After a little while she started to wonder if he was right, for they were bothered by no more houiff. It was the ehhif who were doing the bothering now: Rhiow was picked up, petted, fed, fussed over, fed some more, and even offered alcohol. In the midst of all the ruckus, she was relieved to catch a glimpse of the Silent Man again: she’d lost track of him briefly. Just inside the ballroom next door was a fireplace, and a fire, against the back of the room, between tall windows looking out on a terrace. There the Silent Man had esconced himself at a table that sat a comfortable distance from the fire, and had made himself at home with a pot of coffee that a servant had brought him, while Sheba lay across his lap and accepted the occasional tidbit from a plate of hors d’oeuvres they’d been brought. Around the table sat a few other tom-ehhif, most of them older men. The Silent Man seemed to be enjoying all their company, but with one of them in particular he seemed to be doing a lot of pad-scribbling: a thin little man, sharp-faced, with close-set eyes – another bird-like face, but more closely resembling a hawk than any grackle. The voice was hawkish too, harsh and rasping, and would have been unpleasant if notfor the humor in it. ’Ruah, Rhiow said, take a break from stuffing your gut, will you?
“Did it before you thought about it,” he said from behind her. “Rhi, they’ve got oysters on the half-shell on that third table, and they’re going fast. Stop exercising self-denial and get in there.”
Rhiow’s mouth started watering. “Truly I’m going to get you for that one of these days,” she said. “Meanwhile, you seem to know most of these people. Any idea who that one is? The ehhif with the nose. He’s the only one here who isn’t looking at the Silent Man like he’s some kind of plague victim.”
Urruah sat down beside her, looking strangely pleased as he started to wash his face.“The look of him I don’t know,” he said, “but anyone studying this land in this time would have heard his voice. That’s Hhwalher Hhwinhel’lh. A newspaperman once, as the Silent Man was. But then he did something unusuaclass="underline" he invented the gossip column. Now he’s beyond famous – his column is in two thousand papers across the country, and he does a rah’hio show every night….fifty-five million listeners. In this time, he’s a superstar. And he and the Silent Man have been great friends for some while…which is interesting, since Sheba tells me that once they were great enemies.” He put his whiskers forward. “But since the Silent Man got sick, Hhwalher’s had a change of heart. Makes you think there’s some hope for ehhif after all.”
“So he’s safe there for the time being…”
“Yes. I’ll keep an eye on him for a while, if you like. We’ll all take turns at it. Meanwhile, you go make the oysters feel unsafe for a few minutes! The team’s doing what it’s here for. Arhu and Sif are out looking and listening, and taking Hwaith’s advice when it’s needed. Go on, stop micromanaging…”
Rhiow put her whiskers forward and, to please him, did as she was told. She was on her fourth oyster, obligingly fed to her by a tall dark tom-ehhif in a tuxedo, when she suddenly heard that laugh like glass going tinkle, tinkle, tinkle out of a tipped-over garbage can. Oh no, Rhiow thought, but there was nowhere to escape to: Anya Harte was heading straight for her. The queen had on another of her flouncy little dresses, in a deeper blue this time– more a peacock’s feather color – all scattered with a brittle glitter of rhinestones; and she was collared in a choker of what might or might not have been diamonds, but in any case made her look to Rhiow like a Park Avenue Peke. The little high heels came tap-tap-tapping off the ballroom floor, where she’d apparently been dancing with some tom. “And look there,” Anya cried to several of the group of toms who’d followed her out of the ballroom, “there’s one of the darling kitties! Oh, aren’t they all so adorable? And that’s the prettiest one, absolutely dead black, unlucky for most people of course, but not for me — !”
Rhiow threw a horrified glance at Urruah, who was sitting exactly a foot to the right of where he had been– safely out of tripping range, and sidled. It’s a good thing, Rhiow said silently as Miss Harte snatched her up, that I’m not so paranoid that I’d ever suspect you of setting this up.
“What a sweet face he has! Isn’t he lovely? And such big golden eyes! And – oh, my, his breath smells so fishy! Is it a fishy wishy kitty then?”
Rhiow closed her eyes in what she hoped would be mistaken for a lazy friendly expression.“Woman, you reek!” she said softly. “It’d make anyone’s eyes water.” The overpowering scent was mostly that of roses, but other rather mismatched scents seemed to have been haphazardly added to this basis — as if the wearer had mixed the bottle-remnants of several expensive perfumes together, assuming that the result would be all right just because they’d all been expensive. “Oh, Queen Iau,” Rhiow said, “please let her just put me down before I have to shred her tatty dress. Oh, not upside down!”
“But they’re dear Mr. Runyon’s friends, so we have to be nice to them,” Miss Harte said, in one too-expert move inverting Rhiow and holding her cradled on her back in her arms, exactly as Hhuha had used to do. But Hhuha hadn’t squeezed her as if she was a rag doll, and had spent her time holding Rhiow talking to her; whereas Miss Harte was talking over Rhiow’s head at the crowd of toms who were using the excuse of admiring Rhiow to admire the parts of Miss Harte she was being squeezed against. Rhiow opened her eyes again – had to, they felt like they were popping — and looked up into that pretty face, all smiles, but not a smile-line in sight, and all wide blue eyes, though those eyes were only looking into the toms’ eyes for the purpose of seeing her own reflection there. “They’re the only friends he has now, I suppose, though everybody does their best to help himalong. It’s so nice that he has some company at home, it must be so hard for him to be alone so much after that dreadful woman ditched him, though I suppose everybody was expecting it, we all know what those types are like! But you wouldn’t believe the terrible kind of people he’s been keeping company with, I ran across him at lunch at Musso and Frank’s today, and the whole back room was simply aghast, because…what?”
Miss Harte trailed off, slowed down by what Rhiow thought was the only thing that could have done it, short of Iau Herself appearing in Her glory and starting in on the buffet: the toms’ faces turning away. All around them, another stillness like the one the Silent Man’s entry had produced now fell, but this one much differed in quality, as about fifty tom-ehhifs’ breaths went in and didn’t come out.
Helen Walks Softly stood in the middle of that open double door from the front hallway, wearing more than any other woman in the place…and somehow less. Her dress was sleeveless, off-the-shoulder, nipped in at the waist, full-length, and a shade darker than the wine she’d been drinking at lunch. The fabric seemed unornamented, except for a subtle shimmer toward darker shades when it swung away from the light. But a half-inch or so above where the cleavage became truly interesting, the fabric simply seemed to start fading away like fog. By the time it reached Helen’s collarbones, it was completely gone. The effect seemed calculated to distract even the most singleminded viewer from the single blood-red cabochon garnet hanging by a chain in the hollow of Helen’s throat… and to instead leave one wondering whether the boundary between fabric “being there” and “not being there” might possibly shift without warning, and in which direction.
Possibly the focus of even more attention, though, was Helen’s hair. In a time when all the other queen-ehhif seemed to be wearing it put up or fairly short, in rolls or curls, and some in structures that looked more like architecture than hair, Helen had simply pinned the sides of her long hair back and let the rest flow untrammeled in raven waves down her back. Numerous of the tom-ehhif watching her were doing so with expressions suggesting that they only saw queens with their hair down so in far more private circumstances. Some of them had plainly begun wondering how such circumstances, involving Helen, might be organized.