House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(6)

I bristle at the double insult. She’s only a handful of years older than me, and Jannik is more than just an expletive. “Pelim Felicita,” I snap. I’m trawling my memory for the woman’s House. I’ve made the foolish error of memorizing the names of all the men, and not their wives’. My own fault then if I come out the worse from this encounter.

“Oh, I know your name.” She laughs and takes a sip of her drink, and shudders lightly. “Everyone does.” Carien must catch the anger that flashes through me. “Don’t take it that way.” She smiles behind her liqueur glass. “You’re the centre of all the talk, you know.”

Wonderful. I’m thrilled. And I’m an idiot.

Carien shakes her head, still laughing. “I do wish you could see the look on your face.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Come.” She holds out a gloved hand, unexpectedly. I stare at it. “Come on.” She wiggles her fingers in a strange melding of impatience and playfulness. “You should meet the others.”

Others? Now I’m intrigued. Perhaps my opening has finally come. This is the first time I have had a civil conversation with someone that lasted longer than five flicks of a nilly tail.

I don’t take her proffered hand, but I do follow her. She leads me to a small room, really more of a comforting little nook lined with leather books and warmly lit by fatcandles in coloured glass. Several small intricate glass sculptures, of the kind made by War-Singers with the talent for art and glass, are scattered about the room on low tables and shelves. They cast fantastical shapes of orange and green and blue across the spines of the books. Several women, most of them Carien’s age or a bit older, sit chattering softly. They look up when we enter. The rainbow lights dance across their faces.

“Oh, so you’ve caught her then?” says one, smiling with something that is not so much amusement as pleasure.

So I’ve walked right into the sphynx’s den, have I? Watch out, I am not unarmed. I still have my wit and my pride and my family name.

“Rescued her, actually.” Carien flops down inelegantly on one of the lush sofas that clutter the small room. “Mirian was busy showing off those spawn of hers.”

“Oh, Gris.” A woman with long fine features and long fine hair taps long fine fingers against her glass. “You know she only dragged them out because the Matas finally decided to accept an invitation. She’ll tie those girls to House Mata if it kills her.”

“Making up for her own failure,” says another. “Couldn’t catch herself a prince, so she baits the hook with her daughters.”

The women laugh together like all the bells in MallenIve striking midnight.

“And you.” The woman stops tapping her glass and turns her attention to me, her dark brown hair swinging across her face. “You should be grateful to us, you know.”

“Should I?” I say it coolly, gathering up my insecurities and snarling them tight and small.

“Oh yes.” She stands – a languid motion that fits her look. “I’m Destia, and you’ve met Carien. We’ve seen you trying to talk to our husbands.”

My cheeks heat, my breath sticks in my throat. This is mortifying. Here I thought I was going to begin making alliances, and instead they are putting me up on trial so they can mock me. “I believe I have spoken to some of them,” I say with a cool archness I do not feel.

“They won’t listen to you.” Destia smiles neatly. She has very small teeth.

“They will listen to us,” adds Carien. “We’ve been waiting for you to realize it.”

“Only you didn’t,” says another, honey blonde and dressed in scarlet.

“Carien took pity on you.”

“You should thank her.”

The air stinks of scriv. The drug is their key to their magic. They are wealthy, or they would not be so casual in its use. And they want me to know it. Perhaps there have been other rumours about me – ones that talk about how I have given up scriv, given up magic.

No one quite believes it, of course. What Lammer in their right mind would give up the only thing that truly sets them apart? It’s our very reason for being. And, if I am honest with myself, I feel its lack in my own life. Were I to start taking scriv again, I would once more be a War-singer and the highest of the magical castes, with complete control over the air. I could choke the breath right out of Carien’s lungs. She would see then I am not a little toy to be played with like a terrier does a rag-doll.

But those days are past. Power corrupts, it’s said, and I have felt that corruption chew its way through me. More than that, I have been on the receiving end of a War-singer’s magic, have been choked and belittled and discarded.

Carien’s amber eyes are on me, watching with a predatory intensity.

I hold my head very still, not wanting to seem cowed, but not wanting her to pounce either. “I’m disinclined to throw out my gratitude like grains in a hen coop.”

Instead of sputtering or demanding an apology, Carien shows me her long throat and crows. The noise is raucous and loudly out of place – a farmyard screech.

All I can do is stare. There is something very wild and unpolished beneath Carien’s House fashions and society strictures. Whatever I expected of her – this isn’t it. What kind of well-bred lady trained for House subservience and the shuffle of domesticity calls attention to herself like this? One who intrigues, who mirrors something in me that I have tried to cover like the mirror-silver in a death-house. I almost find myself stepping closer to her, as if she has wound a silk thread around us and has begun to spin us together.