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“Dref!” Eliste burst out of the doorway of the manor, hair and hair ribbons trailing down her back in a tangle. (She knew her governess would say that now that she was a girl of six she could most assuredly no longer play the young hoyden without repercussion, but she was choosing, for the moment, to ignore that, as she chose to ignore many things that she found inconvenient.) “Dref!”
Dref was sitting on the wide porch, as was frequently his custom. He was of course not permitted within the house, not unless his duties sent him on some errand there or unless he was given special leave, as when he took lessons. But he was also not permitted to take the books any farther than the porch. So on the porch he was, which suited Eliste. It made him easy to find. He had been sitting, nearly reclining, on the ground with his back to one of the wide porch railings, a book open across his knees.
“Exalted miss,” he said, unbending to give her a courtly bow that—she was now old enough to recognize—was just this side of mockery. Just.
“I’m bored,” she said, and—recognizing the lift of his brows, the parting of his lips that she knew heralded a flurry of suggestions of ways she could easily entertain herself—”and want to play Blind Boatmen.” She rattled the velvet bag that contained the pieces.
“Your governess won’t indulge you, miss Eliste?”
Eliste made a face. “She will if I make her,” she said, “but she’s terrible at it. And she always makes stupid mistakes just to end the game faster.” (Dref, on the other hand, was just enough older than her to be interesting, but not so much older that he was no fun.)
Dref laughed.
They took a seat at one of the wickerwork tables on the porch. Dref marked his place carefully in the book. As she set out the board, Eliste asked, “What were you reading?”
“A history of Strell.”
“Oh,” Eliste said, losing interest, and Dref laughed again.
“It’s more interesting than you think, perhaps.”
“Maybe,” Eliste said dubiously. “I think Blind Boatmen is much more interesting.”
Dref laid out the pieces in their separate indentations along the river-shaped board and then extended his hand, indication that Eliste should go first.
The game passed quickly, and when Eliste thought it had just started to become interesting, Dref declared in his quiet way that he had won. Eliste stared, mouth agape. Sure enough: all of his pieces were safely on his side of the ‘river.’
She let her mouth close with a snap and brooded. After a moment, she said, I don’t think you should win games against me.”
“Oh?”
She tilted her chin, imitating a gesture she had seen on her older cousins. “I think you should let me win, as I am Exalted and you are not.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
He looked like he was almost smiling, but not quite. “Ah, but that would be so much the worse. For if I lost the game on purpose, how would you ever feel the triumph of actually beating me?”
She frowned at the thought.
Dref continued, “It would surely be the greater crime—oh, practically unforgiveable, I think—to rob you of the joy of winning in truth.” He had, while speaking, been packing up the pieces, and now he rose and bowed. “Good day, Exalted miss Eliste.”
She sat back in the big wicker chair and thought about that until her furious governess finally found her.
***
It would never quite stop being unnerving, being drawn through the illusory cliff face: one minute to feel cold hard stone and the next, to pass through as easy as passing through a veil. But it was hard to remain unnerved when your guide was Uncle Quinz, with his dreamy great eyes and moth-pale demeanor.
“My dear,” he said, “my dear! How wonderful to see you!”
She followed in the familiar steps to his cottage and allowed herself to be seated in the comfortable, if shabby, chair beside the fire. (When she was younger she would not have noticed that it was shabby, but she was becoming a lady now, and such things were important.) “It’s good to see you, too, Uncle Quinz.”
“And would you like a cup of lemon tea? I was just putting the water on for myself….”
She assented, and watched with—again, for the first time—mild dismay as her uncle went about the task of preparing the tea himself: slicing thin slivers of lemon into an earthenware teapot, topping it with a handful of melissa, sweetening it with honey, and then lifting the copper kettle from its brazier and pouring the steaming water over the lot. It wasn’t that it was difficult labor, of course, but then none of what the servants did was—after all, if it was hard, an Exalted could surely do it more easily and better. But it was boring work, and there was no point in someone as talented and Exalted as her uncle doing such menial tasks as making his own tea.
“Uncle Quinz,” she said, when he handed her a thick clay mug of lemon tea, “why do you have no servants?”
“Dear child,” Uncle Quinz said, “how could I maintain the solitude necessary for my peace and my studies with servants bustling in, bustling out?”
“But you must make your tea yourself,” she said, wrinkling her nose even as she took a sip of the tea. Then a thought occurred to her. “And your food, you must make that yourself! And make your bed—and dress yourself—and mend your clothes—!”
“It is but a little inconvenience, for what I gain from it.” Uncle Quinz eased himself into the other armchair, extending his hands toward the fire.
Eliste frowned, not quite believing. Then she brightened, “But of course you can use magic to make it easier.”
Uncle Quinz smiled. “I could,” he said, “for some things, at least. But generally I do not. I wash my clothes and sweep my floor by my own labor.”
“But why? If you have the advantage of Exalted magic—”
“Magic is not easy, dearest child. It is only from the outside that it appears to be without effort. And it is best, I find, to save that effort for that which cannot be done except by magic. Like so.”
“But—” Eliste began, and then fell silent when she saw her uncle’s lips moving in silent words.
A seedling—a tiny vine—sprouted from the earth beside her left foot, just nudging her instep. It flourished and sprouted with unnatural speed: an emerald-green vinelet, sparkling with light, unfurling delicate leaves as it crawled toward the walls. A dozen—a score—a hundred other vines joined it, each one twining up the furniture or crawling towards the walls. Within seconds, Uncle Quinz’s shabby drawing-room was covered in greenery.
Then the vines ceased growing. Hundreds of buds swelled on their narrow stems, finally bursting into a multitude of luminous orchid-like blossoms. The blossoms gave of a scent both beguiling and unfamiliar: heady as roses, sweet as lilacs, spicy as cinnamon from ZuLaysa.
And then, most miraculously, most beautifully: from each orchid sprang a dragonfly, rainbow-iridescent, its humming wings singing a song as sweet as any harpsichord.
Eliste couldn’t help clapping her hands with delight. “Oh Uncle Quinz! How marvelous!”
“I am so glad you approve, my child.” He looked faintly tired, but very pleased. One of the dragonfly-singers alighted on Eliste’s hand: she could feel the feathery brush of its tiny feet, smell its perfumed scent. Then it took off again and—with its brethren—vanished into nothingness.
“Now,” Uncle Quinz said. “Perhaps you would indulge me in a game of Blue Cat?”
***
The Lily Room—so named for the border of lilies worked in alabaster at the top of the gold-silk-covered walls, and the elegantly fluted shapes of the chandeliers—had been a room for games for at least a century, or so Eliste had been told by her grandmother.
Eliste had not yet gone in. The rules for gaming in Exalted society were complicated. It was, of course, entirely appropriate for a woman (even a young woman) to play and even to gamble amongst her female friends or her family, although it was best to play for tokens rather than for anything of any value. (Her grandmother’s face had taken on the aspect of a glacier when she’d heard Aurelie suggest that she and her cousin play for chocolates, and Eliste was glad that she had not gone along with it.) It was, of course, unthinkable to consider an Exalted lady in a gaming-house, even one of the very fine and private ones, although of course Exalted gentlemen did so all the time.
Eliste was not quite sure where playing in mixed company—but in the elegant Beviaire—but in public—but for nothing but tokens and trifles—would fall, so she stayed away. Better to learn the rules, unspoken but real, than to break them unknowing.
But Gizine’s wide spaniel’s eyes could be dreadfully convincing. “Oh join us, Eliste, do,” she said. “You know Peril is best played in multiples of three, and we are only five without you!”
Stazzi vo Crev, at the table’s side, gave a little bow. “And your presence would brighten our game.”
“Ah, I see!” Merranotte said, pressing a hand to her heart in artful dismay. “Gizine and I are not luminous enough for you!”
While Stazzi continued the game, paying compliments of increasing ridiculousness to Merranotte to make up for the “insult”—and then to Gizine, who affected a pout at being left out—Eliste glanced at the board. Ah: tokens only in the betting pile. Well, and a single long silk ribbon; that had the flavor of Merranotte’s sense of humor in it. That seemed safe enough, or at least unlikely to do her reputation much harm. She permitted herself to be dealt in.
It was hard to admit it, after how firmly she had put her childhood games behind her, but Eliste had to finally admit to herself by the fourth hand that Peril was not a particularly interesting game. It had some strategy in it, but more chance, and what little strategy there was lay largely in being able to read your partners. That had been a real difficulty when playing with Zeralenn (although not, obviously, with Aurelie), but now none of her fellow players were even trying very much to conceal their intentions. She thought wistfully of playing games with Dref, where even a simple game of Blue Cat or Blind Boatmen held a challenge.
So Eliste allowed herself to barely pay attention to the game, instead turning her wit to the conversation.
“Vequi,” Gizine said, her eyes wide, “how do we know that you won’t use your Exalted talents to see our cards and thus unfairly win?”
Vequi’s smile showed the flash of his emerald-chipped teeth. He gave her a half bow. “I am an Exalted gentleman, my dear Miss vo Chaumelle. My honor prevents me. I use my magic to amuse and to enlighten, not to cheat and harm.”
“I trust you don’t hold yourself to those standards when it comes to the rabble?” Rouveel-Nezoir vo Lillevant said, looking amused.
Vequi made a gesture as if to indicate that the rabble was less than no concern to him.
“My yes,” Merranotte said. “I hear there was another riot this morning, in the Eighth District. Most crass, I think, causing such a fuss. It isn’t as though it shall do them any good in the end.”
Stazzi bowed low over her hand. “And you may be assured, in the face of any threat we will rise up like lions—we will swoop on them like eagles—like King Erzedan we will summon all that we have and drive away the chaff long before their footsteps will ever fall where your shadow has passed.”
At the last reference, Merranotte looked blank, but she recovered quickly. Eliste was startled, and did not recover so quickly, though she didn’t let her face show it. Merranotte was no fool: anyone who had seen her genius for evading the Watchdog (or, for that matter, had seen her sharpen her tongue upon some overly-forward unfortunate) knew that. But the story of how the first king of Strell had banded together the barbarian tribes of his wild country to drive the Umean forces from their borders was hardy obscure history. No one wished to be thought a bluestocking, but that was hardly—
I would have been at least as indifferent a scholar, were it not for Dref, Eliste thought suddenly. When she’d been very small, he’d patiently explained to her when she had difficulty. When he’d been a little older, she’d studied simply to prove that she would not be outdone by a serf. Had he not been there, had it been merely her and her tutors and governesses—would she to have been unable to remember the name of King Erzedan the First of Strell?
And now she had thought of Dref twice in one shot conversation, which seemed to her both remarkable and inappropriate. Why, when surrounded by the opulence of the Beviaire, with the company of the most desirable and eligible men of her own class, did her mind keep returning to Dref?
Because these men seem like background, like part of the room, like—like furniture. Furniture that makes elegant conversation, but still furniture.
And Dref was always at the foreground of anywhere he was. Dref could always be underestimated but never overlooked.
He was only a serf, and yet—
Eliste forced herself to drag her thoughts away from that and toward the conversation, which had moved on without her. But though she laughed and flirted and gossiped through the game, and could not remember even five minutes later who had won or lost, she couldn’t stop feeling disquieted.
***
Ever since Eliste had come to lodge (to lodge? to find sanctuary? to be rescued?) with Dref, it had become a pattern with them: Dref returned home from wherever he spent his days (whenever Eliste asked, he brushed it off with ‘here and there,’ or ‘making my living’) bearing food for her, and while she fell to with enthusiasm and appetite he set out the Verge board.
Eliste had grown up with Verge boards of inlaid alabaster and ebony, with thin lines of gilt to delineate the squares, and polished half-spheres of garnet and jade for the Forest side and topaz and lapis for the Sea side. Dref’s board was of course no such thing; the board was squares of common wood, dark and light wood, and the pieces were colored clay. (Although her uncle’s board had been not much finer than Dref’s—glass instead of clay, but still common, she recalled—but he had wrought a most charming illusion on it, so that the Forest pieces seemed to twine with vines or blossom with flowers, and so that the Sea pieces were enlivened by the sparkle of waves, the brilliance of a sunny beach, the sound of lapping waves.)
She was not so hungry anymore that she had to gulp her food, so today she ate at a more sedate pace. He had brought her a covered cup of cabbage-and-sausage soup, and a split roll rubbed with butter and garlic and sprinkled with hard cheese and then toasted. She could remember that once the smell of garlic struck her as unimaginably gauche, crude beyond bearing. Now the scent of the hot bread, sharp and savory, made her ravenous… though she was careful to drink the mint tisane after to clear it from her breath.
Dref’s hands were sure on the Verge board, placing a double line of Forest pieces alternating red and green, and then a triple line of Sea pieces alternating blue and gold. She found herself watching, as she chewed the last of her bread and sipped her tea, the way his long fingers dipped into the tin, the dexterity with which he placed the pieces, each centered perfectly within its square. He had always been good with his hands, of course, that was part of what had set him apart even as a child, but—
He interrupted her thoughts. “Forest or Sea for you, tonight?”
“Oh,” she said. The Forest side had the advantage of speed and flexibility; the Sea side was slower, but inexorable. In the hands of a master, either side could win. “Sea, I suppose.”
He gestured to the chair on the Sea side of the board with a bow just barely this side of mockery, but the smile on his lean face was warm. “As you will,” he said.
They played for the first few minutes in silence. Eliste had been playing Verge long enough to know at least the basic strategy for the Sea side: move cautiously, do nothing too daring, let superior numbers overwhelm your opponent. The opposite strategy, of course, was necessary for the Forest side of the board. For a little while there was no sound in the room but the crackle of the fire and the click of clay game pieces on wood.
“And how did you pass your day?” Dref asked, eventually. He had been building a chain of alternating red-and-green across the board, while she had spent her time making elaborate defenses, moving her gold pieces out to border the blue.
“I slept half the day,” she said, and sighed.
“Most likely you needed it.”
“Maybe,” she said, although she hated that weakness. While some women of the Exalted class had cultivated a mien of fainting fragility, Eliste never had: no wilted blossom was ever as beautiful as a fresh one, she had once said, nor crushed butterfly as treasured as one in full glory. She could still remember her grandmother’s expression of faintly condescending amusement at that little speech. Her grandmother. Her throat still tightened painfully at the thought. She pushed it aside, and went on, “Then I read all afternoon.”
“What did you read?” There was no mockery in his voice, now, just interest.
“The poems of Piera Ottavia.” She moved a blue piece, carefully, watching Dref’s face for a reaction to the move. Alas, his lean visage remained impassively pleasant.
“Ah. The Lanthi Ume sonnets.” Dref said. “And what did you think?”
“It depends on the sonnet?” she said, and he laughed. “Some I liked, some I didn’t. The ones about the perfection of nature seemed… facile.”
“And you a fan of Rees-Raas Zhumeau?”
She wrinkled her nose. “A fan three years ago, perhaps. Now I think rather less of Master Zhumeau.”
“Ah,” Dref said, laughter in his voice, “you learn.”
Stung by the implied superiority in his tone, she said, “And have you learned nothing yourself, since you came to Sherreen?”
That sobered him. “Indeed I have,” he said. “Many things. Good and ill.”
“Then it shouldn’t shock you that the same is true of me,” Eliste said tartly, and Dref inclined his head as if in recognition of the fairness of the point.
“And those you did like?” he said, after another quiet moment.
Eliste opened her mouth, then hesitated. The ones she had liked the best—the ones that had felt truest and most beautiful to her—were the poet’s cycle of romantic poems, about a growing love between herself and an unnamed but dangerous dark lover. And for some reason that she could not quite name—
(did not dare to name, even to herself)
—she didn’t want to say so to Dref.
But she also did not want to lie to Dref. Would not lie to Dref, not after he had saved both her life and her sanity. So instead she said, “I liked sonnets thirty-one through forty-five.”
There was another long silence, broken only by the click of game pieces on board. Eliste felt her cheeks heat and forced herself to sit straight, to banish the blush that would betray her with calm breaths. (Oh, Madame was dead, but in some way Madame would live in her. And that was yet another reason to cling to life. Madame Grandmother—!)
Then Dref said, “I believe those to be among her best, myself.”
Dref won, in the end; but Eliste was pleased to note that it was by the barest margin.
***
Their wedding was restrained, as befit a Niriennist and his bride, even if that bride was formerly-Exalted. Indeed, almost all of the guests were Dref’s friends, though many were now Eliste’s friends too… and Uncle Quinz attended, arriving through some mysterious mechanism of his own and claiming the first kiss on her cheek after the ceremony was over.
(Aurelie did not attend, of course, but Eliste had felt obliged to send word of her nuptials to Aurelie’s new lodgings in Strell—and had received an effusive and entirely inappropriate reply, accompanied by a fan dripping in Strellian lace and silk rosettes, and so absolutely inappropriate for Eliste’s current life that Eliste had laughed herself sick—as had Dref, when he’d seen it.)
And now the wedding was over, the dinner complete—well, nearly; the revelers still worked on the roast chickens while arguing political theory. But Dref had caught Eliste’s eye, and the dark glance had sent a shock of heat through her, and when he’d held out his hand in the old courtly gesture she’d taken it.
No one who grew up in the rural provinces had any illusions as to what sex was, although of course provincial ladies pretended ignorance. And while it was a conceit of the Exalted classes that their butterfly daughters knew nothing of the acts of love, the speed with which Doctor Zirque’s stocks of contraceptive (and abortificant) potions vanished gave lie to that. Eliste herself could not have had many illusions after her encounter (thankfully, stymied) with Feronte.
Still. But. And yet.
Her desire for Dref, potent as it was, warred with an anxiety that made her mouth dry. For all that she was not as ignorant as perhaps the Exalted ideal would be for a bride, still all she knew was gossip, whispers, dreadful warnings, and the actions of animals.
And all of that was hard to square with the warmth of Dref’s hand around hers as they ascended the stairs to the room they’d rented for the night, and she drew a breath that was only a little shaky. This was Dref, who she loved and trusted, and who loved her.
They reached the top of the stair and Dref pushed open the door. The fire had been lit; the bed was drawn back… and before all that was a little table with a game of Blind Boatmen laid out on it.
Her tense breath left her in a laugh. Oh, Dref. He always knew, one way or another. He was smiling at her, but right now there was no edge to it, no mockery, nothing but warmth.
“Care for a game, Exalted miss?”
She glanced at him, and then put on the Fabeque-country accent she’d used in those long terrifying weeks: “Don’t mind if I do, kind sir.” She was rewarded with the warmth of his laugh.
Eliste had decried Blind Boatmen as a baby’s game when she’d left for Sherreen, but now she recognized that it was by far the better game than Peril or Rullou, which had seemed so sophisticated to her once. Blind Boatmen was a game almost entirely of skill, not luck. In choosing where and how to deploy your pieces, where and how to move them from ‘boat’ to ‘boat,’ you had to think, to make decisions, in a way that you did not when mindlessly rolling the dice and flirting over Peril.
But it was a short game, and so it was not long after Eliste became immersed in it that she put her fingers in the last indentation and found it empty. All of her 'boats' were empty.
“I won,” Eliste said. She stared at the board. Yes: all of her pieces were on her side of the river; Dref still had three to move.
“Indeed you did,” Dref said.
She glanced up at him, suddenly suspicious. “You didn’t—”
“Let you win? No.” He smiled, that familiar flash of white teeth against his dark skin. “I told you I wouldn’t.”
She smiled then—grinned, even, an expression that had been schooled out of her as a child. An Exalted lady smiled in a decorous manner, but right now Eliste felt as though if her smile was any wider the top of her head might come off. “Well,” she said, and wasn’t sure what else to say. He had been right, after all, all those years ago.
Dref smiled back, almost as if it was his victory. And perhaps it was. He caught her hand, hovering over the board, and drew her gently to her feet. Kissed the back of her hand, and then—as was his wont—turned the gesture into something else: kissed her knuckles, her fingertips, until her blood was thudding in her throat and her temples.
He pulled gently and she came around the table, was enfolded close in his arms as he kissed her. It wasn’t the first kiss and it would not be the last but it melted her as all of them did, filling her with warmth that trembled up through her. It was as if she was both heavy and light all at once, and her arms closed around him, her hands pressed to the long lean muscles of his back.
He paused to tug the combs from her hair, sending it cascading down her back; he wound his fingers through it, soft, soft, and Eliste shivered despite the heady warmth that suffused her. He kissed her throat, caught her hand, and led her (fearless, now) to bed.