The Adorned

by John Tristan

  I wondered, then, if the Count had told her that she had been his second choice to serve as his companion here. A sour guilt rose in my throat, and I broke our gaze.

  Regardless of Lord Loren’s reservations, the princess seemed to like her gift. Isadel lingered at her feet, now and then slipping a grape or slice of honey-cake beneath Itayysa’s silvery veil; Itayysa laughed and caressed her, and the Count looked on, well pleased with his handiwork.

  Chapter Thirty

  A voice woke me in the night, whispering my name. I sat up in bed, blinking away the last remnants of a dream—a hand, rough and familiar, and the bloom of lines on my skin, blurring into featureless grey before I could glimpse the outline of the design. The face I had seen in my dream faded into Istan’s, thin and serious. “What is it?” I murmured.

  “It’s time,” he said. “Lord Loren is sending you to the Count.”

  Sleep dropped away, and I swung my bare legs out from under the cover. “Now?”

  He nodded. “Now. Get up.”

  He shaved me, combed my hair, and wrapped me in a thin robe. Outside the windows the sky was still iron-dark.

  “What am I to do?”

  Istan gave me a look that suggested the answer was obvious. His mouth was twisted into a half smile. “The same you always do.”

  I held his eyes. “And?”

  He breathed out slowly, almost a sigh. “Listen to him, as you were told to. And make sure the Count is aware you go to him with Lord Loren’s knowledge and approval; it may serve to sweeten the Count for him.” His voice trailed away.

  Now it was my turn to smile. “So I am merely meant to...sweeten him?”

  “No, Etan.” This was an unexpected voice. Lord Loren stood at the doorway; it was his first visit to my room.

  Istan looked up, startled. “My lord—”

  “Leave us a moment, Istan.”

  With a bow, he left. Lord Loren came and sat beside me on the bed. He smiled at me—a tired, distracted smile—and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “If you do not wish to go,” he said, “you do not have to.”

  They reminded me of Tallisk, somehow, those softly spoken words. I swallowed. “Just...tell me what you expect of me, my lord.”

  “There is a matter of Edia. A border town. The Surammers want it as one of the concessions of the treaty, and they daily grow closer to persuading the Council. I will not let them have it.”

  Will not, I noted. I waited for him to say more.

  “If the Count were to speak against it, they wouldn’t. Etan,” he said softly. “I will not lay too heavy a burden on you. But...beauty might serve to sway the Blooded where reason cannot. If he asks you—and he will—tell him that I allowed you to go to him. If he asks why—and that, he may not—tell him the truth. Tell him I hope it will sway him to my point of view.” He smiled. “He will understand that, in his way.”

  I licked my lips. “And if it does not work?”

  “It will be no fault of yours. You will still have served as an example of my generosity—and, perhaps, you will have heard a reason from the Count’s lips that I could not.” His hand found my cheek. His touch was rough and warm, like Tallisk’s was.

  I swallowed a lump in my throat and leaned in to the touch. He smelled warm, of clean sweat and linen. “I will do what you ask, sir,” I said, and I listed toward him, pressing my lips to his.

  A moment later, I realized what I had done. I froze, my mouth still pressed to Lord Loren’s lips. Ever so gently, he moved me away from him and placed my hands at my sides. I tried to say something. I tried to meet his eyes, to break the tension with a smile, to tell him—what? That I was still half dreaming, seeing shadows instead of the solid, waking world? That I had not intended to embarrass him?

  It would be unnecessary: he would know all of this, would have read it in the tightening lines of my body.

  “Istan will take you to Count Karan’s chambers,” he said. “Your writ-sister Isadel is with Princess Itayysa; he will be alone.”

  “Yes, my lord.” My voice was very soft.

  “You will do fine, Etan,” he said. He rose from my bed. For a moment, his hand hovered over my head, as if he meant to lay a blessing there—but he did not touch me. “I know that I chose well, with you.”

  I swallowed hard and turned away from him. “Thank you, my lord.”

  He was kind, I could not deny that—but his kind words could not close the dark fault of shame that had opened in me, when he’d pushed me away as you would a sleepy child, or a mewing kitten from a too-busy lap.

  * * *

  The Count’s chambers were quiet, his massive bed enclosed in a dark canopy. A single candle flickered when I opened the door, caught by an errant breeze. The room seemed empty, from my place in the doorway. I bit my lip and looked back. Istan stood a few steps behind me, placid-faced, flanked by the Count’s bloodguards. There would be no quarter from him.

  I cleared my throat. “Your Grace?” My voice sounded too loud in the quiet dark.

  “Etan.” The Count’s response was soft; I still could not see him. “Is that you?”

  No turning back now; Istan had vanished. “Yes, Your Grace. May I enter?”

  The Count’s laugh was low and musical. “Of course, of course.”

  I closed the door behind me. The candle’s flickering ceased. Out of the shadows of the canopy he came, his eyes green flames. In the indistinct light he seemed like something carved from ivory, all cold smoothness. I closed the distance between us and kneeled; he seemed to be almost expecting it.

  “What brings you to me tonight, dear Etan? I thought that Haqan had the pleasure of you.”

  “He—he did, Your Grace.” I looked up into his firefly eyes. “He allowed me to come to you.”

  A slow smile spread across the Count’s face. It showed the sharp edges of his eyeteeth. “What a lovely gift.” A single finger traced the outline of my cheek. I felt a strange leap in my blood; my Adornment squirmed across my shoulders, leaf lines outlined sharply against my uninked skin. “You are both...so thoughtful.”

  He bent to kiss me; his eyes did not close. When he drew back I noticed for the first time that he was entirely naked.

  “Your Grace,” I whispered. I could feel my heart beating in my ink, straining, as if the Blood he had given me yearned to be back in his veins.

  “Did Haqan give you a message for me, Etan?” He still wore his sly, foxy smile.

  I felt myself color. If he asks why, tell him the truth, Lord Loren had said. Now that it came to it, I found the words gone dry in my throat. The Count watched me, and now and then he trailed a fingertip through my tousled hair.

  “Edia,” I said at last. “He...worries about Edia.”

  “The border town?” He laughed softly. “I did not know it meant so much to him. It is just a dry scrap of land, useless and unlovely.”

  Useless and unlovely—I thought from the Count’s mouth those words were redundant. One would imply the other, without fail.

  “He does care, Your Grace,” I said. “He let me come because he cares.”

  “Hmm.” The Count withdrew his hand from me. I still felt the cool trails of his touch. “Isadel would suit this kind of subtlety better, you know.”

  I lowered my head. “I know, Your Grace.”

  He lifted my chin—he did not allow me the luxury of looking away from his eyes. “Did he promise you anything, did Haqan? As a reward for carrying his message to me?”

  In the candlelight his smile was a sharp slant, full of the promise of teeth. I held his eyes and tried to slow the painful beat of my heart. “No, Your Grace. Nothing except your presence.”

  At that, his laugh was soft and sweet, and he drew me into his arms—into the shadowed canopy of the bed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When the treaty was signed, the feasting had gone on so long already it seemed almost an anticlimax. The signing was done in the gardens, under a blazing white afternoon sun. A grand, round ta
ble had been erected there, and we stood and watched as Princess Itayysa—the hand of her Queen—placed her seal and signature upon it, followed by the Count and his Council.

  “Now,” the Count said, “we are at peace!” And there was applause at that, but it was the applause of bored, overheated functionaries, eager to be done and go home—I know that I was. I thought I understood then, why Tallisk had no patience with the niceties of display. I imagined him here, chafing and restless, and could not help but smile at the thought.

  Lord Loren stood beside me, and Istan was behind us, holding the parasol in hand. I had never borne the heat well, since I was ill as a child. Too long in the afternoon sun, and my lungs felt like iron. The blue slice of shade the parasol cut from the day saved me from the worst of it, but still, I was breathing hard in the windless air.

  Not that any seemed to note it; all eyes were on Itayysa and the Count, saying their hasty, fond farewells. Behind them and to the side stood Isadel, under a black parasol’s great parabola of shade. I could not see her eyes; her Adornment seemed a blood-red smudge on her pale skin.

  “We will be leaving shortly after she does,” Lord Loren said, low-voiced. Whether he spoke to me or to Istan, I was not sure. “I’ve no appetite to linger here longer than we need.”

  “I will make sure all is in readiness,” Istan said—answering that, I supposed. I glanced back toward the great table. A small tangle of Blooded and Sword-nobles were gathered around the princess now, craning their necks, seeking a moment’s confidence. Vultures, I thought, each waiting their turn to make peace into profit.

  The princess had ceded useless, unlovely Edia in the end, in return for a concession on the trade of furs. So Lord Loren had told me. She had ceded Edia, and I still wore the Count’s kiss-bruises on the bare places of my collarbone.

  Shadow-smiling beneath her veil of pearls, she rebuffed them all; I wondered at her easy grace with it. Her honor guard closed around her, smooth as dancers. One raised and blew a gnarled sort of horn; its call echoed over the Fevrewood, a deep and mournful cry. In the distance, disturbed by the sound, a flock of birds rose from the trees and cut a dark swathe across the hard blue sky.

  When she had gone, taking with her her handmaidens and her honor guard, the afternoon sagged into evening and, one by one, the revelers started to leave.

  Istan folded up the parasol and went, trailing after Lord Loren. I lingered, just for a moment. The sun was low enough now that I could stand it. I looked at the hollow remnants of the feast—the wading pools emptied by the harsh afternoons, the scattered scraps of silk flowers.

  Someone seized me by the arm—hard enough to startle me. I turned around; it was Isadel, a pale shadow under her parasol. “So. Etan,” she said. “Have you enjoyed your time here?”

  I tried for a smile and failed. There was a savage note to her words. Her dark eyes were narrowed, and not against the light. “I suppose,” I said.

  “Too bad it is coming to an end,” she said, and she released me, leaving my arm aching. She turned away; I saw the tips of her snakes’ tails flicking back and forth at her ankles.

  I watched her go, blinking. It was the most she had said to me since we’d come to Fevrewood.

  * * *

  On our way back to the city, we blundered into a storm. At first, it was a tame thing, distant clouds and a whisper of thunder, but as we drew deeper into the forests it opened its mouth and roared.

  We did not quite retrace our journey, but took an older, quieter route. I thought Lord Loren had decided on it to avoid the glut of carriages rolling back to the city from Fevrewood. We paid a price for it; the narrower roads had turned to sludge under a relentless hammer of rain, and our journey was slow and mud-soaked.

  A few of Lord Loren’s household who would have ridden on horseback were allowed room in his carriage to escape the rain. We were not quite crowded, but were too close to ignore the sweat and snuffling of each other. It did little for our moods. No one was inclined to conversation, least of all with me. In a way, I think they envied me. I, at least, was going home.

  I twitched at the curtains, gazing at the storm-black forest. Behind the rain, the trees were shadows, and the distant mountains mere ghosts. I let the curtain fall and gazed at my hands, linked in my lap. A small bundle was tucked at my feet: gifts, from Lord Loren and from Count Karan, who had been generous with all of his guests. They were display-clothes, mostly, and some pieces of glass jewelry in a Surammer style.

  I was glad to be dressed in my own simple clothes, hiding most of my Adornment. The only true nicety I wore now was the hooded cloak that had been Tallisk’s gift to me. Despite the warmth of the carriage, I enjoyed its velvety feel around me. When I wished to drowse, I turned my head into its folds. It still held the scent of home.

  The weather and the road had their own ideas about my sleep, though. Each time I’d drifted off in the last day, I had been jolted moments later by a thunderclap or a hole in the road. I was beginning to feel stretched and thin. Even the faces of my companions seemed distant and grey, as if they were also behind a dark veil of rain.

  “Ill weather,” one of them—Lord Loren’s cook, a jowly woman called Divis—muttered. “Ill omen, if you ask me.”

  “It is merely rain,” Istan said with a shrug.

  She slit her eyes at him. “Mayhap you call this normal for a summer in Suramm. Here, it is ill weather for the turn of year. How will we light the fires to fend off Lord Winter, if everything’s soaked through?”

  “And what happens if you can’t light the fires?” Istan’s tone was light, but harshness dwelled beneath it. “Winter comes early, and stays all year?”

  “I’ll not hear your heathen talk with the thunder overhead,” Divis said. “We’ll bring it down upon us. Now they’re not getting their barrels of blood from our battlefields, they have to make their own.”

  “Be civil, both of you,” Lord Loren said. I glanced up at him; he sounded as tired as I felt.

  Divis snorted, but said no more. Istan turned away from her toward the rain-soaked window, his face troubled.

  I felt an errant stab of guilt at Divis’s words. I was neither soldier nor sailor, to ask much from the Storm Lords, but I had not prayed even to the Lord of Stars for months, and he was my patron. Even Tallisk, who was no pious man, kept a small icon of him in his atelier.

  After that, I must have slept, because I dreamed: I saw faces in the clouds, immense and iron-black, and heard cannonballs whistle and roar around me. I held a sword, but it was too heavy to lift, and I could not raise it against the coming horde.

  I snapped to waking. Everyone was quiet, dozing or trying to; judging from Istan’s soft snores, he at least had succeeded. It was night now, and the worst of the storm was behind us. Every few minutes, the sky still flashed silver with lightning, but the thunder was distant, growling like a sleeping dog. I could not find my way back to sleep, and I watched the rain dwindle through a gap in the curtain.

  It was nearly sunrise when the rest of the passengers stirred. Istan was the first to wake, sitting up with a jerk and looking about him, wild-eyed. When he saw nothing to be wild about, he settled back into the seat, shoulders creaking. “We’re near the vineyards, then,” he said.

  “How do you know?” He had not looked out of the window.

  “The ground feels right for it. And we’ve covered enough distance; how much further could they be?”

  We had made good time, despite the storm. Soon we were on proper roads again. The walls of Peretim could not be far. I sat upright in my seat, aware of the pains in every muscle, but uncaring. I did not know when I had begun to see the city, with its smells and fullness, as my home, but I did, and I could not wait to return to it.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When we rolled into the city, I half expected to be taken directly to the house on Nightwell Street. Lord Loren’s courtesy did not allow it; I was taken to the palace, to his apartments, and would be fed and bathed. It seemed Doiran wo
uld be denied the dubious honor of teasing the travel knots from my hair. Istan, bleary-eyed himself, was assigned the task of my care, and he looked none too happy about it. After he restored me to some semblance of civilization, he nodded to me.

  “Time to go,” he said.

  I bowed. “Lord Loren?”

  “Is asleep, after a long journey. I have been instructed to send you home.”

  Again, I bowed, ignoring a small pang of regret. “Please convey all my regards to—”

  He cut me off with a sharp gesture. “Yes. I know. I must make sure he hears all the niceties.”

  I bit my lip and looked away. I had barely spoken to Loren, since he had come to my bed—since he had sent me to the Count, carrying his message.

  Istan sighed. “Come now. Or your household will be asleep when we bring you home.” He smiled, a half-moon of bared teeth. “Your chariot awaits.”

  He did not see fit to accompany me home. He had his own duties to attend to. I watched the palace recede from the carriage, all its lit windows blurring in the dark. They became pinprick specks then winked out of my view as I was rolled down the cobblestones to Nightwell Street.

  The driver was an old man, with a nose like a blighted root. He smiled at me when he opened the door. It was kind enough, though smiles did not sit right on his ancient face. “There y’are,” he said. “To the door of y’r house.”

  I bowed. “Thank you, sir.”

  He clapped one of his crabbed hands on my shoulder and steered me to the door. “Been told to see y’ in.” He knocked thrice, loudly.

  It did not take long for Yana to answer. She looked first at the driver, then at me, and did not quite smile. “Etan,” she said. “Good to see you. Come inside.”

  Glad to be out from under the driver’s hand, I slipped inside. She tipped the man, then closed the door. I stood in the entrance hall and breathed, breathed in deep. The house held the same scent as my cloak; I was home.