It was too great a distance for either of them to see each other’s faces clearly, but Margaret felt that did not matter to Rupert and the old woman. The plum-coloured rush of shadow and wind blew over them, lifting the dark hair from his forehead; his hands flickered—a swift black-and-blue electric prickle ran in the air. But even as Margaret braced herself, unsure of what would follow, it drained away with the wind. The broken shadows of the woodshore slashed back and forth and the old woman, slipping out of their gaze, disappeared among them.
11 | The Overlord
That evening after supper Margaret sat alone in her room, grateful for the windy quiet and solitude, her muscles aching, her nerves raw, and lost herself in filling the blank pages of her little book with notes on the past three days. Her hand had begun to ache along with the rest of her, her eyes were beginning to smart, and she had put her pen down, thinking she was finished, when another image darted into her mind, silky red and sinuous, like the dragons on Mark Roy’s robe. She picked up her pen again.
I spoke with Mark Roy this evening before coming up to my room. Somehow he got out of me, in one of those moments in which politeness must disarm my tongue, that I am leaving tomorrow, and I was surprised to see that he seemed genuinely sorry. Perhaps he believes Centurion and Lord Gro. Perhaps my episode in the woods has helped prove to him that I am not willingly Rupert’s pawn, that I should wish better things for them—as if wishing had any weight. He was sorry, and urged me to visit them in Orzelon-gang’s capital some day. Of course I told him that I would—what else could I have said?—and he began to tell me of its beauty, a little like a man who is homesick, and the strange thing was that I felt he was painting a portrait of his wife as he spoke. He talked of the black marble that is native to Plenilune, with which his home is made, and of the many little streams and pools that run all through it, making music in the background, and the great red and gold fish that they keep which flicker like flames in the watery dark. He spoke of the golden dragons which are the doorposts of the house, of the lotus gardens that make the grounds look as if the sky has come down among them when the plants are all in bloom. I thought of strange, beautiful Romage and her harp-music, of the red-and-gold thread of her hair and song, and the huge orchestral dark behind her, and wondered if Mark Roy thought of that too when he spoke of his home, and if that was why he sounded homesick.
To be homesick for such a place! My heart ached so deeply as he spoke to me and though I did my best not to be rude, I fear I must have been because I have no place like that, and I know it, and I had to come away as quickly as I could for fear I should cry in front of him like a little girl. At least Romage, when she left her home among her own people, had a lovely place like that to go to. Mark Roy clearly loves her, and though I am not sure what I think of Brand, I do like Aikin: she must be very proud of him. I wish—I wish I had that kind of luck. Or grace. Or providence. I do not know what to call it, only I know I do not have it, and I wish so badly—badly enough to break this pen with the force of it—I wish so badly I had it too.
There was a rustle, louder than the silken rustle of her candle-flame, and a soft knock at the door. Broken from her grey, sorrowful reverie, Margaret put down her pen and set aside the book in the shadow where the ink ran with the darkness and could not be read.
“Come in.”
It was Aikaterine who entered, lamp aloft, the light rushing sharply and swiftly against her cheeks. “It is nearly ten-thirty,” she murmured. “I have come up to get you ready for bed.”
The weariness which Margaret had blindly been holding in check suddenly washed over her, warm and smothering, and she relaxed into her chair, bending at the small of her back. “Of course. I had lost track of the time.”
They said no more for a space. The cold winter quiet, full of the murmur of the wind outside the window, fell over them. Aikaterine shut the door and set the lamp next to the candle on the dressing table and began taking down Margaret’s hair. The clean, clear scent of pine fell with it and it was a sweet, bitter-sweet perfume. While the girl worked, Margaret looked down at her hands and felt with the flats of her thumbs the raw, sore places on her palms where she had fallen in the stream-bed gravel. That nightmare seemed impossible and far away. She wished she could believe it had never happened; thinking about it made her shiver with the closeness of its danger. How flippantly she had taken it at the time! She had been sick, and cold, and numb, but now, in the sea-shell hollow of her turret room, the horrible clearness of it brushed aside her hair and whispered at her ear and her heart quickened with the fear of it.
“Your dress,” said Aikaterine.
She got up, turned in the light, and let the maid take apart the heavily embroidered white silk gown she wore; fold on fold of golden etching twinkled in the yellow light as it was drawn off her pale, chill-crawling skin.
It is a beautiful gown. I will wear it back home and show it to the fox, and perhaps he will like it, and it will cheer him a little.
As if recoiling from a nasty taste of medicine, she turned her head from herself, realizing belatedly that she had called it
home
.
Aikaterine straightened from putting away the gown and looked over the room. Margaret, seated on the edge of the bed, finished tying the neck of her sleeping gown and looked back at the maid, quizzical. “I think that if you have no more need of me I will go,” the other said. “My lord is meeting with the other great ones and he may need my service.”
Margaret sat back, seeing, not Aikaterine, but the swiftly checked ring of men around the hunting fire, the thing that had almost come above the surface held just out of sight. It had been narrowly avoided then: it was coming into the open tonight. Aikaterine, seeing whatever look was on her face—she was not conscious of making a face—looked quizzical in turn. “Skander Rime meets with the others tonight?” Margaret echoed. Then, more cautiously, “What for?”
The other seemed to hesitate, her almond-coloured eyes sliding away and fixing for a moment on something in the distance. “For us, Lady Margaret,” she said at last, huskily. “They meet for us and to know what our fate is.”
Margaret did not remember getting to her feet. At one moment she was seated on the edge of the bed, turned sidewise to see Aikaterine, and the next she was standing before the maid, looking just a little downward into the other’s face, with her forefingers resting heavily on the white-clad shoulders. She could feel the collar bone sharp beneath her fingertips and, at odd, punctuated moments, the soft throb of blood beneath the skin. But it was the eyes she looked into, the almond-coloured, dark-spangled eyes that looked back demurely into her own. There was no fear in them, but there was, perhaps, little hope, too.
Hardly aware of what she did, hardly knowing what she would say, Margaret took her hands away and stepped back. “C-come to me again within half an hour, Aikaterine.”
And Aikaterine herself said nothing, but turned down her lashes over her eyes and broke away. Margaret did not see her go—she was looking out the round window on the sea of darkness below—but she heard the latch click behind her.
It came to her clearly in the long silence afterward that she was being a fool, but even as the knowledge came to her she knew as certainly that she did not care. Careful not to think about it much, she slowly went through the motions of drying her book page and putting it safely away. She had finished and was sitting up in bed with time to spare when, as she knew would happen, there was a brisk knock at the door and Rhea, without waiting to be called upon, stepped in.
The two looked at each other coolly. Margaret was afraid that the maid’s witching eyes would see past her own careful mask of annoyance, but if she did, she did not say so.
“I see that my lady is to bed. Is there anything she needs else?”
Margaret broke her gaze and moved a pillow to a more comfortable position. “No, though you may dust the room and wash the floor, if you like. I am tired enough, I would not hear you bang about.”
“The dusting and washing can wait until tomorrow,” Rhea replied dryly. “I will go, then, it please us both.”
“No doubt it will.”
“Shall I take the lamp?”
For a moment Margaret cast wildly for an excuse to keep the lamp which would not raise the suspicions of the wildcat Rhea. She knew an excuse should come. If heaven loved her at all, an excuse should come…but none came, so she said with a jerk of her shoulders, “You can if you like. I would as soon put it out anyway.”
With noiseless tread, the light hardly penetrating her well-like eyes, Rhea came in and took the lamp away, pausing only once at the door to look back over the latch like a nursemaid being sure her ward was going to sleep. It was at least the truth that Margaret was bone-tired, every length of muscle raw and sore and every nerve threadbare, and as Rhea shut the door the young woman half wished Aikaterine would forget and not come back, because the bed was soft and the blankets were warm, and she was so very tired…
It seemed Rhea had only just gone when the door opened again and a slim figure slipped in, shutting it again almost at once. Margaret sat up in bed, squinting against the blue-steel dark. The figure was not dressed in white. It
was
Aikaterine, was it not?
“Your pardon, my lady,” came Aikaterine’s voice. “I thought it best that I not knock nor make any noise.”
“You thought well.” Margaret pushed back the covers and swung out into the cold air. “I need my slippers and a dressing gown—a heavy one, for it is cold.”
Even as she was saying it Aikaterine was across the room and kneeling on the balls of her feet before the trunk, the lid flung back, hauling out the wine-dark gown, ringstreaked with angry fire-colour, rich with brown marten fur that would be warm and soft against her skin. Margaret shoved her feet into the slippers and held out her arms for the gown—it settled heavily, almost ominously, about her thin body—and then she beckoned for Aikaterine to lead the way.
They went without a light. Margaret had to feel her way by the sound of Aikaterine’s feet, but the girl was so light-footed and swift and sure that it was alarmingly easy to lose her in the dark. Several times as they stole down the passageway she felt Aikaterine reach back and touch her hand to reassure her, to give her her bearings. They came to the steps, and that was easier, for the steps were evenly spaced and she had gone up and down steps all her life so that it was as natural as breathing to go down them. After that it was hard, though they passed through one hallway that bore lamps, and the lamplight played furiously in the orange of Margaret’s gown and silver on the fur, and she got turned about and lost all sense of direction by the time they slipped through the kitchen, down a little wine-smelling passage, and tiptoed down an old wooden stair toward a distant yellow light and a distant yellow sound of voices.
Aikaterine gestured to her lips. Margaret nodded, peeved that the other thought she had to be told to keep quiet. Hand upon the banister she slid soundlessly down after Aikaterine, each calf aching as she placed all her weight with care on the balls of her feet, and finally stood in a low, narrow, stone-walled hallway that smelled powerfully and richly of wine and hops and, elusively, of earth. There was lattice-work in the hallway-wall of the little room from which came the voices; if they stood too tall or moved too quickly, the people within would be able to see the light breaking up in flickering diamond patterns on their faces. Bending low out of the light, Margaret followed Aikaterine to the far side of the door and propped herself up against the wall so that she could get a wide view of the room within without being seen herself.
A man stooped and tossed a log into the fireplace with a bang and tinselly crash. It was cold in the hallway; Margaret wished she could huddle in front of that fire which was flinging its waving bars of light up the man’s face—it was Aikin, looking stern, his fine lips set in a firm, uncompromising line. He looked blood-coloured now in the orange light, not pale, as he turned back to the others arranged about the room. Margaret could see many of them sitting at a rough wooden table on benches. Brand was backed up against a wall beam, arms crossed and pulled tight, looking out from under his brows with fierce, animal-wary eyes. Centurion was pacing, a swinging prance in his step, like a horse before it is led to the gate and the racetrack. Mark Roy sat placidly at the table, Lord Gro and Skander beside him, both looking withdrawn and grim. Rupert, sitting on Brand’s side of the fire with his face toward the door and the firelight on his face, was a smooth, lounging, easy figure who seemed to hold the whole room with a dark power, lightly, in the hollow of his hand.
“And now we will speak of it, that thing which we could not speak of before, as if it were too sharp for tender ears?” Malbrey mocked. Margaret strained but could not see him from where she stood.
“In the ears of many of us,” returned Mark Roy smoothly, “ ’tis very sharp.”
Rupert turned his head toward them. He was graceful, easy, polite—biding his time, Margaret thought, because he held the mouse in his teeth already. Under languid, drooping lids he regarded them, a faint smile catching at his mouth. “Have I faithfully met your strictures, gentlemen? Have I not done all you asked of me and bowed my neck beneath your yoke?”
I am a yoke then, am I?
Margaret’s face heated with disdain.
“Time runs into the well at the world’s end, gentlemen,” he went on. “We cannot keep Plenilune from her overlord forever.”
There was a swift tension in the room—Margaret had the image of a great bird of prey sucking in its breath and fluffing out its feathers defensively—but for a long moment it seemed no one had anything to say against Rupert. Finally it was Skander, looking at the hand in which he clasped his ale-stein, who said quietly,
“But have you, coz?”
The firelight glinted redly in Rupert’s eye as he looked toward the gentle, probing, daring voice—glinted redly on his teeth as he lifted his lips in a cool smile. “I am playing the long game. But the game has gone on too long with Plenilune, and that is the true heart of this matter.”