"Oh." Liss grimaced, turning half around. "Stupid things. He said it was unfair for me to enter because my courier horse was too fine and fit for this country competition. As though his horse was not the finest Cardegoss could yield! And then he said it was not a proper contest for a woman—with half a dozen other women there! A race in the name of the goddess! The men in it only rode on their women's behalf—he entered in your honor."
"A trifle inconsistent, I grant you," murmured Ista.
"He was odious. Well! I showed him."
"Mm, but you also showed him half right. Your horse did clearly overmatch the humble beasts of Vinyasca."
"So did his. If I should not have entered for that reason, neither should he."
Ista smiled in silence, and Liss, after a moment, turned once more to watch the dancers. In the country dances here, men and women danced sometimes apart, in hand-clasped circles, and sometimes together, in complicated patterns sung out above the music by a caller. Most were rather vigorous, with a swirling of skirts and petticoats and rhythmic foot stamping.
Ista tried to decide if this flurry between her two principal attendants was a problem, or its opposite. In truth, she did not even know if her handmaiden, so hastily snatched up into her service, was a maiden. The riding girls of the courier cadre presumably took care not to become pregnant, lest they lose their livelihood, but that did not necessarily mean they were sexually abstinent, or innocent, or ignorant. Quite the reverse, since innocence based in ignorance was unfit to protect itself.
In Ias's court, Ista could not help having learned some things about how men and women—or other combinations of participants—could pleasure each other without risking the consequences of children. Ista didn't know how many of these secrets the riding girls passed around in their dormitories, nor how much they were taught by the women who supervised them, themselves former couriers looking out for their charges. In any case, as a farm girl involved in breeding animals, Liss was doubtless better informed of the basics than Ista had been at a like age. But emotions were as like to wreak havoc in a tightly confined court as physicalities.
Ista was also unsure if either dy Gura brother intended honorable courtship, or merely seduction. The social gap between landless minor aristocrat and landed yeoman's child might tend to the latter, but it was not impossibly wide for the former. Especially given a dowry, though that seemed a dubious hope in Liss's case.
But a very little time in Liss's insouciant company had certainly brought both brothers to attention, and no wonder. The girl was beautiful and bright, the young men were healthy and vigorous ... in all, Ista saw good reason not to rush to repair the breach, lest she replace one problem with a much less tractable one.
Still, she probed: "So what do you think of the dy Guras?"
"Ferda was all right at first, but lately he's grown priggish."
"He feels his responsibilities keenly, I think."
Liss shrugged. "Foix, well, Foix is all right, I suppose."
Would Foix be crushed to hear this tepid judgment? Perhaps not. Ista ventured a hint. "I trust no men of my guard have made offensive advances to you. In order to testify to her lady's honor, a handmaiden must herself be above reproach."
"No, they all seem to take their oaths to the goddess most seriously." She sniffed. "Or else Ferda selected them for like-minded priggishness." A merry smile brought a dimple to the side of her mouth. "The good divine, now, he wasted no time. He propositioned me that first night in Palma."
Ista blinked in surprise. "Ah," she said cautiously. "One must remember that not everyone in the Bastard's Order is of that, urn, preference." She considered how to phrase her next question. "You need not endure affront, regardless of any man's rank or calling. In fact, as my dependent, you should not. It is quite proper to complain to me if there is such a problem."
Liss tossed her head. "I suppose I ought to have been insulted, but he managed to be quite charming about it, really. He took his rejection in good part and went off to try the chambermaid."
"I received no complaints!"
Liss snickered. "I don't think she had any. When they came out of her room later, she was giggling It made me wonder what I'd missed."
Ista tried to set a good stern example by not laughing, and failed. "Oh, dear."
Liss grinned back and returned to gazing enviously at the dancers. After a time, Ista couldn't bear it anymore, and gave her leave to join the party. Liss looked delighted with the unexpected treat, and startled Ista a trifle by popping directly over the balcony to hang one-handed and drop onto the pavement. She scampered off.
It felt odd to be alone. Ista drew a few slightly rude, if not unamiable, calls from passing men in the street, which she didn't know how to handle and therefore ignored. The men trod off more rudely and less amiably Liss had exchanged such banter earlier, with easy cheer, and sent their drunken admirers on their way chuckling. This is not my world. Yet she had ruled it once, supposedly, from a clouded distance in Cardegoss.
Ferda dy Gura emerged onto the neighboring balcony, found Ista by herself, glared a would-be serenader into slinking away, and chided her, albeit in the politest terms, for dispensing with her attendant. He vanished again, only to exit the inn below—by the doorway—and plunge into the crowd to retrieve Liss. When they came in sight again, they both had their fists clenched. Whatever hot exchange they were having, however, they muffled before they came back within Ista's hearing.
Ista led the way to bed. The festival continued noisily for some hours, but did not keep her awake.
DEEP IN THE NIGHT. SHE OPENED HER DREAMING EYES TO FIND herself in the mysterious castle courtyard again. This time the scene was dark—this very night? What seemed the same waning moon that was passing over Vinyasca gave a sickly, inadequate light. But the shadows were not impenetrable, for a strange glow hung in the air, like a rope made of white fire. It ran across the court and up the stairs, disappearing through the same heavy door at the end of the gallery. Ista's dream-self scarcely dared to touch it, though it drew her eyes. She followed it again, up the stairs, along the boards. Through the door.
The bedchamber was darker than the courtyard, shutters closed, moonless, but illuminated still; the rope of fire seemed to be rising up from the heart of the man stretched on the bed. The pale flames flickered all along his body as though he burned, coiling from his chest, flowing away... and then Ista wondered if she was looking at a rope, or a conduit. And where that conduit emptied out. She glanced back along the floating line of light and was moved to grasp it, let it tow her along to its destination as a cable might pull a drowning woman from the water.
Her dream-hand reached, gripped; the line broke, shattering under her fingers, spattering away in bright ripples.
The man on the bed woke, panted, started half-up. Saw her. Stretched out a burning hand.
"You!" he gasped. "Lady! Help me, in the god's name—"
Which god? Ista could not help thinking, in a sort of tilted hysteria. She dared not grasp that terrifying fiery hand, for all that it reached for her. "Who are you?"
His wide eyes devoured the sight of her. "She speaks!" His voice cracked. "My lady, I pray, don't go—"
Her eyes snapped open in the dimness of the little inn chamber in Vinyasca.
Nearly the only sound was Liss's slow, regular breathing on her pallet across the room. The festival dance had evidently ended, the last drunken revelers departed for home, or at least passed out in doorways along the route.