House of Shadows(54)

Taudde again touched the package he carried and answered, only a little too grimly, “Indeed, I thank you, but fortunately I was aware of the custom and I am thus fully provided with small gifts.”

The young woman accepted this assurance with graceful approval, though with a slight reserve that suggested she might have heard and wondered at the harshness in Taudde’s tone. But she did not, of course, comment. She nodded instead toward a sideboard of polished wood and said, “If my lord would care to place these items in the accustomed location?”

Taudde hesitated for a bare instant and then nodded in return and held the packet out to the woman. A slight hesitation before she put out a hand to take it suggested, a heartbeat too late, that she’d expected him to take the package of gifts to the sideboard himself. Distracted by his own dislike of what the packet contained, he hadn’t noticed her expectation. Then, as Taudde gave her the package, he brushed the woman’s fingers. At once, a powerful echo sprang up between them, wholly unexpected.

Leilis jerked back, dropping the packet, which Taudde caught, barely. With his other hand he caught hers, firmly, resisting her sharp attempt to wrench herself free.

An ugly dissonance echoed and re-echoed, splintering Taudde’s perception of light and sound. He set his teeth against a strong desire to let the woman go… for a beat and another beat of time, and then released his grip. Their hands sprang apart as though propelled by some independent force, and they each took a hasty step to recover their balance.

Then Leilis took a hard breath, collected her dignity—no wonder she moved and spoke with such reserve, yes, that made sense now. She said with frozen disdain, “Your guests shall be shown in as they arrive, my lord,” and began a measured retreat. Not a rout, Taudde thought: nothing like it. “Wait,” he said hastily. “Please—wait only a moment. Allow me to beg your pardon. I had no idea—”

The ice thawed just a little. Though the woman didn’t turn back to face him, she at least paused.

“Cloisonné House itself has a strange depth to it. Have you felt this?” Taudde said, speaking not quite at random. He let his words come quick and unguarded. He wanted to hold the woman a little longer; he wanted a chance to perceive that strange blended enchantment more clearly. “As though its shadows are darker than the shadows of other houses, and its light clearer? As though in this house, voices and music and the slam of a door resonate in more than one direction? I think this may be in some way related to your—your—”

“Curse?” Leilis did turn, now. She gave Taudde a steady, neutral stare.

“Is that what it is? I haven’t… It’s some sort of… echo, or interaction, isn’t it, between a mageworking and something else…” His voice trailed off. Something of the sea. Or, if not of the sea, at least something similar, or allied. It was a unique sort of working, whatever blend of magery and other ensorcellment had created it… No wonder he found the woman so compelling. He himself was trying to achieve just such a blend. Though not for so cruel a purpose… He regarded the woman with redoubled fascination, wishing for the time and opportunity to examine the strange curse. He might learn a good deal if he could unravel it, see how it had been made… It would be a kindness to unravel it, if he could…

“You are a mage, then?”

“I?” Taudde was startled to realize how much he had given away to this woman. “More a theorist than a practitioner,” he said, since he didn’t dare deny it entirely. “But I cannot claim great skill, and you are no doubt aware that Miskiannes lacks strong magic.”

“But—” began the woman.

“Leilis?” a servant leaned through the doorway, saw Taudde, and instantly assumed a more formal manner. “My lord—the first of our keiso is ready to attend you, if I may announce her?”

Leilis, her manner a perfect mask of impersonal calm, withdrew. She left Taudde merely with repeated declarations of Cloisonné House’s desire to meet any wish he might discover, but clearly did not include her own presence among wishes she was willing to fulfill. As soon as she had departed, the first of the keiso entered.

Taudde tried to collect himself. His part this evening was surely sufficiently complicated without adding the distraction of even the most compellingly ensorcelled woman. There would be time later for less urgent matters, if he could first break free of Miennes’s leash, free of the threat Mage Ankennes posed to him. Those concerns must come first.

The keiso who had come into the banquet chamber was not as young a woman as Taudde had expected. Though beautiful, hers was a mature beauty. She was a good deal older than he—at least his mother’s age. Her face was delicate in bone, but with an assured set to the mouth and a slightly sardonic tilt to the eyebrows. Violet powder extended the line of each eye and blended on the left side of her face into an intricate tracery of violet and blue that reached from the outside corner of her eye halfway along her cheekbone. This was a style Taudde had not seen before, and he blinked—and then smiled, for despite his nervousness the good-natured, ironic glint in the keiso’s eyes instantly put him at ease.