Chapter 12 #2
My heart flickered at that. A pot of wine that had been sent to Lyimo—claiming to be from a family abroad, perhaps—would have been a simple method of poisoning him. Yet how the other two might have been infected, let alone conditioned, I had no idea.
Velona mistook my consternation for confusion. “It’s a very famous winery. Always put a little stamp of a flower on the cork. Some high houses fashion displays of them, showing how many pots have been drunk at their tables. But we, of course, are not so vulgar.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Ana. “Do you recall which families might have sent these?”
“I do not. We disposed of it all some time ago. It had all rotted or turned to vinegar.”
“I see,” said Ana. “Lastly—do you see the hand of the Buravs in any of this? For many folk in the town say they are your enemy.
“Burav?” spat Velona. “Burilis Burav? No, by hell, no! The man is a schemer, a, a spider, true—but he cannot shape the fates of folk like this! These arts are beyond him. I am sure of it!” She sank back, defeated.
“I…I can only see the hand of the divine in this. For do you not see the hell that has been made for me?” She gestured at her body. “It makes a terrible sense…”
“Yes,” said Ana softly. “Yes, I think so. You, who engineered so many great bloodlines…”
“I must now do the same to myself,” said Velona.
“I must doctor my body just as I did my beauties. What a thing it is, to work with flesh! I once thought my mastery of the womb a wonder. Now, as my own arts are performed upon me, I feel it is a horror.” She shut her eyes, shuddered, and wearily said, “I…I am finished. There are no more words within me. Perhaps you can find some grain of truth in my sorrows to end the plight of my kin. For now, I am tired. I will indulge in what few delights I have.”
She reached behind her chair and produced a long, unusual pipe.
My nerves twanged like the string of a bow at the sight of it: it looked a good deal like Ana’s shawm, being about the length of a man’s forearm, but this one was curiously fluted, with many apertures running its length.
I quickly engraved its likeness in my mind—for this, I felt sure, was the instrument that controlled the guiding web.
Velona took a breath, then paused. “I’ve no air,” she murmured. “Osumlik!”
“Yes, madam?”
“Take the pipe and make dear Coral dance. It’s the only thing that can mend my heart after so many awful tales.”
The medikker reluctantly took the pipe, shot a grudging look at the little green beast in her lap, then placed the instrument to his lips and played.
What happened next was very strange. It was not quite that I did not hear the note as much as my ears acknowledged that some kind of sound was occurring, but they could not catch it. It was beyond my hearing, I presumed.
Yet Coral reacted instantly. She began to jump madly up and down in Velona’s lap, leaping again and again, as if reaching for an invisible fruit on a branch above her.
“No, no!” snarled Velona. “Stupid man! That is the tune for her exercises! I wish to see her dance, not leap about!”
Osumlik apologized, then played again. Once more, that unsettling sense of an inaudible note in my ears—and then Coral leapt down and began to dance.
It was a sight both bemusing and repulsive.
The little green beast rose to her back feet and made stuttering, awkward little steps about on the floor, gesturing with her long-fingered hands to a silent beat.
Yet her silver eyes remained wide, and fixed, and joyless.
I couldn’t help but imagine a miserable panic in them.
“Yes, yes!” said Velona. She clapped her hands softly. “I do love it. It is the dance known as the qu-alm, you know.”
I affected a smile but kept watching the creature’s terrified gaze. Had Zansay and Castus felt the same thing, I wondered, when they’d been forced through such horrors together in the night?
—
As we left Velona’s chambers, Ana’s skinny hand flashed out and took Fotia by the shoulder. “I would like a place to talk in private, girl.”
Fotia took us to a tiny antechamber leading to another room.
It had been a bedroom once, with a sumptuous four-poster bed, and a large silvered mirror hanging from the far wall.
A dressing table was placed before it, covered with many fine boxes containing countless luxuries: perfumes and oils, rings and necklaces, and—most of all—ribbons and scarves of many colors.
All were covered in a thick layer of dust. This chamber must have sat undisturbed for months.
“This was Sagma’s, once,” said Fotia softly. “Velona hasn’t had any of it removed. She said it would pain her too much. Or maybe she doesn’t want to disturb anything hanging about here. The lady has tried to cleanse the room of ill spirits, as you see.”
I followed her gaze. There, hanging from the chandelier, was a chain with a little brass charm at the end, bearing the two spheres separated by a vertical line.
“The sign of Master Gaddar?” I said.
“Yes,” said Fotia. “The Daljeni seer of fertility, regrowth. This chamber’s like a…a limb, poisoned and rotting after an adder’s bite. She asks for Gaddar’s attentions, for him to breathe life back into this wing of the house.”