by Alex Bledsoe
“If you’ll wait a moment, Miss Isadora asked to be noticified when you arrived.” She curtsied again, then rushed off. Noise from the crowd in the main dining hall echoed off the stone walls.
“At least she got our name right,” Liz said.
“It’s my name, Miss Dumont,” I said with fake annoyance. “And I wish I could be ‘noticified’ that there was somewhere to lie down.” If I hadn’t been so hungover, I’d have wondered why Isadora wanted to see us. But my pounding head kept my uncertainties at bay.
“You can sleep through the festivities if you want,” Liz said. “It’s not like we have to impress anyone here.”
“And leave you alone with all these young farm lads again? Not a chance.”
She brushed the tip of her nose against mine. “You’re jealous. That’s sweet.”
“I’m not jealous at all, I just don’t want to be responsible for all the fistfights that’ll break out over you.”
“Oh, and you’d be responsible for that? How do you figure?”
“In some kingdoms, a wife is the husband’s property,” I said with a tired but smug smile.
“And in some kingdoms, the wives poison their husband at breakfast and give them the antidotes that night. Unless,” she added with narrowed eyes, “the husbands step out of line before dinner.”
Isadora came down the stairs in a formal gown, one that looped around her neck and left her back and shoulders bare. Her hair was elaborately coiffed and piled high on her head, revealing the elegant sweep of her neck. She was barefoot, and wore a small anklet that jingled when she stepped.
Of course I’d seen her the night before, pretending to be a goddess for the public. But here she was, looking straight at me. I tried mightily to reconnect this face with the hazy, unformed baby’s visage from before, but it just didn’t happen. There was such intelligence and shrewdness in her demeanor that it was, in a strange way, a lot like the first time I saw Liz.
She stopped in front of us. Two little girls no older than five accompanied her, clearly annoyed at also being dressed up. Isadora nodded to Liz, then looked straight at me.
Before she could speak, one of the little girls gave me a onceover and said, “Who’s he?”
“He smells bad,” the other girl said. She was the younger of the two, and evidently had a child’s honesty.
“Helena!” Isadora said, her face reddening. “Haven’t you been taught any manners?”
“Manners are for servants,” she said with a snort.
“I’m sorry,” Isadora said to us. “These are my nieces, Helena and Hero. My uncle is a bit of an elitist.”
“No, he’s just better than everyone else,” Hero said.
“He is not,” Isadora said. “He’s a bully, and one day someone will stand up to him.”
“And get a spatula to the skull,” Helena said defiantly.
“A spatula?” I asked.
“He fancies himself a cook. He’s in charge of the banquet.” She turned to the girls. “Go back to my room. And if I hear another snotty comment from either of you, I’ll make you stay there. I’m Eolomea, remember, and you have to do what I say.”
“Nuh-uh,” the girls said in unison. “We’ll tell our dad.”
Isadora knelt, grabbed each girl by the front of their dresses, and yanked them close. “Listen to me, you little no-neck monsters, I used to beat your daddy from one end of this house to the other, and I can still do it. He knows it, too. So get up to my room before I put one of my dainty little feet against each of your little butts.”
While she had her back to us, I noticed faded, blackish marks I first took for old bruises. They crossed her bare shoulders in an arc and formed a circle down to the small of her back. It was the dregs of the tattoo she’d sported as a baby, faded and expanded as she’d grown until now they were mere birthmarks that she clearly didn’t fret over. I wished I could remember the tattoo clearly; no doubt the designs would provide a really useful clue.
She released the girls, and they ran screaming up the stairs. Isadora shook her head and smiled. “Sorry about that. Now— would you mind if we talked in private?”
“I’d never turn down a goddess,” I said. Which wasn’t strictly true, I had turned one down once. But it was for her own good.
“Would you follow me?” We entered a small sitting room. She closed the door behind us, then locked it. That sent a little frisson of worry up my spine, but I assumed it was habit. Then she turned and faced us with a small crossbow in her hand.
“Don’t make any mistake, I know how to use this,” she said. “And I know there’s only one bolt, so I can’t shoot you both. But I can definitely shoot one of you before either of you can reach me, and I hit what I aim at. So one of you will die.”
Normally the sight of a weapon pointed at me and wielded by someone who did, indeed, seem to have the skill to use it, would have made me wide awake and tense. But on this day, I just sighed and said, “Look, you want to shoot me, shoot me. It can’t possibly hurt more than my head does.”
“I agree,” Liz said. “You want to shoot him, shoot him.”
“That’s a nice act, but I’m not buying tickets,” she said. “I heard my mother and grandfather talking last night after you two left. I know you know something about me that I don’t know.”
I couldn’t help myself. “And now we know that you know that we know something about you that you don’t know.”
“Stop that!” she hissed angrily. “It may be a joke to you, but it’s my life. You think I don’t know I’m not part of this family? I don’t look like any of them, and I’m supposed to believe Clancy and I are from the same family? You know where I came from. So just tell me wh . . . tell me wh . . . tell me wh . . . tell me wh . . .”
She continued to repeat the same two and a half words, with exactly the same inflection each time. Liz and I looked at each other in confusion. I waved a hand, but Isadora’s eyes didn’t follow it. I stood, and again she did not react. She was like a mechanical toy stuck in the middle of its cycle, repeating the same bit over and over. I walked over and tried to take the crossbow from her hand, but her grip was as strong and solid as rock. I settled for plucking the bolt from the weapon.
“Isadora?” I said cautiously. “Izzy?”
She suddenly collapsed. I barely caught her before she cracked her head on the stone floor. She was completely limp, and for a moment I worried that she was dead.
I carried her to a couch, then sank into my chair again as my own head swirled. Liz said, “What was that all about?”
“I have no idea,” I said. I’d seen people have seizures, something known as the “falling sickness” in other parts of the world, but this was completely different.
Liz took the weapon from her now-limp hand and checked her over. “She’s breathing. Her heart’s beating normally. Isadora? Can you hear me?”
The girl opened her eyes. “What happened?” she gasped. Then she winced. “Oh, man, not again.”
“Has this happened before?” Liz asked.
Isadora sat up. “This is really embarrassing. Really. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for passing out?” I said. “Or for pointing a crossbow at us in the first place?”
“Both,” she said. “I know you’re a professional sword jockey, and I thought I should start out from a position of power.”
“Everybody’s got more power than me right now, sweetheart,” I assured her.
“I heard,” she said with a weak smile. “Billy Cudgel slipped you some Devil’s Dew this morning. You’re lucky you’re still walking.”
“Keep telling me how lucky I am,” I said, and rubbed my temples.
Isadora turned to Liz. “And I’m sorry for frightening you, too. Both with my crossbow, and my . . . illness. It just leaves a hole in you when you don’t know who you really are.”
“Eddie will find out,” Liz said. “He’s already on it.”
She looked at me. “You are?”
“If
no one poisons me or tries to shoot me again, yeah.”
“Well . . . what can I do to help?”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t call your mother?” Liz said. “You were out. All the way.”
“Mom knows all about it,” she said. “Grandpa sent word to the moon priestesses down south, and one of them should be visiting soon. There’s not much else to do until then.”
I’d heard Prince Jack offer to intercede, and her refusal. I didn’t feel it was my place to damage her pride. So I said, “I understand there was a blanket with you when you were found. And some coins. I don’t suppose you’ve still got those lying around?”
“I’ll ask.” She practically ran for the door, then stopped and turned back. “And I’m really sorry. I think Jack might ask me to marry him to night, and it’s got me all in a tizzy. I mean, I’ll say yes, of course, but he’s . . .” She stopped just before she blurted out his secret.
“What?” I prompted. I wanted to see how she got out of it.
She looked down, organizing her thoughts. Then she said, “He deserves to know who he’s marrying. He’s never seen me have one of these . . . fits.”
“I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t change his mind,” Liz assured her.
“How do you know?” Isadora asked.
“Because he looks at you the way this mutton head looks at me. And I’m absolutely certain about him.”
Isadora’s eyes grew wet. “Excuse me,” she said, and rushed out, leaving us alone.
I looked up at Liz. “Mutton head?”
“It’s the best I could come up with. I’ve been surrounded by sheep for two days, after all.”
Someone knocked at the door and opened it without waiting for an answer. Another girl, pretty but no stunner like Isadora, entered. She was dressed in one of the low-cut thighshowing gowns. “My cousin asked me to—”
She stopped when she saw me, and gave me the standard Glendower greeting, “You.”
“Me,” I agreed yet again.
“You gave me a flower,” she said.
Now I recognized her: the babysitter from the barn. “Yes.”
“I heard you were showing off and drinking Devil’s Dew.”
“Yeah. Didn’t realize how strong it was. I do now.”
“I’m Cassandra Glendower, by the way.”
“Eddie LaCrosse. This is Liz Dumont.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Izzy asked me to show to a room. She said you might want to lie down before the banquet starts.”
“She’s a kind girl,” I said, and got to my feet.
“Oh, yeah, the sun shines out of her butt,” Cassandra said with disdain.
We followed the girl into the hall, where me met Clancy. He smiled and doffed his hat to Liz.
“Clancy, where’s Dad?” Cassandra asked.
“Overseeing the decorations, I imagine,” Clancy said.
“Oh, God,” she said wearily. “Tell him to stop what he’s doing and wait for me, I’ll be right there.” To us, she said, “I don’t know why I bother, though, nobody listens to me anyway.”
The room she showed us was on the second floor. I worried that I’d have to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees, but I made it upright. The room itself was high ceilinged, decorated with the same just-past-tasteful style as the rest of the house, and blessed with a magnificent view of the rolling hills and the mountains beyond.
“There’s some clothes in the wardrobe,” Cassandra said. “A suit for you, sir, and a dress for your wife. The actual banquet doesn’t start for a couple of hours. Right now it’s just the preliminary drinking, which I’m assuming you’ll want to skip.”
“That’s a good bet,” I agreed.
“Well . . . we’ll see you there.”
“Thanks.”
I settled back onto the bed. I was so stuffed with feathers that I was tempted to check under it for eggs. “It appears the two Glendower girls don’t get along.”
“They’ve been raised like sisters,” Liz said. “Nobody can hate you like your own blood.”
She sat on the bed beside me and brushed my hair back from my face. I groaned and covered my eyes with my arm. “You really are sick, aren’t you?” she said with genuine sympathy.
“Yes. So let me sleep off a little more of this headache, so maybe I’ll be sharp to night. Right now my brain is very, very dull.”
I got maybe thirty seconds of rest before another knock at the door. Liz said, “Come in.”
Beatrice Glendower entered, in the same sort of gown as everyone else. It looked as spectacular on her as it did on her daughter, but at the moment its effect was wasted on me. She said, “Isadora told me you wanted to see this.” Her voice was tight with conflicting emotions.
I sat up slowly, having learned my lesson about sudden moves. “Is that the blanket she was wrapped in?”
“Yes, Audrey gave it to us. I’ve kept it hidden away.” She looked down. “I suppose I should’ve been honest with Isadora long before this. Of course she’d notice she didn’t look like any of us. Maybe I should’ve invented an imaginary father, one who died some heroic death. Maybe,” she said with a wry smile, “a traveling sword jockey.”
Liz looked up sharply and cleared her throat.
“Oh, I’m kidding, I apologize. I’m very—” Beatrice stopped and handed me the blanket. “Here. See what you can make of it.”
I took it and unfolded it. Dust rose from the fabric. Its rich color had faded somewhat, but wherever she’d kept it, it was still in remarkably good shape. The stain from Isadora’s baby pee was still there as well, dried into the cloth. I held it up against the light so I could see the pattern of weaving. My brain, so recently against me, began to again function as part of the team.
“It’s expensive,” I said. “This kind of weaving takes a while. Look how small the thread it, and how tightly it’s woven. And it’s still supple after being folded for so long. Someone either rich, important, or both owned this.”
I looked close at the satin hem. Several small pulls became visible if I turned it just so, indicating that something once stitched there had been carefully removed. “There was a crest or a symbol here,” I said. “Probably the family symbol. That would’ve been useful.”
“Does the shape tell you anything?” Liz asked.
“No, all crests are shaped pretty much the same. And I’ve got nothing to compare it to.” I resumed my inspection, until I felt a row of tiny, hard things with the hem, nestled in the tight seam between satin and fabric.
“That’s the glowworm,” Beatrice said helpfully.
“The what?”
“It used to glow, but only when it was near Izzy. It made her laugh. It stopped working when she was, oh, about three.”
“Do you mind if I cut this open? I’d like to see what these are.”
She nodded. I took the knife from my boot and carefully cut into the little pocket. It took longer than I expected with the big knife and the small thread. Finally I laid it open and could see what had once made the glowworm shape.
A half dozen oblong clear glass beads.
I tapped them with the tip of my knife. They were solid, not hollow.
I picked one up and held it to the window. (Again, I know what you’re thinking: Glowing balls of glass should have rung a bell, right? Well, remember I was hungover, and the glowing glass I’d seen back in Mahnoma looked nothing like these beads.) “Do you mind if I smash one?” I asked Beatrice.
Again she nodded.
I put one on the table, held the butt of my knife hilt over it, and brought it down hard. It shattered.
And screamed.
It was high-pitched and brief, but we all heard it. It sent little shards of agony into my already-throbbing head. No one said anything for a moment.
“What was that?” Beatrice gasped at last.
I leaned close and examined the residue. It was broken glass, and that was all. Whatever cried out hadn’t left a corpse. “I don’t know.”
/>
“You could smash another one,” Liz suggested, and I positioned my knife over one, but something in that strange little cry stopped me. There was a level of despair that had nothing to do with physical agony, and I suddenly realized it would be cruel to do it again, when it likely would yield no more clues than the first one. Instead I put away my knife and left the remaining beads on the table. “No, there’s no point to that,” I said, “and I don’t want to destroy any more clues than I have to.”
I went over the rest of the blanket but discovered nothing else of note. I handed it back to Beatrice. “What about the coins?”
“Oh, yeah. The gold you forgot to mention to me.”
“I mentioned it to your father.”
“Yeah. Well, as far as I know, it went into the family business, but you can talk to him about it.”
“Can you send him up?”
She gave me a look of mock contempt that took me back sixteen years, to that festival evening when we met. “That’s your plan? Just to sit here and have people parade past you? Is that how all sword jockeys work?”
“Sometimes not even this hard,” Liz said.
“Okay, if I can get him away from decorating,” she said.
“Cassandra went to help him,” Liz said.
“Good. That’ll keep her away from Izzy.”
“They don’t get along?” I asked.
“They were raised like twins, like Dorcus and Mopsa,” Beatrice said. “It all started when the boys started paying more attention to Cassie than Izzy.”
It took a moment for that to register. “Wait, she’s jealous because the boys pay more attention to her than they do Izzy?”
“Yes. She just wants to go off and be a moon priestess, but Dad won’t hear of it. He thinks they’re a bunch of whores. He insists that she’s going to pick a husband or never leave the house.”
“That’s tough,” I said. I knew better about moon priestesses, but I also knew that self-determining women frightened many rural, small-minded men.
“Yes. I’ve offered to mediate, but Cassandra won’t hear of it. She insists on handling it her way.”
“A lot of stubborn women in this family,” I said with a little smile.
“A lot of stubborn people, period.”