by Diane Duane
“His father never did that,” she said, gentle-voiced. “Certainly not with a kllhe: it would never have stood for it.” She moved smoothly past Thue and watched with satisfaction as her narrow face colored to dark emerald, as well it should have. “Pick up the spoon, Thue,” she said without looking back, “and be glad I don’t have one of the ostlers use it on your back. See that you come talk to me later about language fit for a great House, where a guest might hear you, or the Lord.” She felt the angry, frightened eyes fixed on her back, and ignored them as she walked into the big room.
Arrhae left them standing there with their mouths open, and started prowling around the great ochre-tiled kitchen. It was in a mess, as she had well suspected. House breakfast was not for an hour yet, and it was just as well, because the coals weren’t even in the grill, nor the earthenware pot fired or even scoured for the Lord’s fowl porridge. I must get up earlier. Another morning like this will be the ruin of the whole domestic staff. Still, something can be saved—“I have had about enough,” she said, running an idle hand over the broad clay tiles where meat was cut, “of this business with your daughter, Thue, and your son, HHirl. Settle it. Or I will have it settled for you. Surely they would be happier staying here than sold halfway around the planet. And they’re not so bad for each other, truly. Think about it.”
The silence in the kitchen got deeper. Arrhae peered up the chimney at the puddings and meatrolls hung there for smoking, counted them, noticed two missing, thought a minute about who in the kitchen was pregnant, decided that she could cover the loss, and said nothing. She wiped the firing-tiles with three fingers and picked up a smear of soot that should never have been allowed to collect, then cleaned her fingers absently on the whitest of the hanging polishing cloths, one that should have been much cleaner. The smear faced rather obviously toward the kitchen staff, all gathered together now by the big spit roaster and looking like they thought they were about to be threaded on it. “The baked goods only half started,” said Arrhae gently, “and the roast ones not yet started, and the strong and the sweet still in the coldroom, and fastbreak only an hour from now. But there must have been other work in hand. Very busy at it, you must have been. So busy that you could spend the most important part of the working morning in discussion. I’m sure the Lord will understand, though, when his meal is half an hour late. You may explain it to him, Thue.”
The terrified rustle gratified Arrhae—not for its own sake, but because she could hear silent mental resolutions being made to get work done in the future. Arrhae suppressed her smile again. She had seen many Rihannsu officers among the people who came to H’daen’s house, and had profitably taken note of their methods. Some of them shouted, some of them purred: she had learned to use either method, and occasionally both. She dropped the lid back onto a pot of overboiled porridge with an ostentatious shudder that was only half feigned, and turned to narrow her eyes at Thue, the second cook, and tr’Aimne, the first one. “Or if you would prefer to bypass the explanations,” she said, “I would start another firepot for the gruel, and use that fowl from yesterday, the batch we didn’t cook, it’s still good enough; the Lord won’t notice, if you don’t overcook it. If you do—” She fell silent, and peered into the dish processor: it, for a miracle, was empty—there were at least enough clean plates.
“I’ve heard you this morning,” she said, shutting the processor’s door. “Now you hear me. Put your minds to your work. Your Lord’s honor rests as much with you as with his family. His honor rests as much in little things, scouring and cooking, as in great matters. Mind it—lest you find yourself caring for the honor of some hedge-lord in Iuruth with a hall that leaks rain and a byre for your bedroom.”
The silence held. Arrhae looked at them all, not singling any one person out for eye contact, and went out through the great arched main doors that led to the halls and living quarters of the House. She didn’t bother listening for the cursing and backbiting that would follow her exit: she had other things to worry about. For one, she should have reported to H’daen long before now. Arrhae made her way across the center court and into the wing reserved for tr’Khellian’s private apartments, noting absently as she did so that two of the firepots in the lower corridor were failing and needed replacement, and that one of the tame fvai had evidently been indoors too long…. At least the busyness kept her from fretting too much.
The Lord’s anteroom was empty, his bodyservants elsewhere on errands. Arrhae knocked on the couching-room door, heard the usual curt “Ie,” and stepped in.
“Fair morning, Lord,” she said.
H’daen acknowledged her with no more than an abstracted grunt and a nod of the head that could have signified anything. He was absorbed in whatever was displayed on his reader; so absorbed that Arrhae felt immediately surplus to all requirements and would have faded decorously from the room had he not pointed at her and then rapped his finger on the table.
H’daen tr’Khellian was a man given to twitches, tics, and little gestures. This one meant simply “stay where you are,” and Arrhae did just that, settling her stance so that she would not have to shift her weight to stay comfortable. She was mildly curious about what was on the reader screen, but she wasn’t quite close enough to see its contents. At least there were no recriminations for lateness. Not yet, anyway.
“Wine,” said H’daen, not looking up from the screen. Its glow was carving gullies of shadow into the wrinkled skin of his face, and though she had known it for long enough, as if for the first time Arrhae realized that he was old. Very old. It was affectation that he still wore his iron-gray hair in the fringed military crop, and dressed in boots and breeches more reminiscent of Fleet uniform than of any civilian wear. The affectation, and maybe the lost dream, of one who had never been anything worthy of note in the Imperial military and now, his hopes defeated by advancing years as they had been defeated by every other circumstance, never would. Arrhae looked at him as if through different eyes, and felt a stab of pity.
“Must I die of thirst?” H’daen snapped testily. “Give me the wine I asked for.”
“At once, Lord.” She went through the dim, worn tidiness of the couching room to the wine cabinet, and brought out a small urn good enough for morning but not so good as to provoke comment about waste. She brought down the Lord’s white clay cup, noted with relief that it was scoured, brought it and the urn back to the table, and poured carefully, observing the proprieties of wine-drinking regardless of how parched H’daen might be. There were certain stylized ritual movements in the serving of the ancient drink, and if they were ignored, notice would be taken and ill luck surely follow. That was the story, anyway; whether there was any truth in something whose origins were lost in the confusion of legend and history that followed the Sundering was another matter entirely. Perhaps better to be safe; perhaps, equally, as well to honor the old ways in a time when the new ways had little of honor in them. She drew back the flask with that small, careful jerk and twist which prevented unsightly droplets of wine from staining her hands or the furnishings, set it down and stoppered it, and only then brought the cup to H’daen’s desk.
He had been watching her, and as she approached he touched a control so that the reader’s screen went dark and folded down out of sight. Arrhae didn’t follow its movement with her eyes; it would have been most impolite, and besides, all her concentration was needed for the brimming winecup.
“You’re a good girl, Arrhae,” said H’daen suddenly. “I like you.”
Arrhae set down the wine most carefully, not spilling any, and made the little half bow of courteous acceptance customary when presenting food or drink, to acknowledge the thanks of the recipient. It might also have acknowledged H’daen’s compliment—or then again, it might not have. It was always safer to be equivocal.
“You run my household well, Arrhae,” H’daen continued eventually, “and I trust you.”
He touched the shuttered reader with one fingertip, unaware of the worried loo
k that had crept into her eyes. A plainly confidential communication, and unexpected talk of trust and liking, made up an uneasy conjunction of which she would as soon have no part. It had the poisonous taint of intrigue about it, of meddling in the affairs of the great and powerful; of hazard, and danger, and death. Arrhae began to feel afraid.
H’daen tr’Khellian tapped out a code on the reader’s touchpad, and its screen rose once more from the desk’s recess. He read again what glowed there in amber on black, shifted so that he could give Arrhae his full attention, and smiled at her. She kept the roil of emotion off her face with a great effort, and succeeded in looking only intent and eager as a good head-of-servants should. H’daen’s smile seemed to promise so many things that she wanted no part of that when he finally spoke, the truth was anticlimactic.
“It appears that this house will have important guests before nightfall. There is much requiring my attention before I”—the smile crossed his face again—“have to play the host, so I leave all the arrangements for their reception in your hands. It is most important to me, to this House, and to everyone in it. Don’t fail me, Arrhae. Don’t fail us.”
H’daen turned away to scan the reader-screen one last time, and so didn’t notice the undisguised relief on Arrhae’s face.
Ch’Rihan was a perilous place; it had always been so—plotting and subtlety was almost an integral part of both private and political life—but now with the new, youthful aggressiveness in the Senate and the High Command, suicide, execution, and simple, plain natural causes were far more frequent than they had ever been before, and neither lowly rank nor lofty were any defense. With what she already knew about H’daen’s ambition, it would have horrified but not really surprised her had she been asked to slip poison into someone’s food or drink….
Some vestige of concern must have manifested itself in her face, because H’daen was staring at her strangely when her attention returned to him. “Uh, yes, my Lord,” she ventured as noncommittally as she dared, trying not to sound as if she had missed anything else he had said to her.
“Then ‘yes’ let it be!” The acerbic edge was back in his voice, a tone far more familiar to her—to any in House Khellian—than the almost-friendly fashion in which he had spoken before. “I told you to do it, not think about it, and certainly not on my time or in my private rooms. Go!”
Arrhae went.
There had been guests at the house many times before, and both intimate dinners for a few and banquets for many; but this was the first time that Arrhae had been given so little notice of the event. At least she had complete control of organization and—more important—purchase of produce. Armed with an estimate of numbers of attending, quantities required, and a list of possible dishes that she had taken care to have approved, she set out with the chastened chief cook to do a little shopping.
The expedition involved more and harder work in a shorter time than Arrhae had experienced in a very long while—but it did have certain advantages. Foremost among those was the flitter. H’daen’s authorization to use his personal vehicle was waiting for Arrhae when she emerged from the stores and pantries with a sheaf of notes in her hand and tr’Aimne in tow, and that authorization did as much to instill respect for her in the chief cook as any amount of severity and harsh language. None of the household staff were overly fond of H’daen tr’Khellian—but his temper had earned him wide respect.
Arrhae checked the usage-clearance documents several times before going closer than arm’s length to the vehicle. Oh, she knew how to drive one—who didn’t?—but given the present mood of the inner-city constables, she would sooner find an error or an oversight in the authorizations herself than let it be found by one of the traffic-control troopers. She listened to gossip, of course—again, who didn’t?—but she gave small credence to the stories she had overheard from other high-house servants of strange goings-on in Command. Though there was always the possibility that Lhaesl tr’Khev had just been trying to impress her.
Arrhae smiled at that particular memory as she went through the vehicle-status sections of the documentation. Lhaesl was a good-looking young man, very good-looking indeed if one’s tastes ran to floppy, clumsily endearing baby animals. He tried so very hard to be grown-up, and always failed—by not having lived long enough. On the last occasion that they met, he had managed to talk like a more or less sensible person in the intervals of fetching her a cup of ale and that plate of sticky little sweetmeats that had taken her so long to scrub from her fingers. She hadn’t even liked the ale much, its harshness always left her throat feeling abraded, but to refuse the youngster’s attentions with the brutality needed to make him notice would have been on the same level as kicking a puppy. So Arrhae had sat, sipping and coughing slightly, nibbling and adhering to things, and being a good listener as working for H’daen had taught her how. It was all nonsense, of course, a garble of starships and secrets, with important names scattered grandly through the narrative that would have meant much more to Arrhae had she known who these doubtless-worthy people were.
But gossip apart, there was an unspecified something wrong in i’Ramnau. Arrhae had visited the city twice in recent months, not then to buy and carry, but merely to supervise purchases that would later be delivered. Because of that she had traveled by yhfiss’ue, the less-than-loved public transport tubes. They always smelled—not bad, exactly, but odd; musty, as if they were overdue for a thorough washing inside and out. There had been times, especially when Eisn burned hot and close in the summer sky, when Arrhae would have dearly loved the supervising of the sanitary staff. That, however, was by the way. What had remained with her about those last journeys to the inner city was the difference between them. The first had been like all the others, boring, occasionally bumpy, and completely unremarkable. But the second…
That had been when the three tubecars had stopped, and settled, and been invaded by both city constables and military personnel, all with drawn sidearms. Arrhae had been very frightened. Her previous encounters with the Rihannsu military had been decorous meetings with officers of moderately high rank in House Khellian, where they were guests and she was responsible for their comfort. Then, looking down the bore of an issue blaster, the realization had been hammered home that not all soldiers were officers, and indeed that not all officers were gentlemen. What such uniformed brutes would do if they found her in a private flitter without complete and correct documentation didn’t bear considering….
She carded the papers at last and slipped them securely into her travel-tunic’s pocket, then glanced at tr’Aimne, the cook. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said in a fair imitation of H’daen tr’Khellian at his most irritable. “Get in!”
Without waiting for him, she popped the canopy and slipped sideways into the flitter’s prime-chair, mentally reviewing the warmup protocols as she made herself comfortable. Once learned, never forgotten; while tr’Aimne was securing himself in the next seat—and being, she thought, as ostentatious as he dared about fastening his restraint harness—her fingers were already entering the clearance codes that would release the flitter’s controls. Instrumentation lit up; all of it touch-pad operated systems rather than the modern voice-activators. H’daen’s flitter might have been beautifully appointed inside, and fitted with a great many luxuries, but it was still, unmistakably, several years out-of-date. No matter, for today, old or not, it was hers.
Arrhae shifted the driver into first and felt a tiny lurch as A/G linears came on line to lift the flitter from its cradle. Ahead and above, the doors at the top of the ramp slid open, accompanying their movement with a dignified chime of warning gongs rather than the raucous hooting of sirens. H’daen was a man of taste, or considered himself as such, anyway. Out of the corner of her eye, Arrhae caught sight of tr’Aimne tightening his straps, and his lips moving silently. Tr’Aimne was not fond of driving, and little good at being driven. “You could get in the back if you really wanted to,” Arrhae said. “That way you wouldn’t h
ave to watch….”
Tr’Aimne said nothing, and didn’t even look at her, but his knuckles went very pale where they gripped the harness-straps while his face flushed dark bronze-green. Arrhae shrugged, willing to let him brazen it out, and took the flitter out of the garage.
She didn’t even do it as fast as she might have, but nonetheless tr’Aimne changed complexion again, for the worse. “Sorry,” she said. It was of course too late to change the speed parameters—the master system had them, and in accordance with local speed laws, wouldn’t let them be changed without groundbased countermand. “It won’t be long,” she said, but tr’Aimne made no reply. He was too busy holding on to the restraint straps and the grab-handles inside the flitter. Arrhae for her own part shrugged and kept her hands on the controls, just in case manual override might be needed. The system was fairly reliable, but sometimes it overloaded: and this was, after all, a holiday….
With this in mind she had let the i’Ramnau traffic-control net have them from the very start of the trip rather than free-driving it: people did forget to file driveplans, and there had been some ugly accidents in the recent past on the city’s high-level accessways. One of them had in fact resulted in her appointment as hru’hfe s’Khellian, and she would as soon not provide someone else with advancement by the same means.
The flitter brought them to i’Ramnau far faster than yhfiss’ue would have, and too fast for Arrhae’s liking; she was enjoying herself as she had rarely since she began working for House Khellian. Both lifter and driver of the Varrhan-series flitters were more powerful than warranted by their size, and they were less vehicles to drive than to fly. Arrhae flew it, with great enthusiasm and considerable skill. When they grounded in the flitpark, and the far door popped, followed by tr’Aimne leaning out and making most unfortunate noises, she busied herself with her own straps and lists, and carefully didn’t “notice.”