House of Shadows(80)

Leilis frowned at her. “Piping. Not just music, but specifically piping.”

“… yes?”

The woman stood up. “Come along,” she said. She led Nemienne out of the room and strode purposively down the gallery, so that Nemienne had to hurry to keep up with her. Leilis led the way along the gallery—all the doors were shut, the women of Cloisonné House evidently all still asleep—and down a flight of stairs to a second, shorter gallery. She strode along this hall to the room on the far end, and here she tapped gently and entered without waiting for an answer.

The room was another bedchamber, this one twice as large and far more handsomely appointed than Leilis’s. Two small tables, each with its own dainty little chair set before it, held respectively brushes and combs and pins in neat racks, or little pottery bowls filled with ointments and waxes. A well-used kinsana was set against the far wall, a flute and three sets of hand pipes occupied an ornate stand next to the kinsana, and a scroll filled with musical notation had been pinned open on a stand of its own. The bed was set so that its occupant could catch the breeze from the room’s one window, though this was shuttered now against the morning’s chill. A pallet was lying across the room from the bed. The pallet was occupied only by Karah’s silver kitten, which had evidently made its own way back from the deep places beneath the mountain and was now curled up asleep on the pillow. Karah herself, Nemienne supposed, must already have gone on to her bath.

But another woman was sitting on the bed. Like Leilis, this woman was fully dressed, which Nemienne had begun to guess from the quiet of the House might not be customary at this time of day. Past the first bloom of youth, and with the narrow features and reddish-black hair of a Samenian, this woman looked more interesting than beautiful. Right now her expression combined weariness and exasperation and relief all at once.

The woman—she must be Rue—looked up as Leilis entered and gave a little nod. “So you found our little strayed bird—again. Honestly, Leilis, what are we going to do?” Then she saw Nemienne and stopped abruptly.

Leilis gave a little brusque wave of her hand toward Nemienne. “Karah’s sister. She’s the one who found her.” Leilis stepped aside and impatiently gestured Nemienne forward. “You surely know that your sister has charmed Prince Tepres? Your sister must have said so?”

Karah somehow hadn’t thought to mention this. Nemienne knew she must look shocked, but she couldn’t help it.

Disregarding Nemienne’s amazement, Leilis was going on, “He gave her a set of twin pipes. Where did she keep them, Rue? Oh, under her pillow? Ah, the romance of the young!” From her tone, she might have been a grandmother rather than maybe in her mid-twenties. But Leilis did just seem older, somehow. She said, crossing the room to Karah’s pallet, “Well, let’s have a look, then.” The kitten twitched an ear as Leilis lifted the pillow, cracked open one eye, hissed halfheartedly at the intrusion, and went back to sleep.

There was indeed a set of twin pipes under Karah’s pillow, a set carved of ivory and bound with gold. Clearly the set had once been very beautiful. Even now an echo of that beauty remained. But the ivory was cracked and yellowed, and the gold blackened and twisted. The pipes looked like they had been thrown into a fire and left there to smolder. Rue, eyes widening in surprise and dismay, silently took them from Leilis, holding them cupped in her hands as though the pipes were some small injured creature.

“Well,” said Leilis to Nemienne, “now I believe you did hear piping.” She took the pipes gently back from Rue and turned them over curiously.

“Prince Tepres… the prince himself gave these to her? And she sleeps with them under her pillow?” Nemienne remembered Karah blushing when she thought of the man who had given her the kitten. Is he wonderful? Nemienne had asked. And her sister had said, Maybe he is. Karah was in love with Prince Tepres.

Nemienne shook her head in amazement. She reached to take the pipes from Leilis, half expecting the ruined pipes to leap with fire and life in her hands—either because they’d clearly been bespelled or because they’d been a royal gift, she did not quite know which. But they lay quiescent in her hand. But the brush of Leilis’s hand against hers was another thing, and not so quiet. Nemienne pulled back and gave Leilis a wide, surprised stare.

Leilis took no notice of Nemienne’s reaction. She said, still focused on the pipes, “I much doubt the Dragon’s heir knew what he gave her. He knew only that she would be pleased to have them as a gift. He saw as much when he received them himself, a few days past, at that foreign lord’s engagement…” Her voice trailed off, and then firmed: “At that engagement, where the foreign lord gave these pipes from his own hand to Prince Tepres.”