On the way back she stopped off to borrow a looking-glass from one of the other serving-women. In return for the loan she gave the woman the round ball of soap she had assembled from discarded slivers in the laundry. The mirror was the size of Qinnitan’s hand, in a chipped frame of polished tortoiseshell.
“Mind you bring it back before bedtime,” the woman warned.
Qinnitan nodded. “Just...for hair,” she said in her fragmented Hierosoline. “Bring soon.”
When she reached her bed again she saw that Pigeon had done his best to clear away the remnants of his day’s carvings. She set the carved bird on the empty barrel she shared as a table with the next bed over, and borrowed a comb from the girl whose bed that was, and who luckily did not ask anything in trade.
Qinnitan set the mirror on her knee and stared at the reflection. To her despair, she saw that her unruly hair had escaped the scarf again right where the red streak emerged. As if she had not already left enough of a trail across the citadel! She no longer had access to the cosmetics and dyes the women had used in the Seclusion, so she had done her best to disguise the flame-colored patch with soot from the candles and the laundry fireplaces, but working in that damp, hot room ensured that the soot didn’t work for long. She would have to get a bigger scarf, or cut her hair off entirely. Some of the older women here wore their hair very short, especially if they were past childbearing age. Maybe no one would think it too odd if she did the same... “Nira, isn’t it?” a scratchy voice asked.
Startled, Qinnitan looked up, hurriedly tucking her hair back under the scarf. It was the old woman from the laundry, the one with the burned face and missing teeth who had only been working there a few days. “Yes?”
“It’s me, Losa. I thought that was you when I saw you across the room. And is this your little brother?”
Pigeon was looking at the old woman with mistrust, his usual expression with strangers. “Yes, his name is Nonem.”
“Ah, lovely. I didn’t mean to bother you, child, I was just...” At that moment, just to add to the madcap air of sudden festivity, Yazi approached, followed by a young girl in a very fine dress—the kind of dress the laundrywomen only saw when they were called upon to clean things from the upper apartments of the citadel.
“Nira, I just...” Yazi saw the old woman. “Losa! What are you doing here?”
The woman smiled, then quickly pulled her lips together to hide her ruined teeth. “Oh, I couldn’t get out the gate to get home. All kinds of soldiers coming in, and such a fuss! Wagons, oxen, people shouting. Someone said they were Sessians hired by the lord protector. I thought I’d ask if I could stay here.”
“We’ll talk to the dormitory mistress,” said Yazi, “but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.” At any ordinary time Yazi would have pressed the old woman for details and it would have been the subject of the evening’s conversation all over the dormitory, but now something even more exciting was clearly pressing on her. “Nira, there’s someone here to see you.”
Qinnitan was beginning to feel quite overwhelmed. She turned to the very young girl in the beautiful blue dress and velvet petticoat. A crowd of women was beginning to gather as people came to see what had brought such an apparition into the dormitory.
“Yes?”
“I am to take you to my mistress,” the girl said. “You are... Nira?”
Qinnitan’s confusion quickly turned to panic, but she couldn’t very well deny it. She struggled to frame the Hierosoline words. “Who...who is your mistress?”
“She will tell you herself. Come with me, please.” Beneath the formal manners, the girl seemed a little anxious herself.
“Oh, that is too bad,” old Losa said. “I was looking forward to a chat.”
“You’d better go,” Yazi told Qinnitan. “Maybe a handsome prince saw you when we were wandering around lost today. Should I come with you, in case he has trouble making himself understood when he proposes to you?”
“Stop, Yazi.” Qinnitan just wanted everyone to go away and forget about this, but it was obviously going to be the talk of the dormitory, perhaps for days.
“She is to come alone,” said the girl in the blue dress. “But what about...my brother?” Qinnitan asked.
“I’ll watch him,” Yazi said. “We’ll have fun, won’t we, Nonem?”
Pigeon liked Yazi, but he clearly didn’t like the idea of letting Qinnitan go away with some stranger. Still, after a warning look from her, he nodded. Qinnitan rose, leaving the comb and mirror for Yazi to return to their owners, and followed the girl out of the dormitory into the cold, torchlit night.
She felt in the pocket of her smock for Pigeon’s carving knife and held it tightly as they walked back across the tiled immensity of the Echoing Mall.
“Who is your...mistress?” she asked the girl again.
“She will tell you what she wishes to tell you,” the little girl in the blue dress said, and would say no more. “
I am not happy,” said her father. Pelaya knew it was the truth. Count Perivos was not the sort of man who liked surprises, and all this had obviously come as just that. “Bad enough that a foreign prisoner should bribe my daughter to send messages to me when I already have so much else to worry on—using her as a...a go-between. But to find he also expects her to arrange some sort of assignation for him...!”
“It’s not an assignation and he didn’t bribe me.” Pelaya stroked his sleeve. The cuff needed mending, which made her heart ache a little—he worked so hard! “Please, Babba, don’t be difficult. Was there anything bad in his letter to you?”
Her father raised his eyebrow. “Babba? I haven’t heard that since the last time you wanted something. No, his thoughts are at least interesting, perhaps useful, and all he asks in return is any news I can give him about his home or his family. There’s nothing wrong with the letter, except that he knows too much. How could a foreign prisoner have so much to say about our castle defenses?”
“He told me he fought here twenty years ago against the Tuan pirates. That he was a guest of the Temple Council.”
“I remember those days, but he remembers where every tower stairway is and how many steps it has, I swear! He must have a memory like a mantisery library.” Count Perivos frowned. “Still, some of his warnings and suggestions show wisdom, and I am willing to believe he meant them in good faith. But what is this madness about a serving girl?”
“I don’t know, Babba. He said she reminded him of someone.” Pelaya spotted her servant coming across the garden with the dark-haired girl walking slowly behind her. “Look—here they come now.”
“Madness,” her father said, but sighed as if weak protest were all he was allowed.
Seeing the laundry maid up close, Pelaya was both relieved and confused. Relieved, without quite understanding why, to see that this girl was only a year or two older than she was, and that while she was by no means ugly, she was not astoundingly pretty, either. But something else about this laundry servant put her on edge, although Pelaya could not say what it was—something in the quality of the girl’s watchfulness, in the cool and measured way she looked around the torchlit garden, was not what the steward’s daughter expected from someone who spent every day up to her elbows in the citadel’s washing tubs.