“Forgive me, Mistress Duryan,” she said. “I am ill-humored today. Sleep has eluded me of late.” She folded her hands in her lap. “If Lady Katryen wishes it, you may help me dress.”
She did look tired. Ead went to warm some linen beside the fire. Once a servant had brought water, she stood behind Truyde and gathered her abundant curls. Cascading to her waist, they were the true red of madder. Such hair was common in the Free State of Mentendon, which lay across the Swan Strait, but unusual in Inys.
Truyde washed her face. Ead scrubbed her hair with creamgrail, then rinsed it clean and combed out every tangle. Throughout it all, the girl said nothing.
“Are you well, my lady?”
“Quite well.” Truyde twisted the ring on her thumb, revealing the green stain beneath. “Only . . . irritated with the other maids and their gossip. Tell me, Mistress Duryan, have you heard anything of Master Triam Sulyard, who was squire to Sir Marke Birchen?”
Ead patted Truyde’s hair with the fire-warmed linen. “Not a great deal,” she said. “Only that he left court in the winter without permission, and that he had gambling debts. Why?”
“The other girls talk ceaselessly of his absence, inventing wild stories. I hoped to silence them.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you.”
Truyde looked up from under auburn lashes. “You were a maid of honor once.”
“Yes.” Ead wrung out the linen. “For four years, after Ambassador uq-Ispad brought me to court.”
“And then you were promoted. Perhaps Queen Sabran will make me a Lady of the Privy Chamber one day, too,” Truyde mused. “Then I would not have to sleep in this cage.”
“All the world is a cage in a young girl’s eyes.” Ead laid a hand on her shoulder. “I will fetch your gown.”
Truyde went to sit beside the fire and finger-comb her hair. Ead left her to dry.
Outside the room, Lady Oliva Marchyn, Mother of the Maids, was rousing her charges with that crumhorn of a voice. When she saw Ead, she said stiffly, “Mistress Duryan.”
She enunciated the name as if it were an affliction. Ead expected that from certain members of the court. After all, she was a Southerner, born outside of Virtudom, and that made the Inysh suspicious.
“Lady Oliva,” she said calmly. “Lady Katryen sent me to help dress Lady Truyde. May I have her gown?”
“Hm. Follow me.” Oliva led her down another corridor. A spring of gray hair had escaped her coif. “I wish that girl would eat. She’ll wither away like a blossom in winter.”
“How long has she had no appetite?”
“Since the Feast of Early Spring.” Oliva tossed her a disdainful glance. “Make her look well. Her father will be angry if he thinks the child is being underfed.”
“She is not sick?”
“I know the signs of sickness, mistress.”
Ead smiled a little. “Lovesickness, then?”
Oliva pursed her lips. “She is a maid of honor. And I will have no gossip in the Coffer Chamber.”
“Your pardon, my lady. It was a jest.”
“You are Queen Sabran’s lady-in-waiting, not her fool.”
With a sniff, Oliva took the gown from the press and handed it over. Ead curtsied and retreated.
Her very soul abhorred that woman. The four years she had spent as a maid of honor had been the most miserable of her life. Even after her public conversion to the Six Virtues, still her loyalty to the House of Berethnet had been questioned.
She remembered lying on her hard bed in the Coffer Chamber, footsore, listening to the other girls titter about her Southern accent and speculate on the sort of heresy she must have practiced in the Ersyr. Oliva had never said a word to stop them. In her heart, Ead had known that it would pass, but it had hurt her pride to be ridiculed. When a vacancy had opened in the Privy Chamber, the Mother of the Maids had been only too happy to be rid of her. Ead had gone from dancing for the queen to emptying her washbasins and tidying the royal apartments. She had her own room and a better wage now.
In the Coffer Chamber, Truyde was in a fresh shift. Ead helped her into a corset and a summer petticoat, then a black silk gown with puffed sleeves and a lace partlet. A brooch showing the shield of her patron, the Knight of Courage, gleamed over her heart. All children of Virtudom chose their patron knight when they reached the age of twelve.
Ead wore one, too. A sheaf of wheat for generosity. She had received hers at her conversion.
“Mistress,” Truyde said, “the other maids of honor say you are a heretic.”
“I say my orisons at sanctuary,” Ead said, “unlike some of those maids of honor.”
Truyde watched her face. “Is Ead Duryan really your name?” she asked suddenly. “It does not sound Ersyri to my ear.”
Ead picked up a coil of gold ribbon. “Do you speak Ersyri, then, my lady?”
“No, but I have read histories of the country.”
“Reading,” Ead said lightly. “A dangerous pastime.”
Truyde looked up at her, sharp-eyed. “You mock me.”
“By no means. There is great power in stories.”
“All stories grow from a seed of truth,” Truyde said. “They are knowledge after figuration.”
“Then I trust you will use your knowledge for good.” Ead skimmed her fingers through the red curls. “Since you ask—no, it is not my real name.”
“I thought not. What is your real name?”
Ead eased back two locks of hair and braided them with the ribbon. “Nobody here has ever heard it.”
Truyde raised her eyebrows. “Not even Her Majesty?”
“No.” Ead turned the girl to face her. “The Mother of the Maids is concerned for your health. Are you quite sure you are well?” Truyde hesitated. Ead placed a sisterly hand on her arm. “You know a secret of mine. We are bound by a vow of silence. Are you with child, is that it?”
Truyde stiffened. “I am not.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is none of your concern. I have had a delicate stomach, that’s all, since—”
“Since Master Sulyard left.”
Truyde looked as if she had struck her.
“He left in the spring,” Ead said. “Lady Oliva says that you have had little appetite since then.”
“You presume too much, Mistress Duryan. Far too much.” Truyde pulled away from her, nostrils flared. “I am Truyde utt Zeedeur, blood of the Vatten, Marchioness of Zeedeur. The mere idea that I would stoop to rutting with some low-born squire—” She turned her back. “Get out of my sight, or I will tell Lady Oliva that you are spreading lies about a maid of honor.”
Ead smiled briefly and retreated. She had been at court for too long to be rankled by a child.
Oliva watched her leave the corridor. As she stepped into the sunlight, Ead breathed in the smell of fresh-cut grass.
One thing was clear. Truyde utt Zeedeur had been secretly intimate with Triam Sulyard—and Ead made it her business to know the secrets of the court. If the Mother willed it, she would know this one, too.
3
East
Dawn cracked like a heron’s egg over Seiiki. Pale light prowled into the room. The shutters had been opened for the first time in eight days.