House of Shadows(31)

It took a moment for Leilis to steady her voice, to speak with some semblance of her customary flat indifference. True indifference was not, right now, within her reach. But she was too proud to make a show of loss, of grief. Of the bitterness of failure. She said, “The effect is even stronger when a man touches me.” She had to cut the last word off short, or she would have lost control of her tone.

Moonflower cried, with intense sympathy, “But that is horrible! Couldn’t Narienneh—couldn’t Mother make it better?”

Again, it took a long moment for Leilis to flatten her tone. She said, her tone colder than she’d intended, “All the mages of Lonne tried, one after another. None of them could remove the spell. None of them understood exactly what Blueflax had done, or how she had done it so—powerfully. One of them tried Blueflax as an apprentice, but she had no aptitude. Another said I—said I was myself at fault, that there was some kind of intrinsic magic in me that had got slantwise to the magery in the curse. He thought if he could get rid of the curse I might have aptitude myself, maybe because of my father. But he couldn’t, so it didn’t matter.”

“Your father?”

“He was a mage, a king’s mage, from the Laodd. He never had much interest in the left-hand daughter whose birth killed her mother. I didn’t know him.” Leilis waved an impatient hand. “He’s dead now—it doesn’t matter.” It didn’t. No girl born to a keiso was likely to think overmuch of her father. In the flower world, mothers and sisters were everything. And, of course, as she was not keiso, Leilis did not truly have those, either. She set her teeth against sharp anger Moonflower surely did not deserve.

“Oh,” Moonflower said in a faint voice.

“But even though Mother wouldn’t send me away, of course I was ruined for the flower world.” Despite everything she could do, Leilis’s voice shook a little at the end of this explanation.

“This is terrible!”

“I’m accustomed to it,” said Leilis. But she had to wait a moment before she could go on smoothly. “It was years ago. But what happened to me made Mother guard you more carefully.” Though Leilis had had to work hard to make sure of it, and now found herself even doubting whether anything she’d yet managed could even begin to guard this innocent girl enough. Or whether she could stand the burden of Karah’s gratitude or trust or whatever it was the girl was offering… Suddenly desperate to recover her solitude, Leilis said, “You will be very busy. You have a great deal to learn. So you had best go back to Rue and rest while you have the chance.” She knew her tone had gone sharp, even savage.

“Yes,” Moonflower said, earnestly, without either apparent offense or fear, and bowed herself gracefully out of Leilis’s room.

She would, Leilis thought, make an unforgettable keiso. If only that would be enough… Narienneh might have required prompting to change the girl’s robe straightaway, but she shouldn’t regret her decision. Though Leilis had no authority or official reason even to consider such questions, though nothing about running Cloisonné House could ever legitimately be her business, Leilis couldn’t help but find satisfaction, cold though it might be, in that conclusion.

And if Narienneh remembered that the initial idea had come from Leilis… well, naturally it wouldn’t matter, because Leilis could never be anything more than she already was: not quite a servant, yet truly nothing more, either. She threw a knot of wood violently into her fire, scattering burning twigs out onto the hearth. She left them there, guttering on the hearthstones, and went to gaze blindly out the room’s small window.





CHAPTER 5




Nemienne sat cross-legged on cold stone, her hands resting on her thighs, her back very straight, surrounded by a heavy, ungiving darkness that pressed down upon her. It was not quite silent: A slow drip of water somewhere far away broke through the otherwise impenetrable boundaries of the dark.

She was trying to call light.

“It is a simple magic, and a necessary one,” Mage Ankennes had told her. “You learn the theory of magecraft quickly and this is good. You understand some of what you are taught, which is better still. But what I will begin to teach you now is the foundation of true magic. The featureless dark resists any form a mage tries to give it. It crushes the heart and muffles the mind. You will find that darkness may of itself smother light. Magic requires light and clarity. You must learn to strike through the dark and send it back to hide in its shadows so that you will be able to work.”

So far Nemienne had proved unable to do any such thing. She wondered how stupid she would have to be at summoning light before Ankennes would give up on her and send her home. Well, but it didn’t matter, she told herself firmly. Because she would learn how to do it.