Do I look as stiff as I feel, I wonder?
She was torn by conflicting emotions. While it was humiliating to know that her father could not possibly have concocted a less flattering costume for her and that she was going to look her absolute worst in front of a horde of strangers, still, looking her worst would make it less likely that anyone would find her even remotely interesting.
Better to be thought of as the sickly looking stick than to find myself—
Find herself—what? Betrothed to someone like her father, perhaps?
Mother would say that wasn't so bad a prospect
. There was resentment in that thought.
But then, Mother has never cared half as much about my welfare as she has about Lorryn's. If he stood in my place this evening, would she be so quick to urge him to be bartered off to a bride
?
"If my lady would hold still for a moment—?"
But Viridina was not her daughter. Viridina was used to her constricted lot in life. Sheyrena had a brief glimpse of a wider world in the last year or so, and she did not want to give that up.
In many ways it was much easier to be Lord Tylar's unregarded daughter than his wife. Viridina's entire existence was bound up by so many rules and customs that she could scarcely breathe without risking the breach of one or more of them. That most of those customs dated back to a more hazardous time when women were in constant danger mattered not a bit to her lord husband; they were customs, and therefore they were to be followed to the letter. But Sheyrena had little or no importance to the house until recently; her older brother Lorryn was the important one, the heir, the
male
. There were more unmarried females in Lord Tylar's social class than there were males; he was too proud to send her to wed a lesser lordling, and dared not look higher. And Lord Tylar, like all the rest of the Lords of the Council, had been very involved with first the rumor, then the fact, of the Elvenbane's existence—
"Please, lady, a step to the right."
Then had come the second Wizard War, which had occupied his attention to the exclusion of all else. So Sheyrena had been ignored, as long as she was properly dutiful, properly trained, properly behaved.
She had found that on the whole she preferred her own company to anyone else's—except, possibly, her brother's. She hadn't made any effort to find friends or companions mostly because she had no interest in the things the others of her generation occupied themselves with. Attendance at a handful of parties had quickly taught her that she was the kind who would settle into a corner and remain there during the entire duration of the event, uncomfortable and alone, wishing she could go home.
"—and this fold should go
so
—"
She didn't enjoy the loss of control that came with intoxication, she didn't see what made gossip so fascinating, she was too plain to attract male attentions, unwanted or otherwise, and the games that the others seemed to find amusing just left her wondering what it was they enjoyed so much, and why something so unchallenging to the intellect should be amusing. On the whole, she would much rather be left to find a corner of a garden, read, and dream her strange thoughts.
There had been a lot more of those strange thoughts in the last year, although they had begun the day she had first learned flower-sculpting.
"A stitch here, I think."
She had begun by resenting those trivial-seeming lessons that her father had ordered her to begin.
Lorryn learns how to shatter stone with his power
. I
learn flower-sculpting
.
She would never know if her magic was the equal of Lorryn's, because no elven maiden would ever be taught anything but useless skills like flower-sculpting, water-weaving, and the like. Oh, she had heard vague rumors of a few, a very few, elven women who wielded their power like a man, but she had never met any, and she doubted that any of them would be willing to share their secrets with her. Yet before that lesson, it would never have occurred to her that she had a certain power in her own hands that no elven lord would ever suspect.
For it was during the course of that lesson that she realized something strange, exciting, and a little frightening.
The same skills I used to shape the flower could be used in other ways
—
stopping a heart, for instance
. Those useless lessons? If she ever needed that power, those lessons might not be so useless after all.
"What is this? A thread? No, cut it off."
She had not mentioned her revelation to her mother, knowing that Viridina would have been horrified. And she had not really known that the idea would work until a few days later, when she had found a bird in the garden that had flown into a window and broken its neck. Without thinking, she had moved to end the poor thing's pain—and stopped its heart.
She had run back to her own room in horror, fleeing what she had done. But the deed remained, and the power, and the knowledge of what she had done.
Since that moment she had not been able to look at anything the same way. She had surreptitiously experimented with her power, working with the sparrows and pigeons that flocked to the garden. At first she had only made tiny alterations in their color, or the length of their feathers. Then she grew bolder, until now her garden was full of exotic creatures with feathers of scarlet and blue, gold and green, with trailing tails and flaring crests, all of them tame to her hand. Something told her that making subtle changes with her power could be as important—and as dangerous—as the kinds of magic that Lorryn wielded.
And yet, at the same time, she was afraid to stretch out her hand and take the ephemeral power that beckoned her. No other elven woman had ever dared do so—perhaps there was a reason. Perhaps this beckoning power was nothing more than an illusion of strength. True, she could make a colorful bird out of a sparrow—but what good was that? What did it prove?
"If my lady could remove her foot from the sleeve, please?"
But what if it was not? What if it was real? What if she had discovered something no one else knew?
Her secret thoughts weighed in her soul and made it impossible to accept anything at face value anymore. Hardest to bear was the way her father treated her mother and herself.
This very gown was an example of how little he thought of them, how little he trusted them with anything of import. To Sheyrena's certain knowledge, the only time he ever came to Viridina's bower with a pleasant face was when he wanted her to come play the proper wife before his influential friends. In private, neither of them could ever truly please him. He preferred the company of the human slaves in his harem, and constantly compared Viridina to his latest favorites, always unfavorably.
Not that I envy them
, she thought, glancing out of the corner of her eye at one of the redheads.
Father's tastes are fickle, and his favorites never last long
.
And when his favorites were out of favor, Lord Tylar seemed to take a malicious delight in sending them to serve his wife or daughter in the bower. Sheyrena had never been able to guess whether he did so to try to torment them with the still lovely presence of his former leman, or to torment the former favorite with the presence of the lawful wife who could not be displaced. Perhaps it was both.
Viridina accepted this quietly and without a single comment, ever; just as she accepted with the same serene resignation everything else that life bestowed on her. She was not envious of the harem beauties either; there was really no difference in the world of the harem and that of the bower except that Viridina could not be supplanted. They had neither more freedom than their putative mistress, nor less. As Sheyrena had gradually come to understand, the distinction between the bower and the harem was that the bower was a harem of one. Only when it came to Lorryn and Lorryn's well-being did Viridina show any signs of interest—though a furtive, obsessive, fearful anxiety, as if she was terrified that something would happen to him. She watched over Lorryn with the care and concern she could have shown if he were an invalid, rather then the healthy creature he was. Or did his attacks of
kryshein
mean he was not as healthy as Sheyrena thought? Was there some secret trouble with Lorryn, something Rena could not be told? But if that was true, then why hadn't
Lorryn
told her? He never had kept any secret from her before!
Viridina might accept her lot as an elven lady, but it was more than Sheyrena could stomach for herself.
Better to be ignored as the daughter than humiliated as the wife of someone like Father.
She was surrounded by all of the slaves now, each of them making minute adjustments to the gown, the lacings, as if she were nothing more than a mannequin inside it and the gown itself was the important guest. Sheyrena had a sudden, absurd thought, that perhaps this was the real truth—that the gown had a life and purpose of its own, and she was nothing more than the vehicle it required to propel it to the place where it would be admired!
Yet, in a sense, that was the whole truth. The gown represented Lord Tylar, his power, his wealth, his position.
She
was nothing more than the means to display all these things, a convenient banner-bearer. It was the banner that was important, not the hand that held it, after all.
Anything
would have served the same purpose.
If I'd been as feeble-wined as Ardeyn's mother, he would still have had me trussed up in this gown and sent off to the fete. And if he were as wise as any of the High Lords, he would have found a way to command my silence so as not to distract potential suitors from the message of
his
importance
.
She and her mother were nothing more than things to Lord Tylar—not that this was a new thought, but it had never been driven home quite so obviously before. They were possessions, game-pieces, and their whole importance lay in how they could be played to the best advantage.
She was encased in the layers of this gown as she was encased in the layers of his power over her, and nothing would ever change that. She knew that, and yet a persistent little voice deep inside kept asking, "Why not?"
Because that is the way things are
, she told that little voice.
They have always been that way, and they will always be that way. Nothing will ever change them. Certainly not one insignificant female, for females are of no consequence to anyone
.
But the little voice would not accept that answer. As her slaves directed her to sit again so that they might dress her hair, it replied, "Oh no? Then what about the halfblood wizards? What about the Elvenbane? She is only one female."
Sheyrena had no answer for that. Certainly the High Lords had been certain they had disposed of all the halfbloods long ago, and had thought they had made certain no others could be born. The halfbloods, with their melding of human and elven magics, were holders of the only real power that had ever threatened the elven lords' rule over this world they had conquered so long ago. Yet despite all the precautions, more halfblooded children
had
been born—worse, had escaped to grow into their powers—and had survived to learn how to use those powers. One of those children had been a girl who had, by ill luck or conscious direction, matched the descriptions of a "savior" in human legend called "the Elvenbane."
She
had found allies the High Lords hadn't even dreamed existed.
Dragons.
Sheyrena sighed as she thought of the dragons, her chest constricted by the tightly laced dress. Not that
she
had ever seen one, but she had heard plenty of descriptions. Oh, how she would love to get just a glimpse of one! Sinuous, graceful, glistening in the sunlight with the colors of precious gems as they flew—dragons lilted through her dreams at night sometimes, leaving her yearning after them when dawn came, sometimes with her cheeks wet with tears of longing and loss.
'Turn your head this way, my lady."
It was the dragons that had turned the tide for the wizards, and made it possible for them to hold off the armies of no less than three of the High Lords. There had been a dreadful slaughter that included many elves. Chief among those was the powerful, if half-mad, Lord Dyran. Sheyrena had heard it whispered that it was his own son who had slain him. That hardly seemed possible, and yet, who would have thought that dragons were possible a year ago?
In the end, the High Lords were forced to accede to a truce. The wizards retreated out beyond the lands that the elves claimed, and the elves pledged to leave them in peace.
My father claims we drove them out, and that we only let them go because it wasn't worth pursuing them
. She allowed herself a treacherous iota of contempt.
The last time he entertained guests, he went on for hours about it. They all did. You'd think we actually defeated them, from the way Father acted
!
And that little voice inside spoke up without prompting. "Maybe they aren't as much in control as they would like to think," it whispered insidiously. "Maybe they aren't anywhere near as powerful as
you
think. Maybe you aren't as insignificant as they would like to make you think."
That's all very well
, she told it sullenly,
But what exactly am I supposed to do to prove how free I am
?
The voice finally went silent then, having no solutions to offer. After all, it was nothing more than her own stubborn rebellion.
Still, that was a point. Lorryn called the second Wizard War "a draw at best, a rout at worst," and he did not mean for the halfblood side. What if the power of the High Lords had weakened? Did that mean there was room for a female to make a life for herself, in the midst of the High Lords' scramble to retain what they had?
"Bend your head, please, my lady."
But how
? That was the real question. How to escape the dreary life that had been laid out for her from the moment of her birth? These plans had a life of their own, rolling along whether or not she agreed to them.