“Be ceremonial, Lady Caissa,” whispered Trin, her hands clasped tightly under her chin, her eyes enormous with delight in her grey face.
Regally, Caissa lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and pulled in her diaphragm, realizing for a fleeting miserable second that she copied that movement from her sire. Red spilled through the fabric and it ceased to cling to her legs but fell in graceful drapes to the floor. Then the color settled to echo the pattern of her heir-tattoo Caissa, with an arrogant expression, moved across the floor in the haughty gliding pace that she had been trained to assume for the greater ceremonials. So she would walk tomorrow. And in this robe!
She could not maintain that cold imperiousness for long, not with the exultation she felt. Laughing uninhibitedly, she started to twirl in gladness, revelling in the comfort of the coelura against her bare skin. The fabric responded to her mood in pulsing reds and purples, shot with cerulean blues, breaking into spontaneous patterns as her steps fell into different dance modes. She exercised a hundred while Trin laughed and applauded until, exhausted by her excess, Caissa collapsed on her bed. Now the gown sobered and lovingly warmed her.
“You’d best sleep in it tonight, Lady Caissa, so that it knows you, or tomorrow . . .” Trin’s expression was solemn. “If the Triads should learn that you’ve received a coelura robe…. Oh, I don’t know what I should do, my lady!” Trin’s hands pressed against her mouth in fear.
“No one will know, Trin. And they couldn’t take it from me if they did know,” replied Caissa staunchly. She hugged herself and coelura lapped protectingly over her forearms. “They can never take it from me!”
“Yes, the gown would die with you, my lady, but I wouldn’t want things to get that far,” cried Trin.
“How long have you known about coelura, Trin?” Caissa suddenly thought to ask.
“Oh, dressers like me, we’ve always known about coelura. I never thought to see it in my lifetime.” Trin shook her head slowly in wonder. “Tomorrow, when your sire signs that contract, you’ll outshine everyone else!” That prospect seemed to offer Trin tremendous satisfaction.
Caissa could not admit to sharing a similar anticipation. Since the occasion was her sire’s, her attitude was unworthy.
“Tonight you sleep in the coelura, Lady Caissa,” Trin repeated. “Tomorrow no one will know it’s coelura unless you let ‘em.”
Tomorrow, reflected Caissa, everyone will know about coelura. And someone will think to inform the High Lady Cinna. The irony that she should possess coelura before her womb-mother was doubled by the fact that a person like Lady Cinna was the greatest danger to coelura. Her robe gently compressed about Caissa’s body, as if in sympathy as well as understanding.
Murell had said, Caissa reminded herself firmly, that coelura would be protected. He had emphasized that. She only hoped that he knew what he was talking about. Did he, could he, appreciate how dangerous Baythan could be so close to a long-awaited fulfillment?
The exhaustion of the day’s emotional stress overcame her. Despite her anxieties, or perhaps because she was enveloped in coelura, Caissa slept.
She woke, unexpectedly refreshed, her coelura a gentle green, a shade that illuminated her lovely complexion and complemented her black hair. Trin arrived with a tray of food and exclaimed with approval at her mistress’s subtly enhanced beauty.
“You’d better eat well my lady. It’s going to be a long day and with everything, you can’t risk coming over faint from lack of food.” Nourishment was an answer-all for Trin. “Coelura would give you away for certain if you aren’t feeling well.”
The food did quiet the roiling in her stomach and Caissa ate more than she intended. She did not like surrendering the gown even for bathing and it clung lovingly to her hand until she, following Murell’s example, told it to behave. She kept its dulled green length in sight as she submitted to Trin’s ministrations. She sighed with relief when she could settle the coelura back about her shoulders.
“Now set it in your colors, Lady Caissa.”
She did and Trin could find no fault in shade, shape or drape.
“You’ll never want for the perfect gown again, my lady,” said Trin. “It’s only just too bad as you aren’t the important contractee today in that robe. You’d have all eyes. No one would outshine you.”
“Outshining has never been my ambition, Trin, as well you know.”
“I know,” and Trin’s deep sigh bordered insolent regret, “but not for my want of trying. You shine now! I’ll watch it all.” She activated the wall screen and tuned it to the Great Hall, now a lucent white as befitted the occasion.
Trin’s excitement was nothing to the aura exuded by the invited and chosen as they moved towards the Great Hall in the slow grav stream, decorously, so as not to disarrange their finery. The entry ways from all grav channels were lined with mirrors to permit last minute adjustments before entering. Caissa’s robe remained in immaculate folds about her as she stepped onto the platform. She moved politely forward in the press and pretended to touch up her hair as she glanced at the throng pausing or passing her. Everyone was, as usual, far too occupied in their own appearance to notice anything unusual about hers. She waited in the anteroom as long as she could, hoping to locate Murell. He might have chosen to dress in lower caste neutrals to deliver her coelura yesterday but he did have an heir-tattoo. Surely he possessed rank enough to enter the Great Hall for the contracting of his Caverna.
The Great Hall was filling: the hour for the ceremony and the Triads’ announcement near. Already the upper tiers were occupied by the ranking Cavernii and their body-heirs. Ambassadors and ministers from other planetary systems occupied booths and tanks or the balcony for oxygen breathers. Caissa thought wryly that her sire was certainly going to achieve maximum dissemination of his new contract as well as his mission’s success.
Although she had no part in the ceremony, she was his body-heir and would stand the usual three steps behind him, to his right. She moved across the immense Hall to take her position on the lowest of the four steps leading up to the two ceremonial chairs, red and blue, set for the Triad Rulers. There was, she noticed, sufficient room for a third chair on that dais.
With slow dignity, she viewed the assembled and, though she had often been a witness to prestigious contracts, she had never seen the Hall so crowded. Black guardroids kept open an aisle down which her sire would lead his new contract partner.
The sonic call-to-order peeled melodiously, through the Hall to the subtly carved domed ceiling. Before the last echo had died, two notes summoned the Rulers of the Blue and Red Triad cities. There should be three, thought Caissa rebelliously. For surely the Yellow City would be reinstated and Demeathorn united in its original Triadic form.
She had always known that the two Rulers were old but suddenly she realized how old they must be for unmistakably both wore coelura robes. She knew Blue Ruler to be in his fifteenth decade and Red Ruler was older. Blue Ruler’s gown was vibrant, sparkling; Red Ruler’s blurred. She remembered the gossip that Red Ruler had not completely recovered from his recent illness. His robe, now that she had some grasp of the properties of coelura, gave the strength to that report. Red Ruler’s body-heir now took his place and his garment, rich though it was, was a poor imitation of what his sire wore. He would need a coelura robe to maintain the dignity and authority of his office. How much compromise had been extracted from the obdurate Oriolii who had withstood sanctions for so long? Had the need for a new Ruler’s robe been an advantage? And for whom?