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As they worked on me, I asked, “Did any of you deal with the lad called No-Skin?”
Three pairs of hands went still. Then, slowly, one mot, then another, took up the combing again. The other one got back to work on my hands, hesitant at first.
“He may have brought some of the oils and soaps we use on the ladies down here,” one of the mots said. She was behind me, dealing with my hair, so I could not see her face. “Quiet lad.”
“Very quiet,” said the other mot with a comb.
“Not even five,” the one who cleaned my nails added.
“What did he look like?” I asked them.
“Big for his age,” said the one who knew how old he was. “He said he was four, and he was more than three feet tall, like a lord’s son! Brown skin, like one of those southerners from Barzun. Black hair.”
“Dyed,” said the one who’d spoken first. “I could feel it was dyed.”
“Underfed. Scared of everything,” the second woman who combed my hair told me. “Everyone knew they were forbidden to whip him—that was enough to get us all talking—but he said there were other things they could do to hurt him.”
“Enough. He’s gone, and that’s all there is to that,” the first woman who combed my hair ordered. “We’ll never see him again and this one needs to get upstairs.” Hurriedly they coiled my damp braid and fixed it to my head with hairpins.
I was allowed to dress myself. Sabine had sent what was needful with that clean uniform, I suspected. I’d donned my loincloth and breast band and was about to pick up my tunic when the laundry maid presented me with a long-sleeved, thin silk shirt.
“For under the tunic, mistress,” she said quietly. She had not been one of those talking to me earlier. Now, as I handled the shirt, she and the bath attendants watched me. I wonder if they knew they’d each raised a shoulder, as if they expected me to strike one of them.
I wanted to refuse, but I remembered the tunics of the ladies-in-waiting. Despite the warming weather, all wore long sleeves. “Pox and murrain on these canting god-struck nobles,” I muttered, and I slid the silk shirt over my head and arms. Through it I could see the mots smile at each other, as if mayhap they agreed with me. I also stole a glimpse at their ankles. All wore an iron fetter. I did not doubt that they would be punished, just like the ladies, if I resisted the countess’s will any further.
How could such a harsh mistress follow any goddess of womanly kindness?
As I donned my clothes, I asked, “Mistresses, how long have you been slaves?”
They looked at one another. Finally the oldest of them said, “Long enough that to hear myself called mistress makes me want to laugh.” She was not even smiling. She continued to speak. “My father gave me to the count instead of the tax, the year of the blight on our wheat.” I recognized her voice. She had been the one to say how frightened Gareth had been.
“And you?” I asked one of the others.
“You have no business asking these things of us, Dog,” she said, all scorn. She was that first speaker, the one who’d recognized the hair dye. “And if you are late, it is us that’ll get the whip for being too slow. Come visit out in the main court once the music begins. That’s when the day’s stripes are dealt out.”
I said no more, but donned the rest of my clothes and held out my hands for my gear. The attendants had cleaned my leather and metal so the metal shone and the leather gleamed. My boots looked near as good as the day I had bought them.
My knives, my arm guards, my baton, none of them were on my belt, only my pouches. Even the knives hidden in my boots were missing. Only my smallest eating knife remained to me. “Where are my weapons?” I asked. “I had a few of them. And my dirty tunic, I need that.”
“Weapons will be sharpened, oiled, and taken to your room with your clothes,” the oldest attendant said. “Only nobles may carry weapons to supper. Your blades are safe. Under the count’s law, a slave with a killing blade is skinned with it. Your dirty uniform will be cleaned and returned to you before prayers in the morning.”
“You’re done,” the one who told me about the slaves’ penalties snapped. “Go.”
I confess, I spent a bit of the king’s coin giving each of them a copper noble. The king could spare it. Besides, I had saved all that money during those nights in the marsh, with no inns to put up at, and no meals to buy.
At last I ran up the stairs to the ground-floor landing. To my relief, Pounce was there. It will be more amusing to sit with you, he said as we passed through the door. Though Achoo would not think so.
The cats seemed to like you, I told him as we walked down a short hall lined with expensive tapestries.
They are well enough, Pounce said. But I wish to stay with you. Your temper is rising.
I have never been in so noble, or so wealthy, or so nasty a house before, I replied. I’m not accustomed to the way things are done.
You are a commoner, Pounce said flatly. You do not get a choice about being accustomed, and if you are not more careful, you will not be given many more chances to practice being accustomed.
We could see people moving beyond the archway ahead, and tables. We had found the great hall. A wave of noise struck us.
You’re right, I admitted, hanging my head. I will try harder.
Which is more important, your pride or that boy? Pounce wanted to know.
I will do more than try, I told him crossly. Leave me be. Can’t you tell when I’m downhearted?
You will never end in the slave cages, Beka, Pounce said as we entered the dining hall. Not you, not your family. You’re safe.
Yet even the king’s son was not. How just was that?
The sight before me made me want to run back to the marsh. Slaves and servants, one fettered and wearing cheap tunics, the other clothed in colored and embroidered fabrics, ran to and fro. They were setting bowls, platters, and pitchers on the long tables that had been placed in rows down the length of the hall. Those who were already seated did not eat. Instead they talked to their neighbors or waited, looking around them. The dais now supported a long table covered in white linen. Branches of candles burned there. Those of us below the dais would make do with the torches on the walls.
Prince Baird’s men-at-arms were seated already, their uniform tunics as clean as could be expected for coves, most of whom had been hunting all day. I frowned when I saw Tunstall among them. Farmer sat across from Tunstall and the men-at-arms with an older cove and a younger one. They had the look of scribes or mages.
Wondering how I could fit among them when they were so snugly bracketed by other coves, I gave the hall another look and realized the pain of the night before me. All of the castle’s women, from the ladies-in-waiting on down to the lowliest of the serving maids, sat at the line of tables closest to the wall where I was. Half of another table, the next one, was also filling with mots, young and old. The remaining two and a half tables sat only coves.
I took a deep breath. I’d never seen anything like it.
Beka, take it with grace, Pounce told me silently. All of it. Remember you are here as Gershom’s representative. Do him proud.
He must have known I was about to walk away. I released the breath I was holding. But, Pounce, this is crackbrained, I told him in the same manner. How do they expect folk to understand each other if they’re separated when they aren’t rushing about their work?
They aren’t expected to understand one another, he replied. The women will learn to flirt over a friend’s shoulder, instead of close. The men will see the women as distant and unknowable. Their friends will be only men. The women will see men as strong and unknowable. Their friends will be only women.
The thought of Tunstall and Farmer, or Holborn, or Rosto, or even Lord Gershom, as strong and unknowable made me choke on a laugh. I held it back somehow. From the corner of my eye I could see Lady Lewyth bustling my way.
“Beka, wonderful, you’re here! I’ll show you where to sit,” she said, leading me along th
e row of benches closest to the wall. “I’d hoped to put you with your lady, but the countess has placed her on the dais, as a dinner partner for the prince.”
Thank you, Goddess, I thought. Surely it was the Great Mother Goddess who was in charge of seating arrangements. I loved sitting with my lady, but nothing short of chaining me to a plow dragged by a bull would have gotten me onto that dais.
“You’re here,” Lewyth said, pointing to an empty seat on a bench. “The countess chose this place for you, not me. I’m sorry.” She rushed back to her place among the ladies-in-waiting, up at the head of the table.
I wasn’t certain why she had apologized until I had seated myself and inspected my setting. It was for one person only. My trencher was a round of bread, not the length that was set between every pair of diners—all of the other diners. If she had written me a note the countess could not have made her wishes clearer. She did not want me to corrupt her Gentle Mothering household with my talk.
“You may as well come up,” I told Pounce, who was under the bench, leaning against my boots. “I’m going to be alone here.” He leaped up on the empty length of bench at my right.
The mot a yard away on my right, a skinny thing who smelled of herbs, glanced over her shoulder at Pounce and me, then looked away hurriedly. I wanted to thump the back of her coiled, pinned, and veiled head, but I thought of Lord Gershom and behaved.
No, the truth is that I would never have done any such thing. My shyness has gotten much better since I was a Puppy, but mostly when I’m in uniform and acting as a Dog, or on my home streets. Socially, when there’s no work to do, I am as miserable as if I were standing before Sir Tullus on my first day at magistrate’s court. Lady Aeldra had done me a favor, making it plain I was out of favor with her. No one would be my supper partner, trying to find something we could talk about while I stammered like a goat, and other folk wouldn’t be gathered around as they did at other castles, asking me questions about the capital.
Suddenly everyone was getting to their feet. The nobles were walking to their places on the dais. I noted that the count’s chair was no higher than the prince’s, though all the others were two inches shorter. Prince Baird sat on his right, and Lady Sabine sat on the prince’s right.
On the countess’s left was a cove in his mid-thirties, brown-haired and sharp-nosed, with a rounded chin and a thin mouth. He wore a brown tunic with white embroideries and a great gold chain with some kind of yellow gem at intervals between the links. Lady Baylisa sat on his left, dressed in ice blue with a white veil over her hair. Her supper partner would be the other cove. I put his age at thirty, with no reason to think I was wrong, after winning last year’s competition at age-guessing in all the Corus districts. Plainly he and the older cove were related. They had the same brown hair combed straight back, the same brown eyes, and the same sharp nose. This one’s chin was slightly cleft, and his mouth was even thinner than the other one’s. He wore dark green. There was some kind of embroidery on his collar and cuffs, but the thread was dark, so it was impossible to see. He wore a large gem on a gold chain, one I recognized right away. It was a fire opal, smoothed and set still in its native stone. Its colors flashed in the light. When a slave tried to pour wine into his cup, he put his hand over it and shook his head, saying something to her. That’s when I saw his ring, another stone set in gold on his index finger. It was too dark for me to tell what it was.
Bloodstone, Pounce said. A very powerful one. I do not particularly like a mage who boasts of his power by wearing showy stones, do you? That is Elyot of Aspen Vale, the mage. The one with the gold and yellow-sapphire necklace is his brother, Graeme. He is a baron.
What do I care if he is a baron? I asked as a priest in Mithran orange and a mot in pale pink robes walked in to stand before the dais. Tortall is lousy with barons. Every time a king wants to thank someone for saving his arse somehow, he names him baron and gives him an acre of rocks.
Did I raise you to be this cynical? Pounce asked me as we all stood for the Mithran’s prayer.
You told me it was “worldly,” I replied, looking at the floor so as to seem devout. Pounce and I had entertained each other through prayers at Lord Gershom’s for years, and had begun again when our Hunts took us to noble houses. You said I needed to be worldly.
The Mithran finished and I was lowering myself to my seat when I caught an elbow in the shoulder from my left-hand neighbor. The one on my left, a mot with the strong arms and flour traces of a baker, had moved closer while I talked with Pounce. Her lips barely moving, she said, “There’s the Gentle Mother blessing yet.”
I straightened up in a hurry as the priestess began to call for peace and bounty, praising the fief’s strong men and calling for love and serenity for its women and children. I stopped listening. There were so many better things I could do with this time.
My belly growled, loud enough that the mot on my right and the mots across the table from me looked up and glared. I glared back. It was hardly my fault that it had been a very long time since our bread and cheese on the road.
Do you want me to claw at the embroidery on their hems until it unravels? Pounce offered. I am willing to make that sacrifice for you. The needlework is bad, anyway, and the colors are not well chosen. I would be doing them a favor.
I had to struggle to keep from laughing. At last the priestess called for the Goddess’s blessings on the royal family and ended. The count gave us the sign to take our seats. Servants began rushing about with more bowls and platters. They went to each of the nobles and placed food in their trenchers or not, as the pairs of diners agreed. For the rest of us, they dumped the serving dishes at central points and left. We lesser folk were to serve ourselves.
The baker turned to me with a basket of fresh rolls. “Take one, for that growlin’ belly. Where are you from, that you don’t know the priestess of the Gentle Mother?”
I took one. “Corus. My thanks, mistress.”
Her trencher mate leaned out around her to look at me. “And it’s true, thirty of you Provost’s Guard came here to arrest the count?”
“Has he done anything worth arresting him for?” I asked as I buttered a piece of the bread. The two women began to laugh.
“Not he,” said the one on my neighbor’s left. “Doin’ aught that ain’t writ down in—Fay, what’s that book them nobles set such store by?”
“The Book o’ Silver,” my neighbor, Fay, replied.
“Aye, that’n. If my lord ever thought of doin’ aught that wasn’t writ down in that Book o’ Silver, he give it up as soon as he thought of it. Like that there roll, do you?” the mot asked.
I looked at the bread in my hands and discovered I was down to the last bite. “Yes, I do,” I replied. “It’s very good.”
“Iris does the rolls,” Fay told me. “I do the bigger loaves, like these.” She tapped the side of their trencher. “And your’n.” A maidservant brought a large pitcher and set it before Fay. She half rose. “Herb and greens soup,” she told me, and poured some into my trencher. I tried to tell her not to give me too much, but I was too late and my trencher was full. It was wonderful soup.
“Listen,” I said when I’d had a few spoons full. “Mayhap you shouldn’t talk with me. The count and countess aren’t so happy to have Dogs in their home, and they’re particular vexed with me.”
Fay took a heavy gulp from her tankard. “So we heard. You’d look prettier in a proper tunic, you know. All that black makes your eyes ghost-colored. Like you’ve been witness to things that twist your tripes.”
I squirmed at that. These countrywomen who see more than their pots and their gardens, they do that to me. They speak their minds, too, just like my gran. Even Tunstall will fidget if such a mot gives him a looking-over.
Fay patted my back. “Ease your belt, young one. The countess can’t see more’n three feet off without it blurrin’, nor more’n six at all. I have the Sight. My lord lets me do as I wish.”
Iris leaned around Fay. ?
??And Master Niccols has taken his pleasures in my bed.” She winked. “We’re a wicked pair, Fay and me. Me for doin’ what I please, and Fay for Seein’ what folk don’t like. There’s none that’ll squeak to us about who we talk with. That’s why we sat here, instead of at our regular spot.”
“It’s not my fault if the gods gave me their Gift,” Fay said, and elbowed her friend. “But since I got it, I’ll speak it true. There’s naught my lady can say to halt me, either, not her nor her flower-mouthed priestess.”
They refilled their tankards and emptied them while I decided to take them at their word. Few people will cross any who have the magical Gift of Sight, as Fay claimed, for fear the next time a grim Sight came on the one so touched, she would share it. The notion of plump Iris tumbling the prim and pinched Niccols gave me a squeeze in my imagination. I changed the subject rather than think about that any longer. “Do the count and countess feast like this often?” I asked.
