“You might as well. I’m not prince of anything right now.”
“We both know that isn’t true, but thank you for your permission.”
Ausai waved him on with a thin Bronze Coast hand. Tregarro was already beginning to regret the curiosity that had brought him this far. But there wouldn’t be another moment for it. “Andomaka has no children, my lord. When she becomes prince of the city…”
“Yes, I’ll have to take care of that. It’s been a long time since I was pregnant. It will actually be nice. There are some very pleasant aspects to it.”
“You’ve been women before, then?”
“Men, women. Fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons. I’ve watched my children grow and become my siblings, and then my aunts and uncles. Great-aunts and great-uncles. I’ve held babies for their first breaths and held their weary, bony, liver-spotted hands at their last. Birth to death. I’ve seen its whole arc, again and again and again. I know what we are better than anyone.”
“Who were you? First, I mean. Who were you born as?”
Ausai, or the boy, or Airis, chuckled. “I am Kithamar. I was born a city,” he said, moving a red bead at the center of the board, and Tregarro saw how the game would be lost.
In the palace of Kithamar, the great hall was lit by a thousand tiny candles, each no larger than Andomaka’s smallest finger, and half a tree burning in a long iron grate. The air was thick with the scent of burning sap and spiced wine and the low, earthy perfume that seemed to be the fashion this year. A singer moved through the crowd, crooning hymns to half a dozen gods in turn, with a drummer following along behind him as accompaniment.
In the side galleries, people clustered and spoke. An Inlisc woman in gaudy scarves cast little spells or else little sleights of hand while the nobles appreciated or ignored her. A juggler cracked jokes crafted to offend no one. A priest from the common temple passed the charity bag, taking coins of silver and bronze and giving a sense of absolution in return. Even those in the finest silks and furs, with jewels on their necks and wrists like flakes in a snowstorm, could feel generous.
Servants carried shallow plates of beef and boar to the noblest mouths in Kithamar, and then took the plates away to have the grease toweled off. Nothing used or soiled was allowed there for long. Even the little candles had a team of unobtrusive young women walking with eyes turned away from their betters and waiting for a flame to gutter and be replaced. The palace guard wore their red cloaks like costumes, with flares of embroidery at the collar and sleeve special to the occasion.
The walls, by contrast, were stone and old and dark. They remembered war and violence. Light, they seemed to say, passes quickly. Soot and scorch endure. At times like this, the palace reminded Andomaka of an old soldier forced to wear a frilly dress. The decorations were beautiful and bright. They promised lightness and gaiety. The frame beneath them suffered the illusion but didn’t share in it. The palace was hope, as worn by history.
Ten days had passed since Longest Night. Most of the city had already fallen back into the rhythm of its usual life. The garlands were either down from the walls and windows, or still there but turning brown and losing their leaves and needles. The markets were open for those who had things to buy and sell in the cold. Only Green Hill and the palace held on to the festival air, celebrating a moment that had already passed because they could. It was, by common keeping, the first ten days of the new year, and the beginning of the long, slow cold that would lead eventually to spring. There were other ways to mark years, though.
The legal calendar began on the day Byrn a Sal had stolen his crown. Followers of Shau or Lannas or the Emurian mysteries counted theirs from the day the river froze. The Dajan, from the equinox. There were a thousand ways to describe the cycle of seasons and the motion of the sun along its arc, and someone, somewhere championed each of them. If it had been music, it would have been cacophony. But palace and temple kept the common calendar, and so they celebrated Tenthday, when the prince opened the city’s private rooms, but not too wide. Enough to let the nobility in. Andomaka had heard that Riverport merchants had started a feast of their own, since none of them were welcome here, as an echo of the real thing. She wondered whether that were true, and whether Elaine a Sal’s clandestine lover would attend it. It would be interesting to see, even if she had to go in disguise.
“You’re looking lovely tonight, Andoma,” a voice said, and she pulled her mind back from the imagined merchant feast to where she actually stood. Barasin a Jimental was at her side, his sharp cheeks a little softened since she’d seen him last. Marriage was thickening him.
“You’re very kind,” she said, bowing her head. They both understood that he’d just made her an offer, and that she had turned it aside. Anyone who understood the court would have seen it, but it had been done correctly. No offense could be taken by anyone except perhaps Barasin’s new wife. He smiled, nodded, and returned to the crowd. She had kissed him once when they were both children, and he’d never quite let go of it. It was sweet, in its way.
All around her, the companions and families of Green Hill and the palace moved and spoke, touched and avoided touch. Micha Reyos, head of her family now that her husband was ill. Andomaka’s own cousin, Ober Chaalat, his smile a little too wide and his face sheened with sweat, already drunk. Little Jabin Karsen with a ceremonial sword at his side that would probably bend if he tried to draw it. Every one of them had secrets and intrigues, loves and hatreds. The party was as many different parties as there were people attending it, and only a few had much in common. Andomaka found it all beautiful and comic and melancholy in more or less equal measures.
The one person she wanted to find, however, wasn’t there.
She tried the lesser halls, with no better luck. The palace, for all its majesty, was denser and closer than the compounds of Green Hill. It had been made when Kithamar was a smaller, less forgiving, and less civilized place, and it wore its history in thick, cold stone walls and galleries and meeting halls that had been grand when they were built. There were few places among the music and entertainers, wine and beer and cider that a girl like Elaine could go, and fewer still where she could be alone. Andomaka knew many of them, but not all. Not yet.
She felt herself getting close when she went up the narrow stairway to the stone gardens that stood on the palace roof. A bonfire roared there, thickening the air with its smoke, and the heat of it radiated without warming. One cheek could feel almost burning, and the other bitten by the cold. The older cohorts of the noble families stayed below in relative comfort while their children danced in steady blue moonlight and red flicker of flame.
It hadn’t been so many years since she had been among the new generation of noble blood. She clearly recalled breaking away from the dour, slow, dull conversations of her elders and finding where the others of her age were meeting. Of course the constant eyes of the palace guard and the house chaperones were on them. The freedom they had was a performance, but it was the closest they would have until they reached majority. She strolled in the play of light and darkness. The wind at the rooftop of Kithamar was cold, and there was nothing to break it.
Elaine was at the eastern edge, far from the bonfire, in a gown of yellow and blue. Her hair was plaited with silver threads, and she wore a scarf around her neck against the cold. She was speaking with one of the palace guard, a young man whom she dismissed when she saw Andomaka drawing near.