The Stranger at the Wedding

by Barbara Hambly

  She curtseyed just slightly as Kyra strode past her toward the carved door at the foot of the stairs. The curtsey, Kyra guessed, had cost the butler some inner debate, but she knew Briory could conduct such debates with the speed and efficiency of the weaving machines in the new steam-run factories down by the river. To have curtsied as to a member of the family would, of course, have been to disregard Master Gordam Peldyrin’s formal disavowal of his eldest child; to omit all mark of recognition would have been to relegate a member of the family to the status of a tradesman. There were those—the butler almost certainly among them—who would say that Kyra had sunk herself far below even that status, but Briory thought too much of the rest of the household to admit it.

  “Thank you.” Kyra caught herself with practiced ease on the book-room door jamb as she tripped on the marble threshold; Briory closed her eyes briefly. In some unacknowledged corner of her mind, she’d clearly been hoping this was all a nightmare. But no nightmare would have included Miss Kyra tripping over her own feet.

  In a moment the butler followed her in, carrying the tapestry satchel as if it contained snakes and poison.

  The first hurdle cleared, Kyra thought. For days she’d lived with the fear that she wouldn’t even be admitted to the house.

  She reached out with her mind to kindle the lamps on her father’s desk, more for Briory’s sake than for her own. As a wizard, she could see clearly in the dark. The butler started almost imperceptibly as, within their glassy chimneys, the wicks sprang into flame, immediately followed by the lights of the seven-branched porcelain candelabra on the room’s long table. At the Citadel Kyra had forgotten the effect such things had on those who weren’t used to being around the mageborn. The rosy amber glow broadened over the shelves of her father’s ledgers, year after year of corn bought and sold, of sea coal and wood for the five bakeries operating in various corners of the city, of purchase orders for the great charity hospitals and barracks, of investments in merchant ships, tenements in Southwall, farms. A twinge of guilt plucked at her like sharpened tweezers at the sight of the abacus and wax calculating tablets on the table, the pens and blotters grouped like sleeping pets around the candelabra’s base. Who helps him in here now?

  Not Alix, that was certain.

  A fire still flickered low in the grate, its warmth, after the chill of the hall, welcoming. When Briory left her, Kyra walked to the shelves and ran her hand gently along the backs of those prosaic brown books. At one time she had known every page of them. There were dozens exclusively in her handwriting: the dull earth from which flourished the gay colors of the Peldyrin family’s wealth.

  Those colors lay in great rolls immediately beneath the bookshelves, bannerets and pennoncels and hangings to decorate the house for the wedding feast. All new, she saw, the purple and yellow of the Peldyrins fresh and unfaded. Among them she discerned the softer buff and blue of Lord Earthwygg, her father’s noble patron at the Emperor’s Court. She bent to examine the big hangings more closely and smiled. They were embroidered and appliquéd rather than painted, of course.

  She rose, smiling, and dusted off her hands. “Trust Father,” she said aloud, “to have nothing but the best.”

  “You mean trust Father to let everyone know how much we can afford.”

  Kyra spun around with such suddenness that she knocked over the nearest pennon staff and, in scrambling to catch it, overset three more. The beautiful nymph who had been framed in the book room doorway laughed and ran to her side, helping her prop the long bundles against the wall again.

  “Good heavens, Alix!” Kyra stepped back in surprise, and her sister caught her in a delighted embrace. It was strange to feel the younger girl’s chin on her collarbone, those delicate shoulders high enough for her to put her arms around them.

  “Are you surprised I’ve grown?”

  “Certainly not. You’d have looked tremendously silly if you’d remained four feet, seven inches tall all your life.” Stepping clear to look at her, Kyra was a little breathtaken nevertheless, although she’d known even six years before that Alix would be beautiful. Even this beautiful.

  Alix was, in fact, everything that her older sister was not or was slightly too much of: tall enough to set off the hooped skirts of her lettuce-green silk gown without Kyra’s gawkiness, with enough amber in her eyes to lighten their brown to brightness without those disconcerting tawny glints. The dark rust of her older sister’s hair survived only as a burnishing flame in the masses of golden curls, and while the red hair was coarse textured to frizziness on wet days like this one, the blond was only luxuriantly thick. Framed in those corn-silk ringlets, with clusters of pink rosebuds and sprays of forget-me-nots, Alix’s face was a delicate oval, while the sharpness of Kyra’s cheekbones and jaw turned her face nearly square; also, Alix’s voice was a low, pleasing alto, well above the drawling huskiness of the other’s tones.

  Alix was laughing. “It might have been better if I had. You know, I’m only an inch shorter than Master Spenson. Tellie—you remember Tellie Wishrom? Neb Wishrom’s daughter next door?—says her father’s been negotiating to have her marry Mole Prouvet, and Mole’s inches shorter than she is, though I think he’s perfectly sweet in spite of having his nose buried in a book all the time. It’s so wonderful to see you! I didn’t think you’d come!”

  “Quite obviously neither did Briory.”

  “Poor Briory! The house has been in chaos—they have to put up the banners, and the big garlands for the banisters and the pillars on the porch tonight, as soon as Master Spenson and the other guests leave. Master Spenson and the Bishop and Lord Earthwygg are all coming for dinner, you know.”

  “Well,” Kyra purred ruefully, “Father will be thrilled to see me. Hence the gown...” Her gesture took in her sister’s embroidered petticoat with its cream-colored lace and bunches of silk flowers, while her somewhat harsh features melted into a smile. “In which you look beautiful, by the way.”

  “Oh...” Alix blushed a little and shook her head. “It’s just the dress. This shade of green was always my color.”

  “Dress forsooth. You were always twenty times prettier than I, though I suppose the same statement could as accurately be made about Mother’s lapdogs.”

  It had taken Kyra some years to become reconciled to that fact.

  Alix’s eyes twinkled. “Now, you shouldn’t make comparisons like that! Those lapdogs are specially bred to be beautiful. But yes, Papa’s gone into one of his fusses to get everything ready. I think if the Emperor’s Regent showed up for dinner, Papa would fly into a frenzy about having to lay an extra plate. Ever since the wedding date was moved up—”

  “Moved up?” In the soft lamplight Kyra felt herself blanch. “Moved up to when?”

  Alix blinked at her with those soft brown eyes. “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Kyra was still getting her breath back against the cold shock those words had brought her when the door of the book room opened again and Briory said colorlessly, “Master Peldyrin.”

  Alix swung around, smiling with her usual sunny welcome—in this case, Kyra knew, assumed.

  Kyra herself stepped briskly forward past her and held out her hand. “Father,” she said.

  Gordam Peldyrin’s sharp eyes, topaz like her own and like hers rather heavy-lidded, cut to Alix with a glint of suspicion and more than a little anger. “I thought I told you—”

  “She didn’t invite me, if that’s what you think,” Kyra said as Alix’s face turned pale under its smile, rice powder, and rouge. “She merely sent me an announcement, something you can scarcely fault her for, considering you had my tutor make me write out a list of all the members of my family to the fifth degree a hundred times in punishment for not sending Cousin Plennin in Mellidane a note when I was presented at the Guildmaster’s Ball when I was fifteen. And a wedding ranks a good deal higher than a Guildmaster’s Ball.”

  There was brief silence in which the spicy fragrance of the carnations bound to the newel post n
ear the still-open door seemed almost palpable in the waxy air.

  “Cousin Plennin isn’t a witch.”

  “Of course he isn’t,” Kyra agreed equably. “It would be difficult to state exactly what he is—the man has so little personality that he verges on the invisible. I hope he’s outgrown his tendency to blend into the wallpaper or his valet will have to hunt him every morning. Has he, do you know, Alix?”

  Alix had pressed her hands briefly to her mouth with shock and distress at her father’s words but managed to stammer, “Yes, I... I think so...”

  “If I were his valet, I’d make him wear a bell, myself,” Kyra mused, turning back to her speechless parent. “And a sister, even a disowned one, ranks more highly than semivisible cousins from Mellidane. To be exact, Alix sent me an announcement of the date so that I might watch through a scrying-crystal, but since there are spells of scry-ward on so many churches, I thought I’d come. My decision was my own.”

  “I won’t have you making a scandal!”

  Alix flinched visibly; Kyra’s eyebrows rose. “I assure you I’ll devote my best efforts to avoiding one.”

  “If avoiding scandal was your aim, you’d have stayed where you were, away from this city!” her father snapped harshly. “You may attend the wedding if you feel it’s your right, but I won’t have you riding in the procession to the Church... And I won’t have you dressing like some Old Believer rag peddler, either.” The jerk of his hand indicated the faded black robe that all wizards, from novice to Archmage, wore when abroad from the Citadel. “Blore Spenson has just been elected the President of the Guild of Merchant Adventurers now that his father is Lord Mayor of Angelshand. I’ve put a year and a half into negotiating this contract and more than that into getting people to forget the last scandal you caused “

  The muscle in Kyra’s jaw jumped as if someone had laid a birch rod across the backs of her legs, but she said nothing.

  “...so I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head while you’re under my roof. Thank God it won’t be for more than a day. And I won’t have you upsetting your mother, either.”

  “Well, that’s something beyond my guaranteeing, since Mother is capable of upsetting herself over a collapsed soufflé at the best of times...”

  “None of your pertness, miss. And you’ll stay clear of your sister, and I mean well clear. Do I make myself understood?”

  “With the clarity of trumpets.” Her hazel eyes narrowed dangerously.

  “Papa...”

  “And you, missy.” Gordam swung sharply around on the younger girl. Briory had tactfully vanished—Kyra knew the butler had far better manners than to be listening outside the book-room door. Alix had sunk back onto one of the sturdy oak chairs, her eyes wide with anxiety and distress in the swimming amber lamplight. “I won’t have you sneaking into your sister’s room in the middle of the night for secret talks, understand?”

  She almost whispered, “Yes, Papa.”

  He turned back to Kyra, his long face with its high cheekbones and square jaw—even the fading reddish hair beneath his black velvet cap—an echo of hers. “As her sister, you have the right to come to Alix’s wedding,” he acknowledged grimly. “But as a householder, as your father, I suppose I have some rights, too. Or was that another of the things you swore away when you joined up with the wizards?”

  “I wasn’t the one who locked the door,” Kyra said, her head coming up and her golden eyes cold. “I wasn’t the one who instructed the servants to tell me that you had left town and wouldn’t be back.” She looked away and stood for a moment studying the banners she had set awkwardly up against the wall. The design into which the staff of the Merchant Adventurers and the loaves of the Bakers’ Guild had been worked had not been well thought out—it would probably provide a certain amount of amusement to the younger apprentices who’d be in the crowd.

  “You can’t have it both ways, you know,” she went on after a moment with her old ironic lightness, turning back to meet his furious glare. “Either I am your daughter and owe you the obedience of a daughter, and as your daughter have the right to attend the wedding and to ride in the procession if I should wish, or I am not your daughter and owe you no obedience, and shall attend the wedding as and how I might.”

  “Don’t chop logic with me, miss!” His brows, as straight and thick as hers, plunged down over his eyes, and his wide mouth tightened. “I’ll have Merrivale prepare the yellow guest room for you and send you up something decent to wear to supper, and you’ll wear it, you understand? Lord Mayor Spenson and his son will be here in an hour, and the Bishop Woolmat—”

  “You got Old Wooley to officiate?” Kyra asked interestedly. “The choir at St. Cyr must have been in desperate need of new robes. If you want me to wear something fashionable, you’ll need to parole Alix long enough into my presence to lace me.”

  “Cannady will lace you,” her parent snapped. “Alix, send someone to the kitchen to see how Joblin and that apprentice of his are coming on the dinner and tell Briory to lay an extra plate. Don’t you go yourself, mind! I won’t have it said that any daughter of mine spends her time with servants! And tell her to find those damned musicians we hired for the wedding and make sure they’re sober enough to play for our guests at supper. I’m told the Spensons have their own house musicians who play for them every night, and I won’t have them thinking we’re marrying into their family for the money. How I’ll get through the next twenty-four hours I don’t know.”

  He strode from the book room, his elder daughter picking up her tapestry satchel to follow, his younger gathering her pastel skirts and hurrying across the hall to the big double doors that led into the service wing. At the foot of the long flight of stairs he halted, turning to glare at Kyra. “I don’t understand why you came back for this wedding at all!”

  “Don’t you?” Kyra asked softly as her father, not waiting for a reply, left her and headed across the hall likewise, the plush skirts of his old-fashioned coat sweeping behind him like clumsy, rust-colored wings. She sighed and started up the stairs to the first of the galleries above. In an even quieter voice she added, “I’m afraid that makes two of us.”

  Chapter II

  TOMORROW! PANIC RACED IN Kyra’s pulse as she descended the tight, square turns of the second-floor stairs, the heavy taffeta of her skirts rustling over the polished oak steps, tomorrow, good God!

  Alix’s note had said the first of May. It was only the third week of April. She had thought she’d have more time.

  Wizards did not travel as a rule by the public stage line, which ran from Lastower through the endless rolling hills, the rude villages and sprawling, muddy trading towns of the Sykerst; it was felt that more good would be derived from walking, improving one’s acquaintance with the grasses, stones, and sky. The morning after her receipt of Alix’s note, however, Kyra had driven into Lastower with Bentick, Steward of the Citadel, and Pothatch the cook and used the money she had begged from Lady Rosamund to purchase a stage ticket, praying it would get her to Angelshand before it was too late.

  Her heart hammered thickly under the stiff whalebone of her bodice. Tomorrow.

  Damn it, she thought, irritation flashing through her dread. People should make up their minds to a plan and stick to it!

  Below her in the hall she could hear the voices of the arriving guests.

  “Lord Earthwygg, I cannot tell you how honored I am to welcome you into my home. My lady...” The high ceiling of the hall, designed for the unbearable muggy heat of Angelshand summers, picked up sound like a well; two stories above them Kyra could hear her father’s voice as if he were standing in the next room. “And my dear Lady Esmin! You grow more beautiful every time I see you...”

  For all his stiffness, Gordam Peldyrin knew how to make himself gracious when he chose, and Lord Earthwygg, though a fairly minor viscount in the Emperor’s court, was his patron, his channel both to Imperial contracts and to the higher social position that he had craved as long as Kyr
a had been conscious of a world outside the walls of the house. From the rail of the gallery she could see them, below the bright glazes and floating lights of the porcelain chandelier. Footmen were divesting Lord Earthwygg, his wife, and his daughter Esmin of their wraps while Briory stood and supervised with a mien considerably haughtier than that of her employer.

  Caldyx Prethness, Lord Earthwygg, she recognized from her childhood and teenage years. Small and slender, he looked as if he’d wasted still further, a delicate little shadow of a man in gray satin whose diamonds flung a refracted galaxy of chandelier light. Without the thick cosmetics affected by the Court, he would have been as invisible as her cousin Plennin. The fair, luxuriant hair Kyra judged to be a wig—his had been thinning six years ago, and no human hair was ever that copious. His wife’s, on the other hand, was undoubtedly real, coiffed and flowered and looped with jewels, the gray and black of storm clouds setting off a stern, handsome face as her rose-colored gown set off the snow mountains of her breasts. She was saying something exceedingly gracious to Kyra’s mother, a plump little woman from whom Alix had gotten both her golden hair and her endless warm loquacity. The condescension in her ladyship’s tone, Kyra realized with a smile, had gone straight over her mother’s head.

  Most things did, of course.

  “Well, one doesn’t want to appear cheap, but frequently, at this time of year, what’s in season in the markets is the tastiest, and it would hardly make sense to pay half a crown apiece for apples that are mealy or pears that look as if they’d come a hundred and fifty miles on horseback... My dear Esmin, such a beautiful dress...”

  Esmin Earthwygg had been ten when Kyra had left her parents’ walls, a skinny, overdressed child who always reminded Kyra of a ferret. As Kyra came to the head of the last, single long flight of stairs down into the hall, she could see that like Lord Earthwygg, Esmin would always be thin and small. Under her pearl-ornamented fair curls, her face had acquired a kind of pixie prettiness, assisted by some well-paid genius with the makeup brushes, but her eyes still looked as if they should be investigating underbrush for mice.