The next room was a bedroom, larger than the sitting room, less cluttered. The bed was carved and fluted and draped with pale blue gauze tied up with pale blue silk ribbons. Matja Allina lay beneath a blue silk pouf with crisp white pillows tucked behind her. Her blonde hair hung straight over her shoulders; it’d been brushed till it shone. Her hands lay limp on the starched white sheet folded over the top of the pouf. All this delicate, delicious fuss did not become her; it made her look gaunt and drained.
Arring Pirs stood beside her, frowning a little; he wasn’t happy with this business or with them.
Matja Allina managed a weary smile. “I commend these women to your notice, Mi-arring. The elder is Tinoopa, the other Kizra. They have given me ease and enjoyment where I expected none.”
Arring Pirs bowed. “I am obliged, chapa.” His voice was deep and slow, a perfect voice for a stained glass hero.
Kizra glanced at Tinoopa, bobbed a quick curtsy a second after the Shimmarohi finished hers.
There was a touch of amusement in Matja Allina’s shadowed face; her eyes opened a hair wider. “Yes,” she said. “I hadn’t expected such a fortunate dip in the pool, but I mean to use it now that it’s shown its head.” She spoke slowly, her voice dragging. Arring Pirs bent over her, whispered urgently. She touched his face, shook her head. “Now,” she said. “I want them established in place before I come downstairs tomorrow. You’ll do that for me?”
He kissed her fingertips, straightened up. “I will do it, Mi-matja.”
She closed her eyes a moment, then turned to him again. “Help me shift a little, I’ve got an ache building.”
When she was more comfortable, she said, “Aghilo, come here.” She clasped the little woman’s hand. “Listen, my dear, no one can or will take your place with me. Do you understand that?”
Aghilo nodded.
Matja Allina settled back on the pillows. “Yes. Young Kizra there is a gifted musician, Mi-arring. Is that not so, child?”
Kizra stared at her hands. “That’s for others to say, Matja Allina.”
“Well, I do say it.” She paused, closed her eyes. “Your music was a joy to me, child. I wish you to play for me each night, it relaxes me and gives me rest. Tinoopa.”
“Matja Allina.”
“Yes. You’re a strong and capable woman; I don’t ask what brought you here, though I suspect someone found you entirely too capable. I need people I can trust,” she smiled up at Aghilo, squeezed her hand, “more people. There are too many about who don’t want this baby born alive. I dare trust neither doctor nor midwife. Anyone could be bought or coerced or work against me for the pleasure of it, people being what they are. If you and Kizra give me complete loyalty and intelligent service for the next year, help me birth the boy alive and see that he stays alive, I will have your Contracts voided and I will do my best to send, you offworld anywhere you wish to go, with a stake to keep you while you look about for work. Not a large stake,” she added cautiously. “We’re cash poor, our wealth is the land and what grows on it. Mi-arring, do you second me in this? Let it be said.”
“Mi-matja, your will is mine in this. If you’re sure…”
“Yes. Besides, what choice have we?”
“Very little.” He shook his head, his gilt hair shimmering in the half-light. “Jirrilscadad dropped by last week while you were gone. He brought his two youngest daughters.” There was a dry distaste in his voice. “I had to sit through string plucking and coos and blushes and giggling until my hide itched. Once the boy is born, though…” He bent and touched her hair, forgetting for the moment everyone else in the room.
Matja Allina sighed, turned from the two beside her to the two at the foot of the bed. “Well?” she said. Tinoopa snorted. “Need you ask?”
“Yes. I do need.”
Tinoopa bowed her head, spread her arms and spoke with more care and formality than she usually bothered with. “I agree to serve you with mind and body in wholehearted loyalty for the term of one year in return for the voiding of the Labor Contract and your good will for the rest of it.”
“I see you have some understanding of the dangers involved. Good. Kizra?”
“I agree. Same as Tinoopa.”
Matja Mina relaxed, closed her eyes, the bruises under them and the fatigue lines on her face more pronounced than ever.
Arring Pirs tapped Aghilo’s shoulder, pointed at the door.
As if she could see through closed eyelids, Matja Allina said, “No. One last bit. The chapa Tinoopa is to have full authority as sub-Housekeeper. Let Polyapo keep the title Ulyinik…” She stopped, turned to them at the foot of the bed. “That means Mistress of the House. But don’t confuse that with Mistress of the Kuysstead. I am the Matja.” She coughed, waited while Aghilo bent with a warm, damp towel and wiped her face. “Leave her the Name, Mi-arring, but nothing more. Make that very clear to her and everyone else. I’m tired to death of her sniping and incompetence. Establish the chapa Kizra as my personal companion and servant, under no one’s orders but mine. Make that clear also. Especially to Kulyari who has already shown her spite. Will you see to this for me, Mi-arring?”
“With pleasure, Mi-matja.”
Kizra caught a grim satisfaction in the words. Obviously Pirs was not all that fond of his niece.
“Um, Aghilo love, see that they have clothing and supplies suitable to their status. And rooms in this wing. And see that Kizra has the arranga with her at all times from now on.” She opened her eyes. “Meals and a hot bath for each. I believe I heard someone saying she’d KILL for a hot bath.”
4
The room on the third floor was long and narrow, with pegs in a white plaster wall instead of closets and paneling. There was a narrow bed with a coverlet white as the walls, loosely woven in an intricate pattern, pretty in the candlelight that picked out the texture and emphasized the pattern and turned the whiteness pearly.
Kizra pulled the door shut behind her, edged around the bed and set the candle on the table. She sat on the bed with her slippered feet hanging beside the boots flopped on the floor next to her wadded-up coverall. She didn’t care if she ever saw that coverall again; it was stiff and stinky with old sweat and clogged with white dust, and her chafed places were still burning from the fifteen days she’d worn the thing. Remembered wearing it anyway. She thought about kicking it out the door but was too relaxed and drowsy from the bath to want to move.
She sucked in a long breath, let it out. She was clean. She smelled good. The candle gave the room a warm welcoming glow. It smelled good, too; it was one of the fancy ones from the Matja’s supply. Aghilo told her to enjoy it while she had it; the next one she got would be tallow and not nearly so nice.
She pinched the candle out, took the robe off and got into bed, shivering a little as her warm body hit the cold sheets.
She had on a blousy nightshirt, very soft and flowing, but it didn’t help at all with the cold. She wriggled around until she was comfortable, then shut her eyes and arranged her mind for sleep…
Moonlight streamed through the narrow window beside the narrow bed, white and chill and far too bright. Moonlight. It was eerie. Things looked different. She pulled her hand from under the covers, stretched it out to intersect that slant of moonshine. The color was leached from her skin; the fingers seemed bonier, they trailed light like smoke.
She wiggled her fingers and watched the shadows play inside the beam, then pulled her hand back into the dusk where it took on an ordinary dark solidity.
Sleep, sleep. She flopped over, the nightshirt twisting about her body, pulling tight against her neck. She humped herself about, tugging at the cloth, smoothing wrinkles that felt like ridges under her.
The inside of her knee itched. She twisted around and down, scratched and sighed. The itch moved to the middle of her back. She chased it as high as she could reach, shuddered all over, kicked the covers off, and rolled out of bed.
Scratching at her arm, she padded to the window and stood frowning out it at a strange colorless landscape, at roofs with pantiles like humpy scales, at a wall two stories high and wide enough to drive the landrover on, with merlons along the outer edge and towers black against a sky hot with stars, so many stars even the huge yellow-gray moon couldn’t blot them out-a full moon rising into a cloudless sky, limned against it a pair of strange mountains, black silhouettes like pointy breasts with hardened nipples.