House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(5)
This dinner is not about wit or social niceties. It’s about the inescapable fact that in the whole of this vast ugly city there are exactly two marriages between vampires and Lammers. So, for this reason alone, we are meant to pretend friendship. Or approximate something like it. I think it’s what we expect of each other, but I do not see how it will work. Isidro is bitter, and he is cold and exact to Jannik, speaking to him only if he absolutely must. Harun is a typical House male, with all the thick-headed stubbornness that implies.
Jannik and I exchange many a wary and exasperated glance over the course of the meal. Finally, we make our escape, and flee into the sharpness of the winter night.
“What exactly,” I say to Jannik when we’re safely in the carriage on the route back to the Pelim apartments, “was that horrifying evening all about? And how do you know the – Isidro?”
He leans back. “I don’t.” The magic around him is thick, making the air almost unbreathable.
“Well, he certainly seemed to know you.”
“My family,” Jannik corrects. “He knows my family.”
“You told me something about your family once – about your grandmother?”
“Great-grandmother.”
I look up at him, I’ve been idly flicking at my hideous skirt, willing it to disappear, or become less . . . flouncy. “You’re awfully snippy this evening. Have I done something to you?”
“No.” Jannik has his third eyelids down, and he looks through me, past me. “You’ve done nothing.”
His mood is souring my already grim outlook on this forced friendship his mother wants us to cultivate. I don’t like games. I don’t like people who lie to me, who keep things hidden and expect me to accept manipulation as my due. With a snort, I pull my shawl close about my shoulders and stare out at the window instead.
Stupid Jannik. I don’t know what he wants of me.
BONE-GRINDERS AND BUTCHERS
The season of summer is one for frivolity. The seriousness of the spring weddings is over, Longest Night celebrations are on their way and, for the moment, no one is thinking of the winter to come. It is the time when all the powerful families in the city gather, and under the pretence of having fun begin an earnest and vicious round of social destruction. The dance of the Houses is the adult equivalent of the children’s game of musical chairs. Last one left standing gets to go home the winner.
Business in MallenIve is done in ballrooms, at small parties, in panelled rooms over snifters of the scriv-rich vai. The magic taints our blood-streams, we drink it like watered-wine. The men gather and talk, propositions are casually thrown into the fray, and men nod, men ponder, men make decisions. In other rooms, the women gather and discuss children, or they gossip.
It’s surprising how much you can actually learn from the latter if you keep your mouth closed and your ears open. I know every man’s foible, every fall and moment of stupidity. Unfortunately, I can’t use it. When I try to engage the House Lords in conversation about business, they talk through me. They do not see me in my layers of silk and beads. Apparently the mere act of holding a paper hand-fan is enough to render one invisible.
But I can’t give up yet. I’m still new enough in MallenIve, still a curiosity, that I am invited to these House parties. As long as I have the invitations I need to make the most of them before the last of their interest dries up and I am, like Harun, left to gather dust with my bat.
Tonight’s hosts are House Ives. It is a fairly intimate gathering, as these things go, but despite that, I have seen many of the most powerful people in MallenIve. The flame-red hair of the ruling House Mata lineage is probably the most conspicuous.
We women have gathered at the foot of a large staircase where the lady of House Ives has brought down her two daughters to greet the guests before being sent back to the nursery rooms. The older is perhaps ten, with a cool, bored look, and hair as fine and blonde as her mother’s. The smaller child is a dour little thing, furtive and sulky. I greet them as expected, annoyed already by the pretence as a gaggle of young married women coo over the girls.
They are just two more spoiled little doves, bargaining pieces. I was once the same. Even so, I can’t help the momentary pain that crosses my chest. Lady Ives has something I will never have in these two girls. I press one hand lightly against my skirt and pretend that I have never wanted children and that I do not care. After all, there’s no point in bringing more people into a world like ours, where their futures are laid out for them so neatly that one wrong step will damn them to misery.
“Makes you feel almost sorry for them,” a woman mutters behind me as the girls are led away.
I glance back. The woman is smiling. Her brunette hair is curled and pinned up so that her neck is left bare; her hazel eyes are almost amber in the fatcandle light. She has skin like fine parchment, and I can almost read the poetry waiting to be written there. My heart leaps. Nerves.
“The girls,” she says, and nods elegantly.
“I should feel sorry for them?” Careful now – this is the first time someone has spoken to me without sneering, without at least attempting to hide their desire to latch on to a new scandal.
The woman raises her small liqueur glass so the light catches it, sparking in the dark depths. “They’re never innocent. We’re never innocent,” she corrects. “Already they’re playing off each other, and trying to catch the eyes of those Mata brats.” Here she tips the glass just slightly in the direction of a group of slender, red-haired boys. “I’m Carien,” she says, “and you’re the girl who married a bat.”