House of Shadows (34 page)

“No,” the mage repeated. “That was not the Dragon’s heir. Who would have expected him to give those pipes away? He seemed to appreciate them… Well, your sister is charming,” he added dispassionately, and went on, “No, Nemienne: The man you glimpsed was an acquaintance of mine, in fact. No one of great importance, though it’s true his death is inconvenient.”

Inconvenient? “But—” said Nemienne, and stopped.

“I believe I would like to examine those pipes,” Mage Ankennes said abruptly, as though he hadn’t heard her. “Perhaps you might fetch them for me.”

“What?” Nemienne said, and immediately felt a fool. She added quickly, “The pipes, yes. You want me to get them for you.”

“Mmm, yes,” the mage said. “Though they have been, mmm, used up, there may yet be some interest in examining the, hmm, interstices where the spellwork used to lie. I have not had the opportunity to study many examples of true bardic spellwork.” He tapped the fingers of one powerful hand on the surface of the table, seeming any moment in danger of oversetting a pile of books on which a glass goblet stood. The goblet held several dozen brass marbles and three polished black beads of hematite.

Nemienne leaned forward, ready to try to catch the goblet if it fell, but it didn’t.

“It’s your sister who has the pipes,” Mage Ankennes added, not seeming to notice Nemienne’s alarm about the goblet. “They’re no good to her in the shape they’re in, hmm? She ought to give them to you if you ask. ”

“Well, yes, I’m sure she will…”

“Go today, then. This afternoon. I should be able to acquire the pipes of horn and silver merely for the asking,” the mage added absently, clearly thinking about something else.

“There’s another set of pipes? Oh, for the other victim, the man who died?”

Recollecting himself, the mage smiled at Nemienne. “Indeed. You’re quick to understand, young Nemienne.” He gave her a brisk nod. “You may go on. There’s script and hard coins in a jar on the kitchen table. Take enough for a conveyance and, oh, whatever small necessities may come up. There is no particular need for haste, however. After you get the pipes, you may go visit your sisters, if you wish. Return here in the morning. I shall see about persuading my door to open for you.”

“All right—yes—good,” stammered Nemienne, and retreated, since she could see Mage Ankennes wanted her out of the way. That unexpected permission to
go see your sisters—
she would be happy to, of course, but it was also clearly a polite way to say
Go away and don’t bother me for a while.
She wondered what he could possibly mean to do while she was gone, but couldn’t think of any way to ask. And, anyway, she longed to see Karah again and make
sure
she was all right. She went out to find the coins and a conveyance.

There was no conveyance handy to the Lane of Shadows, so Nemienne walked on foot toward the more traveled areas of the city. She didn’t mind. It was cold, but she wanted time to think—time to herself, out in the open air.

The image of the Dragon of Lonne kept coming before her mind’s eye, though she didn’t want to think about it. Or at least, not about Mage Ankennes destroying it.

Nemienne badly wanted to tell someone else about the Dragon of Lonne, if not about Mage Ankennes’s plans for it. She felt that if she did, she might find a way to understand it better herself. “Leilis,” Nemienne whispered. She didn’t know why, but she felt that Leilis would understand the dragon—maybe better than Nemienne did herself.

Not that
that
would be difficult.

Cloisonné House was awake and beginning to be lively when Nemienne arrived in late afternoon. But it was sufficiently early
that the flower world still belonged almost entirely to itself. A girl came to the door in answer to Nemienne’s tentative rap, but her faint air of surprise said plainly that it was early for outsiders to arrive.

But the surprise on the girl’s face cleared at once when Nemienne gave her name. “You’re Moonflower’s sister, of course,” she said confidently. “My name’s Birre. You’re welcome, of course. Moonflower is busy dressing for the evening—she’s going to attend a small engagement. Rue will be with her, don’t worry about that.”

“That’s fine,” Nemienne said, wondering what she ought to have worried about. “Actually,” she added, since the opportunity presented itself, “I was hoping I might see Leilis? If she’s free?”

“Oh,” Birre said earnestly, “I’m so sorry. Leilis isn’t in Cloisonné House this evening. She went out early and I know she hasn’t yet returned because Mother was only just asking for her. We really can’t imagine what might have taken her away so long.” She looked a little worried, but then added with more cheer, “But then, Leilis always has good reasons for everything she does, and I’m sure she’ll be back soon. But it is too bad, with first that foreign lord and then you both looking for her. She’ll be sorry she missed you both, I’m sure.”

“Oh,” Nemienne said faintly, and then rallied and asked, with some trepidation, “What, um… the foreign lord? You don’t mean… not the same foreign lord who gave Prince Tepres a set of twin pipes? That the prince later gave Karah? That lord?”

“Why, yes.” The girl looked wistful. “The prince is in love with your sister, everyone in the House says so, and anyway it’s obvious. I saw him when I was carrying platters during his private engagement with your sister—he’s so splendid—and that foreign lord, so gracious, do you know he gave out a gratuity for all the servants? It’s a shame Leilis was already gone when he came by today. She ought to have been the one to accept it on our behalf, really—”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Nemienne said almost at random. “You mean
the foreign lord was here today looking for Leilis? But she was already gone then?”

Birre gave her a mystified look. “Why, yes.”

“Um.” Nemienne hesitated. Leilis’s absence seemed important, but she was not really sure why. She asked after a moment, “Well, then, do you know when Karah will be free? In just a little while, you said? I think I really need to talk to her. Could I wait in her room? Or where would be convenient?”

Karah, of course, shared Rue’s room—Nemienne had forgotten. But Rue politely excused herself and left the sisters in privacy, only reminding Karah that she’d expect her to be ready for the engagement in half an hour.

“And I mustn’t be late, Nemienne, though of course it’s wonderful to see you,” Karah told her sister warmly.

Karah looked wonderful herself. She was wearing blue robes embroidered with dusky rose and white, and a strand of beads wound through her hair: black glass and hematite, white and black pearls, with three lapis beads neatly arranged where they would show to best advantage. She had her silver kitten on her knee. The kitten, amazingly, was not batting at the beads. With her hair up, Karah looked all grown up and every bit a keiso. Nemienne, despite the urgency driving her, paused for a moment in astonishment. She had somehow never thought of her sister as
really
a keiso, and Karah’s glamour startled her.

But it wasn’t just the glamour. Robes and beads aside, Karah just seemed to glow, somehow. A private smile curved her lips; her gaze was warm and happy and a little unfocused. If Prince Tepres
was
in love with Karah, the sentiment was obviously returned. Nemienne had no doubt about that, now. If the prince and Karah… well, that should have been exciting and wonderful, but in fact it added a new worry to the pile that seemed to be accumulating.

“What’s wrong?” Karah asked, a trace of worry entering her eyes. Even distracted, she couldn’t help but notice when somebody else was anxious or upset.

“Oh.” Nemienne hesitated, and then asked about the pipes instead of the prince.

“Oh, I don’t have them anymore,” Karah said, sounding a little surprised. “Leilis showed them to me—it’s so strange what happened to them, and really too bad, after Prince Tepres”—her voice softened a little on his name—“was so kind to give them to me!” She stroked her kitten possessively, smiling down at this other gift from the prince.

“I suppose Lily did something to them,” Karah added. Her tone here went a little doubtful. She added quickly, as though trying to justify such an unpleasant supposition, “Lily is jealous, Rue says. But Leilis said she’d find out for me if a similar set could be made, so the prince won’t be disappointed. Leilis is very kind, really, though she tries to hide it,” Karah added, happy again once she could think of Leilis’s kindnesses rather than Lily’s jealousy. “But why ever did
you
want them, Nemienne?”

“Mage Ankennes wants to look at them. He said he can learn things about them even though they’ve been ruined.”

“Yes,” Karah said artlessly, “that makes sense. I remember: Your Mage Ankennes was so impressed by the pipes when Lord Chontas first gave them to Prince Tepres and Lord Miennes. Of course, we all were.”

Nemienne was startled. At first she did not understand what Karah had said to startle her. Then she did, and she was at once dismayed as well as shocked. Mage Ankennes had been at that banquet? Yes, she remembered now he’d said he was going to a banquet at Cloisonné House. He’d seen the foreign lord give Prince Tepres those pipes. And he’d seen the other set given away, too.

Could he have failed to realize right then the instruments were enspelled?

But Nemienne knew, even as she wondered this, that Mage Ankennes hadn’t missed that ensorcellment at all. Horrible pieces fell into place with appalling smoothness.

“Sympathy between similar objects,” she whispered.
Unfortunately
the necessary sacrifice appears to have failed.
That was what the mage had said. “The Dragon of Lonne—the Dragon of Lirionne,” she said aloud. “Sympathy between similar objects.”

“What?” asked Karah.

“It’s a principle. Iasodde explains it in his codex. Oh, sea and sky. I wrote an essay on this…”

“Did you?” Karah was plainly mystified.

Nemienne shook her head. “This can’t be right. I must be mistaken.” But she knew she wasn’t. For the first time, she really
understood
Iasodde’s principle. She felt cold right down to her toes… She whispered, knowing it was true, had to be true, “Mage Ankennes wants to kill
Prince Tepres
in order to, to destroy the dragon. The sympathy between similar objects. He can destroy the dragon if he murders the prince. He
said
it was unfortunate it wasn’t the prince who… who died.
That
was the sacrifice he meant.”

“Wait—what?” Karah stared at her, horrified and frightened. “What are you saying, Nemienne?”

Outside, the descending sun must have begun its plunge into the western sea: The light had shifted from the gold of late afternoon toward the shadowy violets and sapphires of dusk. Nemienne felt like similar shadows were stretching out in her heart. “I think,” she whispered. “I think—”

But before she could complete the thought, the whole of Cloisonné House, maybe the whole city, abruptly went
thump
, as though caught in an earthquake. It felt like the whole House jerked sharply to one side and then the other before returning to rest.

Nemienne cried out, a thin sound that seemed to vanish in suddenly thick air. Karah gasped. Other exclamations, the crash as somebody dropped a tray, and a burst of startled laughter came from elsewhere in the House and from outside on the streets. The kitten, its little tail lashing in alarm, leaped off Karah’s knee, crouched on the floor, glared around at the room, and hissed.

And yet, Nemienne realized, in fact neither Cloisonné House itself nor the city had actually been shaken by any physical tremor. None of the little bottles or mirrors or combs on Rue’s table or in
the cabinets had even trembled. There had not been a real earthquake at all.

Nemienne had an uncomfortable conviction that she knew, at least in broad terms, what had actually given Lonne that twisting not-quite-real sideways shove.

CHAPTER 13

T
he Laodd was imposing enough from the candlelight district. When one actually stood before it, with its powerful walls rearing above and the afternoon sun blazing in its thousand windows and close at hand the roaring Nijiadde Falls drowning speech and sense as it thundered down the cliffs into its lake… “imposing” was not an adequate term. Leilis had almost changed her mind at that point, almost gone back to Cloisonné House. But pride, or stubbornness, or simply the habit of making careful decisions and then holding to them, had stiffened her resolve. Thus she had not turned away, but instead approached the guards.