I reached into my pouch and found three imperials. I passed one to the woman whose name I didn’t know, and one to the young man. “Take a walk,” I said. Their eyes widened, they took the coins, then they looked at Ouffach. She nodded. They got up and moved to a table on the other side of the room. When they’d left, I pushed the third coin over to her.
She picked it up and studied it, tapped her fingernail against it, then frowned. “Who is this?” she said, pointing to the portrait of an Empress who hadn’t yet taken the throne. Oops.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s gold.”
She tapped it again, nodded, and set it down.
“Why do you want to know?”
I fished around and found another imperial, set it next to the first. “Good enough reason?”
She smiled. She didn’t have many teeth, and the ones she had were yellow. I suddenly realized that, during the Interregnum, Dragaerans’ teeth looked like the teeth of Easterners in my own time. I couldn’t decide if that was funny or sad. I also wondered how much the blacksmith would charge to make her some new ones.
“I don’t know a lot,” she said. “I know it happened a hundred years or so after the Disaster.”
She drank some more beer and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. I nodded and waited for her to continue.
“There’s a dancer, also an Issola. Hevlika.”
I nodded, but inside, all of my ah ha’s were going off.
“It seemed that she and Gormin were sweeping the straw.”
That was an expression I’d never heard before, but it was easy enough to figure out. “Involved,” I said.
She squinted at me with one eye, I guess to see if I was only pretending to misunderstand in order to embarrass her, which I was, but it didn’t work. I flashed her a smile and nodded.
“Of course, they were discovered.”
“Pardon the ignorance of a poor Easterner, but was such a dalliance forbidden?”
For a moment, she looked at me as if I were an alien species, which I was. Then her face cleared and she said, “At the time, Gormin was His Lordship’s steward.”
“Is that like seneschal?” I asked, thinking of Lady Teldra.
She nodded. “He was in charge of the household.”
“Which means?”
“The dancer was part of the household. Surely such a thing is improper among your people?”
“We don’t have stewards. At least, I’ve never met one in an Eastern household.”
“Then who is in charge of the servants?”
“Who is in charge of your servants?”
“The steward, as I said.”
“Yours? In your house?”
“My house?” She laughed. “I don’t have servants.”
“Exactly,” I said.
She glanced at the two imperial coins in front of her, then back at me as if she didn’t entirely believe me. I guess I could see her point: how could someone who could toss around imperials like copper not have servants? Fine. Let it be a mystery.
“So, they were caught, and he was booted out of his House.”
“And ordered into the Teckla.”
“Heh. I’ll bet you made him feel welcome.”
Her lips twitched. “We didn’t make it pleasant for him. But he took it well, and never got above himself, so we stopped. Eventually.”
“And now?”
“Beg pardon?”
“What is he doing now?”
“Oh. The same as he did before, only as a Teckla.”
“And the dancer?”
“She is still there.” Some expression crossed her features too quickly for me to read.
“What?” I said.
“Hmm?”
“What was that look for?”
She looked down. I waited. After a moment, she said softly, “It was cruel.”
I drew circles on the table in the condensation from the beer. “What was?”
Her head came up. “You don’t see? He made Gormin stay there, where he saw her every day, only now he was a Teckla.”
I put that together with what I knew of Dragaerans in general and Issola in particular—he was no longer an Issola, or even an aristocrat. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him, and he’d never consider asking her to. Dragaerans are idiots. “He did that just to be cruel?”
She nodded.
“This was Zhayin?”
She winced a little—I guess the local lord is too important to be called by his name—but then she nodded.
“I’m starting to take a dislike to this guy,” I said.
“He’s been through a lot,” she said.
“You mean his son.”
She nodded.
“And then, his daughter.”
She frowned. “His daughter? He has no daughter.”
“Ah,” said. “My mistake.” And let’s have another “ah ha!” In case that went too fast for you, I’d just learned that her mother was already dead, but the woman who was an adult and a ghost in my age had never been heard of by the townspeople. I didn’t know what that meant, but it meant something.
A few people came in and found tables; I guess it was still pretty early as Teckla saw things. And then, a number of them probably had to walk in from miles away once the work was done. I remembered from my travels that Teckla did a lot of walking. So far, all of them were Teckla; I had the feeling that if an aristocrat were to walk in here no one would know what to do.
I cleared my throat. “We were talking,” I said, “about Zhayin’s wife. What was her name?”
“Her Ladyship.”
“That was her name?”
“The only name I knew.”
I nodded. “So, what happened to her?”
“I don’t know. We were never told.”
“What was the gossip?”
She laughed. “That one of His Lordship’s experiments had gotten out of control. That she had killed herself in despair at his violating the laws of nature. That a god had appeared and taken her to be his bride. That he had killed her when she threatened to go to the Duke about his illegal magic. That he had sacrificed her to gain power. Would you like me to go on?”
“No, no. I get the idea. Who would know?”
“His Lordship.”
“Thanks so much.”
She shrugged.
“All right, who else would know?”
She considered. “Maybe Hevlika.”
I nodded. “Maybe there’s some way I could meet her.”
“She should be along soon.”
“What? Here? She drinks here?”
“She dances here, two or three times a week.”
“Oh. I thought she only danced for Zhayin.”
She frowned. “Why would you think that?”
“No reason.”
She gave me a look and grunted, and a few more people came in. I’d been at events—plays and concerts—where there was a lot of excitement as the opening drew close, and this didn’t feel like that. It was more relaxed, like, what was going to happen was a part of the evening, less a special event, more like an Endweek dinner: anticipated, but nothing to burn the chairs for.
I got us another round of drinks. I should add that the hostess collected from me when she brought the drinks; for everyone else, she just made marks on a board behind the bar. To be fair, I don’t know if that was because I was human or because I was a stranger.
I waited for the show to start.
13. The Star of the Seven Jewels
A few more people came in and found seats; then a few more, who stood against the wall because they’d run out of chairs. The hostess was moving like a Dzur in battle getting everyone drinks.