by Sylvia Kelso
And begins, strand by strand, to unravel, to ease and loosen and release, thick as a brandy-brown cloud over her shoulders, the rippling mazes of her hair.
Tellurith slides her hands to the trousers’ waist-band. Finds the drawstring. He jumps again, as the silk telescopes softly round his feet.
The one moment when she might expect blind panic. But she keeps her hands lightly, either side his waist. And after a couple of quick breaths, feels him quiet.
When she waits, his hands come out, hesitant, tentative, to explore the fastening of her robe.
* * * *
Tellurith rouses slowly. To the unaccustomed sharing of her bed-space; to a weight on her shoulder, her throat fanned by sleeping breath. To a beard-rash in most unexpected places, gold-dust—a rueful tongue affirms it—silted round her lips.
To a posy of lover’s memories, outland surprise that women could want more from love than intercourse, expect pleasure more surely, more frequently, and more inventively, than with a man in the usual outland place. Outland shock—Tellurith grins—that nipples are sensitive with or without breasts. Outland adaptability—she feels the smile grow smug—and invention, and once embarked, a skill and gentleness to match those wits. Her fingers shape the black, tangled head on her shoulder, and she feels the smile speak tenderness.
The rhythm of his breathing shifts. She knows it is a part of the old man that he does not wake, like most people, with unguarded movement, with smiles or yawns or protesting groans. That he lies quietly breathing till he knows where he is and with whom.
But is it the old man, she wonders, that, with reconnaissance done, with eyes still shut, he should reach the freer hand across her shoulder? And gather up, like soft gold wound about the fingers, a hank of her outspread hair?
On his cheek she feels the nascent smile.
“I suppose you’ve already made an appointment . . .” The eyes open, black and heart-shakingly soft. And then leaping with alarm.
“Gods, it’s daylight—!” A plunge up, a wild stare around. The black trousers make a distant puddle. Tellurith bangs an elbow and brings him down just before the jump.
“Why the hurry?”
“I meant to be out before—” That fiery, boyish blush. “I didn’t mean to—make a scandal, there’s trouble enough—”
“Scandal.” Tellurith lies back, into the luxury of a full-bellied laugh. “Who’s going to see you? Except Azo and Verrith? Who,” now she thinks, it is absolute certainty, “managed this anyhow?”
A startled look. A sheepish grin. Leaning on an elbow, he teases free a handful of her hair. His eyes stay on her face.
“When we came inside—they whipped me straight into their room. I didn’t . . .” again the flush comes. “Azo said, ‘Listen, man, if you want that woman you’ve got now to tell her. Mother knows, she wants you. Do you want or not?’ I—Azo fetched her husband. And the things. Smuggled it all in.” Sheepish, yet the eyes spark, a wicked, amazed grin. “‘Just pray,’ Verrith said, ‘she don’t want to pee while your head’s dunked in the bath’.” His hand goes, consciously, behind his ear. “They wouldn’t miss out anything. And Herar—the husband—he was worst of all. Damn it, I never felt such a popinjay in my life.”
The grin fades. “And,” so very softly, “I’ve never been so scared.”
Tellurith puts back the falling wing of hair. Ritual, pleasurable, possessive touch. Lets her hand say, But you were brave enough.
He turns his head to kiss her palm. Looks back into her face, in its nimbus of luxuriously out-spread hair. You, his eyes say. Candidly, reverently. You are unique. Without parallel in the world.
Aloud he says, more softly, “Tel . . . thanks.”
For more, they both know, than the pleasure. Or the communion that is close to unity and self-oblivion as is possible for humankind. For exorcising the ghosts. For restoring his manhood, if not all the man.
Tellurith smiles. Then she heaves herself up in bed and he jerks in genuine alarm. “Tellurith, what do I—how do I—”
“Put on your pants. Walk out. To have it known is the whole point of this.” Only troublecrew to see him, and troublecrew have already voted. Seen to their own. “Scandal? To a House-head’s favorite, the word doesn’t apply. If you want to swagger,” she feels her own grin revive, “you can.”
As Tellurith certainly does, taking a leisured breakfast under Shia’s approving ministrations and her minders’ bland stares, stroking her lover’s knee and sharing coffee cups. Before she pats his backside and says, “Hurry up, caissyl.” A proprietary, a lover’s nickname; however incongruous, to call this one, Sweet. “Get dressed. Get a coat.”
“What?”
Blandly as Azo, Tellurith meets the startled stare. “My first appointment’s at the docks. I wouldn’t want you getting cold.”
“Cold—!”
“You’ve just been detailed,” she can feel the smirk rise, “to my personal troublecrew.” And as his jaw drops, “You did want to be some use.”
* * * *
As they troop downstairs it does not surprise her to hear Azo and Verrith giving their protégé a low-voiced, rapid and comprehensive digest of outside procedures. When the vehicle starts she expects to find he has not merely regained composure but swallowed the instructions; and now, though the glow in those eyes speaks more excitement than surveillance, is using wits rather than tongue to process the avalanche of perceptions in the passing streets.
It does make her notice the mundanity of freight and passenger vehicles, the tall, tilted racks of sun-panels progressing above the crowd. The odd bright plume of scarf or garment amid the somberly billowing, clutched, buttoned, belted winter coats. The anomaly of coffee-drinkers ensconced on sidewalks behind sheets of Riversend glass, the wildly various occupations in River Quarter, from upRiver tumblers to artistically mangled beggars to the chromatic explosion of a Verrain Family’s embassy. Downstream, her mind notes, the weather must already have improved.
She does more than notice when, having posted himself the obligatory two paces behind her shoulder, to the shock and then discreet blindness of the warehouse manager, he follows her back onto the open quay. And for a moment the lifted face, the little shift of shoulders, the deep, almost ecstatic breath make the raw Riverside end-of-winter air touch her own throat like wine.
Going back, he asks Azo or Verrith the rare, post-deductive question; where such a street goes; do House vehicles carry blazons. Then, “If the local stone’s red, why’s it called Amberlight?”
Azo and Verrith look aside. Their Head answers, working to be casual. “It was originally Emberlight. They didn’t think it would bring good luck.”
“Oh.”
So why not Pearl-light? he gratefully does not ask.
But as they climb from squalid River to frenetic business quarter, then across the tacit boundary of Hill-foot road into the quiet of clan demesnes, she hears his silence stretch. And looking up, finds the anticipated frown.
“How old is the trouble back there?”
“In the—the working quarter,” he expands, to Azo’s lifted brow.
Azo tallies. Minimally, shrugs. “Five years or so.”
“What sort of trouble?”
At Tellurith’s intervention his eyes flick up. No lover’s softness now.
“Wall-scribbles. Broken shutters. Burnt buildings. That’s usually some sort of—battlefield. A border zone.”
“Gang-country. Slum-folk, getting above themselves. Don’t they have slums in Riversend?”
“Oh, yes.” The eyes hold hers, somber as woken night. Before they flick to the clean, empty street sliding past outside, the luxury of a glass window, the immaculate walls, a cascade of flowering vine.
“But not so many. Not so—restive. Not for a city with—such a great deal of wealth.”
Before Tellurith’s eye
s flash a cotton-wadded shoulder and a gold-brocaded cuff. But she lets her lip-curl acknowledge his quotation; and the tiny flame that flickers in those eyes, lover’s willingness, lover’s acknowledgement, wipes away unease under the warmth of memory, somewhere in her chest.
An almost sweeter revenge when Azo and Verrith fan across the sidewalk and he slides out behind her at the House door, the male shape, the lithe watchful walk, the wing of black hair unmistakable. Right under Iatha and Zuri’s eyes.
It does not surprise Tellurith that Zuri should omissively approve, to the point of drilling him with in-House secrets herself. Her minions have usurped the House-head’s judgment, after all. But she does not expect Iatha to walk into her workroom ten minutes later. Take her by the chin; stare into her eyes; growl, “Well, see he is some use.” And stalk out without another word.
* * * *
Tellurith fully intends to have his use. As troublecrew, ostensibly, to escort her everywhere from docks to Uphill functions, with malicious pleasure in choosing clothes whose black or camouflage-green warn, Minder, but whose jacket and trousers contradict, Man. While the silk and brocaded wool and fur, not to mention the indiscreet jewels, proclaim arrogantly and yet more anomalously: Favorite.
It is the jewels that alarm him most. The night they are bound for a Prathax betrothal, she comes into his room, saying, “I remember they took yours.” He is willing enough now to let her touch him, down to the raggedly healed scar in his ear. But when he looks at their mirrored faces, topaz and tawny, milk and coal, with the great ruby burning between them, it comes out as a gasp.
“Tel . . . Are you trying to upset people? This is too much—!”
“Pretty.” She ruffles his hair, admiring the fitful red-wine star, and smiles. “Should I be ashamed of you? Why?”
“The way they look at me—at Vannish, the other night. Tel, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“They wanted to see you. They’re seeing you.”
“And that meeting.” For she has taken him to a Moon-meet, to stand with Azo and Verrith among the troublecrew who back every House-head’s chair. “They see me there, and nobody says a word?”
“I told you. For a favorite, nobody will. You fit the patterns now. Not a very noble one, maybe, but one that’s understood.”
“Don’t try to fool me, Tel.” It holds no heat, but it is grim. “You don’t make troublecrew of a favorite. Let alone take one up there. Tel—what are they going to do?”
“If they disapprove,” says Tellurith coolly, “we will know when somebody tries an assassination.” At the appalled face, she flicks his cheek, not all in jest. “I told you, you’ll need to be of use.”
Partly in case of that chance she takes him everywhere in-House as well: fulfilling the ancient promise of information with hours in her workroom, initiation willy-nilly into external and internal policy. Into Shaper’s or Power-shops, learning, if only in theory, every Craft to do with qherrique; just as Azo and Verrith solemnly teach him light-guns’ use and wards and dangers. Because he may find them in other troublecrew’s hands.
And partly he is there for the other moments; the digression into the garden, yelps and smothered laughter in the bitter late-winter morning, hands freezing each other inside their opened coats. His stare from Arcis lookout, a hawk’s scrutiny, while his hair flutters like a black silk flag and sun carves his profile, sharp as a cameo, on the clear blue air. The brushed hands, the arm that slides quietly round her in a corridor, a hall, a moment in some dark warehouse. Making love, swift obliterating passion in the maintenance attic of a windmill, with Azo and Verrith somewhere below them and the pound of vanes on a wild southerly to smother, to echo the blood’s cry, careless, exultant, those black eyes blazing into hers.
“As if you don’t wear me out here.”
In the other times, the night times she has almost forgotten, when before or after or with love un-made they lie wound together, weaving the other union out of words.
“I don’t notice signs of exhaustion.” She works a knee between his thighs. Turns further to bring an arm across his chest. Lying back, exaggeratedly submissive, he produces a wicked smile.
“You.” Tangling hands, luxuriating, in the wealth of her unbound hair. “With your crinkly curls.” He plants a finger on her nose. “And your crow-beak. And your squinchy cheekbones. When it’s this dark, even you look pretty. So what do you know?”
She bites a nipple, just hard enough to raise a yelp. “Tell me, then.” Not about anomalous slums in Amberlight, not about coalitions or domestic traitors. “About Verrain. And statuettes.”
The tangled hands still. In the black eyes’ gravity she reads her reply. He too knows their love-play does not cancel intelligencers’ commerce. That what he has learned about Amberlight will command an Imperial price.
“Verrain. Really, Shuya just heads a confederacy. One among—forty, fifty Families. Not inherited, tolerated. So she uses her statuette—quite a lot, at home.”
“Is it just to feel the city’s—country’s—I don’t know, currents, I suppose? Or can she—does she use it to coerce?”
Their eyes clinch, all play lost.
“Tel . . .”
Her eyes answer, implacable: You may have made oaths and understand secrecy and have served Shuya first. But to me you owe more than loyalty. Even if ‘use’ breaks the tenets, the foundations of your soul.
His hands move in her hair. Unconsciously, futilely tracing their bonds. He shuts his eyes.
“She can—influence people. I remember . . . incense. Midnight. Some sort of sacrifice. Blood. ‘You see how I trust you? The fingers should know the power of the hand’.”
“Sweet Work-mother!”
“Tel—!”
She grimaces at the involuntary jerk on her hair. On his face, the mirror of her appalled look remains. “To offer blood. To twist the qherrique—what was she doing?”
He winces too. To break trust and confidence so utterly is to be mentally crucified. “It was the Riversrun border war.”
“But that was with Dhasdein!”
She bites the rest off. Having already given him too many clues to his past, when she resurrected his time in the Imperial guard.
“I don’t—maybe I’d changed—maybe I didn’t always—”
Maybe you were not simply a high Imperial officer but a high-flying mercenary. Before, after?
At the same time?
Tellurith speaks softly but firmly over the distress in that black stare. “What about the Families?”
“Oh . . . that’s fairly simple. No—blood-things. Mostly they use theirs in the Oases. To keep the caravan-workers quiet.”
“And?”
He knows she has heard the trailing intonation, but the rest comes reluctantly. “And of course, to help the trade.”
Tellurith lies back, eyes on the ceiling, where the carven bosses of mahogany, imported clear from Cataract, acquire grotesque shadow-bulges in the night-cycle dusk. It is his turn to prop a hand under his head and wait, stifling knowledge, agitation, distress.
“And Dhasdein?”
She feels him steel himself.
“I told you—Dhasdein’s in a loop. They have to pay you with gold that they can only get from Verrain, so they buy it with colonial loot—that they need qherrique to get. So the more colonies they take to raise gold to pay for pearl-rock, the more statuettes they need and the more colonies they have to conquer—every Archipelago governor has one, Tel, you know that.” His voice is rough. Once he could scourge her city’s supply of abuses with a clear conscience. “You know what a good trade it is.”
For Telluir. For the Thirteen. For Amberlight.
Against the lace-edged pillow his profile is still and rigid as a blade. Until she turns her face. Absently, kisses him. And murmurs, “Caissyl . . . Go to sleep. I have to think.
”
* * * *
“If the Thirteen feels no concern, I have looked into this. And I tell you now: Shuya has used the qherrique for bane-work. For blood-work. Beyond her sovereign state. If the means for that is to come from Amberlight, it will not be from Telluir House.”
Amid the Thirteen’s uproar she is most conscious of two sensations, both a prickling down the back. That black stare behind her. And the answer of the qherrique, strong as at the mother-face.
Affirmation. Assent.
For a single House to refuse service is unprecedented. In five hundred years of working qherrique, a gabbling Falla tells her, there has never been an act so iniquitous. The Thirteen have never seemed so hidebound. Outrage and imprecations embroil even Kuro, Maeran’s rapier slashes are mere crests amid the waves. In the president’s chair Sevitha of Iuras is reduced to cursing froth.
It is Zhee, humped in her usual lizard silence, who spikes a lull of exhaustion with a single, “Why?”
Oldest House. Oldest House-head. Old if not oldest mentor, when Tellurith was thrust into the whirlpool of House politics, a twenty-four-year-old, unexpected heir. Amid that whirlpool, Telluir House’s oldest if not most reliable ally.
The one Head who may genuinely want to know.
“The trade,” she says, as in response to their locked gazes, the others fall temporarily quiet. “It’s being abused. It’s draining the River as well. And it rebounds—it rebounds on Amberlight.”
Liony and Damas bawl. Maeran adds an ironic slice or two. Tellurith ignores them all.
It is Zhee’s way to answer rather than to ask ensuing questions. Tellurith understands the alienness of this entire vision, when Zhee says, “How?”
“The—River Quarter. They’re getting poorer. The gangs are worse, we all know that. And the wages—”
The Houses move together, one concerted growl whose components she knows by heart. The poor are shiftless breeders who will not expose boy babies, who have no will to work and no aptitude for Craft. The pay is enough to drink and gamble, why not enough to eat? It is the city’s grace that they are not all shipped off to Cataract. Sevitha herself breaks in with the exasperation of pure incomprehension, “Rebounds how?”