Read Online Moving Water by Sylvia Kelso - Free Book Online Page B

all”—the tiny quiver of amusement was the bravest thing I ever heard—“it could have been worse.”
    With shame I admit myself unable to match it. I said goodnight and fled.
    * * * * *

    Next day I sent breakfast to his room to ensure the twins would be off to school and Callissa to the markets before he emerged. Despite her tearful protests that “I never meant to upset him. How was I to know? I don’t know why I said it, he just—made me,” I was convinced he would go on striking truth from her as he did from me, and I had been scarified enough. So it was well into second watch before we set out for Ker Morrya.
    He scanned our route with his usual bright-eyed interest, quite unconcerned by his own effect on passersby. I asked if he wanted to inspect the mare, stabled at the post-house with orders to “Wait here for me. And behave yourself.” He merely narrowed his eyes, shook his head, replied, “She’s all right,” and resumed his study of carriages, sightseers, officials, workers, people of every trade and province surging by, while I thought yet again that his eyes had a freakish life of their own.
    With the sunny street making his pupils pinpoints, his irises had the constant swirl and variegation of light in flowing water, mint, bayleaf, laurel, sea and moss and royal jade-green, changes swift and bewitching as his moods. . . . I lost sight of the city. I even forgot to ask how he knew about the mare. But then he nodded at some Gjerven tribesmen with wooden spears, bones in their noses and towering feather helmets, saying, “Imagine charging in one of those—and the chinband breaks.” So we were laughing as we reached Ker Morrya’s gate.
    No steward was there. Passing the sentries I felt a sudden need for support, and nodded to the guard officer, saying, “I’ll take the four on stand-by.” Their boots made a solid, reassuring clump behind us on the marble steps.
    The court was in the central gallery. Its hexagon is big as any temple, one side giving on the forecourt, the rear wall a backdrop for the Lady’s white-gold throne inlaid with onyx moontrees, under the canopy which is the boast of Assharral: a single mighty rock crystal cut and polished to transparency, shimmering above the dais like a curve of visible air, a foil for the flamboyant walls and floor and roof.
    The walls are of alabaster so thin the sun shines through them, turning the stone-grain to huge whorls of sunset rose and tangerine and gold, the floor is black marble spanned by a moontree of silver: flowing boughs, voluptuous orb. The ceiling is yellow amber imlann wood, coffered in geometric mazes whose woven triangles prison the eye, an ebony star at each one’s point.
    I had never felt at ease there. Today I found myself reflecting that a tenth of this ostentation would have fed my troops properly in Phaxia. Among it, perfectly at home, chattered and postured the rainbow of silk, satin, jewels and outrageous fashions that composed the court.
    Nor did I ever like the court. They are nobles, I am a farmer’s son, yes. I am a soldier, they were play-people, yes. But to me there was something immoral in the sight of Assharral’s wealthiest, wittiest, best-bred and most beautiful frittering their days away in empty ritual and squabbles over trivia, while a few governors, a horde of scribes and a couple of generals turned the Lady’s chariot wheels.
    I watched the latest favorite, a willowy gallant in royal purple with sleeves that brushed the floor, thillians in his shoe-heels, scented to smother you at a spearlength, orange and scarlet-dyed hair in two horns above his temples, fooling with a gold stave of office he could barely lift while he changed frivolities with two ladies whose costumes are beyond my description. I saw other heads turn, the arch of painted brows, could imagine the catch-word repartee at our expense.
    Then it struck me like a