Inside the ballroom the musicians struck up a merry tune. Past the opened doubled doors dancers gathered, formed lines and began to tread the first measures. Their movements seemed meaningless. Mute in her appeal, Talith saw with a relief that made her tremble that Lysaer would not, after all, depart without thought for her happiness.
‘One dance.’ The s’Ilessid prince laughed gently and gathered her, silk, pearls and ruffled, layered skirts, as delicately as if she were a blown bit of thistledown captured in the circle of his arms.
Under a breeze from the east, the soured mud of bare tideflats and the dyeworks of Narms swept a reeking pall over the town, which consisted of box-fronted wooden mansions, one storey warehouse sheds, and a harbour. A craft centre from first to last, the place recognized no elegance beyond the bustling purpose of commerce.
Up-coast, where the beautiful yarns spun and dyed in these wind-raked, ramshackle shops were woven into famed rugs and tapestries, Cildorn’s stone buildings held the deeper mystery of more ancient sites: a resonance that lingered from Paravian inhabitance still drew the earth’s forces to flow very near to the surface. For the advantage such powers lent to spellcraft, the Koriani Prime would have preferred to conduct her errand there. But since the Fellowship’s gross misjudgement over Arithon’s failed coronation, Elaira could make Narms with better speed.
The building let for Morriel’s use was owned by the widow of a former Koriani boy-ward. Since his death, hard times and slatternly management had caused his dyeworks to fail. Long abandoned to the whims of stray iyats, the yard stood cluttered with cracked buckets silted wrist-deep in dead leaves. The shop, crudely shuttered, lay sandwiched between a brewery and the mudflats. Storms in winter sometimes flooded the warehouse. The building smelled now of mouldered rags and worm-rotted planking, underlaid by the taint of hops and fish.
One lingering fiend had to be chased from the rafters. Then the sole vat not cursed with slow leaks was dragged inside by Morriel’s servant, wedged level on packed sand flooring, and filled for scrying. A yarn rack propped up and sumptuously padded with quilts had been prepared for the comfort of the Prime, but disdained by the Koriani matriarch. Hunched under shawls like a crow draggled down by wet plumage, she waited in the flickering light of the resin torches with a patience her First Senior could not match.
Sustained by voracious ambition, Lirenda revelled in being the only one chosen for active duty. Though it was well past midnight and her fellow seniors had long since retired, out of pride she would not show weariness and sit in the presence of her Prime.
Sharing attendance upon Morriel’s needs was the huge half-wit who stood as her doorguard. Witness to more secrets than any living Koriani senior, the man sat crosslegged in a corner, drooping in his effort to stay awake. The streets outside were mostly quiet. Sometimes a late worker from the brewery strode whistling by. The stillness in between magnified the hiss of burning resin and the distant beat of combers off Instrell Bay. A sudden clatter of iron as a horse arrived outside caused the half-wit to startle up from his doze and hasten to unbar the door.
Elaira’s voice carried in on the gust that swept the threshold as she dismissed the livery groom who would return her mount to the stable. She entered a moment later. Hair blown loose from her braid was screwed into wisps by the seaside humidity and her skin was like chalk with exhaustion.
She had ridden a hundred leagues in under three days. Chafed raw at the knees from leathers stiffened with horse sweat, she made obeisance to the Koriani matriarch. The formal words of greeting came courageously steady from her lips.
Lirenda watched, avid, as Morriel beckoned Elaira closer. Under browless hoods of bone, the Prime’s deepset eyes did not merely study, but raked the rider who stepped forward on command.
Exposed full-figure in flamelight, Elaira withstood the inspection. Awareness that the sisterhood’s arts of observation would take in all, from the scuffs on her boots left by pebbles kicked in impatience at post stables too slow to tack her remounts; to the stains on her cloak where a drunk in a wayside tavern had upset the broth she could not stay to have replenished.
The Prime observed, ‘Your journey was trying, I see.’
Eased by the unexpected kindness, Elaira straightened sore shoulders. ‘Not so bad.’ In wry humour that Lirenda found particularly grating, she added, ‘If the inns had lice in the bedclothes, at least I escaped finding out.’
Morriel’s lips twitched, perhaps in the ghost of a smile. ‘Your spirits are intact, I can see. When did you last eat?’
Elaira paused for thought, which gave answer enough in itself. The crone gestured to her half-wit. ‘Quen, go next door to the brewer’s and buy some bread and sausage.’ To Elaira, in disarming solicitude, she added, ‘Do you wish beer?’
Not so tired she failed to sense a trap, Elaira shook her head. ‘On the heels of an emergency summons, I think not, thank you. Unless I have leave to go to bed?’
‘You have not.’ But the Prime’s approval was apparent, that the girl had kept sharp wits. ‘Though you deserve the rest, surely. I’m not unaware that you had to bid against the trade guilds’ couriers, jammed as the livery stables have been with bearers carrying ill news.’
Inordinate numbers of state messengers had crowded the roads as well, but Elaira had been too pressed to hear gossip. ‘Worse happened since I left Etarra?’
‘A great deal.’ Fog curled through the door as Quen slipped back in with a steaming parcel. As the torches hissed and spat in the damp, Morriel motioned toward the vat. ‘Bring your meal while you study the water. I would see you brought current with events, that you understand the importance of the demands you’ve been called to attend.’
To thank Quen for any service was to invite an embarrassment of obsequious gratitude. Elaira patted his rough hand and took the food, half-braced in pity in case his fawning should displease the Prime. But Quen only ducked his head in pathetic ecstasy for her kindness, then retired back to his corner.
Elaira unwrapped greasy coils of sausage and trailed after her mistress toward the vat.
Lirenda knew bitterness that the order’s most incorrigible junior initiate should be casually stuffing her mouth, while beside her, Morriel Prime prepared to admit her to the highest level of Koriani affairs, and for no better cause than a disobedient escapade with a man.
With no thought spared for Lirenda’s disaffection, Morriel hitched up one hip and with a drag of thick woollens, perched on the rim of the vat. Graced by a balance at odds with her years, she hooked the crystal that hung on fine chains at her neck and informed Elaira, ‘The images you will observe reflect events that occurred today.’
