CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ten minutes later, as Fsha-fsha and I crossed the lawn toward the house, a broad-shouldered man with curled gray hair and an elegantly simple tunic emerged from a side path ahead.
“You spoke to His Lordship of Milady Raire?” he said in a low voice as we came up.
“That’s right.”
He jerked his head toward the house. “Come along to where we can talk quietly. Perhaps we can exchange information to our mutual advantage.” He led us by back passages into the deep, cool gloom of a room fitted up like an office for a planetary president. He told us his name was Sir Tanis, and got out a flagon and glasses and poured a round.
“The girl reappeared three months ago,” he said. “Unfortunately,” he added solemnly, “she is quite insane. Her first act was to disavow all her most hallowed obligations to the House of Ancinet-Chanore. Now, I gather from the few scraps of advice that reached my ears—”
“Dos talks as well as listens, I take it,” I said.
“A useful man,” Sir Tanis agreed crisply. “As I was saying, I deduce that you know something of Milady’s activities while away from home. Perhaps you can tell me something which might explain the sad disaffection that afflicts her.”
“Why did Lord Pastaine lie to us?” I countered.
“The old man is in his dotage,” he snapped. “Perhaps, in his mind, she is dead.” His lips quirked in a mirthless smile. “He’s unused to rebellion among the very young.” The brief smile dropped. “But she didn’t stop with asserting her contempt for His Lordship’s doddering counsels; she spurned as well the advice of her most devoted friends!”
“Advice on what?”
“Family matters,” Tanis said shortly. “But you were about to tell me what’s behind her incomprehensible behavior.”
“Was I?”
“I assumed as much—I confided in you!” Tanis looked thwarted. “See here, if it’s a matter of, ah, compensation for services rendered . . .”
“Maybe you’d better give me a little more background.”
He looked at me sternly. “As you’re doubtless aware, the House of Ancinet-Chanore is one of the most distinguished on the planet,” he said. “We trace our lineage back through eleven thousand years, to Lord Ancinet of Traval. Naturally, such a house enjoys a deserved preeminence among its peers. And the head of that house must be an individual of the very highest attainments. Why . . .” he looked indignant, “if the seat passed to anyone but myself, in a generation—less! we should deteriorate to the status of a mere fossil, lacking in all finesse in the arts that mark a truly superior seat!”
“What’s the Lady Raire got to do with all that?”
“Surely you’re aware. Why else are you here?”
“Pretend we’re not.”
“The girl is an orphan,” Sir Tanis said shortly. “Of the primary line. In addition . . .” he sounded exasperated, ” . . . all the collateral heirs—all! are either dead, exiled, or otherwise disqualified in the voting!”
“So?”
“She—a mere girl, utterly lacking in experience—other than whatever bizarre influences she may have come under during her absence—holds in her hands five ballots! Five, out of nine! She—ineligible herself, of course, on a number of counts—controls the selection of the next head of this house! Why else do you imagine she was kidnapped?”
“Kidnapped?”
He nodded vigorously. “And since her return, she’s not only rebuffed my most cordial offers of association—but has alienated every other conceivable candidate as well. In fact . . .” he lowered his voice, “it’s my personal belief the girl intends to lend her support to an Outsider!”
“Sir Tanis, I guess all this family politics business is pretty interesting to you, but it’s over my head like a wild pitch. I came here to see Milady Raire, to find out if she was safe and well. First I’m told she’s dead, then that she’s lost her mind. I’d like to see for myself. If you could arrange—”
“No,” he said flatly. “That is quite impossible.”
“May I ask why?”
“Sir Revenat would never allow it. He closets her as closely as a prize breeding soumi.”
“And who’s Sir Revenat?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Her husband,” he said. “Who else?”
2
“Tough,” Fsha-fsha consoled me as we walked along the echoing corridor, following the servant Sir Tanis had assigned to lead us back into the outside world. “Not much joy there; but at least she’s home, and alive.”
We crossed an inner court where a fountain made soft music, and a door opened along the passage ahead. An elderly woman, thin, tight-corseted, dressed in a chiton of shimmering white, spoke to the servant, who faded away like smoke. She turned and looked at me with sharp eyes, studied Fsha-fsha’s alien face.
“You’ve come to help her,” she said to him in a dry, husky voice. “You know, and you’ve come to her aid.”
“Ah . . . whose aid, Milady?” he asked her.
The old lady grimaced and said: “The Lady Raire. She’s in mortal danger; that’s why her father ordered her sent away, on his deathbed! But none of them will believe me.”
“What kind of danger is she in?”
“I don’t know—but it’s there, thick in the air around her! Poor child, so all alone.”
“Milady,” I stepped forward. “I’ve come a long way. I want to see her before I go. Can you arrange it?”
“Of course, you fool, else why would I have lain here in wait like a mud-roach over a wine-arbor?” She returned her attention to Fsha-fsha. “Tonight—at the Gathering of the House. Milady will be present; even Sir Revenat wouldn’t dare defy custom so far as to deny her; and you shall be there, too! Listen! This is what you must do. . . .”
3
Half an hour later, we were walking along a tiled street of craftsmen’s shops that was worn to a pastel smoothness that blended with the soft-toned facades that lined it. There were flowers in beds and rows and urns and boxes and in hanging trays that filtered the early light over open doorways where merchants fussed over displays of goods. I could smell fresh-baked bread and roasting coffee, and leather and wood-smoke. It was an atmosphere that made the events inside the ancient House of Ancinet-Chanore seem like an afternoon with the Red Queen.
“If you ask me, the whole bunch of them is round the bend,” Fsha-fsha said. “I think the old lady had an idea I was in touch with the spirit world.”
On a bench in front of a carpenter’s stall, a man sat tapping with a mallet and chisel at a slab of tangerine-colored wood. He looked up and grinned at me.
“As pretty a bit of emberwood as ever a man laid steel to, eh?” he said.
“Strange,” Fsha-fsha said. “You only see hand labor on backward worlds and rich ones. On all the others, a machine would be squeezing a gob of plastic into whatever shape was wanted.”
In another stall, an aged woman was looming a rug of rich-colored fibers. Across the way, a boy sat in an open doorway, polishing what looked like a second-hand silver chalice. Up ahead, I saw the tailor shop the old woman—Milady Bezaille her name was—had told us about. An old fellow with a face like an elf was rolling out a bolt of green cloth with a texture like hand-rubbed metal. He looked up and ducked his head as we came in. “Ah, the sirs desire a change of costume?”
Fsha-fsha was already feeling the green stuff. “How about an outfit made of this?”
“Ah, the being has an eye,” the old fellow cackled. “Radiant, is it not? Loomed by Y’sallo, of course.”
I picked out a black like a slice of midnight in the Fringe. The tailor flipped up the end of the material and whirled it around my shoulders, stepped back and studied the effect thoughtfully.
“I see the composition as an expression of experience,” he nodded. “Yes, it’s possible. Stark, unadorned—but for the handsome necklace—Riv work is it not? Yes, a statement of self-affirmation, an incitement to discipline.”
He went to work measuring and clucking. When he started cutting, we crossed a small bridge to a park where there were tables on the lawn beside a small lemon-yellow dome. We sat and ate pastries and then went along to a shoemaker, who sliced into glossy hides and in an hour had fitted new boots to both of us. When we got back to the tailor shop, the new clothes were waiting. We asked directions to a refresher station, and, after an ion-bath and a little attention to my hair and Fsha-fsha’s gill fringes, tried out our new costumes.
“You’re an impressive figure,” Fsha-fsha said admiringly. “In spite of your decorations, your size and muscular development give you a certain animal beauty; and I must say the little tailor set you off to best advantage.”