Wedding Page 5

  My pregnancy now could only exacerbate Eleonora’s bitterness, and my own nature had enough in common with hers that I sympathized with her more spiteful emotions, understood them all too well. And I could admire, even share, her genuine care for her brother’s happiness. It was her way of showing it, as if I wasn’t fully human, or not an adult, not fit to be Dominic’s companion, that had created an immediate enmity between us.

  I tossed and turned most of the night, feeling, in a faint hangover of communion, some of Dominic’s choking frustration from our failed reconciliation. Sometime around dawn I fell into a disturbed sleep and when I awoke, late in the morning, Dominic, and Eleonora and Josh, were long gone.

  PART TWO:

  ARANYI

  CHAPTER 3

  The next week passed with the speed of a holiday in paradise. Pregnancy enhances one’s gift and its effects; despite our unsatisfying farewells, the powerful mental connection between Dominic and me remained, stretching and thinning like plastic film as the physical distance between us increased, but not breaking. I could enjoy the comfort of it, unspoiled by any immediate worry for his safety. It would take several days for the Aranyi party to cross the mountains and reach Andrade, more time after that for all the ’Graven forces to join up and coordinate their counterattack on the rebels.

  My condition revitalized my body as well. Once I had slept out the exhaustion of travel, I adjusted to the altitude and I had no morning sickness. With my energy restored, and with no demands of work, I had leisure to explore another kind of existence, what few Terrans had ever had the privilege to observe: the daily life of a ’Graven lord’s realm.

  Aranyi Fortress with its extensive grounds was more like a small town than one family’s house. An inner wall enclosed the castle and front and back courtyards. Beyond these was a large expanse with many smaller buildings, encircled by an outer wall. Guards controlled gatehouses at the entrances, as farm laborers and crafts people passed to and from their work in the fields, the pastures and the villages beyond.

  The place teemed with people, in the corridors and workrooms, in the outbuildings and gardens, all streaming into the great hall twice a day for meals. Life went on in its natural cycles, with or without the master’s presence. Dominic spent half of every year in the city on Royal Guards and ’Graven Assembly business, and Eleonora returned only for the occasional visit, but animals and crops must be tended the year around, land administered, buildings maintained, and the workers must be housed and fed.

  But for all the autonomous nature of this community, nobody forgot whose property it was. Dominic was lord, and as his betrothed, I received the benefit of the allegiance given to him. Everywhere I went, guardroom or smithy, laundry or mews, even the hectic kitchen, everyone curtsied or bowed, smiled and dropped, however briefly, the task at hand, in order to greet “Lady Amalie.”

  As with Magali, my initial reaction was to deny the title, to say, “No, I’m only Amelia Herzog, from Terra.” Luckily I saw before making so gross an error how confusing it would be, how insulting. Eleonora had introduced me as a Terran, as if to undermine my admittedly temporary position, but the ploy had backfired. Most of the staff, born and bred on Aranyi land, their families settled in Aranyi Realm for generations, had never traveled farther than a few miles from their home. People from the other end of the realm were viewed with distrust; those from a neighboring realm were strangers. City dwellers were a separate species. A Terran was impossible to imagine, but would certainly be recognizable, like a giant insect or a two-headed monster.

  I, by contrast, was obviously ’Gravina. Apart from the short hair, I looked exactly like the sort of bride Dominic should have chosen, or been shackled to by his parents years ago, and people made a simple mental adjustment. They assumed they had misunderstood, that Lady Eleonora had merely meant I had lived among Terrans, in the city. They knew some ’Graven had done that, had heard of adventurers who had been to Terra itself. Men, mostly.

  The household regarded me from the start, as my coworkers in La Sapienza, with less excuse, had come to do over time, as the illegitimate daughter of a ’Graven lord. It was easy to imagine my plight: for some reason unacknowledged, denied the status of natural-born that my father’s acceptance would have conferred, I had been unable to claim the rights of ’Gravina that my looks and my gift obviously merited. Everyone was unfailingly sympathetic. With the highlanders’ contempt for the lowlands, they put every peculiarity in me down to a belief that I came from the south or from Eclipsia City, and had led a strange life, in the Terran Sector of the city or even off-world. It all worked in my favor, explaining any unfamiliarity with traditional Eclipsian ways.

  Without trying, I was becoming the “Lady Amalie” of Edwige’s invention. It was like my arrival at the airport, the men at the baggage claim, only here it was the benign opposite of that ugly reaction. People knew I could read their minds, and they were delighted not to have to search for the correct words or find the courage to speak. They had only to envisage their genuine pleasure in the fact of their lord’s finding a suitable wife at last, certain that their welcome and good wishes would be perceived.

  It seemed, for once, that I could not fail. Even at La Sapienza, where I had been given every benefit of the doubt, had had every allowance made for me as a beginner and a foreigner, I had not been able to adapt to the life of a seminary worker, to conform to the expectations of the others. Here, at Aranyi, there were no complicated skills to master, no duties to perform. My growing fluency in the language, always easier for telepaths, as we perceive the meaning of the thoughts before they are spoken, made the illusion effortless to sustain. Each day I grew more confident. With Eleonora’s malice perversely protecting me, I was free to come and go, to ask any question without arousing suspicion, to observe all the fascinating work of the household. I could look and talk and wonder to everyone.

  The fortress alone was bigger than any building I had seen on Eclipsis, apart from ’Graven Fortress, a cross between a castle and a palace. The walls were solid and thick, massive blocks of stone fitted together in a sophisticated design that kept enemies and bad weather out while allowing air to circulate and conserving heat. Like any defensive structure, it had a strong back. Three sides of the building were freestanding, while the fourth, up to the third floor, was built into the mountain. Different rooms on the same level might look out on a steep drop or be underground, depending on which side they faced.

  Unlike the circumscribed seminary and signal station of La Sapienza, Aranyi Fortress, secure behind two protective walls and backed by the impenetrable northern mountains, was free to spread out in three dimensions. There were miles of corridors and hundreds of rooms, for living, working, eating and storage. There were several staircases: winding ones spiraling up into watchtowers, broad ones leading up to the family bedrooms and nursery, and to the servants’ quarters above. There was a dungeon, three steep levels below the ground floor, I was informed by a grinning boy hurrying up from the root cellar. The nearer basements served more humdrum purposes: for keeping food, as this boy was retrieving, for dry goods and weapons, and lower down, for the plumbing.

  The layout of the fortress was a standard plan, but new to me who had known only the uniformity of La Sapienza’s square shape. From a wide, deep cobblestone courtyard, one came in at the entrance, made deliberately narrow to create one last bottleneck for invaders should they manage to get past all the outer defenses. From there, one could ascend a majestic stone staircase, or turn and enter the great hall, where we ate dinner and supper. Breakfast was served buffet style in a smaller room to the side near the kitchen, saving work early in the day.

  Guardrooms near the front and rear entrances occupied large areas on the ground floor. The upper stories and turrets had lookout posts and attics; the middle floors were a mixture of workrooms and guestrooms, including the Zichmni Suite, kept always in readiness should the Viceroy or a member of his family arrive on short notice. Bedrooms, for family, g
uests and servants, ran along the three outer walls, but the storerooms were dark and gloomy, dug into the hard rock that sheltered us. Any work that required bright light, like sewing, was done in rooms near the front and top of the house.

  The hall was two stories high, to give a sense of grandeur and, more prosaically, allowing heat to rise and dissipate from the assembled company and the enormous fireplace. The family and guests of rank sat on chairs at the high table on a dais at the front of the room, opposite the entrance, for safety and warmth. Everyone else sat on benches at tables running the length of the room. The hall had an unfurnished look most of the time; because there was so much willing help, the household followed the old custom of setting up trestle tables before each meal and disassembling them again afterwards, stacking them against the walls. It was as if every day were a potential festival, with dancing or other entertainment to follow the food.

  At the very top was the eclipse platform, the unique feature that marked the fortress as the home of ’Graven. Just as at La Sapienza, where we had clambered onto the roof, here we had a special turret, a shallow cup on the highest tower. It was used as a lookout post most of the time, but when the daily eclipse began the watchman descended and the gifted inhabitants took his place. I found it by instinct the first time; each day after that the watchman would hold the door open, reporting the weather as I pulled myself up the last few steps. Here in the mountains we were buffeted by wind even on fair days, but regardless of rain or sleet, snow or fog, there was no better way to replenish our strength. Every day I could feel it, the crypta energy surging through my body, nourishing me and the child.

  After I had memorized the basic plan and could find my way from my room to the great hall and back, I was ready to learn about the work that went on. Everywhere I went, from morning to evening, there was some kind of purposeful activity, much of it segregated by sex. Maids mopped corridors and bathrooms and swept out the occupied bedrooms. Seamstresses made new clothes and linens for the household, and mended old ones. Footmen did heavy lifting and household repairs. A cobbler and an apprentice, a man and a boy, resoled boots and sandals and made new ones as needed. The guards left behind to defend the castle manned the gates and the entrances, and drilled in the courtyards.

  There was a full-time laundry in the second cellar for the larger items that could not easily be washed by hand—sheets and towels, tablecloths and napkins. Huge stationary washtubs were filled from taps, heated over cast-iron stoves and agitated by a manual crank. Strong young women worked here, turning the handles to wash and rinse, feeding the dripping things into wringers and lugging them upstairs in baskets. In winter everything was hung in an attic to catch the heat rising from the lower floors. In the warmer weather that was coming now it was hung outside.

  Only the kitchen employed both men and women, because of the variety of jobs. Enough people worked in the kitchen to populate their own village. There were the cooks, men and women, a true meritocracy, but there were also assistants of all kinds, to knead dough and form it into loaves and pie shells, to chop and to mince, to make sauces and to dress meat. There were girls to peel vegetables and pluck and clean fowl, others to wash the dishes and scrub the pots. There were boys to bring wood and tend the fire, and to turn the spits on which some animal was always broiling, making the fire hiss with the drippings that missed the pan underneath. People were constantly running in and out of the connecting rooms—pantries, root cellars and wine cellars, cold rooms for meat and milk and for fruit and vegetables, warmer rooms for breads and pies—fetching things the cooks called for, taking back what was not used.

  With its roaring fire going from dawn until after dark, for boiling caldrons and roasting meat, and to heat the ovens built into the walls around the hearth, the kitchen seemed to me a hellish environment. It was hot and smoky, noisy and crowded, huge though it was in area. The cooks banged pots and pans and waved knives, shouting and cursing at their helpers. But it was, I soon learned, a coveted assignment. The kitchen staff worked inside, out of the weather, and had first taste of the best food. Nobody so privileged would complain about the fuggy atmosphere or a few rough words from a cook.

  Soon I discovered a refuge, cool and quiet: Dominic’s library. On Terra the word is still used occasionally, although it merely means a place where people work at retrieving and sending information through computers and the holonet. Now I entered a real library. Dominic likes to read when he has the chance and he had added greatly to the collection amassed by the previous generations of literate Margraves Aranyi. The walls were lined with shelves filled with leather-covered books. I knew what they were, had learned about the way in which text used to be presented—inked type pressed onto paper, the pages bound into volumes—but I had never held a book. For someone who had read words only on a screen or with the holonet enrichment, a printed book was an unbelievable treat, like seeing a fossil of an extinct species come to life.

  Almost sweating with excitement, I tilted my head sideways to examine the titles on the spines. Official Procedure for the Duel of Honor. My face fell comically, if anyone had been around to observe it. Comprehensive Swordsmanship for Rapier or Broadsword. I tried another shelf. Morgan’s Daily Regimen of Horse Training. Hunting with Dogs in Snow. I was ready to cry.

  I crossed the room. The True Romance of Ilana the Fair and Roderick the Outland Prince. I had left the masculine world of warfare and hunting, and entered the feminine world of love. The Tale of Lord Zichmni and the Divine Qiaolian. I knew that story. Nobody could spend any time on Eclipsis without hearing snatches of its founding legend that was usually sung in ballad form. I took the volume off the shelf, running my fingers over the soft leather of the cover, riffling the creamy pages. My first look brought the tears of frustration back to my eyes. It was all verse, in archaic, inflected Eclipsian. It would take me a long time to puzzle out each line, and at the end all I would have would be the formulaic myth of the “wandering sun god” Lord Zichmni falling from the sky and encountering the “silver-eyed goddess” Qiaolian. It was a beautiful, even moving account when sung. In print it could only put me to sleep.

  As I prepared to give up my quest for reading material, I noticed a smaller, enclosed bookcase, shelves protected by wooden doors with glass panels. The Age of Anarchy, I saw the first title. History of the ’Graven Realms: Vol. 1, The Coalition. These were all history books, more my style. The title Aranyi: Fierce in War, Loyal in Peace, probably written by one of Dominic’s forebears, commanded my attention. Eager to read the illustrious deeds, however embellished, of Dominic’s family, I pulled on the delicate handle of the carved door. It wouldn’t open. There was no lock, no key. It just would not open. I had never encountered a crypta lock before, a device like a DNA reader to ensure access by only one person.

  Trust Dominic to lock away the good stuff. I mused on my lover’s contradictions: his pride in his position even as he chafed at its restrictions; his pleasure in both reading and warfare; his passion for young men and his crypta-inspired love for me; his skill at swordsmanship and riding and hunting, as attested to by his books, and his incisive speeches in ’Graven Assembly, which I had heard of, even in the Terran Sector, from people who had been on the receiving end of his barbed words.

  While I thought of him and reflected on his attractive blend of opposing qualities, the doors of the cabinet popped open. I had opened the lock, with patience and calm, by recreating my lover’s character in memory. Afterwards Dominic refused to believe what I had done, made me show him how I could open the lock, then laughed in amazement, saying we didn’t need to be married after all, we were already one flesh. Now I grabbed the book of Aranyi history, in case the doors slammed in my face if I hesitated. I had been away from computers and the holonet for six months, and was feeling the need of the true addict for the visual, not just spoken, word. By the time Dominic returned, I hoped to impress him with my knowledge of Aranyi’s past.

  But even a sloth like me tired of indoor amusement
eventually. It was spring; many days were warm enough that the night’s snowfall melted soon after breakfast. I could put on my boots against the mud and visit the outbuildings.

  There were so many places to investigate, so many strange new occupations to observe. There were barns, some for storing summer crops after the harvest, some for housing the grazing herds of animals when winter forced them indoors. There were shearing sheds for sheep and milking sheds for the cows and goats and ewes. There was a forge and smithy, for making and repairing all the farm equipment, and the shoes and myriad other stuff that horses require. A mill powered by wind ground grain into flour. In the smokehouse, fragrant chips of a variety of woods preserved fresh meat and fish for the months when game was scarce. An icehouse, built partly below the cold ground, packed with snow and insulated with straw, kept a few perishables frozen until autumn returned to do the work naturally.

  Some buildings held more fascination than others. There was a mews, with falcons and hawks, and a Master Falconer to care for them. Alaric was a neat little man, soldierly and reserved, with something of the birds’ own concentration on his work. He was polite, like everyone I encountered, inviting me to watch as he exercised the birds, freeing them from their leather hoods and letting them swoop and dive for a lure of rabbit meat.

  There was an enormous stable, somewhat depleted now, for Dominic’s hunting horses and his battle charger, and those of the men-at-arms who lived nearby. Like the hawks, the horses not away at the war with their masters were taken out every day by the grooms for exercise in a large circular yard. The little mare that had carried me from La Sapienza was here, mine now, a gift from Dominic. Her name was Firefly, according to the wooden sign over her stall. Not terribly original, but I liked it and saw no need to choose another. She knew me from the journey we had made together and would greet me with a whinny. On my first visit a groom offered to accompany me for a ride, but since Dominic had left no orders on this subject I was able to decline graciously on the pretext that he would not like me to go without him.