They know I’m Ilsigi, they’re laughing at me, they’re all laughing….
A man arrived who was not a soldier, who came with servants: she mistook him for
a passerby until he abandoned the servants and came up the steps, seized her
hand and kissed it with a flourish of his cap.
He looked up. His hair was fair brown, his eyes were blue; he was Rankan of the
Rankans and noble and he stared into her eyes as if he had discovered some
strange new ocean.
“Tasfalen Lancothis,” he murmured, and never let go of her hand. “You are the
lady-“
“Sir,” she said, quite paralyzed by a nobleman who stared into her eyes in that
way. And she was further baffled when he plucked a black feather from his cap
and offered it to her. “How kind,” she murmured, blinking at him and wondering
whether she had gone totally mad or was another Rankan here to make sport of
her. She put it in her decolletage, having no better place, and saw his eyes
follow that move and lift to hers again with profoundest concentration. “My
lady,” he said, and kissed her hand a second time, which meant men standing in
line behind him. Her heart raced in a sense of impending disaster, the
Mistress’s dire displeasure. Heat and cold chased one another from her breast to
her face. “Sir-“
“Tasfalen.”
“Tasfalen. Thank you. Please. Later. The others…”
He let go her hand. She turned desperately to the men next, passed them through
with a hand to each and caught her breath as she stared at the tall pair next,
the taller one with the face that she had seen only at distance, riding through