Lady Glisten was not only an important member of our family council. She was a major player in the Great Council that shared power with the Empress. The mages appointed the Empress and voted on her policies. Politics was a major pastime for them and Glisten was deep into it.
“If you don’t show Great Aunt Glisten all possible respect, she sulks, and then there’s all kinds of trouble,” Eff had once told me. One thing Eff was good at was understanding family politics.
With this in mind I bowed as low as I could to my great aunt.
“What’s that lump in your robes?” said Lady Glisten, pointing to the smokeweed, which I’d stuck haphazardly into my body shaper.
“It’s smokeweed. For Lord Lucient.”
“Oh, yes, just what I meant to talk to you about, child.”
The ‘child’ made me blink. Though clearly meant to put me at my ease, the tone in which it was said chilled me.
“Lady Lumina tells me you are not eating meat. She says that you refuse to start breeding.”
A knockout blow from Rat Queen Lumina. I felt breathless from the sheer gall of it. And from the fact that Lumi was obviously watching me closely.
“What is the point of Lord Lucient wasting his time and his seed on infertile ground? It’s wasteful and most improper of you to give him your flower. You should be wearing the long robes. Or better still, eating meat and breeding daughters for this family, Marm Shine. That is your family duty.”
Suddenly I was furious. To tell me who to give my flower to was a blatant breach of Blessing etiquette. And the rest of it was blatantly unfair. All my frustrations came out.
“How can I breed children with a clear conscience when I have no income? I have no profession and no chance to get one. I work hard all day for this family and am paid no wage. And no one will allow me to draw the allowance that is my right under my mother’s estate. Why should I do my duty when this family does no duty to me?”
“How dare you!”
Lady Glisten’s eyes had widened almost to bursting. The sight of her shocked face made me falter. I had lost my temper with a noble and in front of witnesses. Bright Lady!
“You wretched, ungrateful creature. How dare you talk like this? We feed you and clothe you.”
The anger rose up again.
“My mother’s estate feeds and clothes me!” I shouted. “This family does nothing for me except turn up every year and eat us out of house and—”
“Shine! Stop.” Eff’s voice rang out from the open doorway.
“And who, may I ask,” resumed Lady Glisten, “allows you to live on this estate? May I remind you, mundane, this is not your estate? This is your mother’s estate, to be inherited by a mage. You live here only on the good graces of the family. If you wish to make another choice, you are perfectly welcome to leave.”
Too late, I saw the precipice I was heading for.
“Yes, I thought so,” she said. “You gentry. Always talking of your ‘rights.’ You are just mundanes. Be grateful that we do anything for you, Marm Shine.”
It came into my head to assert my right to an allowance again, but I quashed the thought. I had no mage to support me in claiming my allowance and I knew it. So did Lady Glisten.
Eff came forward and took my wrist in a vicelike grip.
“I apologise for my foster child’s manner, Lady Glisten. She’s young and foolish and she does not mean to be disrespectful.”
“She seems a most ungrateful girl,” snapped Lady Glisten.
“The young,” said Eff. “You deal with them so often, my lady, and you know what they are like.”
“Yes, well. She clearly has little sense.”
“But she is a hard worker. And clever. She is making this place pay. You would not get such good work out of a paid servant.”
“That is true.”
Eff turned and took me by the forearms, placing herself between me and Lady Glisten.
“Apologise to your noble Great Aunt for your disrespect.” This from radical Eff, who believed everyone was equal. How had we come to this point?
We had come here because I had opened my big mouth, of course. As always.
“Do it,” mouthed Eff, her face sharp, her fingers digging into my flesh.
“I apologise, Lady Glisten. I spoke out of turn.”
As Eff let me go and turned back to Lady Glisten, I made a low bow.
“Very well,” said Lady Glisten. “We shall say no more of it. You may go. But I wish to see you eating meat tomorrow, girl. This family needs daughters, strong magical daughters. There will always be money for them.”
So now she was implying to me that I would be paid for breeding children. It was rubbish. The children would come and I would have nothing. We would live on Eff’s small allowance as we always had, eat the produce of the farm and wear cast-off clothes and shoes from the Great House. Until they finally decided who would inherit my mother’s estate and we were cast out or exiled somewhere worse.
“You may go, girl,” repeated Lady Glisten irritably. Eff took my arm and gently led me to the door.
“Shine is a clever girl,” she said to Lady Glisten as she did so. “She would like to study to be a lawyer or an assistant. And having grown up in poverty, she dreads bringing up children in similar poverty. And I dread it also.”
“Oh, Eff, not you too. Do you know what struggles this family has faced since that dreadful business with Flara and Radiant? We’re all on short rations. And you two must do your part. Though if Bright and Shine are the results of your mothering, Eff, I wonder if we should not bring Shine’s children up to Elayison after they are weaned.”
I turned, shocked at such an awful thing said so casually, and saw Eff’s face in the doorway behind me. It was set and calm.
“Indeed, Lady Glisten?” she said. And closed the door in my face.
I stood there starring at the door, appalled at what had happened, at what I had exposed Eff to. I wanted to storm in and tell Lady Glisten what a wonderful mother Eff had been and how much better she was than any of them.
“You really told her, didn’t you, Ghostie?” sneered a voice nearby. Lumina was leaning against the stair rail at look of triumph on her face. She bought me to my senses, which would probably have annoyed her had she known it.
“Lady Lumina,” I said giving her the barest of nods. I turned and stalked away along the balcony and didn’t even stop when Lumina started sniggering. Rat Queen!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I FELT SO wretched that I almost ran back to my room to hide. But I had things to finish. I ran down to Lucient’s room.
One look at my cousin told me that here was not the place to unload my feelings. He was leaning on his side with his head in Sharlee’s lap, smoking his pipe. He was so smoked, I had to glare at him for a couple of moments before he sent her away to get some wine.
“Someone came in and startled me and I dropped your jar. I’m sorry. It broke. You’ll have to go in and pick it up.”
He didn’t seem overly upset about the loss of his smoke jar—or about Hagen, when I told him what happened.
“I should have known someone else had the situation under control.”
“So is it true, what I hear? That this Hagen is the Premier’s intelligencer?”