8. N #5
Good enough to get a job as a children’s teacher. Threes … Yellows … you’re a Yellow … are usually fabricators, or farmers. Fours can light green crystals. They are mostly military and skilled craftsmen. Fives are highborn or raised by virtue of power. Lord Haldeen is a strong five.
The rest of the technical lords will be fives, maybe low sixes. Blue and indigo crystals for the fives and sixes. The birth lords will be sevens … they watch those bloodlines carefully to make sure they breed true. Perhaps one in a thousand can light a violet crystal, and no one …
no one can make one dance.”
She trailed off, aware she’d been running on. “I’m sorry, Triana. I lied to you. Haldeen wanted to know where you would fit in, what sorts of work you could do. He ordered you tested.”
Triana gave her a wan smile. “I understand. I really do. I’ve had to do things I found distasteful, regardless of how I felt about it.”
Nora’s unhappiness gave Triana an opening, her first chance to try and understand a bit of what she had seen last night, the marks and squiggles.
She doubted Nora could help her with that, and even asking would open up too much risk.
She racked her tired brain for a way to frame the question, then winced inwardly as it all just came tumbling out.
“How does it all work?”
Nora rose, gathering up the crystals and setting them back into pockets in the box. “How does all what work? Magic?”
“Yes.”
Nora furrowed her brow, thinking. “Well, how does it work where you come from?”
Triana thought about that for a few moments.
“Well, it depends. It’s different between males and females. Males are much more about overt power, but it mostly comes down to shaping things with the mind. Women are forbidden, if not by law, then by custom, from learning those ways,
and female elven lords are inherently weaker in terms of power than the males.”
“A lot is what we call spellcraft. Father once said that the incantations, the spells, don’t have anything to do with the magic itself, but are needed to replicate, and shape and control the mind picture, getting the feel right. A powder burnt to get the smell right,
to cue the right way something gets shaped, or how it should be.”
She smiled. “I commented once that what he described is a sort of a recipe, and Father got quite offended ….”
She assumed a deep and pretentious voice.
“‘Something as lowly as a cook’s herbs cannot in any way compare to a high and powerful elven lord practicing his awesome and most puissant craft.’” She paused.
“Speaking of cooks, I’m ravenous. Any chance of cadging an early lunch?”
Nora grinned at her and picked up the box with the gems. “The testing really takes it out of you. I’ll see what I can do. I make it a point of making friends in low places. You learn lots of interesting things, and can occasionally beg a snack. You were describing spell recipes ….”
Triana smiled and put her finger to her lips.
“Shhh … don’t let the elven lords hear you say that. Recipes. It’ll be all offended dignity and lofted chins.”
She stood. “Anyway, I thought it sounded like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, the way a cook will present a fancy dish that turns out to be simple to make.”
Nora took the hint and started for the door.
Triana followed Nora back out of the small room, and into the bright sunlight, lured by the promise of a meal.
She raised one hand as she stepped into the light, blinking against the bright sun that had moved well up into the sky.
They had been in there far longer than Triana had suspected …
hours instead of minutes. The realization threw her off-stride, and it took her a moment to find her place.
Nora smiled. “The testing takes longer than you think. And it is more work than it seems. I think the lunch line is forming over there.”
Triana looked around to where the household staff had begun to queue for their midday meal. She felt her stomach rumble. They made for the line.
“You were saying … ” Nora prompted.
“We women are less overtly powerful,” Triana continued, “but female magic is domestic. It concentrates on the small rather than the large, and that means our abilities look more like those of a jeweler than a blacksmith. We often … not always, but often … learn fine control, instead of pure power.
The ability to magic up a fine lace, make a perfect flower arrangement, create the perfect seducing bower … turns out those are the same skills needed to stitch a wound, heal an injury, or negotiate a peace.”
She paused for a moment. “In truth, I was never very good at any of those things, certainly not the healing, stitching, or negotiation, and I’m sure not making skiving lace, but it’s the sort of thing we women tell ourselves.”
Nora glanced at her. “What were you good at?”
Triana saw the trap open up. So far, Nora had kept her confidences, but Nora worked for someone, and it wasn’t Triana. She grinned at Nora. “Getting my own way.”
Nora nodded along. “Parts of what you describe sounds like here, but the rest is very different. Women here have more choices … but many of the same … limitations.”
Triana didn’t have to be a savant to read the unhappiness behind that.
The children she would never have. Triana wasn’t sure how to respond.
She breathed a silent sigh of relief as Nora used her talent for shifting away from uncomfortable topics to save Triana from having to reply.
Nora turned to the women in the line ahead of them, who had been openly staring at Triana.
“Hello, Ylana. Thank you for the help with the stain on the blouse. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get it out, and I only have just the one. Thank you again.”
She gestured towards Triana. “Have you met my friend, Triana? She’s from one of the outlying colonies. Agriculture.”
Both women immediately looked sympathetic. “You poor dear,” gushed Ylana, “we heard such terrible stories about the farm colony being overrun. It’s all been kept hush-hush by the city, so of course everyone knows about it. It must be so very hard for you to be so far from your home, Trey’ana.”
Triana had to admire Nora’s ability to escape uncomfortable topics. “You have no idea,” she replied dryly.
Nora shifted to include the other two women, and Triana found herself immersed in some kind of babbling stream-of-consciousness from the extremely voluble Ylana.
Triana gathered that she was a seamstress, and a veritable font of knowledge about the goings-on in the servants’ quarters.
Nora, for her part, looked to be well grounded in the household gossip, and Triana found herself drawn in, in spite of her efforts to remain aloof.
Ylana’s story about having to let out the waist for one of the undercooks drew a baffled expression from Triana.
The other women cackled together before Ylana mimed a big belly.
“Silly hen is knocked up and has no idea.”
Triana remained confused, uncertain about what was funny …. “So, the girl is pregnant?”
The three women burst out laughing. Triana began to get irritated, begging to suspect they were laughing at her.
Nora chortled, and wiped away a tear. “Her husband works in a different House, so the odds are pretty close to nil that the child is his.”
Triana understood that well enough. Scandals involving the ladies of the Great Houses were the bread and butter of elven lord politics.
It stood to reason that any place where the servants of Houses could mix, there would be scheming and opportunities too.
Nothing succeeds like novelty … especially here I think!
In a place where there seemed to be so little novelty that simple sauces were valuable treasures, the prospect of getting into bed with a new face must provide an overwhelming temptation.