'The suitors, dear, not the birds. Luckily her great-aunt stepped in. By the time Pacu gets back even Latzlo may have forgotten her.'
'I'm going with you,' said Thasha.
Syrarys laughed again, touching her arm. 'You are the sweetest girl.'
Knowing very well that she was not, Thasha repeated: 'I'm going.'
'Poor Jorl and Suzyt. They'll have no one, then.'
'Use any trick you like,' said Thasha evenly, 'but this time I'm going to win.'
'Win? Trick? Oh, Thasha darling, we've no cause to start down that road. Come, I'll kiss you despite your dirt. My little Thashula.'
It was her babytalk-name, from long ago when they were close. Thasha considered it a low tactic. Nonetheless they pecked each other's cheeks.
Thasha said, 'I won't cause trouble in Simja. I have grown up.'
'How delightful. Is that a promise to stop throwing your cousins into hedges?'
'I didn't throw him! He fell!'
'Who wouldn't have, dear, after the thumping you gave him? Poor young man, the lasting damage was to his pride. Knocked silly by a girl who barely reached his shoulder. Come, your father is in the summerhouse. Let's surprise him.'
Thasha followed her through den and dining room, and out into the rear gardens. Syrarys had not changed. Smooth, crafty, clever-tongued. Thasha had seen her argue a duchess into tongue-tied rage, then walk off serenely to dance with her duke. In a city addicted to gossip she was an object of fascination. Everyone assumed she had a younger man, or probably several, hidden about the metropolis, for how could an old man satisfy a woman like that? 'You can't kiss a medal on a wintry night, eh?' said a leering Lord Somebody, seated beside Thasha at a banquet. When he stepped away from the table she emptied a bottle of salad oil into his cushioned chair.
She had no great wish to defend Syrarys, but she would let no one cast shame on her father. He had been wounded so many times-five in battle, and once at least in love, when the wife he cherished died six days after giving birth to a daughter. Isiq's grief was so intense, his memories of his lost Clorisuela so many and sharp, that Thasha was astounded one day to hear him speak of her as 'my motherless girl.' Of course she had a mother-as permanently present as she was permanently lost.
Syrarys, for her part, scarcely needed defending. The consort glided among the ambushes and betrayals of high society as if born to them. Which was astounding, since she had come to Etherhorde just eight years ago in chains. Silver chains, maybe, but chains nonetheless.
Admiral Isiq had returned from the siege of Ibithraйd to find her waiting in his chambers, along with a note scrawled in His Supremacy's childish hand: We send this woman full trained in arts of love, may she be unto you joy's elixir.
She was a pleasure-slave. Not officially, of course: slavery had by then gone out of fashion and was restricted to the Outer Isles and newly conquered territories, where the Empire's hardest labor was done. In the inner Empire, bonded servants had taken their place-or consorts, in the case of pleasure-slaves. By law such women were one's property, but Thasha had heard of them won and lost in gambling matches, or sent back to slave territories when their looks began to fade.
She was barely eight when Syrarys arrived. Still, she would never forget how the young woman looked at her father: not cringing like other servants, but quietly intrigued, as though he were a lock she might pick with skill and patience.
Eberzam detested slavery by any name, calling it 'the gangrene of empires.' But to refuse a gift from the Emperor was unthinkable, so Thasha's father took the only step that occurred to him. He kept Syrarys in the house for a plausible six weeks and then declared himself in love. He petitioned the crown at once for her citizenship, but surprisingly he was rebuffed. The second note from Castle Maag read: Wait one year one day Adml at that time if love yet flourish we shall raise this seedling to status propitiatory. What that could mean no one knew, but the admiral obeyed, and became a reluctant slave-keeper for the first time in his life.
That year Syrarys was effectively imprisoned in the family mansion, but the sentence did not seem to trouble her. She turned her attention to Thasha, embracing the little girl half as a mother, half as older sister. She taught her Ulluprid games and songs, and persuaded the cook to make the dishes of her childhood, which Thasha agreed were more sumptuous than the best Etherhorde fare. In turn Thasha helped to perfect her Arquali, which was strong but leaned too heavily on the slave school's vocabulary of seduction.
They were best friends. The admiral couldn't have been happier. Thasha barely noticed when he stopped visiting Syrarys' bedroom and installed her in his own.
At the end of the required year he wrote again to Castle Maag, declaring his love stronger than ever, and this time it was the simple truth. Days later, admiral and slave were summoned to the Ametrine Throne, where Syrarys knelt and was named Lady Syrarys, consort to Eberzam Isiq.
The city gasped. With the stroke of a pen the Emperor had changed Isiq's slave-mere property in the eyes of the law-into a member of the aristocracy. In the long history of the Magads' rule, nothing of the kind had been done. By granting Isiq this boon, the Emperor was raising him immensely on the ladder of power. And no one knew why.
So it was that the most beautiful slave in Arqual became its most mysterious Great Lady. And ceased, from one day to the next, to be Thasha's friend.
A blue fengas lamp blazed in the summerhouse-actually just a large gazebo with a liquor cabinet. Admiral Eberzam Isiq, Prosecutor of the Liberation of Chereste and the Rescue of Ormael, among other violences, sat reading in a wicker lounger, a blanket over his legs and nearly as many moths bouncing off his bright bald head as circling the lamp above. The startling thing was that he didn't notice. As Thasha drew near she saw a big moth crawl from her father's ear to the top of his scalp. He didn't move. One hand whisked irritably at the page where his eyes were trained; that was all.
'Prahba!' she said.
It was her private nickname: Prahba was 'the old sailor nobody could kill,' a storybook hero who conquered every sea, and even outran Death, when the specter chased him against the wind. The admiral jumped, scattering the moths and slamming several in his book. He twisted to look at Thasha. He made a wordless sound of joy. Then she was hugging him, half in his lap, scratching her face on his stubbled neck and giggling as if she were not sixteen but six, and he had never banished her to a school run by hags.
'Thasha, my great girl!'
'I want to come with you.'
'What? Oh, Thasha, morning star! What are you saying?'
His voice dry as coal. Two years had passed, but it might have been ten. His jaw trembled more than before, and the sideburns that were all that remained of his hair had lost their color: they were milk-white. But his arms were still strong, his beard neat, and his blue eyes, when they ceased their wandering and settled on you, were piercing.
'You can't leave me here,' she said. 'I'll be no trouble in Simja, I promise.'
The admiral shook his head. 'Simja will be the trouble, not you. A motherless girl in that cesspit. Unmarried, unprotected.'
'Silly fool,' she said, kissing his forehead. This was going to be easier than she thought. 'You protected the whole Empire. You can protect me.'
'How long?'
Thasha sat back to look at him. His eyes were forlorn.
'And the ship,' he wheezed. 'Those animals.'
'Prahba,' she said seriously, 'I have to tell you something quickly. I saw Hercуl on the way back from the school-'
'Eberzam!' cried Syrarys, mounting the steps. 'Look who I found at the garden gate!'
The admiral had started at the mention of Hercуl, but now he smiled at his daughter. 'You're the living image of your mother. And that reminds me…' He took a small wooden box from the table and passed it to Thasha. 'Open it,' he said.
Thasha opened the box. Coiled inside was an exquisite silver necklace. She lifted it out: each link was a tiny ocean creature: starfish, sea horse, octopus, eel. But they were all so finely and fluidly wrought that at arm's length
