469 H.E

Throughout the city of Rajmuat, the temple gongs had just clanged to mark the second hour after noon, the hottest hour of the day. Down at the harbor the summer sun beat down pitilessly – but picturesquely too, it must be owed – on the stevedores who were loading and unloading the cargo of the ships which bobbed up and down on the glistening green water. Their straw hats, seemingly bent by the heat of the sun, availed little protection. Stripped to the waist, their muscles, strong and hard after years of back-breaking labor, rippled under their dark copper skin, slick under a film of sweat.

It looked to be a slow hour.

A passenger ship from Carthak had arrived about a half-hour before. Its purple sails, slashed with crimson, and with gilt trim about the edges signaled that it was of imperial extraction. The few idlers of the dock, with leisure and energy enough to divert themselves with such thoughts, surmised that it might even be carrying the new Ambassador. He was due to arrive within the week and would have the dubious honor of being the thirteenth Ambassador from Carthak in two years – Lady Imajane had seen to it that the ones before him had been sent back home, more or less intact.

Naturally, the Emperor had been rather aggrieved when some of his Ambassadors had started arriving 'less' intact. There'd even been speculation at both Courts that the Iliniats would no longer be sending any more ambassadors to the Rittevons. Good sense had prevailed on both sides however and after Lady Imajane had sent an exquisitely-worded apology – on Lord Rubinyan's behest – to the Court of Carthak, mutual cordiality, if not warmth, had been restored just in time for the latest ambassador to be sent to the new king's coronation.

There was a young woman, leaning on the handrails of the ship and looking down at the harbor with interest. Those down at the harbor, when they caught sight her, began to look at her too with considerable interest. While not clad in the traditional garb of a noblewoman of the Copper Isles – a loose, flowing one-piece gown cinched with a girdle at the hips and a sleeveless version of the classical houppelande – it was plain for even the commoners on the harbor to recognize that she was a lady, bred and born.

Her fine cambric garment of a surprising whiteness was embroidered lavishly with seed pearls and seemed molded to her slender frame. A sheer veil edged with bone lace had been thrown over the glossy masses of her blue-black hair. Her hair flowed loosely down her in back in the modern fashion that had begun in Tortall and gradually spread to all gentlewomen who professed themselves of the 'elite' in civilized countries. Her hands seemed to glitter in the sunshine, loaded as they were with rings – many thick copper rings threading up her slim copper fingers as in the old Carthaki style.

She was beautiful too, holding herself with the poise of a courtier and the grace of a horsewoman. Certainly as lovely – if not more – a creature as the dusky sultanas of the old fables. Only, rather surprisingly, the lady on the ship was copper-skinned, her complexion closer to that of a daughter of the rakas than of Carthak.

Who is she?

"M'lady, the master wants you."

The copper sultana turned and languidly blew the people who were watching her from below an airy kiss. Queen to their commoners. Then she glided behind the dark handmaid who'd called her.

Who is she?

000

It was Lady Imajane's study and not her bedchamber, a fact evinced by the sight of silver salvers, spilling over, not with flowers or trinkets, but with official documents and letters. Facing the intricately-carved black walnut escritoire with lion's feet of solid gold, the duchess herself sat, sipping a fortifying cup of spiced wine. The heat of the afternoon combined with the weariness that the unaccustomed labors of the day had brought to her had caused her to dismiss all of her ladies except the two most trusted – Edunata and Tyanane – and to exchange her ornate day dress for a simple white kirtle. Her gauzy black cotehardie too had been cast off and now lay, folded neatly over the back of an ivory chair.

Her secretary read out a list of announcements from a small scroll, concluding with the reports of the day with the announcement that Lord Cejo, the new Ambassador, had arrived at one.

"How tiresome," Imajane murmured, kicking her black silk slippers, hand-painted with white lilies, impatiently. "I suppose we'll be pressed to throw some gala for him and his puffed-up lady, to show that we're suitably awe-struck by his liege's power? You remember Eda how insulted the Tusaine Ambassador's woman was just because we neglected to receive her with what she thought due ceremony?"

"Lord Cejo has no wife, Your Highness," the secretary murmured.

"We thank the Goddess for small mercies," Imajane said, visibly brightening. "And he is… a young man, is he?"

The secretary nodded assent.

"We shall strive to find him a suitable bride," the duchess said sweetly. "Let it not be said of the Court of Rajmuat that it lacks suitable maidens – what think you of Lady Aquisara, Tyanane? Would it please her to reside in high state in the desert? Lord Cejo, I understand, is of rather good family, even if he is a Carthaki."

"Lady Aquisara is secretly engaged," Tyanane, who kept all the court gossip, told her. "She has not yet seen fit to inform her parents but her fiancé is one of the wild Gefring lads and he would take it ill if you required Lady Aquisara to entice the ambassador. Lady Faizyl would be suitable though."

"And we would not be displeased at all to rid ourselves of our brashest maid of honor," Imajane said. "Your insight never ceases to give us pleasure, Lady Tyanane. Depend on it there shall be a position open for your son – the Cinque Ports I believe, would be suitable?" Quickly she dismissed her secretary and slipped into the gauzy black overrobe that Edunata held out for her. It was just past five – the time she usually visited Rózčia.

The Royal Palace, in high summer, was a veritable bower of beauty. Flocks of officious geese, almost comically innocent of the gory fate that awaited them at the next banquet, pranced around the mint-green grounds like so many fat, white noblemen. Tall striped tulips, the favored flower of the Rittevons, swayed in the salt-spray-scented breeze, the same breeze that made the crystal wind-chimes hanging from the eaves of the royal apartments laugh.

And today, great mirrors had been set up all around the mighty pavilions that the Rittevons 'received' in – flat, oval glass slabs mounted on bamboo beams and copper stands that shimmered in the sunlight. For tonight was the night of the Virgins' Festival.

It was a festival unique to the luarin of the Copper Isles, though it had its roots in the ancient raka traditions in veneration of the Goddess in her avatar as the Maiden. Girls – hopefully virgins – were expected to behave with appropriate chasteness and modesty and correct feminine decorum on that day. They were also to put a mirror outside their houses. At night, the sun-warmed mirrors were brought back in and a mixture of ash and vermilion powder scattered over them. Using one of the treatises issued by the temples of Ganiel the Dreamweaver – vernacularly termed 'dream diaries' – it was held that one could interpret the trade of one's future husband by the shape that the ash-and-vermilion had made on the glass.

Of course the answers the village maids usually came up with seldom came to pass – most likely as the night of the Virgins' Festival was considered the best time to deflower one – but it was all in the spirit of good fun and entertainment. It had even spread to the high-born ladies of the realm who, though they ought to have known better, had been quite infected by the excitement of their maids as the Virgins' Festival approached. Lady Imajane, sagging down to popular demand, had also arranged for a similar show of mirrors – vocally protesting all throughout that it was perfectly degrading for a gentlewoman to get herself mixed up in such business – and bizarre for the scenery was the result thereat.

But naturally everyone was delighted with the concept – the mothers of the young noblewomen earnestly believed that their frolicsome daughters would take the day to reflect on the virtue of chastity (a virtue the girls themselves held in scant regard), the young noblemen knew from experience with their sisters' maids that the best time to deflower a virgin was on Virgins' Festival and hoped to exercise the same principle on the ladies of their station, the young noblewomen themselves all agog for a nighttime picnic and the chance to be deflowered by their paramours…

Perhaps only one person in the entire palace complex was truly unhappy.

Princess Rózčiane.

She looked like the meadow-violets her mother had once loved in her purple mourning robes, and she felt about as perky as a damp squib. Actually, she felt like a damp squib. At the moment she felt she could understand the soul of a damp squib. The heartbreak it was bound to feel when the truth slowly dawned up it that it's life was worthless. That it would never sail to the stars and burst, for a second, into incandescent glory. That it would be condemned to ignominy, to a fate worse than burning up alive (which at least had its own honor).

"I wish I was a widow," Rózčia wailed. She was twelve and had chosen to commemorate her most recent birthday by emphasizing at least two words in every sentence she spoke. She felt that it was her right, as the sole crowned princess of the realm – Imajane was only a duchess. At that moment she also felt that it was rather hard lines that the only people near enough to hear her dramatic outburst was Cade, who was the cause of her despair, and Petra, who had not a theatrical bone in her body.

"Mmm," her cousin, Petranne, murmured, not dropping a stitch as she embroidered away on the tapestry she'd been working on since she was ten (and had still, four years later, failed to complete). Thirteen-year-old Lady Cadeyrn, Duke Nomru's only granddaughter, merely flipped another page of her book.

"And I wish," Rózčia continued, turning the battery of her glare upon the two, "That certain gentlewomen, lacking in consideration, would refrain from reminding certain aggrieved princesses that they are betrothed, at importunate intervals. It distresses me."

"I was only telling you something you ought to know by yourself, dear," Cade said absently. "Of course it's silly of you to participate in the Virgins' Festival – you already know what your future husband is to be."

"No I do not," Rózčia retorted petulantly, determined to be disagreeable. "It is quite possible that Elsren will accept the Kyprish throne but it is equally probable that he might decide to turn his hand to… farming. Or bookkeeping. He is naturally of a retiring disposition and I think bookkeeping would suit him admirably. Yes, I rather think he shall choose to tend Baron Engan's capacious library – I consider bookkeeping a manly occupation, so he need not fret about pleasing me. Petra, you might tell him so."

"Why don't you go tell my Lord Rubinyan?" Cade asked acidly. She had inherited – or rather had been forced to inherit – her grandfather's distaste of the duke. "I'm sure he'll consider it prudent to slack the expense on Elsren's coronation if he realizes that the future king will soon retire to take up his life's true calling as a bookkeeper. And," she added maliciously, "Lady Imajane might even be able to salvage some money to buy herself a few more rings from the coronation expenses then – she's quite a magpie about jewelry."

"Cadeyrn," Petra sighed, finally looking up from her embroidery. "What would Her Highness say if she heard you speak so?"

"Well she won't hear me," Cade said smugly. "Not unless Mistress Rózčia here fibs."

"You consider me so low? No don't bother answering – I won't need to fib," Rózčia said with dignity. She pointed to a howler monkey that had crept up the low white wall that encircled the orchard in which they were sitting. Sunlight glistened off the jewels embedded in its collar. "Listening spells on the collar – if she chose to keep track of all the reports then…"

"But she won't choose," Cade said brightly. "She doesn't have the time."

"Lady Tyanane would have the time," Rózčia said smugly. "You haven't been in Court for too long so of course you don't know much about anything – but you really ought to have learned by now about Lady Tyanane being my sister's official mole."

"I'm not a Rittevon," Cade said lightly. "Treachery, political intrigue isn't in my blood. I suppose I'll be forced to seduce Elsren away from you, darling – a quiet life as a bookkeeper's wife seems to be infinitely preferable, now, to life here in this nest of vipers."

"And I suppose you consider me a viper?" Rózčia didn't know whether to be miffed or laugh at Cade's innocence.

"You would be quite indignant if I did not," Cade replied, standing up. "It's a compliment."

000

Lord Cejo Baghdassarian was, as certain disapproving elderly members of the Carthaki Court were fond of saying, a puppy. He dressed with the most fashionable flamboyance, chased all the married women, prided himself on his connoisseurship of female flesh and wine, kept a menagerie and a string of glamorous racehorses and hunting dogs of the finest pedigree, gambled to the ruin of the family fortunes and in short conducted himself like a degenerate rake.

All this was decidedly hard lines on his widowed mother, a scion of Marenite royalty, who had begun to fear that her purse would not be long enough to support her twenty-one year old son for more than a few years. To appease her highly distressed ladyship – or perhaps the lady's uncle, the King of Maren, who took a personal interest in the fortunes of his favorite niece – Emperor Kaddar had arranged a special ambassadorial position for young Lord Cejo.

The cost of living in the Copper Isles was low and there was always a chance that Lady Imajane, in a violent mood, would simply decide to dispatch with the ambassador's head. She was rather fond of doing so. Then the problem would be quite easily solved – there would be no further strain on Lady Baghdassarian's purse, a blemish of the court (Cejo was a blemish and Kaddar really, really didn't like his 'innocent' moonlit strolls with the Empress) would be done away with, there would be no need to send any more ambassadors to the Copper Isles… the Emperor congratulated himself, in his cabinet, on his intelligence.

Lord Cejo didn't mind much himself. A fixed income was always welcome and he was sure that there were just as many pretty women in Rajmuat as there were in Kevorkian, the new capital of Carthak. And even if there weren't, he had Reya didn't he?

The journey from Dockmarket to Swan District where the 'ambassadorial suites', as the palaces reserved for foreign envoys were called, were located had taxed nobody's strength. Still in her cool, comfortable traveling garments, Reya – or The Baghdassarian Doll as she was known in the higher echelons of Carthaki society – busied herself with the arrangements for the clothes, the furniture, the linen, the quarters for the few servants they'd brought from Carthak, the new servants of the Copper Isles that the Royal Family had supplied. Lady Baghdassarian herself could not have been more assiduous.

It was late when Reya finally entered her own quarters and signaled for her handmaids to attend her. "Quite a place isn't it, M'lady?" Kohar asked thoughtfully. "Even in the master's suite they use oil lamps – us poor down at Kevorkian use those, aye, but what of the nobles? They all have everything lit with Magefire."

"King Oron had Magefire banned in his day," Reya murmured, as Kohar untangled the knots in her hair. "He was a very odd man, you know… in one of his nightmares, or so I've heard, he feared that Magefire would kill him and so… I'm surprised King Hazarin never had anything done about the law though."

"You know quite a lot about King Oron's policies don't you?"

Reya tilted her head and smiled playfully at the tall young man who leaned in the curving archway. "I know a lot about everything," she said sweetly. "That arch for instance – it's an ogee arch. Quite pretty, isn't it? A common design in the Isles, brought by the luarin conquerors centuries ago, but you won't find too many arches of that sort in Carthak. Unless in a very fashionable, very modern palace in Kevorkian, of course."

He chuckled and strode into the room, throwing himself on a heap of cushions that she'd arranged on the window-seat. He looked tired, though she, for one, could not imagine why. Lord Cejo never did any work if he could help it. "I walked down to the Flowermarket, goddess," he explained, "It's…"

"A round dozen miles from here and home to some of the prettiest, poorest girls in the city," Reya said, feeling a little insulted that he'd gone down to the Flowermarket on his very first day. Really, was she that bad a wife to him? Well, she wasn't any wife to him at all but sometimes she felt like one, tending to his household in the way his wife one day would. But of course sometimes, when he'd squandered too much money and had for his pains gotten a fine scolding from his mother, she felt like his big sister.

He sensed the petulance in his tone because he quickly added, "I thought you might be tired tonight after doing so much… I didn't want to disturb you."

"What a foolish boy you are," Reya sighed, dismissing Kohar with a flick of her fingers. "Why walk down to the Flowermarket when you could simply order the horses?"

He looked horrified. "I know you're a clever woman, Reya but really. The Rittevons were kind enough to send down the draught horses to carry us and our baggage down here, but they left as soon as we were settled didn't they? The only horses in the stables are my racers – can you imagine me riding Brangwane down the common streets? Or Vosgi? My goddesses, my jewels, do you honestly expect me to ever expose them to those filthy roads, to tether them to some common post among the very dregs of society? Really." He shook his head, looking positively appalled.

"I repent me of my calumny," Reya said solemnly. "That's what my co-… I mean, my mother made me say whenever I'd done something bad." She stroked Cejo's head gently and let him lean into her hold. "I was born here you know – you guessed I was half-raka."

"I suppose it was the Flowermarket?" Cejo asked absently. "A poor, pretty little girl like you?"

"It might have been," Reya said edgily. "Perhaps it almost was. Things haven't changed much."

"How do you know that?"

"The same people, the same palaces, the same poverty," Reya said with an ugly laugh. "Lady Imajane Jimajen as much a queen as ever. A child as king, even if he hasn't been coroneted yet. Yes, nothing will ever change here."

"Cheerful as ever, aren't we? Mouthing doomsday with the most charming dimples. If I wasn't perfectly exhausted I'd kiss you."

"And I'd only laugh if you did instead of slapping you," Reya chuckled. "Only I've changed with the times, it seems."

A/N: Some clarification about the ages...

Rocziane is twelve, Elsren and Cadeyrn thirteen, Petranne fourteen, Imajane in her mid-thirties, Rubinyan early sixties.