard Master Marenson’s shocked tones exclaiming, “My lady Rhianne!” that I realized something was amiss.

  I started and dropped my paintbrush—luckily not on the plate that was my current project, but on the stained wooden tabletop. Then I realized his was the absolutely last voice I should be hearing in my father’s workshop.

  Although at the moment I wished I could simply flee out the back door, I knew that escape was not feasible. So I slipped off the stool and turned, one hand going up to pull the pins out of the hasty knot at the back of my head.

  By some miracle, my voice sounded almost calm. “Master Marenson. Is it six o’clock already?”

  His face had flushed an unbecoming dark red, doubly unattractive, as it clashed horribly with the maroon doublet of heavy linen he wore. “Past six, Miss Rhianne, and no one to greet me at the door but a scullery maid and some chit not old enough to leave the schoolroom, let alone allow visitors into her house!”

  By “chit” I assumed he meant my youngest sister Darlynne, who had just turned eleven at midsummer. Where everyone else was, I had no idea. “My apologies, Master Marenson. I’m sure this can all be explained. Perhaps there was some emergency that called my mother and other sisters out of the house.”

  His eyes, small already, seemed to almost disappear as he scowled down at me from the top step. “And what ‘emergency’ is it, Miss Rhianne, that has you engaged in such an unseemly enterprise?”

  For the first time I realized I stood there in a paint-stained apron, my current occupation abundantly clear, not just through those telltale paint spatters, but also from the stoneware ranged around my spot at the worktable. Oh, dear.

  Although there was no way to deny what I had been doing, I thought perhaps if I made light of it, or even ignored it, he would do the same. Essaying a smile, I reached up to untie the apron from the back of my neck and then discarded it on my abandoned stool. At least my gown seemed to have escaped relatively unscathed.

  “Why don’t we go up to the sitting room?” I suggested. “I’m sure there is an explanation for my parents’ absence—they were so very much looking forward to dining with you—but in the meantime I can have Janney bring you some porter or a glass of wine while we wait.”

  For a second or two I thought he might actually acquiesce. But then I saw him straighten and cast a jaundiced eye around my father’s workroom.

  “If you think, Miss Rhianne, that I am going to accept hospitality from those who have purposely lied to me, then you have quite an incorrect idea of my character.”

  “I hardly know you, Master Marenson, and therefore I feel I am not qualified to have yet formed any idea of your character.”

  His face reddened further. “Impertinence! I count myself glad that I discovered this now, before it was too late!”

  “Discovered my impertinence?” I asked innocently.

  “Discovered that you are engaged in trade, young woman—that you are doing your father’s work for him, as no properly brought-up young lady should.”

  “And so the ‘proper’ thing to do would have been to let our livelihood dwindle along with my father’s eyesight?”

  “The proper thing is to be truthful, Miss Rhianne. Your father is selling work that is not his.”

  My mother would have known to guard her tongue, to find the soft tone of voice that might placate an angry man. But I had not her skills, and I found I enjoyed giving in to the anger that flared in me at this preposterous man’s misplaced indignation.

  “What difference does it make?” I snapped. “If the work is good, and our patrons are satisfied, who should care whether it was my father’s hand or mine that painted those flowers, those leaves? Are they any less pleasing to look at because they came from a woman and not a man?”

  “A very great difference,” Liat Marenson said, and his fleshy lips thinned a little. “A very great difference.” With a kind of vindictive satisfaction he added, “And you may find that I am not the only one who feels this way.”

  With that he replaced his velvet cap on his thinning hair and stalked out.

  After he had gone, I realized my hands were shaking. Not so much because I had been discovered, but because of Master Marenson’s not-so-subtle threat to reveal my family’s secret to the rest of the town. Such a revelation could ruin us.

  More pressing, however, was the mystery of my parents’ absence. What could have possibly happened to prevent them from being at home for such an important guest?

  I found out soon enough. My father had gone to gather clay, as I had guessed. What I hadn’t guessed was that he would suffer a heart spasm while hauling the heavy barrow of clay homeward.

  Luckily, a cowherd found him sprawled across the path and had taken him to his cottage, only a quarter-mile away. Word came to the house, and my mother and two of my sisters had left immediately. It would take something of that magnitude for my mother to forget Liat Marenson and her plans for him, and in summoning the doctor and waiting through the examination that followed, she had quite lost track of the time.

  It was falling dark by the time she returned, looking drawn and preoccupied and not at all her usual poised self. She reassured me that Father was fine, but that he shouldn’t be moved for at least a day or so more.

  “And what of Master Marenson?” she asked, casting a worried glance around the dining room, where the unused table settings still awaited a guest who would never use them. Darlynne and Janney and I had cleaned up the uneaten food and stored it in the larder several hours past.

  The truth would only upset my mother further, and besides, I had no idea whether Liat Marenson actually planned to make good on his threats. “I made our apologies,” I said. “He understood that some emergency must have occurred, and so returned home.” Well, that was at least half true.

  She nodded and, after making a quick inspection of the kitchens, told me that it was time for bed. I wasn’t about to argue; the day felt as if it had dragged on quite long enough.

  Perhaps I wouldn’t have been so eager to sleep if I had known what aw
aited me on the morrow.

  They began to appear at as early an hour as was considered halfway civil—Elder Macon, the Widow Mallin, everyone who had placed an order with my father in the last few months. My mother met them at the door and tried to explain that Barne Menyon was very ill and not even at home. They cared little for that. They only wanted their money back.

  Somehow she got rid of them and came to see me where I sat in the schoolroom, looking down at the street from my second-story window. The plumes on the Widow Mallin’s hat bobbed indignantly as she strode away, and I thought the sight reminded me of nothing more than an outraged barnyard fowl.

  “What happened, Rhianne?” my mother asked, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. The shadows under her eyes seemed very pronounced in the bright sunlight streaming through the windows.

  “I fear Master Marenson discovered me painting the last of Elder Macon’s dish set yesterday afternoon.”

  “And you waited until now to tell me?”

  “You had more pressing things to worry about yesterday evening.”

  She was silent, mouth tight as she contemplated my words. I knew she wouldn’t explode—not my mother—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t say some very cutting things when pressed. Perhaps she would tell me that I should have made up some plausible lie, or that I should have noticed the passage of time and been safely out of the workroom long before Liat Marenson appeared on our doorstep.

  I held my breath, waiting.

  At length she said, “We will wait and see if this blows over. I have some money set by, and we needn’t worry. Not yet.”

  Relief course through my veins, even as I wondered at her words. Oh, there had been money on her side of the family—her father, though he had died before I was born, had been a successful tinsmith, and it was his house that we lived in now, the house my mother inherited when my grandmother died. I had been a small child then, barely five years, and I remembered very little of my maternal grandmother. She had been a wispy pale little woman who seemed content to let her daughter rule things. I guessed there had been very little argument when my mother took it into her head to marry a young potter with barely a copper graut to his name.

  However, I’d never heard a whisper of any savings, and indeed, with the way my mother talked about the household finances, I had always assumed that we lived from month to month, with only my father’s earnings to keep us afloat. Now those earnings were threatened, but perhaps it didn’t matter quite as much as I had thought.

  “Some money,” she repeated, giving me a warning look. “Certainly not enough to permanently replace your father’s income, or even keep this house going for more than a month…possibly two, if we are very careful. So do not look quite so relieved, Rhianne.”

  Since there was very little else I could say, I merely bowed my head. I wouldn’t let myself become too discouraged.

  After all, a great deal could happen in a month’s time.

  Chapter Two

  My father came home three days later, riding in the back of the cart his savior shepherd used to bring wool to town. We all clustered around him, exclaiming over his return, but he was uncharacteristically quiet, a grimness that couldn’t be completely attributed to his condition somehow clinging to him. My mother shushed Darlynne and Maeganne, saying that their father needed his rest, and bustled him up to the room my parents shared.

  Down in the entry hall, my sister Therella and I exchanged wary glances. I had not spoken of what passed between Liat Marenson and myself, and neither had my mother said anything, but news gets around in a town the size of Lirinsholme. More than once I had seen Therella give me grudging looks, as if she blamed me for our current situation. Ridiculous, of course—it was not my fault that Liat Marenson was such a narrow-minded prig, nor that the world carried such prejudices against women engaging in trade. Or, to be more precise, women engaging in trades reserved for men. It was all very well for Alina to sell her vegetables in the market, or for the Widow Lanson to sew clothing for those who did not wish to make their own, but the potter’s trade—along with that of the tinsmith, the glass blower, the ironmonger, and all those others who made up the Craftsmen’s Guild—was the sole province of men. In their eyes, I had far overstepped my bounds and intruded where I had no right.

  Finally, Therella said, “I hope you’re happy.”

  “I?” I repeated. “I am happy Father is home, if that is what you mean.”

  She made an impatient gesture. “I always knew it was a bad idea, you helping Father is his workroom. Now look where we are! No one has placed an order for days, and I saw Mother giving money back to the Widow Mallin. What are we going to do now?”

  “Wait for Father to get better,” I replied, trying to keep the bite out of my words. Truly, I understood my sister’s fear, even if I found her blame to be entirely misplaced. But she was seventeen, old enough to want to be grown up while at the same time lacking the life experience to achieve such a state. She could not—or would not—understand that we were all victims here. It wasn’t as if I had asked to help out in the workroom. My parents had decided on the matter together, knowing the risks.

  “And that will help exactly how?”

  “At least then he will be able to go back to work. If people see him working—while I am far away from his workshop—then perhaps things will begin to mend. But fretting isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

  She made a derisive noise but did not argue, instead turning from me and going upstairs to the room we shared. This was her own form of revenge, for our bedroom was not large, and with one of us occupying it, the other was effectively locked out.

  I sighed and moved on to the little sitting room off the kitchen, where I had left some of my hated embroidery. At least no one could accuse me of painting while my hands were occupied with a needle and silk floss.

  Days passed, and my father slowly mended, although he could not or would not return to his workroom. My mother seemed to turn paler and more silent with each passing day, and one night I chanced upon her as she sat at the kitchen table, a meager-looking stack of silver coins in front of her and a paper covered with figures set off to one side, as if she had pushed it away. Her head drooped, and I heard her weeping.

  I stopped then, and crept away. I knew she would not want me to see her weakness.

  That night I dreamed.

  I saw the dark granite bulk of Black’s Keep silhouetted against the night sky. And from its highest tower I saw a black shape move off into the wind, the shadow of its wings blotting out the stars. With the night wind came a high, keening cry, like that of a diving hawk, yet a thousand times stronger, filling the cold air with the echoes of its pain. Darkness seemed to flow out from it, running up the hills and down the valleys between the Keep and the town of Lirinsholme, swallowing everything in its path, as if some god had poured ink from the heavens to paint the entire world black. And we all stood in the town square and watched the shadow approach, fear rooting us in place, until the black tide rushed up and over us, drowning us all.

  Then I sat up in bed, gasping, cold sweat trickling down my back even though the night air coming in the open window was sweet and warm. I grasped the linen of my bedsheets, softened by countless washings, and made myself remember where I was. From across the chamber I heard my sister’s soft snores. I was home. I was safe.

  Once I might have discounted such a thing as merely a nightmare, simply fragments of the day’s worries recast into a dream shape. But a year earlier I had dreamed of my cousin Clary giving birth to her son in the night, and when I awoke the next morning, news came to us that she had indeed borne a healthy boy that night. I might have thought nothing of it—after all, Clary’s impending childbed had been on all our minds—save that another night, only two months later, I dreamed that my Granny Menyon had fallen and broken her hip. So she had, as she’d gotten up in the darkness to fetch herself a cup of water.

  I spoke of the dream to her several days later, as
I was taking my turn in watching over her, and she smiled. “It’s a true Seeing, child. Nothing to fear.”

  “‘Nothing to fear’?” I echoed. “But isn’t it…magic?”

  I had lowered my voice on that last word, for even in these latter days magic is something mistrusted and even reviled, an unquiet relic from an age when sorcerers ruled the land. No one much believed in it anymore, at least not in the world at large. Here in Lirinsholme, however, we had the Dragon as a constant reminder that magic wasn’t quite as dead as the rest of the world seemed to think it was.

  Granny Menyon only smiled again and shook her head. “Not magic…at least not the way people think of it nowadays. It’s only your heart seeing the important things, and telling your head. Nothing to fear. It’s a gift, such as the way you can make a few strokes of paint look like a forget-me-not.”

  Her words made me look at her in surprise. I had thought I was being so careful about hiding my unconventional avocation.

  The smile didn’t waver. Despite her years, she still had teeth as white and straight as a twenty-year-old’s. “Your father is proud of you, proud of your talents. He shares things with me…as he should. Any road, ’tis only that you have a way of seeing things, and sometimes you see them with your heart first. Tell yourself that, child, and it won’t seem so strange.”

  At the time I had been comforted, and since I hadn’t had a true dream like that for some time, I had almost forgotten my so-called gift, pushed it off to some corner of my mind where I could forget it.

  But now…

  I pushed back my bedclothes and stood, then went to the window and looked out over the town. A half-moon hung low in the east, its twin barely visible above the horizon. To the north all was dark, although in the town itself the streets in their orderly grids were picked out here and there by flickering torchlight. All calm, all quiet. Perhaps my dream had been only that, a dream. Never mind that I could still hear the echoes of that wailing cry in my ears, still feel the cold air freezing my very marrow. In the past my Seeing had been of things taking place the same time I saw them, and yet nothing in my world seemed to have been disturbed.