Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,114
bird, dressed in brilliant peacock blue with a skirt of feathers trailing behind him. His mask was white and black and blue, glittering with sequins and paste gems. Ashlin, a peahen to match, wore simple leathers in dull brown, except for a green leather gorget. Even Mathiros seemed amused as they walked in.
Isyllt tensed for an instant, waiting for trouble, but the prince and princess reached their chairs and stood waiting for Mathiros’s sign. When he gave it they sat—for Nikos this involved the delicate operation of sweeping his tailfeathers out of the way—the crowd rose, and the musicians began the soft notes of a minuet. A hundred voices lifted in laughter and conversation, and so began the festivities on the longest night of the year.
Savedra slunk into the ballroom after the first dance had begun, if one could slink weighed down by pounds of beads and velvet. From the dais she caught a flash of gems as Nikos glanced her way. She smiled, though he couldn’t see it—or see how sad and strained it was. Captain Denaris watched her too, white-and-grey livery blending into the wall beside the throne. Captain Kurgoth loomed beside her.
The dais was guarded by the best and soldiers watched all the doors, but assassins had breached palace security before. A knife in the dark was different than a public murder, of course. Did the man expect to survive the attempt? Was the reward worth the risk? How much was Ashlin’s life worth, exactly? She ought to ask Varis.
The crowd shifted and she glimpsed Isyllt on the far side, vivid as a bloodstain on white sheets. The sight was uncanny, like a reflection out of place in a mirror. The Vallish had a word for such a glimpse of oneself—vardöger, they called the spectral double. The idea had been brought to Erisín in several plays and operas. None of them, now that she thought of it, ended well.
The costume was too hot for the press of the hall, but there was no other way—she and Isyllt might be much the same height and build, but no amount of cosmetics would turn Isyllt’s skin a convincing brown, or her own stark white.
She caught a few glances cast at her and her sister-bride, a few giggles and whispers hidden behind hands. Always an embarrassment to find one’s costume duplicated, and amazing to see it duplicated so perfectly.
The Severoi were already in attendance, mostly clustered around Nadesda in a small circle of chairs against one wall. Savedra ignored them, preferring to save her anonymity for the moment. Varis must be here as well, but she hadn’t spotted him yet. She saw Konstantins as well, and Aravinds and Hadrians, each drawn into their own familial knots. Most Alexioi concerned themselves with their estates in Medea; Mathiros was scrupulous about not favoring his own house over others. Savedra often thought he held all the Octagon Court in equal contempt.
The Jsutiens made a fashionably tardy entrance, timing their arrival with the end of the second dance. Thea was dressed as some historical empress or another, a tasteful costume for an older, stouter woman, while still costing more than many courtiers’ summer homes. Her husband, a notoriously handsome younger man, wore a cloth-of-gold turban and flowing silks, so Thea was probably meant to be the Iskari dowager empress Kârekin—Kârekin before consumption killed her, apparently, since she’d forgone the usual dramatic blood-spotted handkerchiefs.
And then came Ginevra, a pillar of crimson and black veils, and the giggles and whispers became murmurs.
In Selafai, brides wore red—the color of life and life’s blood, virgin’s blood, the blood of childbed, blood comingled in children. A color of fertility and fruitful unions. Veils had mostly gone out of fashion, and those who wore them usually chose gold or silver, or more crimson if their complexions could stand it. Black veils had been made famous decades earlier by the playwright Kharybdea, who chose the color for Aristomache in the tragedy that bore her name, the priestess of Astara who broke her vows for love of the prince Sarapion, only to be betrayed and abandoned on their wedding night after he had stolen her temple’s greatest treasure. She killed herself on Astara’s altar and haunted Sarapion in revenge, driving him to madness and finally death. It took a woman of morbid or vicious humor to dress as Aristomache for a masque; that three had done so tonight would surely be called an ill omen.
Savedra and Isyllt slid through the crowd, and