The Storyspinner (17 page)

Chapter 47

Rafi

Lady DeSilva held tight to her brother’s arm as he escorted her into the dining hall. To Rafi, it looked like she was gripping too tightly, hoping to hold Fernando in Santiago by her fingernails alone.

She’d been ecstatic to see her brother—slipping into a fishwife patter and begging all the details of her native state—and angry that he planned to leave before Rafi’s official naming ceremony. She called him a fish-swiving fool and several other curse phrases that made Rafi’s ears burn. Ladies did not speak like that, especially his lady mother.

Fernando took it all in stride, waiting for her tirade to end, before saying simply, “Inimigo killed my son.”

That one simple statement ended the argument abruptly, though Rafi could tell from the calculating look on his mother’s face that their discussion was far from over.

The serving staff set an extra plate, between Rafi and his mother, so they wouldn’t have to ask the Duke of Belem to move down a chair. Lady DeSilva fretted a moment that her brother would feel slighted to sit on his nephew’s left-hand side rather than his right.

“Good glory, woman!” Fernando said as he dropped into the chair. “Living in Santiago has made you soft. If it’s going to make you blue in the face with worry, I’ll sit on the floor with the dogs.”

“You certainly are filthy enough,” she said, much to the amusement of everyone within hearing distance. “We could have waited till you had time to change.”

“No need to hold dinner for me.”

“Hear! Hear!” Belem said, waving a greasy chicken leg above his head. “My stomach couldn’t wait a moment longer, and the Duke of Impreza can impress us with his fine southern silk tomorrow.”

Rafi exchanged a look with his uncle, letting the older man determine whether or not to address his planned departure.

“I’ll be leaving in the morning, Belem.” Fernando sliced a piece of chicken into small precise bites. “I have matters to address at home.”

Despite having already swilled three glasses of wine, Belem wasn’t drunk enough to believe that excuse. He nodded a few times and wiped his oily fingers on the linen he’d tucked into his collar. “Heard Inimigo’s coming, eh?”

Heads at the lower tables turned with interest to the dukes’ conversation.

“Among other things,” Fernando said, eyeing his sister sharply.

Rafi guessed his mother had kicked Fernando under the table. Rafi had been the recipient of bruised shins and crushed toes when his mother wanted him to change the topic or hurry along a conversation.

Fernando cleared his throat. “We’ve had some pirate attacks along our coast. I came with only a small guard so we could travel light and fast, as not to diminish our troops at my southern port.”

“That’s most unfortunate,” Belem said, reaching for the pudding that had been set in front of him. “The girl they’ve hired to sing for us is exquisite, and I’m not talking about her voice. She’s a petite thing, and young, but there’s something about her mouth that makes me forget I’m a married man.”

Rafi’s hand tightened around his cutlery till the metal grip bit into his palm. “It doesn’t take much.”

Belem laughed, slamming Rafi across the shoulders with a meaty hand. “Too true!”

While they ate, Lady DeSilva carried the conversation and carefully sidestepped all of Belem’s crass comments. She handled them smoothly and with a skill Rafi knew he lacked.

She should be duchess in more than name,
he thought as he scooped fried yucca into his mouth.
Maybe a few more years with her as regent would do all of Santiago well.

“As the first round of desserts has been served, why don’t you announce our entertainment?” Lady DeSilva gave her son a wide-eyed look in warning.

Rafi wiped the frustration off his face and pushed away from the table.

The kitchen was a flutter of activity as always, but most of it seemed centered around the two little boys sitting at the kneading table. Someone had washed them both up, though Michael’s hair stood up straight in the back, and his mouth was circled with powdered sugar.

Johanna clucked at them, every bit the mother hen. She wiped her youngest brother’s face and placed a kiss on his forehead, leaving a smear of lip stain.

“Ew, Jo!” Michael rubbed at the spot, making it worse and earning a smile from his sister.

She does have a pretty mouth,
Rafi realized as she applied a matching kiss to Joshua’s forehead. He bore it with more patience than Michael, ignoring her attentions and popping a pastry into his mouth in one bite.

“Chew, Joshua.” She pulled the basket away from him. “It’s not going to disappear. No one is going to steal them from you.”

On impulse Rafi snatched the basket from under her arm and pushed it back in front of the boy. “I don’t know if I’d believe that. Have you met Dom and seen all his pockets?”

Both boys nodded, eyes wide with interest.

“Where do you think he gets the food he fills them with?”

Joshua hugged the basket to his chest as if he expected Dom to appear and steal all the remaining rolls away. Michael’s little hand wedged under his brother’s arm and grabbed as many rolls as he could hold.

Cook smacked Rafi on the shoulder with her wooden spoon. “Don’t you listen to him. There’s plenty. You eat your fill and then eat some more.”

Rafi grinned at the murderous look on Cook’s face, but his smile faltered when he realized Johanna was also giving him the evil eye.

Her neck had turned red and her pretty mouth was pressed flat.

I’m always stepping in it with her. She gets so blasted angry when
I’m around.
Though she probably had good reason to dislike him. He had beaten her to a bloody pulp.

“Dessert has been served. Are you prepared to Storyspin, Miss Johanna?” He offered her his arm.

Johanna reached for the long cloak that hung on Michael’s chair. She tied the cloak’s thread across her throat and tossed the sides behind her shoulders, leaving the majority of her green gown exposed. It looked heavy and uncomfortable, but Rafi had seen many Storyspinners and knew their capes were much like Dom’s pockets: full of surprises.

“The question is, are you ready, my lord?” she asked with a smirk that spoke of a secret.

They repeated their walk into the dining hall as protocol dictated: the welcome, the announcement of the performance, the curtsy—and then Rafi had to kiss her hand.

He hesitated a moment, the intensity of her gaze a lash across his bowed neck.

She hates me.

Rather than offend her further, his lips barely grazed her knuckles. An actual kiss from him, even on her hand, would not have been welcome.

She finished her curtsies to each of the tables in turn, but Rafi didn’t watch. He was too confused by the look on his uncle’s face.

“Where did you find her?” Fernando asked, grabbing Rafi’s arm as he sat down. “Where did she come from?” A deep line furrowed the man’s forehead, but he only had eyes for Johanna.

What was it about the girl that had the dukes, even the long-widowed Fernando, panting like dogs in late summer? She was attractive, but there were a lot of beautiful women in Santarem. There was even a decent selection in the dining hall.

“She’s much too young for you, Uncle.” Rafi forced humor into his tone.

“Oh, I disagree there. Women are not like wine. They’re better before they age.” Belem winked at Lady DeSilva. “Present company excluded.”

The lady ignored the comment and answered her brother’s question. “Johanna is the daughter of two Performers. Her father was killed in a tragic accident, and she lives near the Milners’ mango orchard now.”

“Unfortunate,” Belem mumbled as he shoveled a bite of dessert into his mouth. “A girl like that needs a man in her life. Or a duke.”

Fernando and Lady DeSilva didn’t seem to hear Belem, too involved in their whispered conversation.

Rafi leaned back in his chair, waiting for Johanna to begin her story and to dispel the horrible mental picture of her snuggled in his uncle’s arms. Or Belem’s for that matter.

She reached into her cloak and threw a fine black powder high into the air. It hung like a glistening sheet of fog, hiding her from the audience’s eyes. She lowered her voice, speaking softly, but it still carried to every corner of the room.

The story was that of a huntsman, lost in a dark forest. Awful beasts stalked him, and Johanna’s pale hands danced across the fog, giving the impression of a great chase.

A spark appeared off to the left, her arm held far from her body. She tossed the glowing fleck into the cloud of dust. The entire thing ignited, illuminating Johanna like some sort of nymph in a fairy tale, a perfect illustration for the story. The huntsman was pulled to safety by a woman of indefinable beauty and strength—a goddess.

Bits of burning ash fell, like stars tumbling from the night sky, but nothing caught flame. Rafi had heard the story before, and had even seen it done with the same effects, but Johanna told it with a fresh passion.

The huntsman offered the golden goddess everything to repay her for his life, and she took it.

Johanna tossed two more handfuls of powder into the air, one golden, one purple. As they swirled together, they gave the impression of two shadows locked in an embrace.

The story didn’t have a particularly happy ending: The huntsman died, and the goddess roamed Santarem with the child of their union as her only company.

But Johanna managed to twist the words into something heart-achingly beautiful and poignant. Rather than sadness, Rafi felt the goddess’s joy in her child—the first Keeper. He had his mother’s ability to tap the elements for power, but it was tempered by his father’s humanity and mortality.

Johanna raised her hands above her head, and a bright ball of white light seemed to appear in her hands. The goddess, in the form of Mother Lua, looked down on her people every night and watched over her child’s progeny.

Rafi tried to look away, to ignore Johanna and the spell she wove over the audience, but there was something hypnotic in her eyes. He felt like she told the story for his ears alone, that some invisible thread connected them.

“I should like to meet her,” Fernando said softly as the story concluded.

The thread snapped with a harsh recoil. Rafi gasped as if he hadn’t drawn breath since the first word spun off Johanna’s tongue.

“I told you she was exquisite,” Belem said in an overloud whisper.

Chapter 48

Johanna

The applause was thunderous. Johanna reveled in the audience’s reaction, knowing she’d affected them all. The women dabbed tears; the men clutched their lovers’ hands during the romantic tales and the laments. They laughed when the story called for it and cheered and gasped at all the right moments.

Except Rafi.

He leaned far back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him, seeming the relaxed lordling. But unlike Belem—who lolled to one side of the chair with his ever-full wine cup dangling from his fingers—Rafi’s act was incomplete. His arms were folded a bit too tightly across his chest, and he shot measuring glances at the men on either side of him.

H
e’
d never make it as a Performer. His real feelings are too evident.

Rafi managed to bring his hands together in an unenthusiastic applause as Johanna finished the last story she’d prepared for the evening. She planned to take a few requests, sing a bit, then return to her room with her brothers.

“The evening grows late, but perhaps the head table has a particular selection they’d like to hear?” She posed the question to Rafi, hoping his answer might give her a hint at his interests and what her performance lacked in his eyes.

He waved to the man on his left. “I’ll defer to my uncle. He won’t have the pleasure of hearing your lovely voice as frequently as I.”

Lovely voice.
Johanna hid her look of disgust with a curtsy to the Duke of Impreza.

The man, an older, more distinguished version of Rafi, exchanged a look with Lady DeSilva before speaking. “I do have a request. An odd one perhaps.” He laced his fingers together and rested his elbows on the table. “I had a Performer visit my estate after the treaty was signed. He told an incredible tale called ‘The Survivor of Roraima.’ Do you know it?”

Johanna hoped her cape disguised the goose bumps that rose along her arms and her too-stiff spine. She knew the tale; it was the last story her father had ever spun.

Most of the stories she told were old, embellished and elaborated. But that story was fresh, the words bleeding from wounds not-quite healed.

“It’s not a particularly pleasant story, my lord,” Johanna said, imagining the pall that would fall over the dining room as every person thought of their lost king, his kindhearted wife, and their angel baby, or perhaps a loved one or friend who’d been trapped inside Roraima’s walls as the township burned.

“I’ve never heard it,” Lord Belem said, for once sitting in his chair rather than draping himself across it. “I should like to hear it as well.”

Rafi quirked his dark eyebrows—black peaks sharp with curiosity—and her decision was made.

“Once there was a beloved king,” she said, taking a few backward steps to the center of the floor. “He was a hardworking man who toiled alongside his people. In the spring, he harnessed his mighty war horse to the plow and prepared his people’s fields. In the fall, he wielded a scythe and helped them harvest. In times of peace, he hosted feasts where all, even the most humble peasant, were invited to dine at his side. And in times of war”—she paused and made eye contact with several members of the crowd—“he welcomed his people inside the walls of his fortress and protected them.

“Many years passed, but the king had not found a suitable bride. His people were concerned, and they sent girls and women, young and old, from every state and from the isles to gain the king’s hand, but none could earn his fancy.

“Then, one night, a girl appeared at his gate. Her clothes were torn and filthy, her hair a matted mess. She trembled from fatigue and hunger, but nothing could disguise her beauty. People who met her said she seemed to shine from within.”

A few heads in the crowd nodded their agreement. Some of them had certainly met Wilhelm’s queen.

“The kingdom rejoiced, for their king had finally found a woman whose heart was pure and who wasn’t afraid of hard work. They had one year of blissful happiness, and the queen gave birth to a lovely daughter.

“But all was not well. One lord was unsatisfied with his station in the land. He sought more power, riches, and glory.”

The double doors to the dining hall burst inward, slamming against the stone walls. Two men with shining breastplates strode into the room, escorting a broad-shouldered man in a deep crimson cape. Diamonds twinkled in both of his ears, and a narrow band of gold wrapped around his brow, pressing flat his black hair.

There were gasps, and a chair clattered to the floor.

“Fernando!” Lady DeSilva said, grabbing her brother’s arm, but his sword was already sliding free of its scabbard.

Rafi jumped up from his seat and stepped in front of his uncle. “Stop,” he commanded.

Dom, Captain Alouette, and the weaponsmaster appeared at Duke Fernando’s side, all with hands on their weapons, ready to draw.

The man in the doorway watched the scene with a smile that only reached his lips. “I didn’t expect such a welcome.” He pressed his hand over his heart. “Perhaps I should offer my apologies, Lady DeSilva. I sent an outrider to announce my early arrival, but it appears the message didn’t reach your ears.”

The duchess extracted herself from the group of men, shooting one concerned look at her brother. Rafi stood close, nearly nose to nose with his uncle, speaking in a tone too low to reach Johanna’s ears. Not that Fernando seemed to be listening; he only had eyes for the richly appointed man in the doorway.

“Duke Inimigo,” Lady DeSilva said as she approached the group; her tone was just south of frigid. “This is a surprise.”