“She is quite … lovely,” Matron Mother Zeerith said, and Quenthel understood well that her counterpart had to pause there to search for the right word, because “lovely” certainly didn’t seem sufficient.
“Do you plan to tell them I perished in the fight?” Zeerith asked, and she shook her head and seemed removed from the enchantment of Yvonnel then, and apparently had forgotten all around the surprising revelation of that one’s parentage.
Was Yvonnel’s appearance that distracting, Quenthel wondered, or had the young witch cast a spell to remove thought from Zeerith’s mind?
“I do not believe that to be our best course, if I may offer advice, Matron Mother,” Zeerith rambled on.
Was Yvonnel powerful enough to do that so casually? To an accomplished matron mother of a powerful House?
Yes, she was, Quenthel realized with a sigh.
“If you have other designs …” Zeerith offered, somewhat sheepishly.
“No, no, my mind was other-where. So much has happened and so much is yet to come. You are correct, my friend, of course. Matron Mother Zeerith is not to be rubbed from the ranks of Menzoberranzan-hardly that! You will circle and reside outside the city and together we will find opportunity.”
“While my children ascend,” Zeerith added with her eyes sparkling.
“High Priestess Kiriy is in House Do’Urden?”
Zeerith nodded, then asked, “First Priestess?”
“Saribel is First Priestess,” Quenthel corrected her, somewhat sternly. “And that is something Kiriy must understand and accept.”
“Yes, Matron Mother,” Zeerith said and respectfully lowered her eyes. It was no surprise. Though Kiriy was far more accomplished than Saribel, and much older, indeed the eldest daughter of the House, Saribel had something that Kiriy did not: a Baenre husband.
“When time for ascent comes, who will it be?” Zeerith asked.
“That is a discussion for another day,” Quenthel replied. “I know that you favor Kiriy.”
“Saribel is a bit of a dullard, I must admit,” said Zeerith. “It pains me to say that, but would that Lolth had accepted her as my sacrifice instead of Parabrak, my third-born son.”
“Pray to Lolth to forgive your words,” Quenthel said half-jokingly-but only half.
“I wish I could join you at the Ruling Council,” Zeerith said. “If only to see the face of the witch Mez’Barris when she is formally told that Tsabrak Xorlarrin will assume the mantle of Archmage of Menzoberranzan.”
“You will witness the ceremony,” Quenthel promised and Matron Mother Zeerith swelled with pride.
“They are such petty creatures,” Yvonnel remarked to Minolin Fey in the anteroom, where the young upstart had enchanted a scrying pool so that she could look in on the conversation in the Baenre audience chamber. “They puff and preen over the most unremarkable and fleeting things.”
Yvonnel gave a sigh and turned to her mother, who stood staring.
“How did you do that?” Minolin Fey asked. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“All the time,” the woman went on. “In there, with Matron Mother Zeerith. With all you see-or all who see you. Man and woman alike, taken aback, thrown from their guard, with a simple glimpse upon you.”
“Why Mother, do you not think me beautiful?” Yvonnel coyly asked.
Minolin Fey could only shake her head and reply, her voice barely a whisper, “Many drow are beautiful.” She kept shaking her head. She knew there had to be more to it than that.
“Your mother, Matron Mother Byrtyn,” Yvonnel began, “she is a painter, yes? I have heard that some of her portraits hang in this very house.”
“She is quite talented, yes.”
“Get her, then. I wish to pose for her.”
“I do not know that she-”
“She will,” Yvonnel said. “Tell her the matron mother insists upon it, and that she will be well rewarded.”
Minolin Fey seemed off-balance then. Matron Mother Byrtyn had not even seen this child yet, her granddaughter, who should be no more than a toddler.
“Matron Mother Byrtyn was told of me by the avatar of Lolth in the parlor of her own House,” Yvonnel reminded Minolin Fey. “Tell her that she will come to House Baenre the day after tomorrow, after Tsabrak is named as Archmage of Menzoberranzan, and she will begin her work. And she will return every day thereafter until it is completed.”
Minolin Fey stared blankly.
“I am not asking you,” Yvonnel warned. She turned back to the scrying pool, then sighed with disgust and cleared the image from the water with a wave of her hand.
“So boring and petty,” she said as she pushed past Minolin Fey and skipped to the door at the far end of the room.
“You speak of the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan,” Minolin Fey reminded her.
“Yes,” Yvonnel answered. “And why?”
She shrugged, winked, and exited, leaving Minolin Fey to stand there dumbfounded with that simple yet devastating question hanging over her. She glanced back at the unremarkable water in the bowl. Minolin Fey couldn’t begin to cast a clairvoyance dweomer powerful enough to get past Quenthel Baenre’s wards, as Yvonnel had so easily done. She considered the conversation in the other room. The incessant plotting and conniving, the desperate pursuit of a goal that would often be nothing more than the platform from which to pursue another goal.
“Why?” she whispered through her own frown.
From the balcony of House Do’Urden, the Xorlarrin sisters watched the ceremony across the way. Ravel and Jaemas were there, on the grounds of Sorcere, as was Tiago, whose presence had been commanded by the matron mother.
“It was always Matron Mother Zeerith’s dream, of course,” Saribel said when a great burst of fireworks exploded up by the ceiling, shooting from the alcove of Tier Breche, the raised region that held the three Houses of the drow academy. “To see a Xorlarrin rightfully in place as the Archmage of Menzoberranzan …”
“Better in these times than not at all, I suppose,” said a less-than-enthusiastic Kiriy.
“Better regardless,” Saribel corrected. “Why would a Xorlarrin noblewoman wear such a frown on this day?”
“Dear sister, shut up.”
Saribel sputtered for a moment before declaring, “I am the First Priestess of House Do’Urden.”
Kiriy turned slowly to regard her and looked her up and down. If she was impressed at all, she surely didn’t show it. “House Do’Urden …” she whispered quietly and dismissively.
“It was a terrible fight?” Saribel probed, trying to find the root of her sister’s anger.
Kiriy looked at her with puzzlement.
“In Q’Xorlarrin,” Saribel clarified.
“Hardly a fight,” the older sister replied. She looked back to the distant ceremony. “More like a whimper and a retreat.”
“Do you think Matron Mother Zeerith erred in surrendering the-”
“I think that if all the Xorlarrin nobles were in Q’Xorlarrin, as they should have been, and if Menzoberranzan had offered proper support instead of sending an army of demon beasts, too busy chewing the flesh of each other to understand our enemy, then you and I would not be having this conversation.”
The blunt words and determined tone set Saribel back on her heels.
“So now here we are,” Kiriy went on, “anointed nobles of the wicked joke that is named House Do’Urden.”
“Whose matron mother sits on the Ruling Council,” Saribel reminded her, and Kiriy snorted.
“Matron Mother Darthiir’s reign will be short,” Saribel added.
“Oh indeed,” said Kiriy. She backed away a step and looked Saribel up and down, smiling as if she knew something her sister did not. “And you are First Priestess Saribel, whose tenure will be long, if you are wise.”
Saribel felt very small suddenly, and very vulnerable. Her thoughts went back to her childhood, when Kiriy used to discipline her mightily and mercilessly and often-so often! Under Kiriy’s stern guidance even the slightest infraction of etiquette would get the child Saribel beaten to unconsciousness, or bitten by a snake-headed scourge.