“Oh?” I asked politely. I moved my arm so the gray fringes swung. She saw the fringes but did not understand. Her forehead creased as it had used to do before a tantrum, but she bit her lip, turning to Mendost, those tiny beads of sweat glistening above her brow.
“We have thought ... perhaps we did not do well to ally you to Dragon’s Fire,” he said, all in a rush.
“You didn’t ally me,” I reminded him. “You sold me. It was you who were allied. Or are. If the alliance has not been broken.” I knew in that moment that they wanted to break it. They had sought to use King Kelver, but he had turned the Game on them and used them instead.
“No, it hasn’t been broken. But ... but you were very young ...”
“I believe I remarked so at the time.”
“Well, at the time perhaps we didn’t give that fact sufficient weight. But ...”
“But, Jinian,” said un-Mother, “we’ve thought it over since. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sure if you were to tell the King you are unwilling ... too young ... he would consider breaking the contract.”
“After all,” interrupted Mendost, “He already has a living wife.”
“Had,” I said, giving them time to think that out. “Had a living wife.”
Mendost recovered first. “Even so. You are still very young ...”
“I am sixteen,” I said, “Of those who marry, many do so at that age.”
“You could stay here at Xammer until you are twenty some odd. Though you have no Talent, Stoneflight Demesne would pay ...”
“As we should have done, dearest daughter. As we should have done.” Mother was patting the air with her hands, gulping, aware that a tantrum would not answer, a fit would not accomplish, but unable to come up with much else in the way of response. What monstrously important thing must have brought her here that she controlled herself like this! “Now that Garz is gone, there would be no objection ...” As though Garz had ever objected to anything she or Mendost had wanted. As though Garz had been solely responsible for their treatment of me!
Enough of this, I said to myself.
“Why would Stoneflight Demesne pay for a Dervish’s daughter?” I asked them.
Un-Mother started up from her chair, face chalk white, hands raised against me as against a ghost piece. Mendost growled in his throat, turning red, and I saw his hands clench. Now, if the servant had not been there, he would have hit me. I pretended not to notice.
I went on, “I am grown now. I have met my true mother. She is not pleased that Eller of Stoneflight Demesne broke contract with the Dervishes. Perhaps Stoneflight Demesne should consider what it will do if the Dervishes declare Game against it. A broken contract with them can be very dangerous, I understand.” I stood up, turning to make the gray fringes swirl and flow. Let them think what they would about my true inheritance. Let them fear it. Let them fear lest I choose to return to Stoneflight Demesne. Let them fear to return there themselves.
“They wouldn’t ...” Mendost.
“It was long ago ...” Un-Mother.
“It was that same sixteen years,” I pointed out, “which you say is not long. No, no, Mendost. If I am very young, then sixteen years is a short time. If sixteen years is not a short time, then I am not young.”
“Why would they?” he blustered. “After all this time.”
I pretended to consider this. “It may have been concern for my safety which has held them until now. Once Stoneflight Demesne sold me to King Kelver, however, my safety was no longer a concern. Now the Dervishes will do as they like.” I said this idly, as though I didn’t care, staring out the window into the courtyard the while. The Dervishes would do exactly as they liked, of course, and ignoring Stoneflight entirely would probably be part of it. No matter. The two of them didn’t know that.
When I turned back to them, I wore the expression I believed Dervishes might wear. Remote and cold as ice. Whatever the reality, my pretense was good enough. They could not answer it. Could not speak to it. They had found guilt enough in themselves to tally over for a season or two, seeking where the danger to themselves might lie. They had not thought of that when they had cheated the Dervishes. They had not thought of that when they cheated me. Well, let them think of it now.
I had intended to let it go, coldly, as a Dervish might. The sight of them there, so avid, so intent upon their own needs, stirred me to a baffled fury. “Why?” I demanded of her. “Why didn’t you let them have me? Why didn’t you let me go among my own kind, where I would have been ... been cared about? You didn’t care about me, and they’d paid you.”
“Not enough,” she cried, shaking her hair into a circling cloud, moved by some wild imagining to become for an instant as mist-eyed and lovely as I had dreamed her as a child. “Oh, not enough. We had a dream crystal, Mendost and I. It showed us. There’s a thing the Dervishes can do. To be young again. New bodies. I wanted one.” And she reached to Mendost, clinging to him, so I saw in his face that mixed repulsion and lust toward her which I had seen so often in his face without understanding until that moment.
Mendost and his mother. Lovely Eller and her son. I had seen that balance changing, too, over the years as the dream crystal dwindled and the lust faded and the revulsion increased.
A dream crystal! Fools, oh, fools. Every simple Schoolgirl knew the dangers of that. Every pawn, every half-wit. What of themselves had they sold to buy a dream crystal? What of themselves had they sold to suck it
