“Let them be happy with each other,” he said, his words echoing against the stone. But of course, his prayer wasn’t to the dragon or to God. It was an offering to her, a statement of complicity. “Do you remember when it was our turn to stand there?”
“I do,” she said. “Well, parts of it. I’d been drinking wine for courage, and I may have crossed over into tipsy.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, you did.”
She leaned her head against his.
“Am I needed?” she asked.
“You are. The Palliako boy’s entirely over his head, and Jorey needs to start seeing to his own preparations.”
Clara took a deep breath and straightened her spine.
“Lead me to the battle lines, my dear,” she said.
As with any spring wedding where the wind allowed, the feast was held in the temple grounds. Clara’s count was five hundred invited guests, but the press made it seem closer to a thousand. By tradition, Skestinin decorative cloth was tied to the tree branches, and slaves of several races stood in ceremonial cages, singing anthems to Antea and God and the return of spring. Clara found Jorey standing guard over Geder Palliako at one such where a tiny Cinnae girl, so thin and pale she seemed spun from sugar, worked her ribs like a bellows, chanting out a proud, rousing song in a language Clara didn’t recognize.
The problem was obvious at a glance. Canl Daskellin’s daughter, Sanna, was smiling ice at the eldest of Bannien’s girls while Nesin Pyrellin looked on the edge of tears. A flicker of embarrassment pinched Clara’s heart, and she wondered if she had ever been so obvious and undignified herself. She truly hoped not.
It wasn’t entirely their fault, of course. The life of a woman in court was always bound and defined by marriage, and in a way it was a blessing. She’d taken her turn in the temple before her twentieth name day, and ever since then her place in court had been fixed. She was Lady Kalliam, Baroness of Osterling Fells, but she could as easily have been Baroness of Nurning or merely Lady Mivekilli, wife to the Earl of Lowport. In any case, her place and rank would be determined, and she would have been just as free to make what life she wished within those bounds. Without Dawson at her side, she would still have been Clara. But what that
Still, they couldn’t be permitted to ruin the day over it.
“Baron Ebbingbaugh!” Clara said, swooping down and hauling Geder’s arm around her own. “I have been looking everywhere for you. You don’t mind if I appropriate Lord Palliako, dear?”
“That would be fine, Mother,” Jorey said, his eyes offering the thanks he couldn’t say aloud.
Clara smiled and angled Geder away, guiding him carefully enough that it wasn’t obvious he was being led. There was an alcove at the side of the temple where she might plausibly have a moment’s conversation, though for the life of her, she didn’t know what it would be about. The odd thing about Geder Palliako—the thing that no one else commented upon—was how much and often he changed. She’d been vaguely aware of him the way you were of people at the periphery of the court before he and Jorey had gone off to the Free Cities. She’d seen him when he returned from there and danced with him at his revel. He’d seemed stunned and lost and amazed, like a child watching a cunning man turn water to sand for the first time. Then he’d disappeared for that long, terrible summer, and returned thinner and harder and confident. And knowing, it seemed, all there was to know about poor Phelia Maas and her husband. And now here he was after a winter in his new holdings with a bit more flesh under his chin and carrying a cloud of anxiety with him so thick it dampened the skin.
“Thank you, Lady Kalliam,” Geder said, craning his neck to look back toward the collected young women of the court. She wasn’t sure if he was hoping to see them following or fearing the prospect. Both, perhaps. “I’m not at my best at these things.”
“It can be awkward, can’t it?”
“A baron without a baroness,” Geder said with a tight little smile. “None of them liked me before, you know.”
“I’m certain that isn’t true,” she said, though really she was certain it was.
She watched him catch sight of someone or something, eyes narrowing in anticipation and pleasure. Clara turned to see Sir Alan Klin arrive.
The man looked so pale he was almost ghostly. Seeing his friend and conspirator executed for murder and treason had hit him like an illness, and he hadn’t remotely recovered. Geder had been under Klin’s command, and Clara knew there was some petty feud between them. The powerful memory came to Clara of Barriath, her eldest boy, just before his seventh name day lighting moths on fire. Innocence and cruelty defined young boys. They were what she saw now in Palliako, and it reminded her of how it had felt to be the mother of three young sons.
“Excuse me,” Geder said, extricating his arm from hers. “There’s someone here I’ve been wanting to see.”
“Of course,” she said.
Geder walked over toward Klin, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. Just a little spring in the step. Clara watched him go with a combination of affection and dread.
A shout came from the other end of the temple, and then a man’s voice in a roar. Clara hurried toward it, fearing some new crisis. A group had gathered and was beginning to cheer someone or something, and then Sabiha Skestinin appeared above them all, hoisted onto someone’s shoulders. Her gown was the green of new leaves, her hair braided back so that her face was visible. She was laughing and gripping something hard to keep her balance. The roar came again, and the girl’s eyes opened wider in alarm as she began to move. The crowd didn’t part so much as follow along behind. Barriath and Vicarian ran with their soon-to-be-sister lifted between them, each held one of the girl’s ankles to keep her from tipping backward, and she had her fingers wrapped tight in Barriath’s thick black hair. Barriath still wore his naval clothes with the emblem of House Skestinin on his shoulder to honor his commander. Vicarian had his white priest’s robes, but without the golden braid of final vows. All three laughed and howled as they tore through the gardens in the mock kidnapping of the bride.
Pride and satisfaction rose in Clara’s breast. Whether they were aware of it or only divined it by instinct, the message her boys were sending read clear.
The ceremony itself began an hour before sunset. Dawson and Clara took their seats. Lord and Lady Skestinin took theirs as well. Then Geder Palliako and Prince Aster, whispering to each other like schoolboys, and slowly, with great pomp and care, the court of Antea filed into the room. Men and women Clara had known since she was a girl, friends and allies. The whole court, or near enough, had come to see her son and Skestinin’s daughter remake themselves and become something new.
As the priest led the chant, Clara closed her eyes. Dawson took her hand and she glanced over, wiping away the tears. He, of course, was dry-eyed and proper. To him, the ceremony was calming and reassuring because it was exactly as it was supposed to be. The form that kept the chaos of the world in check. When the time came for them to join the pair at the altar, Clara did it with more grace and certainty than she’d managed at her own.
After the last blessing, they streamed out into the night. There was still a chill in the air, winter reaching back toward them from its grave. Jorey and Sabiha rode away in a carriage, returning to the mansion. In the morning, the girl would be there at the breakfast table along with her sons. They would all begin the long, tentative dance of conversation and etiquette that would, in time, make her sons’ tacit claim true. The girl would become a Kalliam in fact as well as name. There was time.
For tonight, there would be long talks at the Great Bear and the other, lesser fraternities. Dawson and Lord Skestinin would bring celebratory gifts to their friends and allies, drink themselves silly, and sleep too late in the morning. Clara would guard the house and make sure the new couple weren’t interrupted or abused by revelry gone too far. She waited at the temple door as the carriages and palanquins clustered in the street and footmen from a hundred different houses shoved and cursed and fought to follow the dictates of their masters. Lady Skestinin came and stood with her for a time, the pair of them talking about nothing very much—the winter just gone by, the dresses worn by the women of the court, the inevitable cough Canl Daskellin’s fireshow had inspired in his
