Page 247

A LTHEA HEAVED A sigh. She pushed back from the table, causing Malta’s pen to leave a squiggle on the paper. She stood up and rubbed her eyes. Malta watched her aunt walk away from the table and the scattered papers and tally sticks on it. ‘I have to go out,’ she announced.

Ronica Vestrit had just entered the room with a basket of cut flowers on her arm and a pitcher of water in her free hand.

‘I know what you mean,’ she conceded as she set her burdens down on a side table.

She filled a waiting vase with water and began to put the flowers into it.

She had a mixed bouquet of daisies, baby-sbreath, roses and fern fronds.

She scowled at the flowers as she arranged them, as if everything were their fault.

‘The accounting of our debts is hardly cheery work. Even I need to get away from it after a few hours.’ She paused, then added hopefully, ‘The flowerbeds by the front door need attention if you’re in the mood for outdoor work. ’

Althea shook her head impatiently. ‘No,’ she said. She softened her tone and added, ‘I’m going to go down into town for a bit. Stretch my legs, see some friends. I’ll be back before dinner.’ With a sideways glance at her mother’s frown, she added, ‘I’ll see to the walkway then. I promise.’

Her mother folded her lips but said no more. Malta let Althea get almost to the door before she asked curiously, ‘Are you going to go see that bead-maker again?’ She made a pretence of rubbing her eyes as she set aside her own pen.

‘I might,’ Althea said evenly. Malta heard the restrained annoyance in her voice.

Ronica made a small sound as if deciding whether to speak. Aunt Althea turned back to her wearily. ‘What?’

Ronica gave a small shrug, her hands still busy with the flowers. ‘Nothing. I just wish you would not spend so much time with her, so openly. She is not Bingtown, you know. And some say she is no better than the New Traders.’

‘She is my friend,’ Althea said flatly.

‘The talk about town is that she has been squatting in the Ludlucks’ liveship.

That poor ship has never been right, and she has so unhinged him by living there that when the Ludlucks sent men to move her out of their rightful property, the ship had a fit.

He said he’d rip their arms off if they tried to come aboard.

You can imagine how distressing that was to Trader Ludluck.

Amis has tried for years to keep her family name clean of scandal.

Now it has been stirred again, and with it all the old tales of how the Paragon went mad and killed everyone aboard him.

It is entirely that woman’s fault. She should not be meddling in Trader business. ’

‘Mother.’ Althea’s patience sounded strained. ‘There is a great deal more to that story than you have heard. If you wish, I’ll tell you all I know. But later. When only adults are around.’

Malta knew that little sling was intended for her.

She rose to it like a shark to chum. ‘The bead-maker has an odd reputation about town. Oh, everyone says she is a wonderful artist. However, as we all know, artists can be strange. She lives with a woman who dresses and acts like a man. Did you know that?’

‘Jek is from the Six Duchies or one of those barbarian lands. That is just how women behave up there. Grow up, Malta, and stop listening to dirty little whispers,’ Althea suggested brusquely.

Malta drew herself up to her full height. ‘Usually, I ignore such gossip. Until I hear our own family name dragged into it. I know it is scarcely ladylike to discuss such things, but I feel you should know that some people say that you visit the bead-maker for the same reason. To sleep with her.’

During the ensuing shocked silence, Malta added a spoonful of honey to her tea. As she stirred it, the sound of the spoon against the cup seemed almost merry.

‘If you mean fuck, say fuck,’ Althea suggested. She enunciated the crudity deliberately. Her voice was cold with fury. ‘If you are going to be coarse, why be circumspect with the language?’

‘Althea!’ Ronica finally emerged from her scandalized silence. ‘You will not say such things in our home!’

‘It was already said. I but clarified the topic.’ Althea bit off each word as she glowered at Malta.

‘You can scarcely blame people for talking,’ Malta went on after she had sipped her tea.

She made her voice casually conversational.

‘After all, you were gone almost a year, and then came home dressed like a boy. You are well past marrying age, but show no interest in men. Instead, you swagger about town acting as if you were a man yourself. People are bound to speculate that you are…strange.’

‘Malta, that is both unkind and untrue,’ Ronica said firmly. There were high spots of colour on the tops of her cheeks. ‘Althea is not too old to be considered marriageable. You well know that Grag Tenira has expressed more than a passing interest in Althea of late.’

‘Oh, him. We all well know that the Teniras have expressed an even greater interest in the ability of the Vestrits to sway the Bingtown Council. Ever since they began that futile show of defiance down at the Satrap’s tariff dock, they have been trying to recruit others to their cause’

‘It is scarcely futile. The principle of Bingtown’s authority is at stake, not that I expect you to grasp that.

The Teniras defy the Satrap’s tariffs because the tariffs are both unlawful and unjust. However, I doubt you have the wit to grasp that, and I have no desire to spend the afternoon listening to children prattle of matters they do not understand. Mother. Good afternoon.’

Her head up, her face tight with anger, Althea swept out of the door.

Malta listened to her footsteps fade down the hall. She pushed disconsolately at the paper in front of her. As it moved across the desk, it broke the silence in the room.

‘Why did you do that?’ her grandmother asked her quietly. There was no real anger in her voice; rather it was a flat curiosity.

‘I did nothing,’ Malta protested. Before Ronica could dispute that, she asked, ‘Why can Althea abruptly announce she is tired of our work and take herself off to town? If I attempted that –’

‘Althea is older than you. She is more mature. She is accustomed to making her own decisions. She has kept her part of the bargain we struck. She has lived quietly and respectfully, she has not…’

‘If she had not, then why are there rumours?’

‘I have heard no rumours.’ Her grandmother picked up the now empty basket and pitcher.

She centred the fresh vase of flowers on the table.

‘I think I’ve had enough of you for now,’ she said.

‘Good afternoon, Malta.’ As before, there was no anger in her voice, only a strange flatness, and a sort of hopelessness.

On her face, she wore a look of distaste.

She turned and walked away from Malta without another word.

When she was around the corner but not quite out of earshot, Malta spoke aloud to herself. ‘She hates me. That old woman hates me. Oh, I hope Father gets back soon. He will quickly put things right around here.’

Ronica Vestrit’s steps did not even falter.

Malta slumped back in her chair. She pushed away the too-sweet tea.

Everything here was so dull since Reyn had left.

She could not even provoke her relatives into quarrelling.

The boredom was driving her mad. She missed the excitement and importance of Reyn’s visit.

The flowers were long faded, the sweets eaten up.

Save for her secret hoard of smuggled trinkets from him, it was as if he had never come calling at all.

What good was a beau who lived far away?

She felt she had once more fallen into a pit of ordinariness.

Each day was filled with work and chores.

Her grandmother would constantly nag at her to live up to family expectations, while letting Aunt Althea do whatever she wanted.

It all came to the same thing. Do what her mother and grandmother wanted her to do.

Be a little puppet on their strings. That was what Reyn wanted from her, also.

She recognized that even if he did not. He was attracted to her not just for her beauty and charm, but because she was young.

He thought he could control all her actions and even her thoughts.

He would find out he was wrong about that.

They would all find out they were wrong.

She got up from the table where she had been reconciling the accounts and drifted over to the window.

It looked out on gardens gone untidy and wild.

Althea and her grandmother pecked at keeping them up, but it took a real gardener and at least a dozen assistants to keep the grounds properly.

By the end of summer, the gardens would be completely unkempt if things went on as they were.

That would not happen, of course. Her father would be home long before then with a pocketful of money.

He would put things right. There would be servants again, and good food and wine.

He would be home any day now, she was sure of it.

She clenched her teeth as she thought of the conversation at the dinner table last night.

Mother had worried aloud that the ship was so late in returning.

Aunt Althea had added that there was no word of Vivacia down at the docks.

None of the ships arriving in Bingtown reported seeing her.

Mother had said that perhaps Kyle had chosen to bypass Bingtown and take his cargo straight to Chalced.

‘None of the ships arriving from that direction have seen her either,’ Althea had reported darkly.

‘I wonder if he ever intended to return to Bingtown. Perhaps from Jamaillia, he simply sailed south.’