None of Lord Ottonor’s blood relatives are here today, only people he has elevated through sponsorship. Besides my father there are three other military officers, an administrator wearing the long sleeves of a bureaucrat, and one dour merchant. The men have been allowed to bring their marriageable children.
Amaya and Denya have taken a place at the railing at the edge of the awning, where they can get the first look at any visitors coming through from the back. Another Patron girl joins them; I don’t know her name and have never seen her before. Three boys about our age watch the game.
My mother is the only Commoner seated beneath the awning. All the other Commoners here are masked servants, none of whom would ever sit down in the company of Patrons, because they would be whipped.
I don’t want to talk to Amaya and her friends so I find a place to stand at the far end of the balcony. The only thing I really care about is what is going on down on the court. The green-belted adversary is stuck at the rope bridge in Traps. My father sees me. With a stern nod he indicates the platter in his hand, so I hurry over and return it to the table.
My movement catches Lord Ottonor’s eye. “A shame about her, Esladas, no? The other girl is so pretty.”
I busy myself with arranging the platter among the others, keeping my face averted.
My father says, “Jessamy is an obedient girl, my lord. Obedience must always be valued above beauty in a woman.”
“I suppose so,” said Lord Ottonor. “Although when obedience goes hand in hand with beauty, the world smiles more brightly, does it not?” He nods at my mother, whom he allows to sit beside him because he enjoys admiring her.
She is embroidering a length of cloth. Her hugely pregnant belly should make the work a little clumsy, except my mother can do nothing clumsily. No ribbons confine her hair, which she wears in its natural cloud. She makes no effort to lighten her complexion, nor does she need to. Men have written poems to the lambent glamour of her eyes. She looks up with a kind smile.
“I think all my daughters are beautiful, Lord Ottonor, both the two who look like Esladas and the two who look like me.” Her silk-soft voice is as exquisite as her face and rather than scolding him seems to be agreeing with him.
I don’t know how she does it. I don’t think she knows. I think she just is that way, like a butterfly whose bright wings capture the eye simply because it is a radiant creature.
“Four daughters, Esladas!” Lord Ottonor drones on. “I’m surprised you kept them all, since they will just be a burden to you when you have to pay to marry them off. If you can marry them off.” He pops a shrimp in his mouth as he considers the vast swell of my mother’s belly. “Perhaps this one will be a son.”
My father says, “If the oracles favor us, it will be a son.”
My mother’s eyebrows tighten. Although she takes an offering tray to the City of the Dead once a week in the manner of a proper Patron woman, she herself never consults the oracles, not as Father and all Patrons do.
At the railing Amaya tugs on Denya’s sleeve. A party of men enters the balcony box. My mother rises from her chair and retreats to the back benches where sit the Patron women who are the wives of the soldiers. Out of respect for my father’s new fame as hero of Maldine they allow her to rest among them. Anyway, they like her.
Once I am sure she is settled I sidle to the far corner railing out of the way as the newcomers are announced. Lord Gargaron is a slender man of about my father’s age, a thin-faced fellow with thin eyes and a thin nose and a thin smile. Lord Ottonor laboriously rises to greet him.
I am as invisible as any servant. Which is a good thing, because I sustain a shock that jolts right through my body as my hands clutch the railing.
One of the people with Lord Gargaron is Blue Boy.
6
Blue Boy is called Lord Kalliarkos. He is the nephew of Lord Gargaron.
Tidied up and dressed in lord’s clothing, he is the same youth I allowed to reach the tower first. He patiently acknowledges the men being introduced to him by Lord Ottonor, but by the way his gaze keeps flicking to the court below I can tell he wants to be watching the game.
“Ah, you just ran that trial, did you not?” says Lord Ottonor. “Shame about your last adversary falling from the Rings. I thought it a funny slip for her to make.”
“So did I,” says Lord Kalliarkos.
A mighty shout rises from the spectators. Everyone looks to see what has happened.
The green-belted youth has figured out the trick with the rings but his rhythm is off as he leaps from one to the next. The turning rings are about to cut him off. If he is smart he will stop and swing down to the ground, but he sees the girl in the red belt running along the ground and he doesn’t want to lose.