“What is that?” Karigan asked after the butler left the dining room.
“Kauv. Would you care for some?”
“Er, no. I mean the papers.”
“Oh. The daily news, such as it is. Mainly the emperor’s propaganda, I daresay. What new laws have been enacted that we must follow, the latest fire in town, and the emperor’s patronage to various ceremonies and events. That sort of thing. Now my dear, when you are finished with your meal, Lorine will help you prepare for our excursion into the city.”
“I—I’m not prepared?” Karigan glanced down at herself as if to once more find herself in her nightgown.
“Women’s dress is beyond me,” he said with an absent wave of his hand, “but I understand there are certain protocols to follow if a woman is to be considered properly stylish. Lorine will know what to do.” He rolled his eyes and attended to his papers.
Karigan stood, and Lorine came to her at once. Upstairs, she helped Karigan change out of the green dress into the sapphire. Evidently the green was her morning dress and the sapphire was an outing dress. Her shoes were changed to a stiffer and more polished black pair, and this time she was equipped with matching gloves, cloak, and brimmed hat adorned with a silk ribbon and a fine veil of netting that fell over her face. Karigan tried to blow it away, causing Lorine to laugh.
“You must wear the veil,” she said.
“Why? It’s ridiculous, and it tickles my nose.”
“It is proper. And it may protect you from the ill humors in the air. Now this color suits you, doesn’t it.” She straightened Karigan’s cloak with a satisfied expression on her face.
Ill humors, Karigan thought acerbically. The veil itself was giving her ill humors. She did not understand the reasoning behind how hiding her face was supposed to be more proper.
Once more downstairs, she said as much to the professor while they waited in the foyer for the carriage to be brought around. He replied, “The emperor came up with the guidelines for what is acceptable. He has certain notions of how a true woman should behave and appear.” He shrugged. “It is all we’ve ever known and are accustomed to it. Best you pretend to be, as well.” He leaned down and whispered, “I’ve always thought the women have a certain advantage with their veils, because the rest of us can never tell what they are thinking.”
“Are the women here even allowed to think?” She assumed he’d have no trouble in detecting the sarcasm in her voice.
The professor gave her a startled glance, then said, his voice very low, “The emperor would prefer none of us to think very much.”
With that pronouncement, a carriage drawn by a smart pair of white horses pulled up front, and the professor escorted her out into the open air of spring. It was damp and cool, and as she inhaled deeply, she tasted the now familiar acrid tang that permeated the city. The professor handed her up into the cab, and as she settled onto a cushioned leather seat, he paused outside to give the driver instructions before joining her, taking the seat across from her. When the carriage rolled forward, she observed that the sleek vehicle rode much more smoothly than those she was accustomed to.
“Almost like home, but not quite,” she murmured, before gazing out the window to take in the sameness of rows of brick houses.
The professor sighed, leaning back in his seat. “I’m afraid the horse and carriage have not changed very much in the last two hundred years. You would think with all the ingenuity of the machine men and engineers they’d have invented some other form of less tedious conveyance.”
“Why haven’t they?”
“The emperor likes horses. Machine replacements are not permitted.”
Karigan didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t recall Mornhavon the Black having any special affinity for horses. In fact, she didn’t think he’d had an affinity for anything but cruelty and violence.
The veil clouded her vision, so she pulled it aside to continue watching out the window, noting that other women along the street also wore hats with veils of one kind or another, whether or not they appeared by their dress to be of an upper or lower class. Then she saw a young woman with neither hat nor veil, her gaze cast down and her garb very plain, burdened by several parcels and following behind another woman.
“Professor,” Karigan said, touching his sleeve and pointing. “She hasn’t a veil.”
“Probably a slave,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Household slave, I’d hazard.”
“Slaves don’t wear veils?”
The professor shook his head. “No, they are beneath consideration by society, not people.”
Appalled, Karigan watched the young woman disappear from view, the irony that slaves were free to bare their faces, while non-slaves were not, was not lost on her.
As happy as Karigan had been to be allowed out of the house, the yellow, gray haze in the sky, the cheerless brick facades of the buildings, and seeing her first slave, weighed down her spirits. She asked the professor what his students knew about her.
“Not much,” he replied. “That you were confined to an institution, and I brought you here to regain your health. They’ll draw their own conclusions from that.”
The carriage turned down another street before resuming its rhythmic sway. The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves was familiar and soothing.
“We’ve left my neighborhood,” the professor said, “which is, if I may say so, the best you will find in the city. Dregs by the standards of those who live in the Capital, but extremely nice by Mill City standards. Now we are heading toward the commercial district.”