Asvi squeezed her hands together, thinking of gentle Posyon and how he’d comforted her when she wept to see him sent off to the frontier from which there could be no return. But she said nothing. It was not her place to speak.
“The other supervises our warehouse in Farport.”
“So too far to return for the ceremonies in time. Very well. You can send him the proper offerings to make.” The man turned his cool gaze on Asvi, measuring her and, she was sure, finding her wanting. Her father had been a sheepherder who sought a better market for his wool. His child wasn’t worth much on the marriage market, but she’d been sixteen and a good cook even then. For ambitious Meklos, who revered his distinguished mother, the monopoly on her father’s excellent wool and connections into sheepherding clans farther up in the foothills was the bargain he’d been after. He’d doubled his family’s business on the strength of it.
“You’ll pay the walk tithe for your mother, I presume?” the magistrate added, lifting an eyebrow in query. “We discussed the amount upstairs.”
Elilas’s hesitation startled her. She looked up to find him staring meaningfully at Danis. “It’s higher than I expected,” he mumbled.
Danis gave Elilas a scalding, scolding look and expelled a huff of exasperated breath, enough to make him grimace.
He said, “But of course the family will pay it, Your Honor.”
“Let’s settle it now, then, rather than wait for tomorrow. I find it’s easier that way.”
“If you’ll accompany me to my father’s office.”
“Your office now, Headman.”
“Yes, of course. If you’ll accompany me to my office.”
The men went out. Danis set down her cup so hard the impact chipped its base. She glowered at the cup, painted with miniature scenes of women walking nobly into the dagger-toothed maws of massive dragons. “These are so dreadfully old-fashioned. I’ll replace them all.”
“But they’ve been in the family for generations,” said Asvi in surprise. “They were purchased from the temple.”
“Yes, I can tell. I can get a good price for them in the market, unless you want them, Dear Mother.”
“Why would I want them?” Asvi muttered.
“Why, indeed! You have good taste, not that the old man ever let you have your way in clothing or decoration. No wonder you like the kitchen. It’s the only place he never interfered with you.”
Asvi did not know what to say in answer to this plain speaking, so she said nothing. Saying nothing was always safest.
Danis rose. “I’d best go look in on the men or that thieving priest will squeeze another hundred out of our treasury. Eli is a canny trader, but he’s so unbelievably naïve when it comes to the temple. My father says—”
She broke off and leveled a hard look at Asvi, then smiled as one might at a well-loved but rather simple child. “Never mind. It’s been a difficult time for all of us. I blow hot and cold and can’t hold my tongue. Dear Mother, forgive me.”
“You’ve always been kind to me, Danis.”
Danis bent to give her a kiss on each cheek. “You welcomed me when most humbly born mothers would have set themselves against a woman of my exalted background coming into their life. For your modesty and graciousness I will always be grateful.”
She went out.
To sit in the empty parlor was a luxury Asvi had rarely experienced. She savored it now, knowing it would not last long. The demon eyes stared at her from the glass cupboard. People said their eyes never stopped seeing, even when they were dead, not once they had been wakened by a glimpse of prey. The eyes were Meklos’s pride and glory. People respected him for having the courage to keep such a collection within his own house. He had liked to handle them while wearing gloves, entertaining visitors with ghastly descriptions of how each had been acquired. The physic who had treated him over the last two years had informed the dying man that he’d been poisoned by handling the eyes. Yet toward the end Meklos had whispered, in a tone of thick and almost erotic passion, that even so, this withering and painful decline had been worth it, to have seen what he had seen. These claims were nothing more than the ravings of a dying man, the physic had explained to her, and Meklos had never described his visions.
She never touched the eyes. Once, as a girl, up in the foothills, she’d seen a living demon as it plunged in to attack a herd of sheep, its eyes blazing with a venomous light as an acrid, ashy mist poured from its upper mouth like spilled tea to scald and slay the terrified sheep as well as her favorite brother, boiled alive. Just as its blazing eyes saw her, just as it turned toward her to boil her, too, a dragon had come diving out of the clouds with no warning except a stinging pressure of hot wind. The great beast had marked her with a single, slow look, like honey oozing over a wound. But it didn’t care about her; she was nothing, just a human girl, of no more interest than the bleating sheep. It clamped its gleaming claws over the demon and carried it away into the heavens. If she’d had wings, she’d have flown after it right then, before the weight of the world trapped her on the dull earth.
Through the open door she heard Elilas make polite farewells to the magistrate. The front door closed, leaving the two in the entryway.
In a low voice, barely heard through the open door, Danis said to her husband, “They’re corrupt, the whole lot of them. He’ll pocket half and give the rest to the priest-adjudicator.”
“What can we do? They rule the prince, and the prince rules us.”
“We shall see.”
“Danis!”
“Shhh. You know I’m right. I can’t believe you hesitated like that. Your own mother!”
“It’s a lot of money, and she’s old.”
“‘She’s old!’ Is that what you’ll say about me someday?”
“You! Of course not. You’re—”
“I’m splendid and elegant and just disreputable enough to be respected by everyone, not mousy and browbeaten and obedient, and born in the foothills among the sheep, to boot! Your father was bad enough, treating her like a servant and never appreciating the inventive and delicious meals she cooked his whole life. Have you any idea what a treasure she is? I would trade any cook in this city for her. Even the prince’s cook. What do you think of that? And never a word of complaint about having to sleep in that horrible room up in the tower all these years next to the whining, selfish man who complained if she added any scrap of flavoring to his bland porridge.”
“Danis!”
“I’m just repeating your own words, darling. Don’t try to throw them back in my face. He browbeat you, too. No wonder your brothers fled as far away as they could go once they were of age. You’re just fortunate I took a liking to you.”
His voice softened to a teasing tone. “Why did you take a liking to me, my sweet?”
“That would be telling,” she said with a laugh. “Come now. Give your poor mother the bracelet before the magistrate decides to come back and squeeze more coin out of you. He saw your hesitation. You know what they say at the temple. Times are hard, and the dragons need offerings.”
“I would never!”
“You would never, right up until you would.”