House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Well, if the Dragon doesn’t care for the notion, Narienneh’s the one to work him around to it, if anyone can,” Bluefountain commented, unoffended by the sharpness. She yawned hugely, covering her mouth hastily as she took even herself by surprise. “Sorry! I’m not so young as I used to be.”

  Leilis smothered a yawn of her own and withdrew, allowing the older woman to retire. Then she hesitated. Now that she was alone, weariness dragged at her as well. More than weariness. Jealousy, like bitter ashes on the tongue. That was merely foolish. There was nothing new about solitude. Leilis turned toward the stairs and her own small private chamber with its huge fireplace. The warmth of a fire would be welcome tonight. Since she could not personally curl herself around the warmth of a dawning—or burgeoning—or remembered, for that matter—rapport with a lover.

  Well, that was bitter. And bitterness was a gall that would eat out a woman’s heart. Where was the cool acceptance of loneliness that Leilis had striven so hard to win? Tonight that coolness of mind and spirit seemed as distant as the child she had once been, who had entertained such dreams… At the moment, even a large fire would likely be inadequate to warm her chamber. But at least Leilis could have the fire.

  Though that thought was not amusing tonight. Tonight, Leilis was in no mood to find amusement in anything.

  Entering her own chamber, Leilis shut the door firmly behind her, as though she might shut out both the crowded galleries of Cloisonné House and her own bitter mood.

  An insistent hand on her shoulder shook Leilis out of drowned sleep far too soon. A voice said urgently, “Leilis! Leilis!”

  For a long blurry moment Leilis thought she must have overslept and someone had been sent to rouse her, but the urgency in the voice meant there was something else, some trouble—some trouble someone thought she ought to deal with, instead of Mother or Terah or anyone more official. A deisa or servant had got into trouble, somehow, probably, and now wanted Leilis to help her get out of it again.

  Leilis hauled herself up to sitting, rubbing her face hard to try and wake up. There was a low red glow from the smoldering coals in her own fireplace, and a very faint pearly light glimmering around the edges of the closed shutters. Not enough light from either source to make out who had woken her.

  “Are you awake?” asked the voice anxiously.

  Leilis placed it at last. “Rue,” she said. And, not gently, “Rue, it’s barely dawn. Do you know what time I went to bed last night? What can possibly be so important?”

  The keiso ignored this. “Karah’s missing.”

  “What?” Leilis woke up the rest of the way. “Tell me.”

  “She was asleep when I came in, but then I woke up and she was gone. I thought she’d just stepped out to the necessity, but she didn’t come back, and, Leilis, I was afraid to wait.”

  Because she’d thought at once of Lily, yes. Leilis could think of several things Lily might have done. Persuaded the girl to go outside, trying to make it look as though she’d gone out to meet a lover—that was an old deisa trick. Had Rue warned her about that?

  “I looked outside,” Rue said anxiously. “She’s not right outside any of the doors, and anyway I showed her how to get back in if she should be locked out. No little sister of mine is going to be caught that way! I looked in the kitchens, in case she’d just wanted something to eat, but she wasn’t there, either. Then I didn’t know where to look.”

  Leilis nodded, stood up, felt her way over to the fireplace, and lit a candle from the coals there. Then, thoughtfully, another. It would be some time before the gray dawn brightened enough to be useful, and much of the House was unlit at night.

  “If Lily set this up, Karah will be somewhere she wouldn’t want to be found,” she said. “If she’s in the House, she’ll be somewhere she could be locked in, to make sure she’s found there. What places in the House lock?”

  Not many. Rue and Leilis started at the top of the House and checked the attics, which were sometimes used for storing expensive things. Lily might have lured the girl up to the attics, if she meant to make it seem that Karah had been trying to steal from the House. But Karah was not in the attics.

  Leilis and Rue worked their way with increasing grimness down through the House. “She can’t be in any of the gallery chambers,” Leilis decided. Those chambers didn’t lock. “Nor in any of the banquet chambers or other public areas of the house.” She rubbed her face hard with the tips of her fingers, trying to think. “We should skip from here down to the servant’s areas. The laundry…” Light dawned, as though the rising sun had brought inspiration with it. “You checked the kitchens, Rue. But did you check the cellars?”

  Rue stopped. “Oh. Even Lily wouldn’t have…”

  They both knew she certainly would have. “Last night was a late one for the cook and all the kitchen girls, too,” Leilis said grimly. “It will be hours yet before anyone opens the cellar doors.” She stalked past Rue, heading for the stairs. But the dancer passed her, took the stairs three at a time with an assured grace Leilis couldn’t match, and reached the kitchens first.

  The bar was indeed across the cellar doors, as it always was—sometimes some of the kitchen girls slept in the kitchens, and without discussing the matter the doors were barred. No one was comfortable sleeping with the cellar doors unbarred.

  Rue crossed the kitchen with half a dozen long strides, jerked the bar up, and flung the door wide. Then she hissed with mingled satisfaction and outrage and offered a hand to the girl sitting at the top of the cellar stairs.

  Karah accepted the hand and came out of the stairwell into the warm kitchens, where Leilis was lighting the lanterns and setting water on the coals for tea.

  “Oh, yes, please,” Karah said gratefully. “Hot tea would be wonderful! It was so cold down there! Thank you so much for coming to find me.” She was barefoot and wearing only a light sleeping robe, but though she was shivering, her voice held only a normal relief. She held her new kitten in her arms, but it jumped down at once as Karah carried it into the kitchen. It shook each of its feet in turn as though it had stepped in a puddle, and purposefully hopped up onto a bench by the oven.

  Leilis gave Karah a long look, and then exchanged a glance with Rue. Leilis tossed a few pieces of charcoal and a handful of kindling into the oven to encourage the fire and said, keeping her tone casual, “You worried Rue, when she woke and found you gone. How did you come to be down in the cellars?”

  “Oh, well…” Karah looked embarrassed. “Sweetrose told me Moonglow had gone down there and she couldn’t coax her out from under the wine racks. There’s fish in the ice cupboard, and who knows what else Moonglow might have gotten into, so I knew I’d better get her.” She sat down gratefully on a cushion Rue put on the edge of the hearth for her and accepted a cup of tea from Leilis with a nod of thanks.

  “You ought to have woken me,” Rue told her severely.

  The girl looked even more embarrassed. “I knew that as soon as Sweetrose shut the door behind me and dropped the bar. I’m sorry, Rue. But it was just a silly prank. I knew Cook would open up the cellar door eventually, and really it was only a little cold on the stairs.”

  “You didn’t feel… you weren’t… weren’t you frightened?” Rue asked at last.

  “Frightened?” Karah looked puzzled. “Well, I was a little uncomfortable when my candle burned out,” she conceded. “But after all, I knew someone would come eventually. And Moonglow was there to keep me company, of course.”

  Rue and Leilis exchanged another look. Purity of character as a shield against the unnatural cold of the cellars? Leilis, for one, could not believe this. Plenty of girls were sweet-natured. Leilis did not know of any who could have spent hours in the cellars, in the dark, without being more than a little uncomfortable. Or was it the kitten that had somehow protected Karah? Pinenne Clouds were supposed to be lucky, somehow, weren’t they? Just what did that reputed luck comprise?

  “I could tell Mother about this,” Leilis sai
d at last. “But you ought to, Rue. Karah is your little sister.”

  “Yes,” agreed Rue, looking grim. She, too, knew how easily the girl might have been ruined by this prank. “But, Leilis—”

  “I’ll come, too,” Leilis promised her.

  “Wait, wait!” Karah stared from one of them to the other. “It was only a joke—I’m sure Sweetrose didn’t mean anything by it. Why can’t we all simply… simply go back to bed and forget all this silliness?”

  Rue, who hated any sort of fuss and hated it worse if it touched her in any way, looked tempted. Leilis crossed her arms across her chest, gave the dancer a stern look, and said, “This particular prank went well beyond silliness. As Sweetrose knew as well as Rue, or I. You’re a keiso, no fit target for deisa mischief. Oh, I’m sure Sweetrose didn’t mean much by it. I doubt she had two thoughts in her head beyond placating Lily. But, unfortunately, she’s the only one you can honestly claim to have seen—is she?”

  “Well… yes,” Karah admitted. “You think Lily made her take Moonglow and put her in the cellar and bar the door behind me?” She looked disturbed. “Sweetrose ought to have told me. Or you. She could have thought of something to tell Lily, if she’d tried. But even so—”

  “No,” Rue said, suddenly decisive. She stood up, looking like the whole matter had settled at last in her mind. “Leilis is right. No, hush, child. She is. You’ve taken no harm from it…” Her voice trailed off in doubt, and she inspected the younger girl with a long stare. “No harm from it, seemingly,” she repeated, more firmly. “Even so, this was an assault. On a keiso.”

  “Mother will be outraged,” Leilis predicted, with a kind of grim satisfaction. “You,” she added firmly to Karah, “had better go to your room and go to sleep! This isn’t for you to deal with. Keiso shouldn’t be up at dawn anyway. How will you stay lively through your late evenings? Rue, tell the child to go to bed.”

  “Yes,” said Rue, nodding. “Go to bed, child. Take your kitten and go to sleep. Leilis—”

  “I’ll wake Mother,” said Leilis. “You’d better warn Sweetrose and give the stupid girl a chance to get herself together.”

  “Yes,” said Rue. She gave Karah a little push toward the room they shared and strode away toward the deisa rooms.

  “This was an assault. An assault. On a keiso.” Narienneh was exactly as outraged as Leilis had predicted. She fixed the unfortunate Sweetrose with an unforgiving stare. “You have never been the most clever girl, Sweetrose. But this!”

  Besides the Mother of Cloisonné House, only Terah, Rue, and Leilis were present. Rue would be, of course, and Terah was the retired keiso Narienneh most depended on in managing household affairs, but there was no obvious excuse for Leilis’s presence. Nevertheless, Narienneh hadn’t sent her away. No one seemed to find this surprising.

  Sweetrose, an exquisite girl of sixteen with dazzling huge eyes and a pretty, artless manner, was close to tears. Leilis knew that the girl’s artless manner actually rose from a wit too dim for artifice. But the girl could manage a certain basic charm. Easy tears were part of this.

  Narienneh, of course, was not impressed by girls’ tricks with tears. She said now, both impatient and regretful, “Well? You thought I would take no notice of this jealous attack on a keiso?”

  “But… she’s not even really a keiso,” Sweetrose protested, eyes brimming. “Truly, I never meant… and Lily said…”

  The crack of Narienneh’s hand on the surface of her desk was as sharp as the crack of a whip, and nearly as alarming.

  Leilis hid a sigh. She could have warned Sweetrose not to bring Lily into this. In fact, she should have. Mother was now, if possible, even angrier.

  Mother leaned forward, her fine-boned elegant face rigid. “Do not dare throw guilt for your own acts on the other deisa!” she snapped. “Do not dare!”

  Sweetrose, thoroughly quelled, shrank in the face of this rage.

  Narienneh straightened, drew a slow breath, and let it out again. All her anger seemed to go with it, leaving only a weary regret. “You’ll have to leave this House, child,” she said at last. “There’s no way else. No. Stop that weeping, foolish girl. You should have thought twice and three times before that outrageous trick of yours! Only great good fortune spared my newest daughter a ruined spirit or spoiled disposition.” The phrase my newest daughter emphasized Sweetrose’s lack of that status. “It’s quite plain you haven’t the sense to make a keiso in Cloisonné House. Go fetch your things, girl. Terah will help you gather them. Out. Go.”

  Narienneh watched the former Sweetrose stumble from the room, then turned a hard glance on Rue. The dancer, with a streak of ruthlessness few would have guessed at, only returned a short nod and strode out after the unfortunate girl.

  The Mother of Cloisonné House stared after them, expressionless.

  Leilis, surprised by an unexpected impulse toward sympathy, bowed her head a little to make Mother notice her.

  Narienneh, her eye drawn by that gesture, glanced toward Leilis. After a moment, she nodded permission to speak.

  “A foolish, weak-willed child,” murmured Leilis. “But so many girls are foolish, no matter how pretty! How fortunate there are keiso Houses willing to shelter such girls, so long as they are earnest and industrious, or the flower world would never have enough young deisa coming up.”

  Mother glanced thoughtfully after the departed Sweetrose. “Earnest and industrious, I will allow. Sweet tempered and willing to please, ordinarily. But such an ugly resentment of our newest keiso, and such poor judgment!”

  “Foolish talk in the deisa quarters should never be encouraged,” Leilis agreed.

  The glance Narienneh directed toward Leilis was sharp. “You believe I should write her a reference?”

  Leilis widened her eyes just a little. “That would be very generous, Mother. With such a reference, one of the lower-tier Houses might take the child as a deisa. Riverreed House, perhaps. That would spare Sweetrose being forced into an aika House, or worse, some dockside establishment.”

  “I am surprised you should concern yourself with her,” Narienneh commented, but the Mother of Cloisonné House clearly liked the idea of providing at least a small boost to her rejected deisa. She sat down at her desk, pulled out a formal roll of parchment, and set quill to it. She wrote quickly for a moment, then held the resultant note out to Leilis.

  Leilis, wondering herself about her own generous impulse, took the parchment by the edges, careful of the drying ink, and scanned the delicate clear script. She glanced up.

  Narienneh sat back in her tall-backed chair and tapped the feathered end of the quill gently on the surface of her desk. “One would not wish to be too easy.”

  “Generosity is a certain sign of nobility of heart,” Leilis commented, in a slightly dry tone, because though this was always true in the theater and in dances, anyone who lived in a keiso House knew better than to believe artistic truths.

  Mother made a faint gesture of disdain, but at the same time her mouth crooked into a slight smile.

  “I shall suggest appropriate Houses, then,” Leilis said, with a small formal bow of acquiescence. “And I shall advise her to dry those tears of hers and try each one smiling. Resilience and a bit of spirit will do better for her than piteous tears. Have you other advice I should convey?”

  “If advice would make a fool wise, there would be no fools in the world,” Mother said tartly, and sighed, the sadness in her face belying the sharpness of her words. She added in a lower tone, “Perhaps I should make Lily keiso at once. Perhaps that would…” She did not complete the suggestion.

  Leilis bit back an exclamation of dismay. She lowered her eyes instead, and murmured, “Cloisonné House may surely set the style for lesser Houses. But yielding to foolishness among the deisa may not end their envy.” Rather the reverse, she did not say. It was hardly necessary to point out the obvious. Mother was already waving away her own suggestion. She said merely, “You may deliver that reference, Leilis.”r />
  Leilis bowed obedience and rolled up the parchment. It was only a pity, she thought, that she was not delivering this reference to Lily. Except she doubted that any reference, no matter how generously worded, would open a place for Lily at any house other than Cloisonné… at any house where the Mother was not so blinded by partiality that she could not see that Lily’s malice was not the ordinary jealousy of any deisa.

  Well… at least Sweetrose’s dismissal should make even Lily cautious. For a while. So for that little while, Karah should be safe. Leilis tapped the parchment against the palm of her hand and lengthened her stride down the stairs, hurrying to be sure she would catch Sweetrose before the girl left the house. There was a pleasure in the hurry, a kind of pleasure Leilis had almost forgotten. Not the cold satisfaction of settling the affairs of Cloisonné House properly, but a warmer feeling, born of unaccustomed kindness.

  And yet Leilis did not think she had ever been deliberately unkind toward the girls and women of Cloisonné House. Indifferent, perhaps, to the concerns that moved them and were so often so petty. But unkind? Surely mere lack of interest was not the same as unkindness? And if she had for years been unmoved by the small troubles of keiso and servants and, especially, servants, then… why now should those troubles move her? She turned a corner and went down a flight of stairs, frowning.

  CHAPTER 10

  Nemienne woke up out of unremembered dreams with a sharp thrill of terror and a conviction that she had almost heard a scattering of delicate musical notes. She understood the terror only after she felt it. It woke her, and she sat up with a sharp gasp. Only then did she realize that she was not in her bed at home alongside her sisters, nor in her small, pretty room in Mage Ankennes’s house. Instead, she sat on cold stone. She was surrounded by stone, enclosed by a great, heavy darkness. It was the darkness that smothered light; the darkness that seemed as though it might smother breath as well. In the far distance, Nemienne could not hear music now, but only the slow, distant dripping of water.