Solace Arisen (12 page)

I meticulously studied every art in which the eunuchs and old Lilies schooled us. I enjoyed when they rubbed my skin with oil, powdered my face, and fitted me with the finest dresses.

The Sovereign was indeed handsome, but was as vain and impotent as he was beautiful and it made him cruel. He forced me to do unspeakable things to try to please him. I did them, all along hoping that he would make me his wife. For a time, I was the most envied of the Lily Girls. Sapphires were braided into my hair and I wore the best, sheerest gowns. I imagined the day I would leave the confines of a Lily and take my place before all eyes as the queen of High Gheria. But I never conceived Alenius’s child, and he grew tired of me. Among the Lily Girls, I fell from the most envied to the most pitied. Then I realized I would grow old, ugly and forgotten within the walls of the Forbidden Fortress. Even being a country lord’s wife was a far better fate. I wanted to go home. I begged the clerics, but they only beat me for the audacity of asking. I’m ashamed of what I thought worth my release.

It was found in the most commonplace way. When I was a child, my father ordered a new barn. The workers digging the footings unearthed a trove of artifacts—a broken headstone, a casket containing a man’s skeleton whose bony hands locked around a sword hilt, and oddest of all, an immense collapsed rib cage. Inside the rib cage was a clear-shelled egg-shaped object filled with green wafers and silver wires.

Upon piecing together the headstone, my father found it was the marker of Paulus Lerouge’s lost grave. Now you know I told you the truth when I said your sword was Assaea.

My father believed the other thing found, the odd egg, was the Beckoner. It was said Paulus’s body was buried over The Scyon’s. Perhaps the ancients, having lost so much knowledge in those dark times, didn’t know how The Scyon was raised. Perhaps they didn’t know that there was anything inside the rib cage.

Judging the find too dangerous to reveal, my father had the footings filled and the barn built elsewhere. He reburied the creature, the Beckoner, and Paulus. The sword, however, he kept. He said it was a good thing. I didn’t bribe the Sovereign Alenius with the good thing. I wanted my father to be able to keep it. I thought the Beckoner couldn’t possibly work after so long, but that the Sovereign Alenius would like to have it as a rare artifact, would accept it as a bribe for my release.

He did want it. He sent me home to get it.

No man is supposed to look upon a Lily Girl unless the sovereign elevates her to a wife. We came and went from his chambers by an underground passage. On the day I left for home, the eunuch led me far into the tunnels. I always guessed they connected more than our compound and the Sovereign Alenius’s chamber. Although blindfolded, I remember we turned right only once. We climbed a stairway and came out in a room full of vestments. Here the eunuch removed the cover from my eyes. Leading a blindfolded girl through the Worship Hall would have aroused suspicion. I remember a dove window above the vestment room’s door.

Guards took me home. If I couldn’t produce the Beckoner, they would return me to the Forbidden Fortress.

Upon seeing the look on my father’s face when I told him my dealings, I changed my mind. I had disobeyed him not only once in refusing to marry Stellan, but a second time by revealing our family’s secret. I told the guards I had made the whole thing up because I was homesick and needed to see my family just once. My father corroborated my story. They nearly believed us until a foreman hoping for a reward led them to the site. They killed my father for his deceit. To punish me, they executed the rest of my family. To keep the Sovereign Alenius’s word, they gave me my freedom. So you see why, all my life, I have despised the Sovereign Alenius with all my being.

“You know the truth about the rest of my life. When the War of the Borderlands began, I aided the persecuted Mora Gherians who allied with Sarapost. The Janfa Gherian Clan was within a mile of my home when your grandfather Stellan bravely led a regiment in a desperate stand on the northern quarter of my land. Finally, I saw what a noble man he was. His victory was the beginning of better days. I told Stellan I preferred him to even the emperor and had tried to escape the Forbidden Fortress only because of him.

I always worried the Gherians will learn to use the Beckoner. I have prepared you as best I can if the worst comes. In the next pages are notes of all I remember of the Forbidden Fortress. It may fall to you, Nani, to avenge me on Alenius.

M
rs. Karlkin ushered Arvana to a hot bath. A towel and neatly folded chemise waited on a stand. “You were in the attic so long I thought the water would get cold,” the housekeeper said.

Arvana wondered if the woman heard her shouting and threats. Perhaps not, since she was being kind. Or she had heard and was being kinder still, knowing warm water would help release the knotty discomfort of anger. Would it help the sick feeling in her stomach from reading the diary and understanding how Lina had damned herself? Even in Hell, Lina formed herself as a Lily Girl, a Lily Girl craving the glory of the throne. She clung to vanity, to the desire to be noticed above all others, though it had caused so much pain. The irony was that in Hell, she became what she desired, but there was no one to notice.

Mrs. Karlkin handed Arvana the soap. “Call for me when you’re finished.” With a critical eye to the grimy monk’s tunic and riding breeches, she said, “I’ll find you something to wear to dinner.”

As awful as it would be to put back on her filthy clothes, she couldn’t impose on the woman. “I have another tunic in my pack.”

“I’ve served in this house as child and woman. You can’t appear at the table in the clothes you brought unless you eat with the stable hands, and I’m sure Lord Degarius would never countenance such a thing. We may live far afield in the country, but we keep civilized ways. I’ll find a proper dress.” She frowned at Arvana’s boots. “The slippers might be harder.”

Arvana thought to disagree with what Lord Degarius would countenance and assert her preference of eating with the stable hands, but Mrs. Karlkin was bustling away.

The proper dress, in Mrs. Karlkin’s judgment, was a crimson bodice and matching skirt. The slippers were a tad long, but a wad of tissue in the toes made them wearable.

“I don’t feel right wearing it,” Arvana confided as the housekeeper finished repositioning a button so the skirt’s waistband fit.

“Nonsense. It’s nearly the right size. There’s a whole closet and two wardrobes of Lady Degarius’s clothes. She always wore lovely things, but a little young for her age. She never reconciled with getting old. I kept thinking her clothes should have gone to the servants long ago to be made into holiday dresses for the children, but fate has a reason for things.” Putting her hands to her hips, she made a final appraisal. “It’s not in style, but it’s lovely on you. Anything would be, though.”

With deep reservation, Arvana looked into the full-length mirror. She had never worn a tightly fitted bodice and flowing skirt. She had gone from a Sylvanian girl’s leggings and tunic to a Solacian habit. Lina’s dress was a real woman’s robe, not made to be sensible, but becoming. The image of a fine woman stared back at Arvana. She felt like she knew this woman, but only vaguely, and here they were staring at each other. It was awkward, yet strangely compulsive. She could have stared a long while at this woman, at the gentle slope of her shoulders, at the way her chest rose and fell within the confines of the tight bodice, except the housekeeper summoned her.

“Come along. They’ll be waiting. Lord Degarius likes an early dinner.”

Mrs. Karlkin did know
that
about her master.

Arvana peeked into the rooms they passed. Every window seemed to open to a worthy view. The furniture was sturdy, yet elegant. But the place didn’t seem like
his
. Nothing had probably moved or been changed since Lina had died. They turned into the picture gallery. Mrs. Karlkin paused before a man and woman’s portraits that hung side by side. Arvana recognized Lina. The man had to be her husband Stellan. His hair was blond, like Degarius’s, and their beards were the same red. How hadn’t Lina thought Stellan grand from the start?

“The General and Lady Degarius’s marriage portraits. Behind you,” Mrs. Karlkin pointed to two smaller pictures, “is the chancellor as a boy. The other is my master at age eighteen.”

It was Degarius half a lifetime ago. His face was thinner, fresher, but the portrait’s eyes had the same resoluteness. The artist had captured their sky-blue color perfectly.

“A handsome boy. But he’s a handsomer man, don’t you think?” asked Mrs. Karlkin.

“Y-yes.”

“It’s time he had a new portrait made, one befitting the master of this house. Perhaps when he marries. The Maker knows I thought it would never happen and this place would fall into his cousin’s hands. But now—such a story—fighting a prince. I know my master. He’d never do it except for the best of reasons. Many a woman in Sarapost wishes herself in your place.”

So this was the cause of the fuss. Mrs. Karlkin didn’t know her master half as well as she thought.
No woman in Sarapost, or anyplace else, would wish herself in my place
.

“Most of the Sarapostan and Acadian units are camped by the headwaters of the Odis River,” Degarius’s father said. “A dozen Gherian units, under the command of Alenius’s brother, are on the other side.”

“Is Prince Fassal on the front?” Degarius asked. He rubbed his clean-shaven face. It was amazingly good to be rid of the beard.

“He’s field marshal.”

“Field marshal?” Out the dining room windows, the dry grassy expanse was glowing golden in the sunset. Degarius pictured himself a general and the draeden swooping down upon his formations. Fassal would be in that exact position if they did not succeed at the Forbidden Fortress. Thinking aloud, he said, “I need one of the elders to give me a clan mark.”

“Thorwold can. May I suggest taking the coach and traveling as a cabinetman to the Worship Hall for the Winter Solemnity? You won’t be suspected.”

“A cabinetman?” He was about to make a snide remark about pasty, bald government men, when he remembered that his father was one, and Miss Nazar, in a red dress, appeared in the dining room doorway. His chest lurched into his throat, and his breeches stretched uncomfortably tight. Damn, what was that about? He wasn’t a boy without self-control. How in the hell was he supposed to stand and pull out her chair? “Did Mrs. Karlkin give you the dress?”

She took a step backward. “I’ll change into my riding gear. It makes no difference to me.”

Damn her. He hadn’t meant it that way. He could care less if she wore one of Lina’s old dresses. Mrs. Karlkin was a good manager upon whom he could depend to arrange such things, but—he looked at his own starched, immaculate cuffs—he should have given the order. That was all.

His father, thankfully, rose, pulled a chair out for her and said of her resolve to change, “Do no such thing. Knowing what you propose to undertake, my mother would be pleased.”

As Miss Nazar sat, the bodice of her dress gaped open. How could the last thing on earth he needed to think about be the first thing on his mind? He looked adamantly to his father and asked in reference to the command of the division he was to have had, “Who has the third?”

“Reisten was made general,” his father replied.

The servers began to bring out dinner.

“I’m astonished by his appointment,” Degarius said. “He has few connections and is competent. Was he your recommendation?”

“I can’t take the credit. I had already resigned.” Of Miss Nazar, he asked, “Would you care for wine?”

“Yes.”

Degarius avoided looking at her as he poured the wine.
That
trap wouldn’t waylay him again. “You should go back to Sarapost,” he said to his father. “Fassal will need you.”

“No, I served my time. If you worry about my intrusion into your home—”

“You will stay here as long as you wish.” It was reassuring to Degarius that if he didn’t return, the land would be in the immediate family’s possession a while longer before transferring to a second cousin.

“I couldn’t wait to get away from Ferne Clyffe,” his father said. “You could never wait to come. Lina left it in the right hands. The place deserved someone who’d care for it properly.”

He wouldn’t say his father was right, but he was. Though his father had grown up here, he had no notion of how it ran. Degarius poured himself another glass of wine, one to go with the roast pork with apples. It seemed forever since he’d had a decent bottle and real, honest food, most of it from his own land. He’d been away so long he’d forgotten the pleasure of sitting at the head of his own table and having everything as
he
pleased. “Bring another bottle of wine,” he called to the steward.

After dinner, his father fell into recounting the anecdotes he’d accumulated from years of meeting nearly every noble in the region. Miss Nazar was an attentive audience. Maybe the stories were interesting. Degarius had heard them so many times he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter, though. His father was happy. Degarius pushed the thought to the back of his mind that he might never share such a meal with him again.