Undertow (30 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Bear
There was no black sash across it yet, though the confrontation had been a long time coming. Rien had the sash looped through her belt in the back, freshly pressed, and she had a hammer in her apron pocket also, and sixteen long framing nails.
Eight of the other eighteen portraits in the hall were already crossed by mementos of mortality: those of the Princes Royal Tristen, Seth, Finn, Niall, Gunther, and Barnhard, and the Princesses Royal Aefre and Avia. Nine smiled or frowned from the wall, unmarked: Benedick, Ariane, Ardath, Dylan, Edmund, Geoffrey, Allan, Chelsea, and Oliver.
Three more were turned to the wall, frames nailed down.
Rien had never heard their names.
The blood smell wasn’t fading, no matter what lies she recited. And the footsteps were growing closer. Crisp footsteps: a woman’s hard small boots, and the shimmering of silver spurs. Rien forced her eyes open, untwisted the rag in her hands, and began rubbing the scrolled edge of the frame, work smoothing the tremble from her fingers.
No gilt to concern her, just oil-finished wood, with a deep luster developed by centuries of polishing. Like the spider in the window, whose web had already been cleaned away when Rien went to see, she wouldn't look up, wouldn’t pause, wouldn’t seek notice.
Not until the jingling spurs drew closer. Then she put her back to the painting, lowered her eyes—closed her eyes, the truth be told—twisted that sorry rag in her hands again, and bowed so low she felt it in her knees.
The footsteps paused.
Rien held her breath, so she wouldn’t sneeze on the odor of gardenias and death.
“Girl.”
“My Lady?”
“Your rag,” the Princess Ariane said, her spurs ringing like dropped holocrystals at the slight shift of her weight. Rien knew she was extending her hand. She risked a peek to find it, and laid her greasy yellow chamois across the princess’s calloused palm.
Lady Ariane Conn of the House of Rule could never be mistaken for a Mean. Her hair was black-auburn, her eyes peridot. Her collarbones made a lovely line over the curve of her velveted ceramic mail, and her cheek would have been smooth as buttermilk had the plum-dark outline of a gauntlet’s fingers not been haloed in yellow upon it—pricks of scab night-colored against the bruising where sharp edges had caught her.
As she repaired herself, the scabs writhed.
Lady Ariane laid the flat of her unblade on Rien’s chamois and wiped first one side, then the other. She scrubbed a bit where forte joined hilt, angled it into the light for inspection, picked with a thumbnail—careful of the edge—and scrubbed again. The blood she wiped was scarlet, not cobalt. The unblade had already absorbed whatever virtue had been in it.
At last, satisfied, she handed the rag back, then sheathed Innocence almost without steadying the scabbard.
“Will there be anything else, my Lady?”
Her lips pursed, and then she smiled. It closed her more swollen eye, but she did not wince. “The Commodore is dead,” she answered. “Stop polishing the old bastard’s picture and hang up the crepe.”
Rien tried to look only at the princess’s hands, at the pale celadon flush coloring her skin. Had she consumed the old Commodore’s blood already? Were his memories prickling through hers, coloring whatever it was that she saw through those modified eyes? Rien knew the House of Rule did not see or think as the Mean did. Their sight, their brains, their hearing was as altered as their blood.
Before she turned away, Rien cleared her throat.
“Yes?” the princess said.
“I’m…Lady, it is I who is caring for the prisoner.”
Silence. Rien sneaked a look through her lashes, but Lady Ariane gave her no help, only waiting impatiently with one hand on the hilt of her unblade.
Rien took a breath and tried again. “Lady, she knew my name.”
“And what is your name, girl?”
“Rien.”
Rien thought the princess tilted her head, as if surprised. And then her smile broadened, the swelling around her eye already diminishing as the bruise faded across her cheek. “Fear not, Rien. I’ll eat her in the morning. And then after that, she can’t very well bother you again.”
UNDERTOW
A Bantam Spectra Book / August 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales
is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Bear
Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90390-4
v3.0