“Relax? In the middle of this?” Miriam had taken in the organized chaos.
“Yes, Helge, it’s your job to be serene. Leave the panicking to me.” And Brill had left her to the mercy of her wardrobe staff, who had spent weeks preparing their idea of a party dress for her, and who had never heard of the word excess.
Which left her standing still in an attempt not to perspire in the stuffy warmth of the blue receiving room, trying to smile and make small talk and juggle a glass of wine and a peacock-feather fan that barely stirred the air in front of her. She was surrounded: With Sir Alasdair standing discreetly to one side, and a permanent floating mob of relatives and hangers-on trying to approach her from the front, she was unable to move, reliant on the two ladies-in-waiting hovering nearby.
“—The effect on the harvest will, unfortunately, be bad, your highness, with so many destitute; the pretender’s army ate what they could and burned the rest, and banditry and famine follow such as night follows day.”
Miriam—no, Helge—smiled politely as Lord Ragnr and Styl droned on, talking at her rather than to her, but most accurately delivering his report to the small condenser mic hidden in her corsage. “And how much has been lost, exactly?” she nudged, shaking her head minutely as Sir Alasdair raised an eyebrow and mimed a shoving motion.
“Oh, lots! I myself counted—” That was Lord Ragnr and Styl’s vice, Miriam remembered. In another world he’d have been an adornment to a major accountancy firm’s boardroom. In this one, he was a liability to his profession (lord oath-sworn to Duke Lofstrom and ruler of some boring fishing villages, a small chunk of forest, and a bunch of peasant hamlets; performance appraisal based on ability to hunt, drink, and kill the duke’s enemies). But she’d listened to him before, and he seemed to think this gave him license to bend her ear in future, and what he had to say was deeply tedious but clearly a matter of profound importance for the business of future good governance. And so, she stood and smiled, and listened to the man.
“—By your leave, my lord?” Miriam blinked back to the present as Sir Alasdair gently interrupted. “My liege, your grandam is about to be announced.”
“She is?” Miriam felt the color draining from her cheeks. Well shit! “You’re certain about that?” I thought she was dead!
“Absolutely.” Sir Alasdair’s expression was imperturbable: She noted the colorless wire coiling from his left ear to the collar of his tunic.
“Oh. Well.” She took a breath of musty, overheated air. “My lord, you must, please, forgive me? But I have not seen my grandmother since before the insurrection, and”—if I clap eyes on her before I die of old age it’s too soon—“I really must pay my respects.” I’d rather piss on her grave, but I suppose I’d better find out why she’s here.
Ragnr and Styl seemed disappointed for some reason, but took it in good spirit, and after much backing and flowery commiseration she was free. More backing and sidling and some whispered instructions and her ladies-in-waiting formed a flying wedge, or at any rate a creeping one. As they moved towards the door with Miriam in their wake she recognized a gaggle of familiar faces. “Sir Huw?” she called.
“Milady!”
She smiled, unforced: “Did you bring your results?”
Huw nodded. “I’m ready to speak. Whenever you want me to.”
“Good. Upstairs, half an hour?”
Huw ducked his head and vanished into a knot of younger Clan members. Miriam blinked as she noticed Elena, almost unrecognizable in a red gown with a long train. Are they an item? Miriam wondered, before dismissing the question. Where’s Mom? I need her advice before I confront Hildegarde.
“Milady?” It was Gerta, pressed into service as an attendant. “If it please you . . .”
“I need to circulate,” she mouthed over her shoulder. “Sir Alasdair? . . .”
The press around her began to give way as she made progress towards the main hall. Despite the open doors and windows the air was no less close, thanks to the milling clusters of visitors and their attendants, and the copious quantities of rose water and other perfumes with which they attended to their toilet. Out here in the countryside, the humidity and stink of summer was a mere echo of conditions in the capital; though the gods had little to say against bathing (unlike the early Christians), the smell of old sweat and unwashed clothing was unpleasantly noticeable.
“Make way for her grace!” called one of her servants. “Make—”
“So the rumors were accurate. You did survive.”
Miriam turned to face the speaker. “I could say the same of you. Grandmother.”
The grand dowager Duchess Hildegarde was in her eighties, one of those octogenarians who seemed to persist through a process of mummification. She stared at Miriam, her eyelids drooping as if in disinterest. “I find that interesting,” she said flatly. “The odds were not in your favor.”
For a moment Miriam flickered back to that bewildering and fearful night, remembering James Lee’s evident flattery—and offer of a locket bearing the Lee clan’s deviant knotwork: In retrospect an incitement to defect. She managed a polite smile. “I try to make a habit of beating bad odds.”
“Hah. You’ll continue to face them, girl, as long as you keep playing your fancy games. You ignore the old ways at your peril; others cleave to them, and your fingers can be burned just as easily by the fire you didn’t light. Although you do seem to have a fine talent for getting others to rescue you from situations of your own devising. But on another matter, have you seen your dam? I must have words with her. We need to clear the air.”
Her grandmother’s offhanded condescension didn’t surprise Miriam; but the suggestion that the air needed clearing was something else. “What’s there to talk about? I thought you’d disowned her!”
“Well.” Hildegarde’s cheek twitched into something that might have been a grimace. “That was then; this is politics, after all.”
“On the contrary, this is my party, and I’m shocked, absolutely shocked, that anybody might want to discuss matters of politics here.” Miriam glared at her grandmother. “Or haven’t you worked it out yet?”
Hildegarde looked her up and down. “Oh, Patricia raised you well,” she breathed. “And I could ask exactly the same of you, but you wouldn’t listen. Best save my breath. You’ll understand eventually.” Then, before Miriam could think of a suitable response, she turned and shuffled aside.
“What was that about?” asked Brill, materializing at her elbow: “I could have sworn—”
“I wish I knew.” Miriam stared after the dowager, perturbed. “I have the strangest feeling that she was trying to send me some sort of message I’m meant to understand. Only somebody forgot to tell me how to mind read.”
“She is”—Brill stared at the broad shoulders of the dowager’s arms-men—”a most powerful and dangerous lady.”