Yaril swung the door wide as the maid brought in a heavy tray with tea and cakes; she set the tray on the table, bowed, smiled at the silver bit Brann tossed to her. Yaril shut the door after her, came back to the table. “Eyes,” she murmured, “in the wall now.” She squatted by Brann’s feet, her eyes closed, a mask of indifference on her pointed face.
Cathar pulled his shirt over his head and began doing up the laces, making quite a production of it, a twinkle in his gray-green eyes. He was beginning to have fun with this business, the realization born in him that there was hope, there was a good chance he and the others would get back to the Valley, home to the slopes of Tincreal. That hope was bouncing in his walk and gleaming in his grin.
His spirits were winding up to an explosion which she hoped he would put off until he got back in the compound. She watched him scoop up the gold coin she set on the table, toss it up and catch it, grinning, then strut out of the room, watched him and wanted to run after him and hug him until he squealed. Impossible. Damn the Temuengs for making it impossible. She poured out a bowl of tea and sat staring out the window, sipping at the hot liquid, fighting an urge to cry, overwhelmed by the love she felt for her brother, realizing how lonely she’d been the past months. Even with Sammang and the crew, even with Taguiloa and Harra, even with the intimate association with the children, she felt alone; nothing could replace the feel of her folk around her, where she breathed in warmth and affection, where the space she took up was one she’d grown for herself, where she moved suspended in certainty. Not so long ago she’d been fretting about that closeness, feeling suffocated by it, now she was beginning to understand the dimensions of her loss. But she didn’t have time to brood over it. She emptied the bowl in a pair of gulps, patted her mouth delicately with the napkin from the tray, swung to face Yaril. “He was a good one, girl,” she said, making herself sound mincingly precise. “Go find me another such boy.” She reached into a box and took out another gold coin. “Hurry child, I grow… needy again.”
Silent and expressionless, Yaril took the coin and went out. Brann filled the tea bowl and sat staring out the window, sipping at the cooling liquid. Now that the room was silent and empty she thought she could hear tiny scraping sounds the spy made as he fidgeted behind the peepholes, could feel his eyes watching her.
The silence stretched out and out. The noise-in-the-wall sounds grew louder and more frequent. Then the sounds moved along the wall, very small noises that might almost be mistaken for shifts and creaks of the old house. Even when they were gone she sat without moving or changing the expression on her face, sat sipping at the tea as if she had all the time in the world. Yaril came back through the window again, a gold shimmer mixed with the gray light from outside. She flashed through the walls and came back to stand beside Brann. “He’s gone.”
“Think we convinced him?”
“Enough so he won’t probe further, not now anyway. Or he’d be outside waiting to follow you But just in case he left a friend behind, you better keep that form awhile.”
Brann grimaced.
Yaril patted her hand. “Poor baby Bramlet.”
“‘Jahr’ Brann striped off the robe, tossed it onto the bed, pulled on her tunic and trousers. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like this place.”
THAT DAY PASSED and the night and in the late afternoon when the shadows would have been long and dark if the heavily overcast sky had let enough light trickle through, the troupe rolled out of the West Gate, their planning done, two plot lines converging, everyone nervous and wondering if the whole thing was going to come apart on them and sink them beyond recovery, on their way to Maratullik’s meslak, escorted by the slave who’d fetched Taguiloa before, this time on a lanky white mule of contrary temper whose notion of speedy travel was a slightly faster walk than usual. A pair of silent guards rode ahead of them, another pair rode behind.
Yaril was an owl circling over them, Jaril rode with Negomas on top the wagon, both boys quiet, Negomas because he was nervous and rather intimidated by the guards and the great houses white and silent and eerie in the pearly gray light, Jaril because he wanted to avoid drawing notice to himself.
Brann rode beside the bay cob, looking out over the ruffled gray water, the stubby docks with their pleasure boats covered with taut canvas to keep out the rain. The street was empty, even of slaves, as the threatened rain began to mist down and the wind to blow erratically, dropping and gusting, dropping and gusting, throwing sprays of rain into her face.
The wagon rolled on and on, rumbling over the pebbled marble, the sound echoing dully from the walls, the slow clop-clip of the ironshod hooves extra loud in each drop of the wind. Taguiloa drove and Linjijan rode beside him, his flute tucked carefully away to keep it out of the rain. Linjijan stretched out on the seat, practicing his fingering along his ribs, wholly unconcerned about what was happening around him. He was restful to be with right now; Taguiloa felt the calm radiating out from him and was grateful for it as his own pulses steadied, his breathing slowed, the tightness worked out of his muscles. He couldn’t keep his dreams from taking his mind-if they made a good enough showing, if they managed to interest the Hand, they were set. Set for the court performance, the chance he’d worked so long to get. He tried not to think of Brann and her plans for this night, expelled from his mind any thought of the changechildren and what they would be doing while he danced.
Up ahead, the slave kicked the mule into a faster gait as the rain started coming down harder.
BRANN DANCED with fire, a soaring, swaying shimmering column of braided blue red gold, Jaril flowing bright, the drums heavy and sensuous in the shadows behind her, the daroud deep and sonorous, singing with and against the song of the drums. The Hand sitting in shadow watched without any sign he was responding to the music or the dance, but the adolescent Temueng males filling the benches on either side of him were stamping and whistling. Both things bothered her, the meslarlings’ raucous callow behavior and the Hand’s silence, draining the energy she needed for the dance. She owed the troupe her best, so she reached deep and deep within and drove herself to increase the power and sensuality of the dance. Negomas and Harm seemed to sense her difficulty and threw themselves into the music, making the great room throb and the Hand move in spite of himself, leaning forward, letting himself respond. And then it was over and Brann was bowing, then running into the shadows behind the screens set up to serve the players.
Taguiloa touched her shoulder. “Never better,” he whispered.
She smiled nervously. “It’s a bad crowd,” she murmured. “Stupid and arrogant.”
He nodded, touched the chime that warned Linjijan and the others to begin the music. He caught up his clubs, began his breathing exercises, listened to the music, eyes shut, running through the moves in his mind. The dance was paradoxically easier on the high rail at the inns because he didn’t have to work so hard for the clown effect.
Everything forgotten but his body and the music, he caught the cue and went wheeling out with a calculated awkwardness where he seemed always on the verge of winding himself into impossible knots and losing control of the clubs and knocking himself on the head.
AS TACUILOA FLUNG himself and the clubs about, Jaril was a shadow-colored ferret darting through the lamplit halls until he reached the outside, then a mistcrane powering up through the rain to join Yaril who was circling through the clouds waiting for him, a mistcrane herself now that the rain had turned heavy. They cut through the clouds to the far end of the lake and circled around the great shapeless pile of the Palace to the slave compound at the back.