Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (19 page)

After the bath, Zephele wraps Malora in a big fleecy cloth and seats her on a stool before a looking glass to comb out her hair. Delicious smells waft from the next room, making Malora’s stomach gurgle. Closer in, Zephele’s scent, even more than the lavender and the lime, tantalizes her. It is a warm, horsey fragrance combined with something more complex and spicy. “What is your scent?” she asks.

“Wild jasmine. Isn’t it divine? We don’t cultivate jasmine here, so we must obtain precious vials of the essence from the market at Kahiro. Then Orion mixes it with water and a little olive oil. He hates that I want just the single scent and not some fearfully complex concoction he can cook up in the cauldron of his distillery. He says single-scent aromas lack lyricism and potency. I put it behind my ears and on the insides of my wrists and brush it into my coat and tail. The essence comes from the far west, borne to Kahiro by Dromadi caravans. Don’t you love the sound of that?” Her voice lowers to a dramatic pitch as she intones, “
Borne to Kahiro by Dromadi caravans
. One day, I shall journey to Kahiro in a caravan of my own and roam the bazaar to my heart’s content. Well, not exactly
by myself
, of course—I’ll have scads
of bodyguards, for everyone knows that young females aren’t safe on the streets of Kahiro, and the only daughter of the Apex of Kheiron even less so. Imagine being someplace that’s not safe. How
exhilarating
!”

Zephele stops combing Malora’s hair and flaps her arms. “Now I know how the Twani feel. This is hard work!”

Malora loves the sensation of Zephele’s hands in her hair and hopes she won’t stop. Still, she feels guilty being taken care of and says, “I
can
comb my own hair, you know.”

“Can you really? There are so many snarls in here, I was thinking your hair might never before have made the formal acquaintance of either comb or brush. I’m almost done. Ah, Sunshine, there you are, my darling little Twan!”

The female Twan looks much the same as the males Malora has seen, except she has a long, furry tail trailing down between her legs. The Twan edges into the marble convenience, carrying a big reed-woven pack on her back. Malora sees how the Twan has come by her name. Sunshine’s hair is bright reddish-orange and stands out around her face like the rays of a miniature sun, in the center of which her big golden eyes are glum and lifeless.

“Whatever’s the matter, Sunshine?” Zephele asks.

“Your lady mother came to your rooms to find you,” Sunshine whispers. “She questioned why I would be working so hard to clean brushes that were already spanking clean, miss.”

“Oh, Hands! And did you tell her I had ordered you to do so?” Zephele asks, pausing only briefly in her combing.

“I did, miss, and she told me I must be more insistent about not getting caught up in useless tasks. I must stay with you,” Sunshine says, wringing her hands, “and protect you.”

“What from? Squirrels?” Zephele asks with a frown.

“But don’t worry. Even though it was Herself who did the asking, I would never presume to insist,” she says.

“Thank you, Sunshine, I do appreciate your kind consideration. Now go curl up on a cushion and get yourself some sleep. I’ll wake you when I’m ready to leave. And thank you for bringing such an abundance of wraps. Did you bring the belts and brooches and the other things I asked for?”

The Twan nods and sets down the big pack, then departs.

“Poor Sunshine!” Zephele sighs at the ceiling. “It’s not easy being the Twan of Zephele Silvermane.”

“The Twani seem to like to sleep,” Malora says.

“Oh, it isn’t that they
like
to sleep, darling. They
need
to sleep. Honus thinks the reason they all die so young—they don’t live much longer than twenty-five years, poor dears—is that they don’t let themselves sleep as much as they need to, so intent are they on serving us. Honus told me this fact when I was three, and Sunshine, who was a mere kit of one and a half years at the time, had just come to me. I determined from that day forth that I would not be responsible for the early death of my Twan. I let her sleep whenever she likes. Sometimes I even stand over her and
order
her to sleep. At the rate she is going, she will outlast me! Would you like me to plait your hair? I know how. Sunshine plaits my tail, but Herself used to let me plait hers all the time before it got all white and straggly. Oh, I hope I never grow old, don’t you? The old can’t possibly enjoy their lives as much as the young and vital do.”

Thinking of her careworn mother, Malora is inclined to agree. “How long do centaurs live?” she asks.

“They say Kheiron the Wise lived two hundred years, but I think he must have been different from the rest of us, because most centaurs expire when we are sixty or seventy years of age, unless fever or snakebite or disease takes us. Centaurs have very sensitive stomachs. The Apex before Father died of colic at the Golden Horse banquet table. It was considered quite portentous because it was the last time an Apex won the Horse. Everyone thinks my father frightfully brave for being so bent on winning the Horse because what if he were to drop dead at the banquet table just like his successor? There!” Zephele holds up a hand mirror so Malora can see her hair from behind. Zephele has plaited Malora’s hair into a single long braid and tied it with a blue ribbon. “Do you like it? I think it looks cunning! You can wear it down the center of your back, or you can flip it over your shoulder like this.”

It looks just like Zephele’s tail! Malora is charmed.

Zephele takes the mirror back and stares at her reflection in dismay. “I wish I could grow my hair like yours and show it. If they make you wear a cap, I’ll throw a tantrum. We’ll just have to make up some excuse.” She squints as she conjures one up. “Let’s see. We’ll say that hats give humans brain fever. Would that be a violation of the Edict against the telling of falsehoods? Oh, well! Now, let’s see about dressing you. Tell me when you see something you like.”

Zephele lifts the pieces of fabric from the basket and flaps them out, then drapes them across the table before Malora. “I’m more than happy to give these to you. I told West to tell Sunshine to bring anything with blue or green in it because we want to bring out the color of your eyes. You have such
remarkable eyes. The centaurs’ eyes are round, but yours tilt upward. Did all of the People have slanted eyes?”

“My father did,” Malora says.

“He must have been very handsome … for a human, at any rate.”

“All the women thought so, but he had eyes only for Thora.”

“See? That’s romance for you. Centaurs could do with a little more romance.”

Malora points to one that is blue with green and gold threads. It has a watery sheen to it. “I like this.”

“Oh, Hands! The human has taste.” Zephele drapes the fabric over Malora’s right shoulder, leaving her left shoulder bare in the centaurean style. Then she wraps the fabric around Malora’s body and stands back to study the effect through narrowed eyes. She shakes her head and frowns. She wraps and rewraps Malora’s body several times while Malora stands patiently with her arms held away from her sides. She feels like a giant doll in the hands of a commanding child. “Did all the People have this lovely skin color? Some of us are as black as coal, some as yellow as saffron, others as pale as chalk, but none of us is quite this divine color. As red as a clay pot. It’s very pretty, indeed, and we want to show just enough of it to intrigue but not so much as to violate the immodesty Edict. What a shame there isn’t some handsome young human to properly savor your beauty.”

Malora stares down at her feet. Whenever this thought occurs to her, she feels wistful and sad. How wonderful would it be to come across another human, a male human,
handsome and kind and good with horses like Aron, only younger and with his wits intact.

Zephele misinterprets. “You needn’t worry about your toes. I had a quick conference with Orion earlier. We discussed having Cylas Longshanks, the cobbler, make some covering for your feet. Your toes are delightfully unique but so very vulnerable-looking, and we don’t want any clumsy-hoofed centaurs smashing them flat. It’s bad enough for us maidens dodging them on the jubilation dance floor, but you, with those tiny little things wiggling out there in the open, why, they’d be trampled like the grapes of the Silvermane Vineyard. There, now. Walk across the room and turn to face me.”

The fabric is wrapped so tightly around her that Malora is reduced to small, mincing steps. She is sure that the mirrors in the Apex’s receiving room will confirm that she looks like a large silkworm in a blue-green cocoon. “It will be difficult to run. And I won’t be able to ride.”

“Oh, there’s no need to run in Mount Kheiron. There are far too many hills, and besides, it isn’t done,” Zephele says dismissively. “And riding, well, not even the two-legged Twani ride horses. Horses pull carriages and plows.”

Malora teeters. “I don’t think I can even
walk
. Can we perhaps cut the cloth in half and wrap me slightly less snugly and only down to my knees?”

Zephele nods slowly, tapping her pretty little chin. She takes Honus’s shaving blade and slices the fabric in half. Then she rewraps Malora as requested. Zephele fishes a handful of sashes and belts out of the pack. She wraps a wide purple sash around Malora’s waist and ties it. “Perfection!”

“What do you wear for warmth?” Malora asks.

“Heavier wraps. Brocades and wools and velvets. And sometimes fur capes. I have the most heavenly sable cape. If you ask him nicely, Orion will get you a sable cape. Ask him for two, why don’t you?”

Out in the bush, the sable, with its distinctive sickle-shaped horns, was almost pitifully easy to kill. “I can get my own sable,” Malora says.

“By running the poor creature to ground and killing it?” Zephele says. “No, no, no, you’ll do no such thing. Listen to me, my dear little Otherian, you have to get all of this hunting and killing business out of your head now that you’re here. It simply won’t do. Not only is it against at least four Edicts, it’s unspeakably disgusting and I’ll not hear one more word about it.”

In a daze, Malora follows her bossy new centaur friend out into the larger room, where Honus stands at the massive stone hearth stirring something in a big black pot over a fire. She wonders what the pot is made of. It doesn’t look like clay. More such pots sit warming to the sides.

“May I present to you the new Malora Ironbound!” Zephele announces.

Freshly showered, in a blue wrap that matches his eyes, Orion looks up from the table, where a book lies open. The table, which was cluttered earlier, has been cleared, moved out into the middle of the room, and covered with a white cloth. West is setting down plates and goblets and an impressive array of eating implements.

“She looks very fine, indeed,” Orion says, closing the book and setting it aside, “and I have no doubt is ravenous, for all the time you’ve taken in the convenience. Come on, you two beauties, let’s sit down and eat.”

West pulls out a chair and offers it to Malora. “Very pretty wrap, miss. I guess we’ve seen the last of the leopard skin?” He brushes against her shoulder, and she finds herself releasing a held breath.

Zephele says, “I forbid anyone to mention that vile thing while we’re eating. Or ever again, for that matter.”

Honus brings over a pot from the hearth and sets it down in the middle of the table. “You catch me ill-prepared for two-legged visitors,” he tells Malora. “I have but two chairs. One for my desk and an easy chair for my terrace. I will let you have my easy chair.”

With its soft, dark red cushions, the chair is aptly named. Honus serves Malora from the pot. “This is one of my specialties. I call it Barley Surprise.”

Malora glances around to see what the others are doing. The centaurs on the trail ate with large silver spoons. At this table, the implements sit beside their bowls in a baffling row. The implements her tablemates hold look remarkably like miniature silver hay forks to her. She picks up hers and turns it slowly in her hand, then pokes it into the Barley Surprise, about which there is little to surprise her. It is a meatless stew with carrots and root vegetables and onion and bits of fungus, which she eats while trying not to impale her tongue on the hay fork. The others don’t seem to be having any difficulty. They talk easily as they eat. While Malora concentrates on mastering the implement, Orion recounts the lion story. Honus and Zephele listen, their implements arrested halfway to their mouths.

“The lion was old,” Malora breaks in, but none of them pays her the least mind. Their eyes are wide as they take in Orion’s tale.

Later on, while Malora finishes the Surprise, she breaks in on Orion again to say, “It wasn’t a spear. It was a fence post and far too dull to have ever penetrated the lion’s tough old hide. This thing would have served me better,” she adds, brandishing the miniature hay fork.

West removes the fork from her upheld hand and takes her empty bowl. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, miss.” He sets down a bigger bowl filled with a thick, fragrant orange soup with chunks of black bread. “You’ll like this, too,” he says.

“And then there was the asp that visited us on our last night in the bush.” Orion dips a large spoon into his soup.

“The asp,” Malora quickly explains, taking up her happily familiar spoon, “was attracted to the heat of our campfire.”

“There we were,” Orion says, his eyes alight with the memory, “sitting around the campfire, enjoying a hot cup of tea before we trundled off to our tents, when this small, harmless-seeming snake comes slithering out of the darkness into our midst. It comes up between me and Theon.

“ ‘That snake is deadly poisonous,’ Malora announces in the most unimaginably casual way. ‘Stay where you are and don’t move.’ Theon, poor fellow, freezes like the temple statue of Kheiron, sweat popping out all over his brow. Before any of us moves, Malora Ironbound leaps up and grabs the snake by the tail, whips it around over her head, and flings it into the flames. Sizzle! Pop! No more snake! Now that,” Orion says, “is what I call
style
.”