Blade of Dream, page 12
Her father spent the night at the Temple in rituals of cleansing, which he described later as sitting in a hot bath while old men chanted at him and sleeping when he was supposed to be meditating. She had gone back to her rooms in her grandmother’s house. Her cell at the Clovas Brotherhood seemed too austere for the moment, but the vastness of her father’s soon-to-be gifted-away home with only her in it was intimidating. Instead, she chose the bustle and flurry and fullness of House Abbasann, even if Theddan wasn’t there to make it feel quite complete.
She’d slept poorly, though. Her dreams had an odd quality about them, vivid and unsettling and—she couldn’t find a better term—somehow slick or oily. She’d been glad to wake up.
They’d left before the sun quite rose, tracking back to the Temple to stand witness as her father took the crown. The temple grounds were thick with bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, all pushing to watch the moment as it happened. She’d been close enough to see the flicker of uncertainty as he rose to his feet as the prince of Kithamar for the first time. She remembered a little thrill of fear, then. She remembered wondering if her father had taken on more than he could do. Not that there was any choice. Fate, history, and the accidents of birth—or, phrased differently, the will of the gods—had given Byrn a Sal the city, and he had no power to refuse.
The rest of the day had been the joyous mirror image of the funeral’s bleak passage. The streets, filled with merriment and revelry. Her father had spent a fair part of the day seeing the people over whom he now had the power of life and death, and being cheered by them as he passed.
He’d become something more than himself. Or been lost in a larger story than the man was. The Byrn a Sal who played flute sometimes, and badly, when he thought no one was there to hear it. The Byrn a Sal who still sometimes fumbled, starting to call her by her mother’s name. The one who coughed and swore in the morning. That man had been swallowed by the princedom of Kithamar. Elaine scandalized herself a bit, wondering whether he’d ever spent an evening with some woman who didn’t know his name, and hoping that somehow he had.
The palace gardens looked like practice fields with a few flowers and shrubs pasted on them, because that was what they were. Elaine walked among the flowers, the midday sun on her cheeks and the misplaced book back in her hand, and marveled that she found herself largely content. An older man in a gardener’s leathers trundled quietly behind her, pouring water out of a tin bucket onto the lush end-of-summer bushes.
It had taken her all of her first day there to understand what made the palace grounds feel so strange and isolated. She knew that she was at the center of the city, as much the heart of Kithamar as she could ever be, and yet the air itself seemed different here, the sunlight like it fell from some other sky. She felt unmoored. And it was because all through her life, no matter where she was in Kithamar, from the Temple to the Smoke to Riverport, the looming presence of Palace Hill had oriented her. By its size and silhouette, it told her where in the city she was, which was the same as knowing her place in the world.
Palace Hill had vanished now. With it beneath her feet, she was never in its shadow, never saw its bulk, and so she had to find new ways to know north from east from south. She hadn’t anticipated that, and the surprise was a gift.
She passed from the gardens into the low, thick-walled corridors that ate sound and radiated silence. Since she’d come here to live in the palace, she’d found herself spending a part of each day walking through the halls and corridors, going through rooms that sometimes seemed not to have been used in years, and following the thin stairs up to the old storerooms where the ancient Hansch warriors had kept the weapons and medicines and salt-packed meat that would protect them in wars that had been won and lost before the city was a city. And because of it, she could already find her way from the garden to her father’s royal apartments by cutting through the thin alley-like path between the stables and the servants’ rooms instead of going out to the main halls and back in. She felt a little smug about that.
The prince’s apartments had been carved out of a much older building. As high as his entry hall was, there was a clear line in the stone to show where a much lower ceiling had once been. As broad as the rooms were, the floor still had the patterns of old walls that had been removed to make it. Its divans were silk, its tapestries were bright, the fire grate looked like it could hold half a tree and keep the place sweltering through the worst winter night, but its grandness was the grandness of scars and history.
Three people were in the hall when Elaine passed by the red-cloaked guards at the entrance. One was Samal Kint, head of the palace guard. Another was an older woman with close-cut grey hair and an expression of permanent curiosity. Mikah Ell, the court historian. And the last, of course, was her father.
“I find no record, my lord,” Mikah Ell said. “And to be honest, I don’t recall coming across any mention of it in my readings. I’ve read a lot. The court is my life.”
“There has to be something,” her father said. “Please keep looking.”
The historian bowed and retreated like it was a dance she’d learned young and practiced often. Elaine caught her father’s eye and lifted her eyebrows in question.
“Uncle’s private study,” her father said. “My private study now. But I can’t get into it.”
“Can’t find the key?” Elaine asked.
“Can’t find the lock. Just a wide iron door with a thousand decorative carvings that might hide a switch, except none of them do. I’ve been trying to get in for two days.”
“Should we hold off, my lord?” Kint asked. “Or would you like the masons to proceed?”
“Tell Halev there’s no point waiting. He can have them start.”
Kint nodded, turned, and walked off like he was going to make someone’s day very unpleasant and he was pleased to do it. Elaine watched him until he passed through an archway and vanished from sight.
“He’s an odd one, isn’t he?” she said.
“I think he and my uncle were close. I mean as close as anyone was with Uncle. He was an odd one too. My mother said that taking the throne changes you. I don’t know if that’s true, but from everything I heard, it seems that it was for him.”
Her father turned slowly, gesturing at the hall and meaning the palace. “I feel like I’m living in his corpse. All of this was his, and now it’s supposed to be mine. But I don’t feel it. Do you want something? They’ve put some food in one of the drawing rooms.”
“I could,” she said, and he smiled and offered her his arm. She linked elbows with him, and they walked together up a flight of granite stairs, down a short, soot-stained corridor, and to a surprisingly small drawing room with one window that looked to the south. There was a table of light wood with a silver platter on it with grapes and cheese. He sat in one of the chairs and tore a corner off the cheese. She sat across from him. Somewhere in the distance, a hammer fell on stone.
“Are you tunneling through the wall?” she asked, plucking a grape from the bunch.
“The wall is softer than that fucking door,” he said. “Halev and I spent all this time preparing for the transition. I have a list. Things I meant to do the first day I took the crown. And instead, I’ve spent the better part of a week confounded by a doorway.”
Then he laughed, and she laughed with him. When she bit down on the grape, it was tart and sweet and perfectly ripe.
Her father nodded. “I know. I was expecting them to be a little underripe too. But harvest festival’s coming sooner than it seems. Something about Uncle’s dying made me think time would stop. Slow down, anyway. Give us some breathing room. But it turns out a day’s a day whether there’s a coronation or not.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m frustrated. I’m overwhelmed. What else could I be? I’m fucking prince of Kithamar.” He ripped off another bit of cheese. “I’ll be fine. I just need to get my legs under me. I wish your mother were here. She had a better head for this kind of thing.”
“You still miss her?”
“Some days, yes. It’s not as bad as when she left, but… I loved her. She was…”
“I know,” Elaine said, to excuse the fact that she didn’t. Couldn’t. “Can I ask? What was it like when you and she started? I know all the stories about the wedding and when she went, but before that.”
“Courting?”
“Did you court her?”
“Old scandal? Really?”
Elaine plucked two more grapes and handed one to her father. “Scandal, was it? You have to tell me now.”
“She was spoken for when we started. Set to marry Raddeth a Jimental. And then we were at a celebration together—”
“A celebration? Just any celebration?”
“We were at the first thaw celebration at Daos Adresqat’s. Halev was there too. Your mother arrived late with her cousin… Marget. Marget Foss. She was wearing green, and the fashion that year was yellow. She didn’t care. She knew what she looked good in. I knew her, of course. Everyone knows everyone. But she hadn’t… there hadn’t been anything between us. We were going to the back garden to look at a kite Daos had made, and your mother slipped. And I caught her hand. And…”
“And?”
“And there are some things that fathers don’t share with their daughters. There was a great deal of outrage and hurt feelings. At one point, I had to fight Raddeth to address his bruised honor, but thankfully we used blunted swords—”
“But with her. What was it like with her?”
His face softened, like a year of worry being forgotten in a moment. “I would tell you that, if I could. Your mother was amazing, and I know that because I was amazed,” he said. “Is that what’s happened?”
“What?”
“With you.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Elaine said, but there was a taste of panic in her mouth.
“We’ve upended your whole life. Our home. Your friend who was noviced. All this. You don’t brood. You don’t pout. And I love you, daughter, more than I love anyone living, but you can brood a horse to death. Is it like that? Is there somebody that’s…”
“No,” Elaine said. “Of course not.”
“Why ‘of course’? You’re human. You’re alive. What your mother and I felt didn’t stop after we felt it, any more than we invented it for the first time. It’s natural. It’s normal.” He waved his hand. “It’s inevitable, maybe. You tell me.”
For a moment, she saw Garreth in his room, his body silhouetted against the moonlight from the window. “There’s no one,” she said through a smile.
“Can I ask who?”
“Who no one is?” she said, and pelted him with a grape.
“Well, who your no one is. Don’t be ashamed of it. It’s the joy of life. It’s the part that makes all the rest worth doing. It’s a dark world sometimes, and the sparks are precious. And I like it when you’re happy.”
“Don’t be melancholy with me.”
“Was I?”
“You were about to.”
“I was. You’re right. So who?”
Elaine looked out the window. Looking south, the Smoke would have spilled out below them with the black, polluted snake that the canal became as it passed the forges. Beyond that, the city wall, and the forests beyond. Where she sat, she could only see the sky.
“There are things,” she said, “that daughters don’t share with their fathers.”
Byrn a Sal clapped his hands and laughed. “Good, good, good. Turn it against me. I deserved that.”
Elaine hung her head to hide her blush, and a soft knocking came at the door. Halev Karsen peeked in. His hair was greyed by stone dust. “I’m very sorry to have missed the joke,” he said, “but, Byrn?”
Her father nodded, gathered himself, and rose. “Well, if I can’t march in through the doorway, I’ll sneak through the walls like a rat. Tell them the rat prince will be there in a moment.”
“I will not,” Karsen said, and left again.
“Well,” her father said. “I suppose I’m off. Hopefully we can open the fucking door from the inside, and I won’t have to make them just build a new one.”
“It could be a new tradition,” Elaine said. “Every new prince pokes a hole in the wall.”
“A building entirely made from doorways. It’s a good thought. I’ll sit with it.” He stepped toward the door, then paused, about to speak.
“Not melancholy,” Elaine said.
“Not melancholy,” he agreed. “But serious, for a moment, yes? If you can be happy, do. They won’t give it to you. Even if it hurts sometimes, and it will. It does. It’s worth it. And I do like it when you’re happy.”
She woke sometime in the night. Her rooms in the palace were smaller even than the cell at the Clovas Brotherhood. She thought for a moment that the shape at her bedside was her night servant, but the servant’s bed was in a separate closet here, and that door was closed. The only light was the glimmer that spilled in from the doorway to the corridor. She sat up, and the shape started back.
“I’m sorry,” her father said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing,” he said, but his voice was tight and high. He sat at the foot of her bed. Sleep and dreams receded, and she saw him more clearly. Even in the dim light, he looked pale. There was a tightness in his mouth she hadn’t seen before.
“When you were just born?” he said. “After your mother died? I used to wake up in the middle of the night, certain that you’d stopped breathing. Sure of it. I’d lie in bed and try to decide whether I should go see the worst just then, or wait until morning for my life to fall apart again. I could never wait. I always had to go check. It got to where the night nurse kept a cup of wine for me, I went so often. And you were perfect. You were always well.” He looked around the gloom. “Old habits, I guess.”
“Was there something in the study? Did you find something there?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Take care of what?”
He stood, one hand on his belly like he was checking to see his wallet was still there. He nodded in her direction, but not at her. “Don’t worry. I’m sorry I woke you. Everything will be fine.”
The way he spoke made her think that it wouldn’t.
Garreth woke up grinding his teeth. His jaws were tight up to his temples. The sound of servants talking in the corridor seemed louder than it should have, but that was likely just the headache. Sunlight pressed in at the cracks in the shutters, and he closed his eyes against it, willing himself back down to sleep for just a few minutes more.
The effort was wasted.
After a few more minutes of wishing, he got up, took the night pot from under the bed, and pissed until there was nothing left in him. Outside his door, a bowl of fresh water and a cloth had been set out. He brought them in, put them on the desk, and cleaned himself for the day like he was washing a corpse.
When he went to find a shirt, he paused at the old favorite. The one she’d worn, however briefly. He shoved it into the back of the drawer and picked out a more recent one that meant less.
In the corridor, Serria was sweeping with a wide broom while a boy hung fresh rosemary from hooks in the walls. Vasch’s door was open, his brother already gone downstairs to breakfast. Garreth looked at his father’s lover, the woman he kept in the house whether Mother was present or away. It was like looking at a fire. She glanced back and smiled. It was probably the same expression she’d always had. It was the change in him that made her seem smug. Or maybe she’d always been smug, and he’d never known to notice it.
“Is all well?” she asked.
“Perfect,” he said. “It’s a glorious day.”
At the table, Father, Uncle Robbson, and Vasch were eating fresh bread with oil and salt, berries in tin bowls, and coffee. Every inch of the table that wasn’t plates, bowls, or mugs was taken up by paper. The contracts of the whole year, laid out from end to end. Every contract, every letter, every deposit agreement. The whole of the family fortune in pulp and ink instead of silver and silk. That was the magic of it. Warehouses of cloth and grain, cartloads of salt and alum. Coffers of bronze and silver and gold. All of it could be reduced to a line of cipher and put on a table.
His father, vest undone and sleeves rolled to the elbow, had a page in his hand. Uncle Robbson stood behind him, leaning over his shoulder and pointing with a crust.
“That’s the payment due, right there.”
“Aren’t we portioning that out with Caldon and Sitt?”
“They’re making us whole when they take their goods. But we have to make the full payment to the dockmaster.”
“We have it, though?”
Robbson grunted in a vaguely affirmative way. Garreth sat and took a bowl of berries, then leaned back, lifting the front feet of the chair off the floor. His father glanced at him.
“You slept well,” he said mildly.
“Well enough,” Garreth said. He tried to make his tone amiable. Being curt would have felt like he’d lost a contest. “Any word from Mother?”
“No, not yet, but I wouldn’t expect it. Before the first frost, I think. But there’s a great deal to be done between now and then. I’d like you to check the warehouse, if you could.”
Robbson stiffened.
Father looked over at him, blinking. “You don’t mind, do you, Robbson? I thought it would be better if Garreth were seen taking a firmer hand on the rudder. To soften things when news of the marriage comes.”
“Where is Yrith?” Garreth asked. “Shouldn’t she be learning the family trade?”
His father shrugged and considered the paper in his hand. “Once she’s family, perhaps.”
“She’s near enough, isn’t she?”
“The marriage hasn’t happened. Even once it has, we’d be wise to keep her in the closets. It isn’t a long jump seeing we’ve married our son to a northern Inlisc bride to wondering what we gained by it. What our brothers and sisters in the guilds don’t guess, they can’t counter.”
