Paladin of Souls (20 page)

The black-haired young woman dipped in a curtsey of surpassing gracefulness. "Dowager Royina. My household is honored beyond all deserving by your presence here. I hope I may do everything possible to make your sojourn with my lord and myself a memorable delight."

"Five gods give you a good day, Lady of Porifors," Ista choked. "I'm sure you shall."

FLANKED BY TWO SMILING LADIES-IN-WAITING, THE YOUNG marchess led Ista through a cool, dim archway under the balcony and into an inner court. Ferda and Ista's medical acolyte followed less certainly, until gestured forward by Lord Arhys. The courtyard was graced by a small marble pool in the shape of a star, its water bright, and more pots of succulents and flowers. Lady Cattilara darted up the stairway to the second-floor gallery and paused to wait, staring in concern as the acolyte helped Ista labor upward on her sore legs. Ferda hurried to lend his arm. Ista grimaced in mingled gratitude and annoyance.

Their footsteps echoed on the boards toward a corner where a short tower loomed, until Lord Arhys stopped abruptly. "Catti, no! Not these chambers, surely!"

Lady Cattilara paused outside the carved double doors her woman had been about to open, and smiled back at Arhys in uncertainty. "My lord? They are the best rooms of the house—we cannot offer the dowager royina less!"

Arhys strode to her side, lowered his voice, and said through his teeth, "Have some sense!"

"But they are swept and garnished for her—"

"No, Catti!"

She stared up at him in dismay. "I—I'm sorry, my lord. I'll . . . I'll think of something. Else."

"Five gods, please you do," he snapped back, exasperation leaking into face and voice. With an effort, he recovered an expression of bland welcome.

Lady Cattilara turned, smiling stiffly. "Royina Ista. Won't you . . . come to my rooms to rest and refresh yourself before dinner? Just this way . . ."

She eased back past them, and they all reversed direction toward a similar set of doors on the opposite end of the gallery. Ista found herself, briefly, next to Arhys.

"What is the problem with the chambers?" she asked.

"The roof leaks," he growled after a moment.

Ista cast a look at the bright blue, cloudless sky. "Oh."

The men were excluded at these new doors.

"Shall I bring your things here, then, Royina?" asked Ferda.

Ista glanced apprehensively at Arhys.

"Yes, for now," he answered, apparently finding this other, if temporary, lodging more acceptable. "Come, dy Gura, I'll show you and your men to your quarters. You will wish to see to your horses, of course."

"Yes, my lord. Thank you." Ferda gave Ista a parting salute and followed Arhys back down the stairs.

Ista entered the chamber past the lady-in-waiting, who had paused to hold the door open for her. The woman smiled and bobbed a curtsey.

Ista felt an immediate sense of ease from having come at last to what were obviously a woman's private quarters. A softened light filtered through elaborate lattices at the narrow windows on the far wall. Wall hangings, and vases of cut flowers, brightened the austere whitewashed angles. A door, closed, gave interior access to some adjoining chamber, and Ista wondered if it was Arhys's. The walls were crowded with chests, variously carved, inlaid, or ironbound; Cattilara's women whisked away piles of clothing and other evidences of disorder, and set a feather-stuffed cushion on one such trunk for Ista to rest upon. Ista glanced through the lattices, which gave a view onto the roof of another inner court, and settled her aching body down gingerly.

"What a pleasant room," Ista remarked, to allay Lady Cattilara's obvious awkwardness at having her refuge so suddenly invaded.

Cattilara smiled in gratitude. "My household is anxious to honor you at our table, but I thought perhaps you would wish to wash and rest, first."

"Yes, indeed," said Ista fervently.

The acolyte ducked a curtsey at the castle's chatelaine, and said firmly, "And it please you, lady, the royina should have her dressings changed as well."

Cattilara blinked. "You are injured? My lord did not say, in his letter ..."

"Some minor scrapes. But yes, wash and rest, before all." Ista had no intention of neglecting her hurts. Her son Teidez had died, it was said, of an unattended injury upon his leg scarcely worse than a scratch, which had taken a febrile infection. Ista suspected complicating factors beyond the natural; prayers the boy had certainly had poured upon him, but they had gone unanswered.

Lady Cattilara cast off her moment of discomfort in a flurry of activity, ordering her ladies and her maids to these practicalities. Tea and dried fruit and bread were offered, basins and a hip bath trundled in, and water carried up; the acolyte and Cattilara's women tended not only Ista's body but washed her hair as well. By the time these welcome ablutions were concluded, and Ista rewrapped in borrowed robes, her hostess was quite cheerful again.

Under her direction, the ladies carried in armloads of garments for Ista's inspection, and Cattilara opened her jewel cases.

"My lord said you had lost all your belongings to the Jokonans," Cattilara said breathlessly. "I beg you to accept whatever of mine may please you."

"As my journey was intended as a pilgrimage, I actually carried but little, and so it was but little loss," said Ista. "The gods spared me my men; all else may be repaired."

"It sounded a terrible ordeal," said Cattilara. She had gasped in consternation when the acolyte had uncovered the admittedly ugly lesions on Ista's knees.

"The Jokonans had it worse, in the end, thanks to your lord and his men."

Cattilara glowed with pleasure at this oblique commendation of the march. "Is he not fine? I fell madly in love with him from the first moment I saw him, riding into the gates of Oby with my father one autumn day. My father is the march of Oby—the greatest fortress in Caribastos, bar the provincar's own seat."

Ista's lips quirked. "I grant you, Lord Arhys on horseback makes a most striking first impression."

Cattilara burbled on, "He looked so splendid, but so sad. His first wife had died in childbed, oh, years before, when his little daughter Liviana was born, and it was said he did not look at other women after her. I was but fourteen. My father said I was too young, and it was only a girl's infatuation, but I proved him wrong. Three years did I campaign with my father for my lord's favor, and I won such a prize!"

Indeed
. "Have you been wedded long?"

"Almost four years, now." She smiled in pride.

"Children?"

Her face fell, and the volume of her voice. "Not yet."

"Well," said Ista, in an effort to bridge this unexpected chasm of secret woe that flashed so plainly in the girl's face, "you are indeed young ... let us see these garments."

Ista's heart sank, contemplating Cattilara's offerings. The marchess's tastes ran to bright, airy, fluttering confections that doubtless flattered her tall slenderness exceedingly well. Ista suspected they would make her own short body look like a dwarf dragging a curtain.

Her mouth sought less blunt excuses. "I am still in mourning for the recent death of my lady mother, alas. And my pilgrimage, though most rudely interrupted by those Jokonan raiders, is far from concluded. Perhaps something in the colors proper to my grief . . . ?"

The elder of Cattilara's ladies glanced at Ista and at the bright silks, and seemed to correctly interpret this. Much rummaging in chests and some trips to other storage places produced at length some dresses and robes of sterner cut and much-less-trailing hemlines, in suitable black and lilac. Ista smiled and shook her head at the jewel case. Cattilara contemplated the choices therein, and suddenly curtseyed and excused herself.

Ista heard her steps outside on the gallery turn in again almost at once; then through the wall, a reverberation of voices, Cattilara's and a man's. Lord Arhys had returned, evidently. His timbre and cadences were distinctive. The light steps dashed back, then slowed to a lady's dignity. Cattilara entered, her lips curled up with satisfaction, and held out her hand.

In it lay a rich silver mourning brooch set with amethysts and pearls.

"My lord has not very many pieces inherited from his great father," she said shyly, "but this is one of them. He'd be honored if you would choose to have it, for those past times' sake."

Ista, surprised by the sight, vented a huff of a laugh. "Indeed. I know the piece. Lord dy Lutez used to wear it in his hat, upon occasion." Roya Ias had given it to him—one of the least of his many gifts, which had run to half his royacy before it all had come crashing down.

Cattilara gazed at her with eyes shining, Ista would swear, in a muted romantic glow. The marchess, presumably, shared her husband's heroic theories about his father's fall. Ista was still not sure if Arhys had believed her denial of a sexual involvement with a man whose reputation as a lover had been scarcely less famous than his reputation as a soldier, or if he'd merely acceded to her story for courtesy's sake. Did he imagine her still in mourning for dy Lutez? For Ias? For lost love of whatever object? The brooch was an ambiguous message, if message it was.

Arhys's flesh beneath her hand, as she had touched that misplaced wound, had been stiff and cool as wax. And yet he had risen, walked and rode, talked, kissed his wife, laughed or growled as grumpily as any breathing husband might. Ista might have convinced herself by now that she'd had a hallucination, or a dream, but for Ferda's witness to the material reality of the blood on her palm.

Ista wrapped her hand around the mystery of his intentions, and said, "Thank you, and thank your lord for me."

Cattilara looked immensely pleased with herself.

Ista was laid down upon Lady Cattilara's bed with her still-damp hair spread out on a linen towel, under the guard of the acolyte on a stool across the chamber. Cattilara swept her ladies out before her and left her honored guest to rest until the evening meal was served. Probably, Ista thought, to dash off and oversee its preparation. In the quiet of the dim chamber, exhaustion and the immense relief of clean skin and clothing lent Ista a sensation—illusion?—of having come to sanctuary at last. Her headache could just be a touch of fever from her sores and her nightmare ride . . . despite the lingering hum of tension on the edge of her nerves, her eyelids drooped.

At a cool breath on her cheek, they opened again in irritation. No surprise that this castle had ghosts—all old fortresses did—nor that they emerged to investigate a visitor . . . She rolled onto her side. A faint white blob floated in her vision. As she stared, dismayed and frowning, two more slipped out of the walls and collected with it, as if drawn to her warmth. Ancient spirits, these, formless and decayed to near oblivion. Merciful oblivion. Her lips drew back in a fierce frown. "Be gone, sundered," she whispered. "I can do nothing for you." A swipe of her hand scattered the shapes like fog, and they dispersed from her inner sight. No mirror would reflect these visions, no companion share them.

"Royina?" the acolyte's voice came in a dozy murmur.

"Nothing," said Ista. "I dream."

No dream, that, but her inner vision grown clear again. Undesired, unwelcomed, resented. And yet . . . she was come to a very murky place, in this bright afternoon. Perhaps she was going to need such clarity.

The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.

Remembering her vivid, disturbing dream from earlier, Ista hardly dared allow herself to drop off again. She half dozed for the turning of a glass, until Cattilara and her ladies came to collect her again.

The senior lady-in-waiting dressed Ista's hair in what was obviously an accustomed style, braided back from her face and falling loose behind. On Cattilara, the fall made fascinating ripples; Ista suspected her own dun mop, snarling at her nape, had more the effect of a mat of scouring weed. But a lavender linen shift, with a black silk over robe pinned together beneath her breasts by the mourning brooch, made a suitably dignified display. Display, she was fairly certain, would be her next task.

Summer's heat came early to this northern province. The tables had been set up in the court, and the meal timed for when the westering sun dropped below the roofline, the advancing shadow sparing the diners the light's hammering. The head table, at the court's far end, faced the star fountain, and two other longer ones ran perpendicular to it.

Ista found herself set at Lord Arhys's right hand, with Lady Cattilara on her other side. If Arhys had been stunning in mail and leather, splashed with blood, he was devastating in a courtier's garb of gray touched with gold, and splashed with verbena. He smiled warmly. Ista's heart turned over; she gathered the shreds of her reserve and returned cooler greetings, then forced herself to look away from him.

Ferda was given an honored place beyond the marchess. An elderly gentleman in the robes of a Temple divine was seated one space over from Lord Arhys's left hand. One of Arhys's senior officers began to approach them, but halted at the two fingers Lord Arhys held up above the empty seat, nodded understanding, and went to take a place at one of the lesser tables.

Lady Cattilara, watching this, leaned behind Ista to murmur to her husband, "My lord. With these honored guests, surely tonight we should use the place."

Arhys's eyes darkened. "Tonight least of all, then." His brows bent at her in a scowl; one finger touched his lips. In warning?

Cattilara settled back, her mouth taut. She twitched it back into a smile for Ista's sake, and addressed a polite triviality to Ferda. Ista was pleased to see the remainder of Ferda's company, refreshed and washed and lent clean clothes, scattered along the other tables. Arhys's officers and Cattilara's women and a few habitues in Temple dress made up the rest. Important citizens from the town at the castle's feet would doubtless be paraded before Ista at ensuing meals.

The elderly divine shuffled to his feet and quavered the prayers: of thanksgiving for the previous day's victory and marvelous rescue of the royina, of supplication for the healing of the wounded, of blessing upon the meal about to be served. He continued with some special if slightly vague reference to the steadfastness of Ferda and his men, in this the Daughter's Season, which Ista could see gratified the officer-dedicat. "And as ever, we especially beg the Mother, with Her Season impending, for the recovery of our Lord dy Arbanos." He made a gesture of blessing over the empty chair at Lord Arhys's left hand, and Arhys nodded, sighing under his breath. A nearly wordless murmur of assent ran round the officers at the other tables, and, Ista saw, some bleak frowns.