“Your quarters are satisfactory, your Majesty?” Rasha laid her goblet carefully on the table and smiled.
So now it was conversation time? Inos hastily gathered her wheeling wits and began enthusing politely about her quarters. The small talk danced rapidly around Arakkaranian horses, Kade’s life in Kinvale, and comparisons of climate. To babble such trivialities with a sorceress was a weirdly unexpected experience, but Inos was quite willing to cooperate. Peaceful solution! Extremely important!
If Rasha was now seeking to put her at ease, then she was being very skillful, and of course even the Imperial gowns, more familiar than djinn costume, might be designed to help. Alternatively, the sorceress might just be practicing her own acting technique. Or both.
Inos prattled on in the approved Kinvale fashion, saying nothing, playing the game. When she had first been introduced to small talk, she had found it a deadly boring pastime. Then she had discovered that it had little rules, and she could keep score, and play it as a contest. She had confessed this once to a couple of other girls at Kinvale and discovered that they were doing the same. Even their respective sets of rules had turned out to be similar.
Rasha was holding Inos to a tie.
“Your aunt Kadolan is a remarkable woman.”
Ah! Two points for compliments about a relative.
“I love her dearly. She is all I have left.” One point for sickly sentiment.
The sorceress nodded and for a moment seemed to brood. “There is something about her . . . She is a lady, I suppose. So she regards herself. My experiences of so-called aristocrats have rarely been pleasant, Inosolan. I was prepared to despise her. I thought that `lady’ meant `parasite.’ I deliberately told her something of my history and background. I expected contempt. Silence fell. Lose the match for going serious . . .”
Inos said softly, “She pitied you. She still does.”
“Yes, she does. And that surprised me, I admit.”
“Despite her affected ways, Kade is a very genuine and sympathetic human being. There isn’t a mean bone in her body.”
“No, there isn’t. I have learned much from her in the last two weeks. As you have noticed?”
Inos took her courage between her teeth and said, “You can read my thoughts?”
Rasha glanced at her quizzically, then laughed. “You can usually tell when someone is lying, can’t you?”
“I . . . I may suspect.”
“A sorcerer knows. Mundanes give themselves away all the time, as obviously as dogs wagging tails or cats arching backs. That is most of it, a talent called insight. Sorcery can go further, of course, but I don’t like to pry, because it takes all the fun out of things. Other people’s minds turn out to be as disgusting as one’s own, and mucking about in them is depressing. It also tends to addle their brains. Torture is cleaner.”
Inos shivered, and Rasha chuckled. Then she glanced over at the east window and frowned. “He is late!”
She was forgetting her illusion of youth. No woman of her apparent years, a mere girl, could ever radiate confidence as she did. At Kinvale Inos had met maidens of great beauty and such elevated breeding and self-esteem that they could hardly breathe, but none of them had been as assured as this seeming innocent. And she was criticizing a warlock, no less.
The wine was superb. Inos was grateful for the warmth it poured through her. Despite the white glare of the dome overhead, this was nighttime in Arakkaran and the sweet-tempered wind was cool now on her arms and shoulders.
“It is nearly three weeks since your father died.” Inos sobered. ”Yes, ma’am.”
“Three weeks since he gave you his word of power.”
Very sober! “I don’t think he did give me a word of power, your Majesty. I think he tried, but he was too ill, too weak. He said something, yes. It was only gibberish.”
Rasha eyed her thoughtfully. “They are all gibberish. No one knows what language they are in or what they mean, if anything. If you heard it, you must remember it. Can you remember it?”
“No, ma’am, I can’t. I mean I can just remember bits of it. Like a long `ooo’ sound near the end.”
What if Rasha demanded the word of power and Inos couldn’t tell her! What if the warlock did? Red-hot hooks or addled brains? Inos’s hand tightened around her goblet, and she reminded herself yet again that she was a queen and must play politics with truly royal nerve.
Now the scrutiny was longer. “Everyone is good at something.”
“I beg your pardon?” Inos said politely.
“Everyone has a talent for something. Gulth’s was thinking like a fish.”
Inos peered carefully to see if the sorceress was trying to be humorous. ”Did you say, `Thinking like a fish,’ your Majesty?”
“When I was twelve, my parents owed much money to an old man called Gulth. He took me in part payment.”
“Katie told me. Tragic.”
Kade might not have a mean bone in her body, but Inos was uncomfortably aware that she herself had quite a few. “Mmm. Gulth had a word of power. His native talent was a skill at fishing. Even without the word, he might have been a success. With it, he was a genius. Always he knew where the nets should go, where the fish would be that day. Had he also had any real brains at all, he might have grown rich. He didn’t. Even so, he was the least poor man in the village.”
“Least poor! You are being ironic, Majesty?”
“Meaning he had two blankets and his roof was the only one that didn’t leak. He taught me what I must do to please him. It was better than being beaten.”
“But not much better, I expect? Not at that age.”
“Very much better. Obviously you have never been properly beaten. And I had a natural talent for it.”
For being beaten? Surely not! Inos wished that the warlock would arrive soon and interrupt this dangerously personal conversation. “Talent for . . . ?”
Queen Rasha’s lip curled in either contempt or sarcasm. “For pleasing men, your aunt would call it. Gulth was old and weak. He was also greedy, once he understood what he had in me. He told me his word of power!”
Inos didn’t think she understood that, and might prefer not to.
“Shared it. He whispered it in my ear one cold, damp dawn, and I, too, became a genius, a genius at pleasing men. But he was old and sick. I expect the word had been helping to keep him alive. He weakened his power by sharing it, you understand? And then he overexerted himself.”
“Doing what?”
“Being pleased.”
“Oh.”
“So I was a widow and just turned fourteen, but I was a genius at pleasing men.”
“And my talent was even stronger after he died, of course. A self-defeating talent most of the time!”
“Why that?” Inos inquired foggily, thinking of Azak for some reason. Did big men need more pleasing than little men? “Babies.”
“Oh.”
“And what is your natural talent, Inosolan?”
“Not politics, certainly. Perhaps riding and hunting—”
“No,” said the sorceress firmly. “You used no occult power on Evil that first day. I saw that episode. You ride well, but only as a mundane.”
Shocked, Inos said nothing. The sorceress stared at her darkly. “You don’t seem to have one, do you? You’re certainly not hiding anything from me. You just don’t know the answer. I’ve watched you from time to time, but I don’t know, either!”
“Could I have a talent for just being a good all-rounder?”
Rasha laughed abruptly and took a sip of wine. “That’s a contradiction in terms, I think. We shall have to wait and see. Perhaps one day you’ll discover you’re the world’s greatest ventriloquist, or vase painter—but when you say you don’t remember what your father said, you’re lying.”
Inos started to protest and the sorceress raised a hand to stop her. “It adds to your value. Let us talk of pleasanter things.” Shaken by that ominous mention of value, Inos racked her brains for a safe topic. Perhaps Rasha was not too dangerous when there were no men present and the conversation was kept well away from men. And how many people ever had a chance for a heart-to-heart talk with a real sorceress?
She must try to learn about magic, of course. “How did you learn the rest of your words, ma’am?”
“From men!” The sultana scowled dangerously, but her gaze was on the sinister mat, not on Inos. “A word makes you lucky, they say, and I suppose mine did—at times. A widow’s lot is never easy, and yet I lived in a palace for a while.”
She glanced up momentarily. “No, I was not assigned to a prince. A commoner’s cast-off is not worthy of such an honor!” Inos felt herself blush and saw the sorceress sneer faintly in response.