by Sarah Zettel
A pause followed, longer than was appropriate. “Nothing would please me more than to receive such a gift from my daughter’s hands,” said the dowager at last, as Ananda had known she would. For even the dowager to say she preferred servant hands to imperial hands would have been unthinkable. “I give you good leave to go about your errand.”
“I render you thanks, Mother Imperial.” Ananda dropped another reverence. “If it pleases you, I shall set out at once.”
“It does please me, my daughter. You may depart to make your preparations.”
“My thanks, Mother Imperial.” One more reverence, and a careful retreat backward down the dais steps, trusting Sruta and Kiriti to get her train out of the way before she trod on it. When she reached the bottom of the dais, her entire retinue reverenced and held the pose for a full thirty breaths. Etiquette then permitted them to rise, turn around and leave by the route they had come.
Back in Ananda’s apartments, Sruta and Nala hurried to get her travelling clothes. Behule and Kiriti accompanied the empress behind the changing screens to start unlacing and unbuttoning the complex layers of court clothing with Izmaragd standing by to receive the jewels as they were removed. Ananda, now used to the ritual, stood stock-still with her arms held straight out to her sides. Squirming only prolonged the process.
“So, Kiriti my friend,” said Ananda in the court language of her home. “Were you able to learn anything new?”
Kiriti removed Ananda’s ruby and sapphire necklace and passed it to Izmaragd while Behule successfully disengaged the golden collar.
“Only more rumor, Princess.” Kiriti started on the ties for the blue and gold girdle. “Kalami is hunting your servant, Sakra. He is spying on the Nine Elders of Hung-Tse.”
Behule undid the hooks on the indigo velvet outer skirt and lowered it to the floor so Ananda could step out. “I had heard he was out in the Foxwood, courting a river nymph so he could steal her jewels for the dowager.”
“Had my father such storytellers, I should have never lacked for amusement all my years at home,” muttered Ananda. In perfect synchronization, her ladies drew off her trailing velvet outer sleeves.
Sruta stepped around the screens and covered her eyes briefly in salute to her princess. “Secretary Mathura is here, Princess.”
“Your arrival is welcome, Secretary,” called Ananda as her maids began untying the scarlet laces of her cloth of silver gown. “Have you news?”
“My reports are all insufficient, Princess,” he replied. When speaking in the language of Hastinapura, her people used the title she had been born to.
The final lace came undone and Ananda let out a mighty, undignified, sigh of relief as the dress loosened around her waist.
“I have for you only three letters. These were written by my lords Gantes, Tok and Avra,” Mathura went on, tactfully ignoring her noise. “The last concerns the disposition of your estates.”
Ananda gave another clearly audible sigh and stepped out of her first layer of petticoats. “Thank you, Secretary,” she called. “You may leave the letters with Lady Taisiia.”
“With a good will, Princess.”
The second layer of petticoats came off. “Now, leave, man, before the sight of so many beauties in one place strikes you blind.”
“As my princess commands.”
Kiriti and Behule peeled off the third and fourth layers of petticoats, leaving Ananda in a linen shift with silken hose and drawers underneath.
Lady Taisiia came around the screens with three folded and sealed letters in her hands. She reverenced to the princess and handed them across. Ananda thanked her briefly without meeting her gaze. Ananda had known for weeks that Lady Taisiia spied for the dowager. After she had become certain, Ananda had Kiriti acquire one of Lady Taisiia’s handkerchiefs so that Sakra could determine whether she was carrying anything other than messages for the dowager. One of the letters might contain useful information about that question.
Ananda hated the scheming, calculating creature she had become with a bitterness that rivaled her hatred for the dowager’s person. But she wished to live, and that with mind and will intact. She had thought a thousand times about running away, but she could not quit this place without endangering the land of her birth and all who depended on her, including Mikkel. Sometimes at night she would lie awake and invent new curses to speak against her cousin Kacha, who had once been emperor of Isavalta. His treacheries had poisoned the dowager against Hastinapura, when his mission was supposed to have been to unite the realms. Oh, the dowager was her enemy, but Ananda could not ignore the fact that this canker that was her life had been formed by a worm from the heart of her own family.
Ananda broke the seal on the letter with Lord Avra’s crest on it. Around her, her ladies dressed her in a woolen riding habit with a slashed green velvet overdress and sleeves that were almost manageable.
The letter did a creditable job of appearing to report on her estate at Kanjit. Inventories, slaughtering records, rents, the price on the crops of almonds and lemons.
She let Kiriti sit her in a chair, so her boots could be laced on.
The letter also contained the words “I will be there,” no less than three times.
This time, Ananda suppressed her sigh of relief. The letter, in truth, was from Sakra. Lord Avra was a name they had made up to pass information back and forth under the dowager’s nose, and Kanjit was the estate they spoke of when they meant to refer to the holdings of Sparavatan. By Sakra’s repetition of the phrase “I will be there,” he meant to tell her he would be able to meet her when she rode out today.
Regarding the question you put to me about the lady’s gold sleeve trimmings, the letter went on, I believe there is more to be had from the same workman as we used previously, and several garments may be obtained with that particular adornment.
So, there it was. Lady Taisiia did carry some spell from the dowager. Woven into the gold braid adorning her sleeves there was some new magical poison or influence the dowager hoped to use against Ananda.
Ananda tried to feel fury or sorrow; instead, she felt only weariness.
“Well, the price of lemons this season is good.” She handed the letters back to Lady Taisiia. Let her read them, for all the good it would do her now. As the gentlewoman took them, Ananda saw that the sleeves of Lady Taisiia’s burgundy gown had great loops of gold braid loosely attached to their hems, giving the impression that she wore chains of actual gold.
Clever. Functional, yet most decorative. That thought gave Ananda an idea of how to proceed. “Am I attired yet, Kiriti?”
“Almost, Princess.” Kiriti tied the final knot in her bootlace just as Behule pinned the white silk veil with its rose embroidery over her hair. “Now you are attired, with only this small addition.” Kiriti handed the princess a pair of silken undergloves that had been embroidered with roses to match her veil. Her ladies graciously allowed her to put those on herself.
“I am grateful.” Ananda took the gloves and emerged from behind her screens.
Kiriti, Behule, Sruta, Nala, Taisiia and Izmaragd, as her chief ladies, fell in behind her as she pulled the gloves on. Two of the little page girls in white, fur-trimmed satin and green sashes hurried on ahead to tell the grooms their empress and her party were departing. But before she quite reached the door, however, Ananda pulled herself up short and turned.
“Lady Taisiia?” she said, smoothing her embroidered glove over her hand.
“Mistress?” Lady Taisiia stepped forward from the neat line of gentlewomen and reverenced.
“Like you this glove?” Ananda inquired, tracing its scarlet roses with her fingertip.
“It is a lovely creation, mistress,” replied Lady Taisiia with practiced politeness.
Ananda met her gaze. “What would you say if I told you it could speak?”
“I …” stammered Lady Taisiia. Kiriti drew back, and Behule with her. The other ladies followed their example, leaving Lady Taisiia and Ananda standing
face-to-face.
“What would you say” — Ananda took a step closer to the startled gentlewoman — “if I told you the thorns in the roses prick my hands when there is danger, and the leaves rustle to tell me what that danger may be?” She held her gloved palm in front of the lady’s face. “The thorns touch me, Lady Taisiia. Is there danger?”
Lady Taisiia reverenced, clutching her hands tightly together over her bosom. “Surely, my mistress does not believe …”
Ananda let her hand weave through the air before the lady’s face. “The leaves rustle, Lady Taisiia. They are quite clear. There is danger near me.” Her hand drifted up. “It is less here …” Her hand brushed the lady’s arm. “It is greater here. It grows greater as my hand falls. Is that not strange?”
“Mistress …” Lady Taisiia’s voice trembled ever so slightly.
Ananda seized the lady’s arm, twisting roughly so she fell to her knees with a sharp cry. “Bring me a knife, Kiriti.”
“No, no, mistress, please,” begged Lady Taisiia from what had to be a most uncomfortable position. Her arm trembled in Ananda’s grip. “There is nothing. You are wrong. I swear, I have done nothing, nothing!” The lady squirmed, but Ananda held her fast.
Kiriti reverenced and handed Ananda a little jeweled dagger that was meant to be worn as an ornament during hunts but that was, nonetheless, quite sharp. Ananda took it in her free hand, and touched its tip to the lady’s frightened face. “Nothing, Lady Taisiia?”
Lady Taisiia froze. “No, no, please, I was ordered, I had to …”
Ananda brought the knife down sharply, severing the golden lacework on the lady’s sleeve. Lady Taisiia gave a little shriek as the braid parted, letting Ananda know she’d gotten the correct sleeve, but to be sure, she slashed the other ornaments as well.
“There. The danger is gone.” Ananda pushed Lady Taisiia away. Taisiia fell back against the floor, an untidy heap of silk and tears.
“Tell she whom you truly serve that I will not have those who deal double among my ladies.” Ananda swept out. “Tell her to keep you from my sight.”
Ananda did not look back. Taisiia would creep away to her mistress with the story of the magic gloves. Yet one more weaving possessed by the sorceress Ananda. Yet one more enchantment for the dowager to try to find her way around. Never mind that it was a complete lie. As long as the dowager believed Ananda was a sorceress, she would attack her as a sorceress. Weavings that worked on a sorcerer would pass over more ordinary souls.
The lie of her sorcerous nature had kept Ananda alive and in possession of herself. Every day she prayed that the lie would hold. If it unraveled, so too would her life.
Ananda proceeded along the sharply angled corridors that skirted the octagonal courtyard lost in thought. She walked down the Rotunda stairs with their pillars of white-veined pink marble and the painted dome overhead portraying the ascension of Edemsko, Medeoan’s father. The sunlight from the small windows set high in the outer wall made her blink and, for a moment, look up.
She saw Mikkel, and she froze.
He lounged against one of the stair’s polished blackwood rails. His fingers picked restlessly at the golden embroidery that bordered the sash of his deep purple kaftan. His dull eyes flickered back and forth, unable to rest on any one thing. Ananda’s throat closed.
“Go on ahead,” she said to Kiriti as soon as she could speak. “I will meet you outside.”
“As you wish, Princess.”
Her retinue moved on with many a sideways look. Mikkel watched them go, as if he could see only what moved and was too blind to see his bride standing still in front of him.
Ananda reverenced toward him. “Good morning, my husband.”
His mouth worked for a moment before words came out. “Good. Good morning.”
“Have you been out today?” she asked, ashamed at how small her voice sounded. “Is it fine?”
His gaze flicked up to the windows. “I suppose. I don’t know.”
“Would you like to see?” She stepped forward, faint hope rising in her. “I am going out. Come with me.”
He shrugged. “I suppose.”
Ananda held out her hand. Mikkel stared at it for a moment, as if trying to remember what to do with such an object, but then he reached for her.
“My son.”
Ananda’s gaze jerked up to the top of the stairs. There stood the dowager, magnificent in her emerald velvet and drapings of diamonds and pearls.
“Come with me, my son,” she said.
Mikkel hesitated just a bare instant. “No,” breathed Ananda. “Mikkel, come with me.”
But Mikkel just shrugged and turned. He mounted the stairs carefully, putting both feet on one before climbing to the next, like a child uncertain of its footing. Anger and helplessness burned in Ananda as Mikkel took his mother’s hand. The dowager’s face showed nothing but pure triumph. But even as the dowager led her son away, Mikkel turned his face to look back down the length of the stairs, and Ananda thought she saw his mouth shape her name. Her heart contracted.
I will free you, my love, she thought after him. I swear, somehow, I will find out what she has done to you.
But at the moment, there was nothing to do but leave him with the dowager.
Because the dowager did not permit any to be unpunctual in her household, particularly if they were servants, the horses and all other necessary trappings for Ananda’s journey were waiting at the foot of the stairs by the time she emerged into the daylight from the cloaking rooms wrapped in her furs and thick outer gloves.
She mounted Isha, the delicate little grey mare who had come with her from Hastinapura. Her ladies mounted their own horses and raised a green silk canopy over their princess. The usual escort of guards and pages, dogs and trumpeters took their places all around them.
When all had formed up, the great iron gates were cranked open by their keepers and the procession was allowed to venture forth.
In spring and summer they would have proceeded along the canal in barges. In winter, however, the waterway was nothing but black ice frosted with snow.
For all that the cold still bit to her bones, Ananda could see beauty in the winter that lay so heavily over her new home. The stark grey trees of the park surrounding the palace still reached for the sun, despite their nakedness. The towering pines screened the worst of the wind with their thick needles to protect their disrobed comrades. The pure white snow created new landscapes by filling in hollows and building up hills. All sparkled in the faint sunlight and the thin wind picked up whorls and snakes of diamond powder and scattered them all around.
Ananda remembered when she first saw snow fall from the sky. She was just fifteen and had been sent from her father’s court to the court of Isavalta that she might learn the language, customs and all proper observances before she became empress. Her arrival had been greeted with a week of processions, pageants and receptions, all in languages she barely understood. In that time, she saw her intended husband a total of three times and spoke to him not at all.
That evening, it was another presentation of dance and masquerade. In truth, the display was lovely, but she was tired and missing her home, and the stranger she was to marry sat on the other side of his formidable mother, making any communication impossible. She had known all her life that she would be married to someone she had never met. That fact did not bother her, but she had always entertained the hope that there would at least be letters between them. The art of the courtly letter was much talked of in Isavalta, but it seemed little practiced, at least between imperials and their intendeds. She had not had one line from Mikkel during their courtship negotiations.
Sunken in her own thoughts, she didn’t notice that Mikkel had left his place until he reverenced in front of her.
“With respect, the Moon’s Daughter seems dull,” he said, speaking in her own language. Slowly, to be sure, but he was trying, and he had even gotten her familial title right.
Ananda roused hersel
f, aware that she was being extremely rude with her inattention. “No, no, I assure my cousin imperial,” she replied in her High Isavaltan, which was about as good as his Court Hastinapuran. “The entertainment is excellent.” She felt the weight of the empress’s eyes on her. “I am quite enchanted.”
“I am glad to hear of it,” he said with a gravity that was so obviously affected, it bordered on teasing. Ananda felt a little warmth spark inside her. “But perhaps she will permit me to show her something truly wonderful?” It had been he who had extended his hand then, following the courtesies of his own court.
“I would be delighted to see whatever my cousin imperial wishes me to see.” She took his hand, and noted that it was warm, and that the light from the lamps and tapers sparkled in his eyes, which were the color of sapphires.
He walked her at arm’s length down the hall, holding on to just her fingertips with his free arm folded behind his back. Around them, the court parted in a rustle of heavy cloth, and bending heads and backs.
At the far end of the hall, velvet curtains screened the doors to the balcony, keeping out the drafts. Mikkel pushed the curtain back. In the next second, some servant took it from him. Mikkel opened the carved doors and let the frigid air in. Ananda shivered.
“There,” said Mikkel.
The clouds had blossomed. They shed fat white petals that filled the black night and landed on rails and tile floor. Cold made a sharp perfume, like fresh mint, for these broken flowers. Ananda felt a smile of delight spread on her face, not only because of this sudden, small beauty, but because Mikkel had thought she might like to see it.
She cupped her hand to catch a petal. Her palm tingled as it touched her. For a bare instant, she saw the snowflake’s lacy perfection, and then it vanished away, leaving nothing but a few drops of water.
“It is beautiful,” she murmured.
“I am glad you like it,” he whispered back, dropping into Isavaltan. “I am sorry if things have been tedious. Appearances have to be kept up, you know.”