House of Shadows(15)

Rue repeated the steps again. Leilis sat down against the wall, set the tray on the floor beside her, wrapped her arms around her knees, and waited while Rue went through the sequence yet again. And then again, this time adding three gliding cat steps and a long dipping turn back into esienne. Leilis finally recognized part of the middle sequence of the Departing Swallows dance from the Autumn Lament. Evidently Rue was considering an adaptation for the dance. It looked fine to Leilis, but Rue continued rehearsing and adjusting the steps, her face calm and intent, until she reached some level of perfection perceptible only to herself. Then she stood still a moment longer, in the esienne stance once more, the tips of her fingers brushing the rail.

And then, at last, the remote intensity in her face slowly gave way to an awareness of the studio, and Leilis, and the tray. A smile broke into her dark eyes and she crossed the floor quickly and dropped down with a dancer’s automatic grace to sit next to Leilis.

“Thank you.”

Leilis uncovered the food. “It would be better hot.”

Rue laughed. Though not beautiful, the woman had a beautiful voice and a warm, quiet laugh. “When do I ever have my supper hot?”

This was true. Rue spent most of her afternoons and many of her evenings either with the dance master or alone in the House studio, and even the more penetrating bells of the timekeeper seldom broke through her focus. She exclaimed in pleasure now, seeing the duck. “A cherry sauce? Wonderful!”

Leilis leaned back against the wall and watched the keiso eat.

Rue’s father, a Samenian, had given her his narrow face and long bones; Rue was thus tall for a dancer, but she was not willowy. Her wrists and ankles were strong and her limbs muscular, so that she lacked the delicacy that made for true beauty. Her hair was Samenian black: not the desirable jet prized in the flower life, but muted with reddish highlights.

None of that mattered. Rue had left the household of her wealthy father to become keiso because her heart was given to dance. A wife must be a wife, and a mother a mother; a lady must be a lady; only a keiso could make art the center of her life. Rue had become keiso on her nineteenth birthday, had bought out her contract at twenty-three, and now, at thirty-four, was one of the great ornaments of Cloisonné House and of all the flower world. Neither needing nor desiring to tie herself to a man, even the noblest or richest, Rue had no keisonne and would probably never accept one. Further, too secure within herself to concern herself with issues of status and rank, Rue was one of the easiest of all the House keiso for residents of lesser rank to approach.

“The House has gained a new deisa,” Leilis told her.

“Yes, even I could not miss the word of it.” Rue ate a slice of duck breast with concentrated pleasure and began to nibble the orange strands of urchin roe off the creamy mound of mashed parsnips.

“A lovely girl,” remarked Leilis.

Rue made a perfunctory sound of mild interest without glancing up.

“Lily also thinks so.”

Rue paused in the midst of her second slice of duck breast. She looked at Leilis, a searching look. “And so you bring me a tray?”

“With cherry sauce.”

A slight smile crooked Rue’s mouth. “I’m surprised you care.”

Leilis did not know how to defend her own sympathy for the new girl. She said nothing.

“Does she dance?” Rue asked after a moment.

“Compared to you?”

Rue smiled again and went back to her duck. She knew, all possible modesty aside, that there was no likelihood that this new girl would even be able to perceive the distant heights of her art.

“Mother will want to protect her,” said Leilis. “But she won’t.” She meant, Not from Lily. The faint, bitter edge to her voice surprised her, and she stopped.

The keiso, understanding, lifted an eyebrow in cynical agreement. “Children blind a mother. Even a Mother. Lily might have grown into a less selfish snip if Narienneh had fostered her out just as she’d have done with a boy.” Even Rue would not have said anything that direct to just any servant, but then Leilis was not an ordinary servant. Rue simply went on, “But as she hasn’t and won’t, what do you think I will be able to do for this new deisa of ours?”

There was, of course, very little even an influential and well-disposed keiso could do for a deisa among deisa. Leilis lifted a shoulder in a tiny shrug.

Rue finished the duck and thoughtfully broke one of the cakes in two, exposing the thick cream filling. She ate the cake in two neat bites and licked cream off her fingers. “Very beautiful, is she?”

“She’ll surprise you,” Leilis promised. “Even though I tell you so now.”