House of Shadows(55)
The keiso was wearing a blue overrobe traced with a complicated pattern of lavender and blue that echoed the pattern on her face. There was a comb of sea ivory in her hair, and she carried a knee harp in the crook of her arm. She set this on a small table near the door and swept into a low bow, her hands pressed together before her heart. “I am Summer Pearl,” she said. Her voice was warm and lovely, with a slight burr to it, like the deepest tone of a set of alto pipes. “Welcome, my lord, to Cloisonné House.”
Smiling, Taudde returned her bow. Gesturing to her harp, he said, “You are an instrumentalist?”
“I play a little,” Summer Pearl answered, with a glint of humor in her dark eyes that mocked the modesty of her words. “Of course I will not match my lord’s skill.”
“Of course not,” Taudde said drily. He took his place at the table, to the left of the table’s head. He tried a nikisi seed from the bowl on the table. It was excellent, with under the sweetness an unexpected trace of heat that lingered on the tongue.
Summer Pearl came and knelt on a cushion across from him, on the inside of the U made by the table. “In Lonne, it is customary for the host to take the most honored place,” she said, with a nod toward the head of the table. She offered this explanation with a modest, diffident air, pretending mild embarrassment at proffering advice to a valued guest. Again, there was a touch of humor in the curve of her mouth, as though she invited him to share a subtle joke at her own performance.
It occurred to Taudde that the skills of keiso were more comprehensive than he had expected. He could not keep from smiling. “Not this evening,” he said, and rose to his feet as Prince Tepres entered the banquet chamber.
The prince was accompanied by Koriadde and by Jerinte Naliadde ken Miches—Taudde would have preferred Koriadde’s brother to the less-courteous Jerinte, but no one had consulted him—and of course by the dour Jeres Geliadde.
Taudde bowed, stopped from kneeling by the prince’s slight gesture. He caught a sudden reverberant echo of the earlier strangeness as the prince entered the room but could spare no attention now to consider the phenomenon.
Summer Pearl, clearly startled by the prince’s arrival, had risen gracefully and now began a deep bow of her own, saying warmly, “Eminence, we had no expectation—”
Koriadde, stepping forward, caught the keiso’s hands and prevented her from completing her bow. He said, “We are not formal this evening,” and kissed her hands, smiling down into her beautiful face.
“Cloisonné House is lovely tonight,” the prince said, also smiling at the woman. Summer Pearl smiled in return and bowed her head, taking the compliment as directed at herself, and the prince nodded to her. They were fond of subtle compliments in Lonne, as well as subtle threats.
The prince nodded to Taudde and walked across the room to take the place of honor at the head of the table. He wore an overrobe of black and jewel-dark purple. His fine hair was back in a single braid, bound off by a plain black band. The stark colors suited the prince’s rather angular features, making him appear both older and more authoritative than so young a man would likely otherwise have managed.
Though the authority, at least, seemed a natural quality. This young man had been the heir for… only for the past year, surely? The Dragon’s ruthless execution of the latest in his string of rebellious sons—which one had it been? Rette?—hadn’t that execution taken place only this summer just past?
The past year must have been a difficult time, surely, for Prince Tepres. A harsh education in power and its uses. There was something about him that suggested he’d grown very fast to meet the demands placed on him. Taudde felt his mouth tighten. He kept finding himself inclined to admire or like the young prince, which was disconcerting and not at all welcome.
He turned, a little too stiffly, to greet the prince’s two young companions and bow slightly to Jeres Geliadde. The young men bowed in return, hands over their hearts; the prince’s bodyguard inclined his head minutely, frowning.
“Do cease this sour manner,” the prince said to his bodyguard, frowning quickly in his turn. “I vow, you tire me with this refusal to be agreeable, Jeres. This is Cloisonné House, not some disreputable dock establishment.”
“Sit down and smile,” Koriadde advised the older man, following his own advice. “We are all friends here.”
Taudde tried to find the young men’s confidence amusing, but could manage only a biting sense of irony. He nodded to a servant to pour tea, which was of the kind most admired in Lonne: a pale crystalline green with a complex floral scent and no discernible taste. It was served in fragile cups like lacquered eggshells. Taudde lifted his cup, smiled, and nodded at the girl to pour for the other men. He meant to say something to Koriadde, something light and humorous. But Miennes arrived just then, smiling and affable, and Taudde lost the flow of his thought in his struggle to hide his revulsion at the man’s presence.