Rue made a skeptical little sound, ate the second pastry, and rose to her feet in one neat motion. “Will you take the tray back to the kitchens, or shall I?”
“I ought to leave it for you. Then at least you would have to leave the studio for half a moment.”
The dancer only laughed, not at all offended at this impertinence. She glanced at the rail, at the mirror, but pulled herself away and strolled toward the door instead. She said over her shoulder to Leilis, who had picked up the tray and followed her, “I’m going out to the theater with Lord Nahadde soon. He gifts well, but he wishes an attentive companion, so I had better not be late. I must thank you for bringing the tray, Leilis. I would have noticed later that I had missed supper!”
Leilis watched Rue walk away, then turned and headed slowly back herself toward the kitchens.
Cloisonné’s banquet would certainly continue into the small hours, leaving the House itself largely deserted until the keiso came wearily home to seek their beds. In the meantime, a deep quiet settled throughout the House. The young servants had already retired; they would rise early, while the keiso were still sleeping off their night. And the retired keiso who had never acquired property of their own and remained in the House were mostly elderly and abed with the sunset.
And, of course, the new girl would have been left to sleep in the deisa gallery, she being too new to the House to accompany the keiso to their banquet. Leilis wondered whether she had yet met the other deisa. Whether she had yet met Lily. Whether she slept, and whether her dreams troubled her.
Probably she was not asleep. Probably she lay awake in her narrow deisa bed and cried for her sisters. Especially if she had encountered Lily. She would be justified if she wept, then.
More important… more important, Mother would be in her apartment. Leilis changed her direction and quickened her step, realized she still held Rue’s empty tray, hesitated, and turned back toward the kitchens after all.
The kitchens were dark, if still warm; they were never really cold, even in the depths of winter. Leilis put the tray down quietly by the nearest sink, lit a candle from a coal banked in a fireplace, and swung open the door to the cellars.
A sharp cold emanated from the stairway. Leilis’s steps fell more softly than seemed reasonable, as though here sound itself became muted and tentative. Accustomed to this muffling of sound and sense and less given to fancies than most residents of Cloisonné House, Leilis did not pause but quickly went down another flight of stairs into the deeper, larger cellar beyond. There she found a bottle of straw-colored Enescene wine. The bottle was cold in the hand, and dusty. Leilis blew the dust off its label, holding the candle close to the cramped angular writing to make out the script. Then, satisfied, she went again through the small cellar and up the stairs.
Up in the kitchens once more, she dusted the bottle more thoroughly and set it and a tall goblet on a tray. She added a narrow vase of clear glass and a sprig of moonflowers from an arrangement chilling in the ice pantry, added a single cream-filled cake on a delicate plate painted with more moonflowers, and slipped out of the kitchens again without waking the girls.
Narienneh was awake; light showed in a narrow line beneath her door. Leilis was not surprised. She would probably be fretting about the new deisa she had bought into the House. Though probably she would not have framed clearly to herself any question about Lily in that connection, or Leilis would have no necessity to trouble her.
The door was shut nearly to, but not latched; a touch of Leilis’s hand swung it inward. A small fire of rowan and mountain cedar was burning in the center of her large fireplace. A kettle of tea had been set to one side of the fire to keep hot, though Mother did not seem to have poured a cup. She was sitting at her small writing desk close by the fire, with the house ledger open before her and an abstracted expression on her aged, elegant face. Though she held a quill in her hand, she was not writing, but only gazing into the fire. But she glanced around as her door opened.
Her eyes traveled from Leilis’s face to the tray she held, and she smiled a little. “Leilis.”
“You seemed tired.”
“I am, a little. Thank you.”
Leilis walked forward, waited for Narienneh to close the ledger and move it aside, and laid her tray down on the table. “I presumed to open a bottle of the Enescene gold.”
“That is thoughtfulness, not presumption. You have always,” said Narienneh, with regret, “had a fine instinct.”
Leilis said nothing. Even after so long, even spoken kindly, such a comment still had the power to wound. She refused, however, to flinch. Instead, she opened the bottle of wine and carefully poured, then set the goblet of wine down near Mother’s hand, backed up a step, and settled herself on the floor by the hearth.