At the end of the week, when Shamesh came to her to pay his accounting, she could stand it no longer. "Will you be wanting the room for a week longer, or have you completed your business here?"
"I have not even begun!"
"Come—sit down. I have just made tea." Her smile invited confidence. When the house was new, her mother had hoped to hold feasts in the dining room. Large enough to hold all the guests for a communal meal, it was empty now. Morning sunlight filtered through the high windows and glowed on the frescoes, the only remnant of past splendor that had survived the hard times when anything that could bring in a few padpols had to be sold.
"Nothing in this town is where I was told to seek it—even the Vulgar Unicorn has moved!" Shamesh exclaimed.
"The past few years have been troubled," Latilla agreed. "Much has been destroyed, and many died." She waited a little, watching him. "Is it a person or a place that you are looking for?"
"A person…" he said at last. "A noblewoman of Ranke who came with the household of Prince Kadakithis when he was sent here as governor."
"The Prince left Sanctuary thirty years ago! The only Rankans remaining here are the old families—I suppose you have asked among them?"
"Exhaustively. A few of the older folk remember her, but they believe she went with the Prince to the Bey sin isles…"
Something about the way he said it alerted her. Clearly, Shamesh knew that Prince Kadakithis had returned to Ranke instead of sailing away with his Beysib queen. Was he dead, or was it he who had told this man about Sanctuary?
"My older sister was one of the Beysa's ladies," Latilla said instead. "So I can tell you that there were only a few women from Sanctuary on those ships, and none of them was Rankene." Watching, she saw the light fade from his eyes, and repressed the impulse to reach out and comfort him. "She never arrived in the capital?"
Shamesh shook his head. "Do you think I would have come all the way to this miserable hole if she had?"
For a moment Latilla bristled. Then she sighed. It was, after all, true. Even her own father had left in the end, and though he had promised to be back in a year's time, he had never returned. She took a calming breath.
"What was her name?"
"Elisandra. She was the older sister of the lady who is now Empress of Ranke. I have been sent to look for her."
Latilla sat back, understanding many things. Though Ranke no longer dared claim Sanctuary as a possession, rumor of events in the Empire still reached them. The throne had been seized by a northern general some years back, who appeared to be ruling well. To legitimize his reign he had married into a family which was, if not quite imperial, ancient enough to make him socially acceptable. Had Shamesh taken on this search for money, or was there some more pressing motive? She could not ask, but he had gained her sympathy.
The sudden light in his face made it for a moment beautiful. La-tilla's breath caught, and she was abruptly conscious of him as a physical being, and at the same time remembered how long it had been since she had felt that kind of awareness of a man.
He is at least a decade younger than I am, despite the silver threads in his hair, she told herself, and whatever beauty I might have had is long gone!
"That's true!" he exclaimed. "But I would not know how to begin asking. Mistress Latilla, will you help me?"
In the morning it had rained, and the streets were still muddy. Latilla held up the skirts of her second best robe and picked her way along Pyrtanis Street with care, very conscious of the tall man at her side, who was glancing from side to side, his expression an uneasy mix of disgust and caution.
"Who is this woman we're going to see?" Shamesh asked as they turned the corner to Camdelon Street. The buildings here were even shabbier, but the steps were swept and here and there a plant in a pot made a pathetic attempt at gentility. Like me—thought Latilla, remembering how Sula had stared at the unaccustomed finery. The girl is too filled with her own dreams to imagine that her mother might also cherish a few fantasies… She realized the subject of her current fantasy had spoken and forced a smile.
"Her name is Mistress Patrin. In the old days, she was chief housekeeper at the Palace, and the terror of the servants there. When I was a little girl she certainly terrified me. She will probably inform you that her father was a Rankene lord, and it would be best to pretend to believe her. My mother always doubted that story, but at least while they could still get out and about, the two of them stayed on visiting terms. So I know the old bat survived the Troubles, though whether she's alive now I couldn't say."
It had taken a week of patient inquiry to get this far. Most of the Palace servants she had thought of first were dead or disappeared, and even Taran's network of scruffy layabouts, motivated by the promise of Rankene coin, had run out of options by the time she remembered her mother's old friend.
"And you think this Patrin can help us?"
"Well, she knew everyone who was at court in those days—and all the gossip as well. She'll have known this Elisandra of yours."
And Elisandra, if we find her, will be at least ten years older than I, thought Latilla with a grim satisfaction. She would be no rival, even in fantasy.
A gaggle of yelling children shot out from an alley, gave Latilla and her companion a practiced once-over, and having decided they looked too alert to try a little purse snatching, pelted off down the road.
Latilla, who had been counting the houses down from the corner, paused, eyeing the dwelling before her dubiously. The potted plant on the step had clearly died some time ago.
Shamesh, less sensitive to nuances, took a step forward and banged on the door. They waited in the street for what seemed an endless moment, Latilla feeling more foolish as it extended. But Shamesh had only just lifted his hand to knock again when a crack widened at the edge of the door. Metal glinted—the chain was still on. Above it she glimpsed the glitter of an eye.
The chain glittered and swung as the door was pulled open.
"Who's this?" the old woman barked as she saw Shamesh. "Not your husband!" She looked him up and down in an appraisal which her age saved from being insulting.
"A… friend, who volunteered to escort me through the town—" answered Latilla as they had agreed.
"Please, good mistress, I am quite well behaved, I assure you!" said Shamesh, smiling.
"A Rankan lord, by your accent! Did you think I would not know? I wonder what such a one is doing here?" She sniffed, but she pulled the door the rest of the way open.
It was just as well they had brought their own food, thought Latilla, wrinkling her nose a little at the faint sour smell in the room. It was dusty, too. From the way Mistress Patrin moved, she guessed that the old woman's sight was failing. She must have recognized her by voice rather than vision.
"And how does your mother?"
"Her health is good," said Latilla, "but she cannot walk very well anymore."
"Too fat!" Mistress Patrin exclaimed triumphantly. "I told her that her joints would give out one day! I flatter myself that I have kept my own figure tolerably well!" She added, smoothing shawls draped over a frame like a rack of bones. Her wig, pinned in a style that had been fashionable a generation ago, bore a spider web between two stiff curls.
For a moment Shamesh caught Latilla's glance and she fought to keep her composure. Mistress Patrin's vague gaze slid towards the corner where she had told him to sit and she simpered.
"And you, my lord, are from the great city? How I should love to see it! My father, you know was an exile, but he often used to speak of its splendors."