Bloodflower

by Bloodflower (The Returning) (retail) (epub)

  ‘Hnn.’

  ‘Hnn.’ Cam mocked Gyaar’s sheepish look. ‘Gyaar, get rid of those ladies.’

  ‘Which ladies?’

  Cam told him of the old sow and puss-faced Ii-yo.

  ‘I cannot interfere with those arrangements.’

  ‘Bah. It was easier climbing the keep wall, than it is playing nursemaid to one young woman.’ Cam filled Gyaar’s cup, pushing the wine jar closer to him, hinting for his own to be filled. ‘Why do Lord and Lady Ryuu not come? It is springtime.’ Lord and Lady Ryuu always spent spring at Dorn-Lannet.

  Gyaar smiled, but not at Cam – inwards, at his thoughts. ‘Mother would not ever say it, but I think Grandmother Ryuu was . . . difficult, and Mother wished to spare her new daughter something of what she experienced, in the early years of her own marriage.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cam pushed the wine jar about the table. The clay squawked on the wood surface. ‘Gyaar? What is this business of a gift? Your Lady mentioned it.’

  Gyaar took the jar from him. ‘That is just how I told it to her, to make her feel . . . more comfortable.’

  ‘And you tell me another way, to make me more comfortable, but’ – Cam leaned across the table – ‘which is the truth?’

  Laughing, Gyaar made shooing motions in the air, as if brushing Cam’s words away.

  Gift, thought Cam. ‘It’s not I who has a marriage yet to consummate.’

  Gyaar set the wine jar down with great care. Something between them tightened until it snapped. ‘I will bid you a good evening,’ said Lord Gyaar. He did not raise his voice, but it struck on Cam’s ears.

  Lord and dearest friend. Cam tried for words, but knew none that would fit, so he simply bowed. He straightened to find that Gyaar had gone.

  Cam went into the garden, and was nearly at the fish pond when he remembered that he wouldn’t find Diido there. He trudged back through the night-time garden and shut his door on it, the evening, everything.

  Day after day, Cam waited on the bench in the anteroom to the women’s quarters, pushed about by cushions, and recalled his life before this service, as something that had happened long before, to another, freer Cam.

  On the trees the blossoms blew away, and leaves fuzzed the boughs, pale green. The summer-flowering shrubs were covered in buds. Day after day, Graceful wafted about the garden, and the only one of her ladies not to hold her always at arm’s length was Diido.

  Gyaar began to visit the garden, though never coming near enough to speak to the women, to Cam. He stalked the other end of the lawn, tall and lordly. If Graceful began to walk in his direction, Gyaar retreated at once to the inner bailey, to the barracks and practice yards where the ladies could not go.

  One day, when Gyaar marched out to take his air, Graceful turned and fled. Cam glared at Gyaar and shook his head. Coming to his feet, he cut through the woodland to the moon-viewing pavilion, looking for his charge, but Diido had beaten him there. She sat, a skinny red sentinel, on the stair that led up to the platform. Cam stepped over her. She grabbed at his coat, unbalancing him so that he had to stop. ‘Leave her be.’

  ‘No. I can do better than that.’ Cam pried her fingers from his jacket.

  Inside, Graceful stood with her face turned into a corner of the room, like a naughty child. Elbows propped against a crossbeam, head tucked into the fold of her arms, plump, pale hands hanging prettily, she wept.

  ‘What do you want?’ It came all muffled from the cradle of her arms.

  ‘I did hear you crying.’

  ‘I repeat, what do you want?’

  Cam sank down on his heels. ‘You are getting high and mighty.’

  Graceful snapped her head up and stared at him over her shoulder, blotch-faced. ‘Is this how you behave towards your Lady?’

  ‘Aye, for that’s how she’s playing it, and my legs are stiff with standing about like a statue all day.’

  She stood herself straight, pulled in a regal way at the ill-fitting robe. ‘Traitor,’ she said. ‘False and faithless, and he gives you to me. He gives me those ladies – faugh! And he stands off, too proud to bend his neck even to say me a good morning.’ She stamped her slippered foot, pom, against the floor.

  ‘Do you push back, if you don’t like where they shove you.’

  ‘You have seen how they disregard me.’

  ‘Why should they regard you, when you sit like a sack and cry all the day long?’

  Great grass-green eyes stared astonishment at him.

  Cam rose to his feet. ‘Be Lady Graceful, if you want me to bow and My Lady you. You have been learning this place – well, do you take charge of it.’

  Cam watched Graceful come back to her women in the garden, eyes red, but not, this time, lowered. She hesitated at the closed circle, shot one desperate glance at Cam. ‘Tea.’ Graceful went among them, and sat. Her cheeks were bright red. ‘Ii-yo.’

  Ii-yo looked down, seemed surprised to see her fan in her hands.

  ‘My Lady must find another messenger,’ said Old Sow ‘Ii-yo is—’

  ‘It is kind of you to offer.’ Graceful met the older woman’s stare. She looked so very like to her father, thought Cam, when he was striking a tough deal.

  ‘I do not think—’

  ‘Tea,’ said Lady Graceful Ryuu, softly. ‘If you would please arrange it.’

  Stiff-hipped, the old sow rose and made her way across the grass to the keep, glancing, more often than once, over her shoulder.

  The other ladies all looked at each other, and away. Cam watched the corners of Graceful’s mouth lift, faintly, in a smile.

  Gift. Cam still could not stop rubbing that sore patch. He thought he might ask for an audience with Gyaar; then he thought he might not, for if he was turned away, then he would leave: post, keep, Lord, leave them all. Out of that thought, something came clear. He thought of Kayforl in that gold-lit, always-summer time; the war, blood-washed; and now, here, this green time, a growing time – and what he did not want was the one thing he had always wanted: to seek, to go. Not now. He poked in his mind at the yearning, with care not to stir it into life again. It did not. He tallied up the people already lost to him, and those that would be, if he gave up his service to Gyaar. What else would he lose? And where would that drive him? Wandering ever?

  Cam waited in the garden, by the women’s quarters, on the bridge; waited for Diido to come past. She did not. In desperation, he waited while she sat with Graceful, waited until she got up and headed towards the privies. He trailed her with his eyes, then came to his feet and followed her, sat at a discreet distance, until she came out from behind the veiling trees.

  ‘What do you do here?’

  ‘You.’ Cam held up one finger. ‘Graceful.’ A second. ‘Gyaar.’ A third. ‘These are the people who were angry with me. But now Graceful . . .’ He put a finger down again. ‘Gyaar . . . I will talk with. So I am left with you. What is it I have done, that you avoid me so?’

  ‘Nothing to tell!’ She began pulling leaves ferociously from a branch. At a loss, Cam spun on his heel.

  He was a handful of paces along the path when he glanced back over his shoulder. Diido stood just as he had left her, all cross and crossed upon herself. Cam found himself walking back to her, taking her pointy little chin in his hand. He bent his head. His thumb brushed her cheek; her lips. He paused, lifted his gaze to hers.

  Diido’s lips and eyes were wide. An unfamiliar feeling took hold of Cam. He let his hand fall, along her arm, and away. Shy, he realised. He felt shy. He shook his head.

  ‘What did you mean, when you said to Lady Graceful, Nothing to tell?’

  Understanding. It was like a lamp lighting a dark room. Cam felt his smile pulling at his mouth. ‘Ah, it is you who has been dull-witted.’ Her expression – astonishment turning to anger – made him laugh aloud. He reached for her hand, drew her fingers between his. ‘Let me tell you what you did hear.’ Lifting her fingers, he touched their tips to his mouth, kissed them.

  There was a to-do com
ing from the latticed screen.

  ‘Oh, My Lady!’

  Graceful was dressed as Diido was wont to, in men’s clothes: a long jacket and trousers. Her Dresser came after her, wailing.

  ‘You cannot, you are not properly dressed!’

  ‘Is properly.’ Graceful had taken to speaking only Uplander. ‘Look,’ she said to Cam. She did not mean the jacket. She held up a glass bowl, two small fish swimming in it, little warriors mailed in red and gold and blue.

  ‘Guy-yah give me.’

  A guard and goldfish. Cam grinned.

  ‘So you do not hate me, Attling’s Oldest.’

  The Kayforl accent, coming unexpectedly, jolted him. Cam felt the smile drop from his face. He bit his lip, looked up at the white painted ceiling, and hoped he would not, like she so often did, burst into weeping.

  ‘I am glad you do not.’ Graceful gazed at the bowl, and the swimming fish.

  A maid was dispatched to return the fish to the women’s quarters, and the little army of women sallied forth into the bright, light spring day.

  ‘So this is where My Lady hides herself,’ said Gyaar. ‘I have lost the garden, and now my tea pavilion.’

  Cam glanced at Graceful. Her usually white face was red, her expression more wary than pleased.

  ‘Hides . . .’ Graceful laughed. Her laugh was like music. Whenever it sounded, it had everyone in earshot lifting their heads and smiling. That sweet laugh out ofthat plain lumpen girl. Gyaar looked spell-struck – Downlander magic working on him just as Cam’s innkeeper had once described.

  ‘I would have tea with you, My Lady Wife.’

  Graceful’s women fussed about him, bringing him cushions, tea. Some of them were wearing jackets and trousers, but made from women’s cloth, peach and moss and turquoise. Gyaar stared, clearly trying not to.

  ‘I’ve noticed it in town, too,’ said Cam. ‘I wonder what will happen when she goes to the City.’

  Gyaar ignored him. ‘My Lady Wife, send them away.’

  She only had to smile, small and sad, and her ladies all rose up – lagging only a little was Ii-yo, of the pretty little cat-face – and moved off a pace or two, Cam following them as far as the stream. He went to sit with Diido, but she had again placed herself right in among the women, so he sat on the stream’s bank and tried to catch Gyaar’s reflection, or Graceful’s, in the water.

  ‘Not yet two seasons here and they are already yours, heart and mind. I am not surprised.’ There was the noise of a teacup being drained, man-fashion, in a gulp. ‘Graceful,’ said Gyaar, ‘I would have you know that I want to see you settled, before I . . .’

  Cam was burning to look.

  ‘Before I invite you to my chambers.’

  ‘It is I who should invite you.’

  Silence.

  ‘Er? Ah. Oh.’

  ‘You,’ she said. ‘You talk yourself so big, but what are you? A thief and a killer.’

  Cam had to smother a shocked laugh.

  ‘I— What?’

  ‘You take Dorn-Lannet, and now me, and do you ask? No.’

  ‘We must do our duty— Ai!’

  Cam whirled about. Graceful had flung the contents of her cup over Gyaar, who clasped his hands to his face, tea dripping onto his collar.

  Graceful set the cup down. ‘Duty!’

  ‘I won’t sit and wait for him to visit if and when he decides upon it.’

  ‘Show him how it will be, then,’ said Cam, not really thinking about what he was saying.

  She made no answer, only that single nod that meant she was working over what had been said. Cam wished he had put some, any, thought into what he had just said.

  ‘I,’ said the girl who had been Graceful Fenister. ‘I will visit the town.’

  Graceful and her entire court of ladies went to Dorn-Lannet: to shrine, market, guild houses, beggars’ barracks, and Cam’s old haunt, the inn. ‘Every tenant the keep draws rent from,’ Cam said later, propped against Gyaar’s doorway and unlacing the neck of his jacket. ‘She visited them, every single one.’ He sat in his usual seat. ‘Walked and talked all day, the lot of them. My ears feel bruised.’

  ‘Huh.’ Gyaar glared at the table. ‘Did I ask you here?’

  ‘No, I asked myself.’

  Leave, the room and your post. Cam waited to hear it, ran the words through his mind.

  ‘Handfastened,’ was what Gyaar said.

  Cam blushed.

  ‘Why did you not tell me? I thought your reluctance was . . .’

  . . . shame. Too much pride. Cam knew what Gyaar had thought. ‘It is long in the past now, and I am not the boy who was betrothed to her, nor she the little maid.’

  ‘I must invite her,’ Gyaar said at last.

  Cam shook his head. ‘You have it all wrong, my friend.’

  Graceful said, ‘I wish to attend the council.’

  Cam laughed. He slumped against the doorway and laughed. ‘My Lady, not at you, but at his face, when you arrive.’

  ‘Come, come.’ She was waiting on him, already at the door.

  ‘You should make this visit very public, and enter the council chambers from the courtyard, I think.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘It gives Gyaar less room to manoeuvre.’

  For a moment, her smile made her look very like to her father. They marched into the main hall and out into the courtyard, Cam a pace behind Graceful. Staff, guards, lords and ladies, all bowed or curtsied. Then they forgot to, as the party turned and took the postern door to the side of the tower that opened into the council rooms.

  Gyaar was seated, but came at once to his feet when he saw them. ‘My Lady Wife! What do you do here? Are you alone? Where are your women?’ Now Gyaar looked over her head at Cam, a reprimand. ‘You should not be without them.’

  Graceful answered him in Uplander. ‘I, ffft.’ Her hand waved imaginary people away. ‘No, no, they say. Only no. So, fffft.’ She stepped up to the smooth shining spread of the floor, and crossed it, her slippers whispering.

  ‘Er,’ said Gyaar. He looked at Cam; Cam looked at Lady Graceful.

  ‘Mine.’ She gestured at the keep walls, the northern distance beyond them. ‘Ryuu, yes? It is mine. So, I sit, council.’

  Cam waited for Gyaar to say no, but he sat silent, seeming stupefied. Cam saw Graceful seated in his own place and himself took a lower position down the table. All around, the men were stirring, in a rustle of cloth, but none dared speak.

  Attling’s Oldest, translate for me.’ In their shared tongue she said, ‘Vercamer Attling asked me, once, about his family, and I could not tell him. Oh, I was ashamed. To have lived in that one place my life entire, and to know nothing of anyone.’ She sat very still, yet relaxed, her big white hands loosely folded on her lap. ‘After he had left, after I had thought about it, I visited all of them, every month, Stepmother and I. I will do the same here. I will know who and what and when and where, if I am to be Lady here.’

  For the first time since she had come as a bride to Dorn-Lannet, Cam bowed to Graceful and meant it, the respect it implied.

  Cam settled his back against a tree and watched the colour seep from the garden. Diido was a pacing shadow, even the red of her jacket lost in the dark now, but he could hear her singing. The particular tune pulled at his heart, his head, though he did not know why. Cam stood in her path. ‘Koi-boi,’ he said. ‘I’ve been lying in wait for you.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Diido. ‘I’m not the Koi-boi, now.’

  ‘Are you angry with me because I paid court to you?’

  ‘Yah.’ But she did not snap the word out, or her fingers as she said it.

  ‘What was it you were singing, as you came over?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She turned from him. ‘Lady Graceful taught it to me.’

  Cam hitched himself onto Lord Ryuu’s rock. ‘Shall I tell you a story?’ He could just see the lift and drop of her shoulder in the dark.

  ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘
There was an Uplander girl, who knew about war, and knew about difference. And she met a soldier—’

  ‘I know that story.’ Diido turned on him, and Cam heard her spit. ‘I know what you mean, and I told you once before, not that!’

  ‘In Kayforl, we call it handfastening.’

  In the darkness, Diido gasped. As she had done once before, she dropped to her knees, weeping. ‘I thought you meant . . . you wanted to . . . like Tseri used to.’

  ‘No.’ Cam sat beside her and put his arm about her. ‘Not at all like Tseri.’

  ‘Would . . . would I have to leave My Lady?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would . . . will we live in the keep?’

  ‘Where else?’

  Diido laid her hand against his cheek. Cam felt the touch run through skin and blood and muscle. Lifting his arm from her shoulders, he tangled his fingers in her hair, and tipped her face to his. Her lips were soft, her mouth, her kiss.

  ‘That,’ said Cam after a moment, ‘is the contract joined. Too late to change your answer now.’

  Diido was dark as the shadows, but Cam heard her fingers, snap.

  ‘As if I want to, yah!’

  There was colour in the great white antechamber to the women’s quarters. The cushions had been culled and redressed in gold, scarlet and green. On the floor, Downlander-style, was a rug. It looked like a piece of lawn had been planted in the centre of the room, so living a green it was. Though if the rug was alive, nothing else in the building was: it was absolutely silent. Cam went out to the garden.

  The court ladies sat on the banks of the stream, legs adangle in the water, while Lady Graceful Ryuu taught them ‘Cuck Maran’, the tavern version. Cam rubbed his forehead with his palm.

  ‘My wife is not easy to find.’ Gyaar’s voice carried from the gateway to the inner bailey.

  There was a sudden flutter among the women. They began chittering, and drawing their legs from the stream, putting on slippers over wet feet. Cam kept his grin to himself.

  ‘Her ladies protect her, the serving staff, even her Personal Guard. But here she is, run to ground at last.’ Gyaar approached, but did not sit until Graceful bent her head, yes. Circled about them, the ladies sat demure and proper with their legs tucked under their robes, quieter than Cam had known them.