A Rose Point Holiday Read online

  “The season is about the future,” Hirianthial said.

  “A future created by the sacrifices of the past.” There was steel in the words, but Liolesa softened them with her smile. Was that what it was like to be a queen, Reese wondered? To always be finding the bright side in duty and grief? But then... wasn’t that what all people did, who survived? And they were all survivors. “By all means. Let us consider Araelis’s little project. I predict the hours will positively fly.”

  And they did, because it was fun, and it was interesting, far more fun and interesting than any board or card game. Half the gathering fetched data tablets, the others notebooks and pens or pencils, and they covered the low table meant for dainty cups and saucers with maps and sketches and jotted projections. The discussion ranged from trade routes to governance—Reese had plenty to say about how a colony and its parent world should treat one another—and touched on seemingly everything in between, from what language everyone should speak to the ratio of Eldritch to Pelted. Little was decided; much was speculated on. But like so many other things lately, it was a beginning.

  “We will need to name the planet,” Hirianthial said to Liolesa.

  “The colony?” Irine asked.

  Araelis shook her head. “Both planets, then.”

  “Your planet doesn’t have a name?” Sascha said, aghast. “This one? The one we’re on right now. You’re telling me you people never named it?”

  “I thought you were just being coy about sharing it.” Kis’eh’t’s brows were lifted.

  “No… no, I’m afraid not,” Liolesa said, laughing. “When we speak of the homeworld, that’s what we call it. ‘The homeworld,’ or ‘the world.’ It has no formal name. Now that we have a colony, I suppose we will have to stop putting it off.”

  “How do you name a planet?” Sascha asked, ears sagging. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “You could vote?” Kis’eh’t said.

  “Certainly not!” Araelis exclaimed.

  “Araelis is entirely correct,” Hirianthial said. “This is not a democracy. Cousin, you shall have to shoulder the responsibility.”

  “Woe,” Liolesa said. “Yet another duty! Pity me.”

  “Do it quickly,” Araelis said, brisk. “I would like to call my new home something less withering than ‘That Other World’ before the name sticks.”

  “You see how much I suffer,” Liolesa told Reese and the others.

  “Oh yes,” Kis’eh’t said. “Goddess forfend we have your problems. Owning two planets, and having to come up with names for them!”

  “I still can’t believe you didn’t give the planet a name,” Sascha muttered.

  “Things without names are forgotten,” Reese said, thinking of history. “So maybe this was the right time. Before it was too late.”

  Liolesa met her eyes and her lips twitched into a crooked smile. “There is something to that.”

  “Begin as you mean to go on?” Reese offered.

  Araelis startled them both by laughing. “You have taught your offworlder liegewoman well, Liolesa. She has learned all our precepts already.”

  “The ones that matter, anyaways,” Liolesa said with a chuckle. “Very good. I will take care of the matter before the year ends.”

  “Then we can get back to this,” Kis’eh’t said. “Because I’m curious if you have enough in that overstrained budget of yours for another merchant vessel or two, alet, or if you’ve gone and cultivated another handful of traders like us?”

  “Woe is you,” Araelis said to Liolesa. “All the responsibility.”

  “And all the bills,” Liolesa agreed, long-suffering.

  With so much to divert them, dawn wasn’t long in coming. When Reese’s data tablet chimed a muted warning fifteen minutes before sunrise, she glanced at it in surprise. If it hadn’t been for the gritty feel in her eyes and the ache in her shoulders, she wouldn’t have realized the night was over. “Looks like it’s almost time?”

  “Nothing like!” Liolesa said. “You must go to the window, Theresa, and wait for the entirety of the sun to rise over the horizon from your vantage.”

  “From mine!”

  “You are the lady of the house,” Araelis agreed. “To you falls the duty of informing everyone of the end of the Vigil. When you see the sun has safely risen, then you take the bell and ring it—either at the door if you are at the ground floor, or a window if you’re in a room like this one. Then the other women with you take up the spares and join you.”

  Then she would finish the rite with the glass. And then she could sleep. Sleep suddenly sounded like a very good idea. “All right. I can make it that long. But Freedom, my bed is going to feel good when I get to it.”

  “Everyone will be sleeping in tomorrow,” Hirianthial said.

  “Day triumphant over the fears and terrors of the night,” Liolesa murmured. “It will be safe to rest.”

  Reese glanced at her, then went to the window and moved the candle so she could sit on the sill and squint out the clear panes in their leaded glass frames. She was very glad Irine had chosen a third-floor room for this, or it would have taken a very long time for her to finally see the sun with the castle walls in the way. Wouldn’t that have been ridiculous: everyone asleep with lunch almost ready for the tables and the bells not yet rung!

  The room had a sleepy peace to it now. The twins were leaning against one another, eyes narrowed to golden slits. Kis’eh’t had her hands folded over her forelegs, composed almost as if for meditation. Bryer, of course, hadn’t moved or spoken much, though Reese had heard more of his hissed laughter than she’d had in years of their acquaintance. Allacazam… she’d left him kindly by the fire, because he liked firelight. Something about it made him tipsy, or at least, as close to tipsy as she thought Flitzbe could get.

  The Eldritch were the most alert of the lot. They were waiting on the sun.

  Well, so was she.

  When it was finally time, she opened the windows, mindful of the beautiful but antiquated catch. Kis’eh’t had brought her the bell; peering past Reese’s shoulder, the Glaseah said, “Looks good to me, too.”

  Reese nodded and ran her finger along the golden metal rim of the bell. Then she stuck her arm out the window and rang it, expecting a clang and hearing instead a bright chime, so pure it made her ears tingle and the hair on the back of her neck rise. As she rang it again, Irine took one of the spares and gave the other to Araelis. They opened the other two windows and added the pure clear tones of their bells, one higher, one lower.

  And then, like magic, all across the courtyard other handbells answered. How many families had been sitting this vigil to make such an amazing chorus? The goosebumps that flashed up Reese’s arms and sides had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the unlikely beauty of it: the voices of this perfectly tuned chorus, sounding across an iced-over courtyard grown through with sweet winter roses.

  She was almost done. Setting the bell down on the floor by the window, Reese crossed to the fireplace, and the glass. This part of the rite was not codified: it was supposed to be her choice, the choice that revealed her to her people. There were no words, nothing she had to recite. Her only job, Val said, was to make sure an empty cup was displayed by the firebowl. Most ladies handed the glass they received from the men at Vigil, still full, to servants, and trusted them to empty it before setting it up on the pedestal. It was, however, permissible to drink it.

  “But should you?” she’d asked him. “I thought this was some special men-only drink.”

  “It is,” Val said. “If you drink it, it is transubstantiated, and becomes the blood of the sacrificed.” He paused, then grinned. “But if you slam the whole glass back, that’s considered bad form.”

  The Eldritch and their unspoken rules, she thought. Well, this was one she understood. Mars had begun with blood in the soil. Laisrathera had too: twice over, if you counted its first incarnation as the castle Corel had taken from the first Queen of the Eldr
itch, and how could she not when history shaped so much of any people?

  Kis’eh’t had been right: gentleman’s punch packed one, a hard-liquor burn that made her eyes prickle and stung her nostrils and throat with the fumes. But it was spiced and complex, too, oranges and cardamom and cinnamon sweetness, with hints of other things she didn’t recognize yet but knew one day she’d have names for. The wine that served as the base for it was dry and full and probably expensive, and yet nothing could be as priceless as what it represented. She closed her eyes, letting the liquid lie on her tongue, then swallowed. One sip, to show that she honored the sacrifice, but that she wasn’t trying to appropriate the mysteries that belonged to men. The rest of it she poured in front of the dim glowing embers of the fire, watching it pool and sink into the ashes like blood.

  Sascha nudged Irine gently. “Time to go, sis.”

  Irine yawned and straightened. “I’m ready.”

  “I think we all are,” Reese said, and handed Allacazam to Irine to cart back to a safe place. She stopped Kis’eh’t and handed her the glass. “Goes in front of the firebowl. Or leave it for Felith, she’ll know what to do with it.”

  “All right.” Kis’eh’t hugged her. “A wonderful night. Good night, Reese.”

  “Good morning, more like!” Sascha said, much to Irine’s evident dismay. One by one her crew trickled out of the room toward their beds.

  Araelis curtseyed. “Theresa. Thank you for having me.”

  “Any time,” Reese said. “I mean that.”

  Araelis smiled. “I shall take you up on it. We have similar works to do now; I have no doubt we will benefit from consulting one another on them.” She inclined her head and then headed down the hall: a transformed woman, Reese thought with gratification. Not less sad, but no longer irresistibly drawn by the singularity of her grief. Another present, she thought: this evidence that there was hope, and a second chance, and a third and fourth and fortieth one. As long as they were alive, there was hope for a rebirth.

  The hand Liolesa rested on her wrist surprised her out of her reverie. “A magnificent Vigil. I don’t remember the last time I was so happily entertained.”

  Reese managed a huff of a laugh. “You are a holy terror, Lady, between your presents and your comments.” More seriously, “I’m glad I got to meet Hirianthial’s cousin for a night.”

  “Goddess willing you shall see her more often.” Liolesa smiled at her and let her hand slide away. “Speaking of… be well, cousin. I see you anon.” She kissed Hirianthial’s cheek. “Happy the day that finds you once again a Lord of the Vigil.”

  “Lord and Lady be praised,” he murmured. “Go well, Lia, with our love.”

  …and that left her alone with him, when she was far too tired to do anything about it, that brittle tired that meant she was either going to fall unconscious the moment she tripped onto her far-too-large Eldritch bed… or be up all night staring blearily at the ceiling. Except that the moment he cupped her face in her hands, all that fell away: the tension, the fatigue, everything but a calm so perfect she wondered if this was his last gift to her.

  “I would not want you to pass the morning poorly,” he murmured, his mouth close enough that she could sense the cinnamon on his breath as a tingle on her lips. Softer: “Theresa. You drank from the glass.” And then he kissed her.

  She was keeping count of the kisses they’d shared so far. She… couldn’t remember the number, because she was tired. And because this one was the best yet. The last one had been the best yet, until this one. When he pulled back he was chuckling, a low, happy sound.

  “Number… thirty…ish?”

  He kissed her between the eyes. “Thirty-ish and one.”

  Reese’s laugh was a little on the shivery side. But she said in response to his earlier words, “I had to. You know I did.”

  “Yes. And it is one of the many reasons I love you.” He smiled against her brow. “My Courage. Go to bed now. And… Happy Dawning.”

  “You too,” she murmured, and drifted to bed in a contented haze. Irine had left Allacazam by her pillow, along with the promised box: a new nightgown just like her old one (but not falling apart), and under it, a set of surprisingly modest underwear in ivory satin, pretty without being fussy. Reese petted one of the straps, hesitant, and wondered how she’d fallen into so many blessings.

  It was exactly the sort of thing she would ordinarily have ‘discussed’ with Allacazam, but when she climbed into bed alongside him the only thing he had to offer was a vague impression of bubbles floating past a kaleidoscope of dim and slowly changing pastel colors. Her Flitzbe, she thought, was drunk. Grinning, she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Tam-illee, it turned out, hadn’t celebrated a Vigil at all. They’d gone up to the ship to join Lesandurel in preparations for a Christmas ball: not a Hinichi Christmas either, but a bona fide human edition, with donkeys in the manger instead of wolves. Lesandurel had met the Tams’ ancestress, Sydnie Unfound, the day before her office holiday party, and gone to that dance with her in silver to her gold. Ever since, the Tams had celebrated that meeting and the holiday together with a dance that had only grown in size with every passing generation, until now it was an enormous affair with hundreds of Tam-illee, most of them wearing something gold or silver to honor Sydnie or their Eldritch patron.

  Reese would have liked to see it. Maybe next year she would wrangle an invitation. For now, though, she was mostly concerned with the final preparations for her trip to the village, and for that she wanted Felith as much as she wanted Taylor. Which gave her the opportunity to ask some questions which, naturally, led to awkward answers.

  “Why were there so many bells ringing during the Vigil?”

  Felith was with her, sorting through the crates of supplies sent down by the Fleet vessels. Exhausting work but gratifying, since she kept coming up with small and useful things that she’d had no idea were useful until she’d started setting up a modern city from scratch. Who knew that genies needed special adapters to be connected to low power gem grids? Reese did now!

  “I beg your pardon, Lady?” Felith said. “There were as many bells as there were groups of Eldritch waiting for their men.”

  “But I thought… that was just… you know. You. And me for Hirianthial….”

  Felith glanced at her. “You do know we employ Eldritch servants here, milady?”

  “Yes?” She did, more or less. She’d given Felith carte blanche to hire as she saw fit. “But I didn’t think… they’re not local, are they? I thought you got most of them from the capital. Wouldn’t they have gone home for the Vigil?”

  That won her a hesitation, and then a sigh. Felith found a crate and sat on it, hands grasping the edges for balance. As this was as informal a pose as she’d ever seen from the woman, Reese wondered just how worried she should be about whatever cultural faux pas she’d triggered this time.

  “No, no. It is nothing bad, I pledge you. You are correct, in that I have chosen our staff from the capital. They have moved here, Lady, that is why they didn’t go home... this is now their home. But the situation weighs on me because I have since seen the census records that Sascha brought back at High Priest Valthial’s request. And the remaining families in your village are descendants of this castle’s servants.”

  “That’s… bad, then,” Reese guessed. “Because we didn’t go down there to hire them, and I’m guessing that there’s some Eldritch thing where you vow your family to your noble liege until the last person in it dies.”

  Felith’s eyes widen. “Your instincts are very good, milady!”

  Reese winced. “Right. So… we didn’t do that because….”

  “That was my fault, I am afraid,” Felith said. “I know the servant pool in the capital. We talk amongst ourselves, you know. And it was much easier for me to know who would find employment for a foreigner agreeable, and who needed the work, so….”

  “No harm done. Yet, anyway. I’m guessing we’re not fully sta
ffed?”

  “Not yet. There is not enough to do yet,” Felith said. “Or rather, there is too much to do, but little of it can be done by us.”

  “Well, that’s something that’s gotta change,” Reese said, and opened a new crate to see what else Soly had sent her. “We can’t all be engineers, but there’s a basic level of competency in just… living a modern life that the engineers should be teaching all of you. We should probably be looking for Eldritch who’d be interested in professions in engineering and medicine and modern technology, too. Now, before Liolesa snatches them up.”

  “My Lady! You would have us poach from the Queen!”

  Reese looked over her shoulder and arched one skeptical brow, and Felith giggled.

  “I suppose I should not be surprised.”

  “No,” Reese said. “Besides, Liolesa’s got plenty of people. She can share. So tell me about these Eldritch down in the village?”

  “That is the astonishing thing,” Felith said. “They comprise all four of the necessary types of service. The families that remain were those that gave the castle their seal, manse, land, and beast servants.”

  “Trust you all to complicate things. I figure the beast servants took care of the horses, and the land servants did… groundskeeping?”

  “And patrolled the province, and noted the state of the roads, suchlike. The beast servants also cared for any other creatures.”

  “So, chickens, I guess. Or sheep. We have sheep.”

  “We do, and they are dearly in need of management,” Felith said, stern. “They have become a nuisance with their wandering.”

  “We’ll get someone to pen them,” Reese promised. “What’s the difference between manse and seal servants?”

  “Manse servants maintain the physical building and the other servants,” Felith said. “So you would find both your cook and your cleaning maids there, as well as repairfolk. Seal servants take care of the noble family. That is both guard duty and chamber duty, dressing, keeping appointment books, so on.”

  “And who manages this army of servants?”