14

Father did not become a highly decorated captain by being slow to observe the obvious. He turns. Surprise flashes through his face but he absorbs my presence swiftly, for he is a man who never hesitates, even when the tide of battle turns against him.

“Jessamy! Tell Lord Gargaron that none of your sisters runs the Fives.”

“None of my sisters runs the Fives,” I echo obediently.

“There, my lord! Your accusation is unfounded.”

“I have made no accusation,” says Lord Gargaron. “There is nothing illegal or criminal in a girl wishing to run the Fives. Although I perfectly understand why you would not wish it known among your peers, Captain Esladas. The half-blood daughter of an ambitious man like yourself must behave in keeping with the old customs of the Saroese homeland, where daughters are few and kept indoors until they are safely married to a respectable husband. I would not like to see the lords and officials at court laughing at a man I had sponsored because his concubine’s daughter was running Rings around him.”

The moment Father realizes what my echoed answer means, his expression darkens with a look of such betrayal that all I can think about is the recrimination in his eyes.

“Come inside, Jessamy,” says Lord Gargaron in a voice that cannot be disobeyed.

I enter the study. It would have been better to be crushed in turning Rings and my body dropped all bloody to the sand.

All at once Father acts decisively. He strides forward without the lord’s permission, and rings the handbell on his desk to summon a steward. As we wait in silence, Father stares at the rug. The knotted wool is framed by a border of immortal firebirds as rosy as dawn. For years Mother saved coin from the household budget and engaged in a bit of marketing on the side to earn enough to buy him this carpet as a gift.

Footsteps approach, and Polodos halts at the open door, eyes wide as he takes in the scene.

Father speaks in a cold tone that scares me. “Polodos, go fetch…” He is about to say “the Doma” or “the mistress of the house” but these are titles he cannot give to my mother in front of Lord Gargaron. “I wish Jessamy’s mother to attend me at once. Then make sure we are not disturbed.”

“As you command, Captain.”

Polodos closes the door as he goes out.

Lord Gargaron smiles his thin smile, and I shudder. The three tiny gold rings in his right ear mark him as a man who commands a palace household, although he is not himself born of royal lineage. “Tell me something, Jessamy,” he says.

I wish desperately he would stop using my name in such a familiar way but I cannot object.

“You ran impressively against my nephew. Why did you allow a lesser adversary to win?”

Instead of answering I look at the rug. I have failed Father in the worst way: I have caused him to lose face. He knows it, and so do I.

“Answer Lord Gargaron, Jessamy.”

“I did not dare win, my lord,” I say in a low voice.

“Why is that, Jessamy?” Gargaron asks.

“Because the winner must unmask, my lord.”

“You did not want your father to know you run the Fives, is that it?”

“Yes, my lord.” I finally look up.

Father is actually too stunned to speak as the extent of my insubordination hits him.

Lord Gargaron oozes on, his unctuous tone like slime in the air. “Garon Stable is shorthanded in promising young Novice adversaries. Your daughter appears to have real skill. More than that, she possesses an aptitude for the finer points of the Fives. My nephew Kalliarkos is a good boy, a pleasant lad, but he doesn’t have the edge that determines loser and winner just through sheer guts. You know what I mean, Captain. You see it among the men you have fought beside, those who, like you, have the necessary grit to see the battle through. Your daughter takes after you in that way. Do you not think so?”

“You, Jessamy? You were the one I trusted most.”

I will not give Lord Gargaron the satisfaction of seeing me break down. But it is so hard to stand here with my father staring at me as if I am a scorpion crawled out of the night to sting him with its venom.

A tap rattles the closed door.

“Enter,” says Lord Gargaron.

Mother comes into the room, and Polodos closes the door behind her to seal us in.

Even in her shapeless mourning shroud and with the bulk of her pregnancy before her, she glides like the most beautiful of ships, resplendent, moving gracefully under sail.

“My lord,” she says, and I am not sure which man she addresses.

For an instant I think neither Father nor Lord Gargaron is sure either.

Part of what makes her beautiful is that she has the discipline to regret nothing. Even under Gargaron’s censorious eye she does not wilt or fade.

“What is your wish, my lord?” she asks, addressing Father directly.

“Has Jessamy been running the Fives without my permission?”

“She didn’t know!” I cry, for above all things I do not wish Mother to take the blame.

She sighs with such gentle reproof that she could as well have slapped me. “Of course I knew, Jessamy. Do you think I don’t know everything that goes on in this household?”

“You knew, Kiya?” Father raises a hand as if to strike in sheer, frustrated rage, glances at Lord Gargaron, and lowers the hand. “You let it go on despite knowing I could never allow it?”

“What harm? Amaya is youngest of the four and she is now the age I was when you and I met. When I was her age, I worked in the market. I came and went as I pleased. It seems to me it was in part my freedom to come and go that attracted you because it was so different from how women behaved in the land of your birth. Our daughters are no longer girls. They are becoming young women. Do you mean them to live shut up in this house all their lives?”

“As you have done? Is that what you mean? Was this house not good enough for you?” He is shouting. He has forgotten that Lord Gargaron watches all, a vulture waiting for the beast to die so he can consume the carrion.

Mother never shouts but there is a stony weight to her voice that is worse than any chastisement. “I have no complaints nor have I ever made any. I chose this life with you. I knew what it would be. But our daughters have had no choice.”

“So you let them sneak around. Good Goat, woman! What else have you allowed them to do?”

“They are good girls, Esladas! There is nothing wrong with Jessamy running the Fives. Many girls run the Fives.”

“Not my daughters! Not the daughters of men like me!”

Always Mother has championed us and encouraged us. Defended us. “She is good at it. In all the months and years you have been gone to the wars, what harm? I have been careful and so has she. She does it for the love, not for glory, not to shame you. So I ask again, what harm?”

“The harm is what falls on my honor and my reputation! But how can I expect you to understand a man’s honor? How can I expect you to understand the shame it brings on a man when his household of unruly women disobeys his few rules because he has wielded too generous a hand?”

Mother is as tall as Gargaron and a little taller than Father. She does not shrink or slump as they stare at her. If anything, she grows more magnificent. “I acted as I thought best to make this household a peaceful refuge for you, my lord. No whisper of shame or disobedience has ever met my ears. Have such whispers reached you, Lord Gargaron?”

“Indeed, none have,” he says with amusement and a flicker of respect. “The household of heroic Captain Esladas is never spoken of at all except as a curiosity. Yet it was not so difficult for me to discover the truth about this girl Jessamy.” Despite the brief courtesy he shows Mother, he bends the severity of his gaze on Father. “You have been imprudent in your supervision of your women. They have made a fool of you because you have been too compliant, more like an Efean man, henpecked and hog-tied by the women in his sad eunuch’s life. Yet I am willing to overlook the situation if you will agree to the offer I have set before you.”

He speaks to Father, looks at Father. But like currents striking stepping stones in the obstacle called Rivers, the words flow toward a different shore.

Mother blinks as their impact hits her. As she understands what this truly means for us. The radiance of her face dims. She staggers, and I grab her arm to support her.

In all my life I have only seen my mother cry three times, twice when we carried stillborn boys to the City of the Dead and its Weeping Garden where infant sons of Patron fathers are buried. The third time was when my father left for the campaign in Oyia across the sea, because she knew he would be gone for years and might never return.

Now she sucks in gasping, ragged breaths as she struggles not to break down right here in front of him and Lord Gargaron. Twenty years have been cut loose with casual words flung in her face.

Father will not even look at her. He has already made up his mind.

“How could you? You selfish pig!” I scream.

“Jessamy!” Mother’s voice shatters into coarse slivers. “Do not humiliate us.”

Lord Gargaron sighs. “I cannot spend all day enduring a woman’s tears. Steward!” He rings the handbell.

The door opens and Polodos enters, bowing. “My lord?”

“Take the concubine away,” says Gargaron.

Father says nothing.

Turning so I don’t have to see the man I have looked up to all my life, I help Mother toward the door.

“The girl stays,” adds Gargaron. “She will come with me.”

I stop dead.

Mother’s shuddering and silent tears cease on the instant. Her gaze rises to Father’s shame-ridden expression.

“Esladas, you cannot mean to hand Jessamy over to this man?”

“Lord Gargaron is my lord now and thus my household is his to order as he wishes,” says Father in a tone so rough I suddenly realize he is on the edge of weeping.

She steps between us. “I will not allow it! She stays with me!”

“Ah,” murmurs Lord Gargaron. “Now at last we see the scorpion. Defiant and disloyal when her true face is revealed!”

“Mother, it’s all right.” I am so afraid that Gargaron will demand Father punish her that my thoughts tangle up in a dead-end maze of terror. But I can sluggishly think through what Gargaron has already said. “He just wants me to go train for the Fives in the Garon Palace stable. That’s all.”

“Of course that is all.” Gargaron laughs. “Please do not believe I would ever touch a woman of your blood and breeding, much less any of your litter. If I need a concubine, I can engage a woman of my own people. Ottonor has died in such destitution I can pick and choose from among the prettiest of his young kinswomen. Now, if you will, remove the concubine to her quarters.”

“I won’t let you go, Jessamy,” Mother cries, clinging to me.

“You must let her go,” says Father in a brutal voice. “She is mine, Kiya. I allowed her to live, so I hold the power of life and death over her. Let it be that if the girl was willing to defy me by running the Fives without my permission then she can live with the choice she made.”

I see Lord Gargaron fingering his whip. He’ll whip her, I know he will. I tug on her arm frantically. “Mother, I’ll be all right. You have to go.”

Polodos peels her away from me. The young steward’s expression is closed and disapproving. He obeys without a questioning word and leads her out of the room. I hear her sob with wrenching despair before the door closes.

I stumble, overcome by fear and grief, and barely catch myself against the door that has locked me away from my mother and sisters. The whole world has broken apart around me.

“Very good, Captain,” says Gargaron in the pleasant tone of a man who approves of the bread and wine set before him. “You will not regret this. Together we will do very well.”

“Yes, my lord.” So easily he acquiesces! The thought of Mother’s grief-stricken face keeps me silent. I will not cause more trouble for her. “But if I may, my lord. It would be dishonorable of me to leave before Lord Ottonor’s mourning procession and his journey to the City of the Dead. As one of his sponsored men, I am required to attend with my household.”

Lord Gargaron waves a hand as if brushing away a fly. “But you are no longer Lord Ottonor’s man. You are mine now, so you are not required to observe this obligation. Besides, I stand among Ottonor’s creditors. Clan Tonor owes my clan a great deal of money. By taking on your sponsorship I do his memory and his household a service by erasing part of his debt.”

“My lord, I obey. But…” His hesitation lasts only a moment before he forges on. “Legally I have no further obligation. But Lord Ottonor supported me in my early years when I came to Efea with nothing but the clothes on my back and a hope to make my fortune here. Honor declares that I must show my gratitude properly. Had Lord Ottonor not given me the chance to take up a military career I could never have gained the honors I did and thus come to your attention.”

“Your honor does you credit, Captain. I will make sure that members of your household are granted the honor of sitting the overnight vigil with Ottonor on his first night in the City of the Dead. However, I need you to depart right away. I received word yesterday that there has been an attack on the outpost of Seperens, beyond the Green River. I need a reliable and intelligent commander there as soon as practicable, so today you will be escorted by an honor guard of Garon soldiers to my villa at Falcon Hill. My niece will meet you there. You will sign the marriage contract. After Ottonor’s funeral we will celebrate the wedding feast and you will sail east to the war.”

Father’s eyes have darkened with a surging storm-sea of emotion but he collects himself. He is like a man who has been commanded to throw overboard his most cherished treasure and yet will steel himself to do so in order to keep the ship afloat in wave-tossed seas.

“Yes, my lord.”

“You must make a start on getting a son before you depart for the frontier. Let me assure you there is nothing wrong with the girl, no unsightly blemish or defect of character. You will find her appearance pleasing, her manners polished at the queen’s court, and her acumen for matters of business quite up to the mark.”

“Yes, my lord.” Father curls his hands into fists, opens them, and at last fixes them together behind his back in a soldier’s waiting stance. “My lord, the woman… my daughters… it would be dishonorable to just abandon them.”

“It’s not as if you have tossed them into the Fire Sea without a raft! You are a more tenderhearted man than your valor and hard-mindedness on the battlefield have led me to believe. Still, every man has his little flaws and quirks. I will have my stewards make provision for the women so you can travel to the frontier with peace of heart and a calm spirit ready to do battle.”

Father glances at me.

“I will never forgive you for this,” I mouth, and though my words are silent, he understands them and looks away. I pray he is ashamed of the work he has done this cruel morning!

Gargaron smiles. “Gather your arms and armor, Captain, and your military aides and senior staff.” He glances down at the butterfly mask with its bright blue wings and cheerful strong color like a glimpse of the embracing sky. “I have taken a fancy to this mask, Esladas. I will just take it when I go.”

Father swallows, choking down the final shard of refusal. “Of course, my lord. If I may ask…” His gaze darts to me in my shroud. “What of Jessamy?”

“She will come with me now. All the gear and clothing she will need will be supplied at Garon Stable.”

A sob catches in my chest like a knot of whirling winds. “Can I not even say good-bye to them?” I whisper.

“No time for that.” Lord Gargaron claps his hands three times.

I take a step toward the door, thinking to dash to the back of the house just to kiss them for the last time.

Father taps his hand twice against his chest, and I freeze and tap mine in reply, as I have been taught. Obedience traps me. The door opens and three resplendently garbed Garon Palace stewards appear like the dread guardians who defend the gates at the entrance to the afterlife.

My path is blocked.

I take the only road open to me, the one that leads me out of the household where I grew up and into the household of the lord who has just ripped apart my family.