Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (15 page)

They reached the plaza before sunset and entered the
lawgiver’s house, finding the lamps already lit along the broad portico that
framed the atrium. A dozen or so dining sets, low tables surrounded by
cushioned benches, had been set out under the portico. Ilias had been a little
nervous at the idea of going to a formal dinner at the lawgiver’s house, though
he would rather have died than admit it. He was a ward of Andrien, but his
birth family, the Finan, were much further down on the social scale. But Erinni’s
large family was already there, along with a few of the more important heads of
household in the city and their husbands and families. They all stood around
talking and laughing, and children played among the tables, and he didn’t feel
unpleasantly conspicuous.

Karima had made them all wear their good clothes, and
Ilias thought that Irissa looked the best. She wore a dark blue dress and a
purple stole with gold painted designs, and a necklace of braided leather and
silver beads, with polished bluestones.

Oblivious to his sister’s beauty, Giliead commented, “The
food smells good.”

“We could get the same at home,” Irissa said, her tone
bored. “Better, in fact. Ignias has the best recipe for duck sauce I’ve ever—”

Giliead eyed her in annoyance. “Could you just enjoy
yourself for once?”

Irissa’s lips thinned. “We’re not here to enjoy
ourselves. Mother wants us here so I can look for a worthless husband and so
women with more money than the merchants and cargo-haulers can get a look at
Ilias.”

Frustrated, Ilias contemplated the darkening sky. To
hear them talk you would think he was the biggest slut in Cineth. But one thing
everyone was right about was that he had honed his flirting abilities over the
past season. He hadn’t tried applying them to Irissa, but maybe that had been a
mistake. He gave her a half-smile. “I thought you were going to marry me.”

Irissa tried an aloof stare, but couldn’t keep her
face straight and started to smile. Giliead then ruined it by saying, “When you
say ‘mother’ do you actually mean our mother? Because I don’t know what house
you’ve been living in but—”

Irissa turned to him impatiently. “Well, you’re a lost
cause, since Chosen Vessels don’t marry.”

“I didn’t realize you were the Chosen Vessel,” someone
said. It was the new poet Delphian. Dressed in a dark red shirt and dyed
leather, his hair braided and clean, he looked more like a traveling Syprian
poet and less like a Hisian seaman. He had been given a room in the lawgiver’s
guesthouse, and Erinni must have paid for his new clothes as part of the reward
for his performance. Delphian carried a battered leather case slung over one
shoulder, and Ilias remembered he had had it on the Hisian ship; it looked
incongruous now next to his good clothes.

Giliead regarded him uncomfortably. “Yes, I’m the
Chosen Vessel.”

Delphian didn’t seem to take Giliead’s reticence for
rudeness. “What poet did you choose to tell your stories? Perhaps it’s someone
I know.”

“I haven’t chosen a poet yet.” Giliead looked away,
still distant, though the cause was more obvious now. “I haven’t killed any
wizards, so there aren’t any stories to tell.”

Delphian smiled, shrugging it off as no consequence. “You’re
young yet.”

Giliead’s mouth tightened. “I’m older than I look.”

Ilias knew there was no good way out of this
conversation. Hoping to change the subject, he asked Delphian, “Have you told
stories for other Chosen Vessels?”

“Once, for a Vessel called Lydae, from the Bistrai
Island.” Delphian’s lips twisted as he tried to suppress a wince. “She was
killed, and I told that story.”

Ilias willed his expression to stay noncommittal. It
was like praising water over the bodies of the drowned, but Ilias supposed
there were few others Delphian could talk to who might understand. Everybody
seemed to know Chosen Vessels died often; few of them seemed to realize that
Chosen Vessels had families and friends. Irissa didn’t react either, and just
said, “The Bistrai Island, is that where you come from? You’re a long way from
home.”

“I was born there, but I’ve been living in Syrneth.”

“How did Lydae die?” Giliead asked, watching him
sharply.

Delphian hesitated, looking as if he wished he hadn’t
spoken. “On her first hunt.” He gave Ilias and Irissa an apologetic look. “Excuse
me, I think Erinni needs to speak with me.”

As he walked away, Irissa took a deep breath. “I hope
no one asks for that story.”

“That would be all we need,” Ilias agreed, his jaw
set. “Then people could come right out and say ‘why isn’t your brother dead
yet?’“

Irissa frowned at him. “I don’t think he meant that.”

“He didn’t mean it, but...” Ilias shrugged, giving in.
He didn’t know what he was trying to say.

The dinner was uneventful, and afterward Delphian
stood to speak. Everyone moved to arrange themselves in more comfortable
positions on the couches, or put cushions down on the tile floor to sit on. Ilias,
Giliead, and Irissa went to sprawl on the grass in the atrium with some of the
children and other young people, though they sat at a distance from the others.

The battered case Delphian carried was explained when
he opened it, drew out a cloth-swaddled object, and carefully unwrapped it to
reveal a panpipe. The pipes gleamed white, and seemed finely carved, and he
obviously prized it. Ilias heard Giliead groan faintly, and grinned to himself.
Old-style poets tended to accompany themselves with an instrument, which
Giliead thought was dead boring. Ilias didn’t mind it, though he did prefer
Bythia’s unaccompanied style.

The story Delphian told turned out to be an old one,
about the Isle of Storms just off the coast. The island was far enough out to
sea to be out of the god’s reach, and it had been wizard-haunted off and on for
ages. Their curses had trapped mist and clouds around it, to make it easier to
draw ships to ruin, and even though the wizards who had done that were long
dead, the clouds lingered. But what had always caught Ilias’ imagination were
the stories of how there had been a great city there once, built inside the
rock of the island itself and under the sea around it.

When the poem was done, and the rest of the audience
called out appreciation and approval, Ilias rolled over on his side to regard
Giliead and Irissa. Giliead sprawled face down, pretending to be unconscious. Irissa
hadn’t gone quite that far, but she didn’t look rapt with enthusiasm either.

Ilias said, “He wasn’t very good, was he?”

Irissa nodded absently. “I thought he spoke well
enough, but something was lacking.”

Giliead lifted his head. “I would rather have heard Bythia.”
He looked around, his expression sour. “But everyone else seemed to enjoy it.”

The rest of the guests were getting up, milling
around, talking, and the servers were bringing out warmed wine.

“Let’s go.” Irissa pushed to her feet, suddenly
impatient. “Where’s mother?”

Ilias suspected Irissa wanted to avoid attention from
the young men of good families now wandering around the atrium. That was fine
with him. “I’ll go look.”

He made his way through the crowd on the portico,
dodging cushions and tables, slipping between people. Everyone was talking
about Delphian’s performance, as if it had been the best poem they had ever
heard; Ilias thought they must have had too much wine. He saw Erinni, still
sitting at her couch, with some of the other heads of families, but Karima wasn’t
there. He ducked into the indoor dining room, finding it empty except for a
couple of children playing on the floor, then went through the interior door to
the receiving room.

The curtains that closed it off from the open portico
were partly drawn, but a couple of oil lamps were lit, and it was enough light
to see Ranior standing with Delphian. Ranior’s shoulders were tense, and he
held Delphian’s panpipe as if examining the workmanship, but from his face his
mind wasn’t on it.
He’s angry,
Ilias thought. Delphian’s expression was
placating; maybe he had asked for a favor, for Ranior to speak to Halian or
Erinni. People sometimes sought Ranior out for that, and it never pleased him.

“I’ll take my leave,” Delphian said, with a gracious
nod, “I should speak to the other guests.” He took the panpipe back and turned
for the doorway, pushing the curtain aside to step out onto the portico.

Ilias went to Ranior’s side, but Ranior still stared
after Delphian. Ilias asked, “Did he want something?”

Ranior blinked, then smiled in a preoccupied way. He
patted Ilias absently on the shoulder. “It was nothing. Go on.”

It took Ilias longer to get back, because he got roped
into moving the tables off the portico to make room for the dancing. Once he
escaped that and reached the atrium again, Karima was already there, standing
aside with Irissa.

Giliead stood a few paces away, arms folded, and from
everyone’s expressions it was clear there was an argument in progress. Ilias
moved to Giliead’s side in time to hear Karima say in exasperation, “Of course
you don’t have to choose one tonight, but you need to get to know these boys.”

Irissa gritted her teeth. “I already know them.”

“You don’t. You’ve hardly spoken to any of them since
last summer.” Karima sighed. “Irissa, I’m not asking you to do anything you don’t
want. But an alliance with a town family would help us, it would help Erinni
and Halian, it would help every other family we’re allied with. I’m just asking
you not to disregard all these boys just because of how they behaved as
children.”

Irissa seemed unaffected, but the words hit Ilias
hard. He hadn’t seriously thought he had much chance of becoming Irissa’s first
husband, but... Maybe he had taken it more seriously than he had realized.
You
were stupid to get your hopes up
, he told himself. If Irissa married him,
it wouldn’t cost the family anything, but it wouldn’t bring them anything,
either. No new alliance with another family, no interest in anyone else’s
farming or trading concerns. It would be a waste of both of them. And his
prospects, as a ward of the family and not a real son of the house, weren’t
nearly as good as Irissa’s.

“That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about,”
Giliead muttered, sounding bitterly pleased about it.

“Lucky you,” Ilias said, bitter but not pleased. He
needed some time, or he was just going to say things he would regret later. “I’m
going down to the docks, see if I can find Macritus. I’ll go back with them.”

“What? Are you sure--” Giliead called after him, but
Ilias was already heading for the door.

* * *

Ilias ended up riding back to Andrien in a wagon with
Macritus and Selias, who had been in town buying supplies for both Andrien
village and the house. The two men had sampled too much of the wine part of
their cargo with the merchants, and were now moving more slowly than usual and
were glad of the extra help. Macritus had lost the lower part of his arm in a
long ago battle, before Ilias had even come to Andrien, so once they arrived at
the village Ilias stayed to help them unload. By that time it was late into the
night, and they all three agreed that no one at Andrien House would be pleased
to be woken to take in amphorae that could be just as easily delivered the next
morning. Ilias ended up on a pallet on Macritus’ porch, lulled to sleep by the
sound of the sea.

Ilias woke to a gray cloudy dawn and a sharp salty
wind off the water. Standing up to yawn and stretch, he looked down the hill
toward the fishing beach, between the houses and huts. The breakers rushed up
the sand, white-capped and rough. The sky threatened rain, and it was obviously
not going to be a good fishing day. It didn’t make him feel any less depressed,
but he thought he could at least keep his problems to himself now.

Ilias smelled porridge cooking and decided to go up to
Andrien House for breakfast before he got to work.

He borrowed the blanket he had slept in, wrapping it
around his shoulders as he started the walk up the hill path. He followed it up
through the stands of trees, then to the more level ground of the orchards and
pastures, through the large vegetable garden and across to the house.

The farmyard was quiet under the gray sky, the big
flat-roofed two-story stone house not showing much sign of life. Ilias heard
someone moving around in the cowshed as he passed it, but didn’t stop to see
who it was. He went up the steps and through the open front door, through the
painted foyer and into the atrium, heading toward Giliead’s room to see if he
was awake yet. Ilias needed a bath and a change of clothes, but he thought he
might as well put that off until they had finished moving the amphorae.

Then Ranior stepped out of the doorway into the
receiving room. He demanded sharply, “Where have you been?”

Ilias stopped short, startled. “I was down at the
village, with Macritus--”

Ranior’s shirt was rumpled and some of his braids were
coming undone, as if he had dressed in a hurry, as if he had barely slept. “Don’t
lie to me.”

Ilias stared, felt his jaw drop. “I’m not-- Why would
you think--”