Or so Anh thought, when she had enough time to consider such matters. “My lady?” The kaburei bowed, her braids swaying over her shoulders, as she halted just inside the partition. “The ladies Su and Hansei are here.”
Anh’s Khir lady looked up from the empty page. Her brush, poised over the inkstone, had hovered there for some while to judge by the fat black drop trembling at its end. Ink splashed free as Lady Yala gazed at the doorway, her wide grey eyes blank and haunted. “Oh?” For a moment, she looked as if she did not recognize her own servant, and Anh’s chest suffered a strange twisting sensation.
“Lady Su and Lady Hansei,” Anh repeated. “Shall I bring tea?” She shouldn’t presume, but her lady’s blank stare was almost terrifying. From the very beginning, her lady had been crisp and direct, never unkind but also never overly familiar— in all things, a true noblewoman.
“Yes, tea,” Yala said, distractedly, and rinsed her brush before placing it, with infinite care, upon the rack meant for such cargo.
Anh bowed the two young noblewomen into her lady’s quarters. Dreamy Lady Hansei was for once not carrying a bound book with her thumb marking the page; she wore her very best dress, too, bright yellow cotton with thick viridian silk edging. Lady Su was in a very prettily reworked pale-peach cotton with threadbare, faded orange silk edging, probably the closest she had to mourning. To show their sadness, neither wore hairpins in their nested red-black braids, and both had wide belts of unbleached linen to mark grief for a Crown Princess they had barely begun to know.
Anh’s lady wore silk like a princess, though. In Khir, some highborn families shared that royal fabric instead of merely using it to edge their brightest and best garb. It was one more reason to take pride in her service, Anh thought, and sometimes she held her chin high in the Jonwa halls as she bustled about upon her lady’s business, her chest full of smugness and her liver no doubt swelling dangerously. A prideful servant was a bad one, but there was a certain amount of justifiable pleasure to be had when one was not yoked to an embarrassing beast.
Even the proverbs said so.
Weighed down by a lacquered wooden tea tray, Anh made her steps as quiet as possible upon her return, and strained her ears.
“— to her aunt,” Lady Su said, steadily. “She will ask to accompany us; I am not certain Lady Gonwa will give leave.”
“The good Lady Gonwa no doubt has a more useful place for her niece.” Lady Yala sounded far more like herself now, cultured, accented Zhaon crisp even through its softness. “And you, Junha?”
“I stay with you,” the young lady said, firmly. “Liyue and I have discussed the matter.”
“We are both determined.” Hansei Liyue’s tone was much sharper than usual; she was a soft-voiced one. “We requested permission of the Crown Prince, and he has granted it. I hear his estate near Nuah-An is very fine. Perhaps that is where we are bound.”
Well, that was good news. Anh had been half afraid the Crown Prince would send Lady Yala swiftly back to cold, barbarous Khir, all alone and grieving. Of course Anh would go with her lady, she had decided as much— but it was a relief to keep her inside slippers on, as the proverb went. Travel was a barbarity, Khir was by all accounts a harsh land even if her lady was somewhat mild, and to be given to another household in the Palace was not a fate to be desired, much less when you already belonged to a kind mistress.
Kind, but also firm. A servant’s disdain was cringing when it came to a cruel master, and sneaking when it came to an easily bullied or hoodwinked one. The middle ground, as Zhaon was balanced between the greatness of Heaven and the punishments of the many hells, was to be cherished.
“He intends for me to stay, then. At least for the moment.” Lady Yala had moved to her usual thin but well-embroidered cushion at a low ebonwood table, where she often took tea in the afternoons. The noble girls, a pair of temple statues, barely turned their heads as Anh hurried in to arrange the tea-tray; Lady Hansei, as the youngest, arranged the cups with swift movements and began to pour without ado. “I had wondered.”
“The Jonwa is brighter for your presence, he says. And travel is so dangerous without a proper retinue.” Su Junha did not deign to glance at Anh, who settled upon her knees just inside the door, ready for more errands. “I’m glad you’re staying. Lady Kue is too; she was there when we came from the Crown Prince’s study.”
“She frightens me,” Lady Hansei murmured, and finished pouring. “This is Lady Gonwa’s heaven tea, my lady. She sent more, though she kept Eulin to herself.”
“Kind of her. I shall write a note of thanks.” Yala lifted her cup and inhaled the steam, which meant the other ladies could drink— but she set it down immediately afterward, untasted.
A few strands of blue-black hair had escaped Yala’s braids, and Anh longed to take the comb to them. It was unlike her lady to be even slightly disheveled, and doubly unlike her to halt, looking between her guests as if she could not remember what came next. If the Crown Princess were here, Lady Yala would be occupied in smoothing her way, and very prettily, too.
Well, the Crown Princess was decidedly not here. Her poor body had been crushed, Anh heard, and it was a shame. She had been so beautiful, and with the Prince, a real pair of love-birds in a gilded osier cage. They had all, from kaburei to housekeeper, expected a haughty foreign tyrant instead of a docile, kind noble girl sent all the way from the cold North with merely a single lady-in-waiting.
Su Junha took over the burden of conversation. “Of course you shall stay with us.” She blew across her tea to cool it; fragrant amber liquid trembled inside simple but expensively thin blue-glazed ware. “After all, if the Crown Prince remarries—”
Lady Hansei made a small warning noise in the back of her throat, shook her head. “It is far too soon.” The motion was strange with no hairpin dangling its cargo of bright decoration. “Even the Emperor must know as much.”
“But with Khir—” Su Junha caught herself, lifting the back of her left fingers to her mouth to trap the remainder of an unwary sentence. “I am sorry, my lady.”
“In Khir, ladies do not speak of politics.” There was no reproof in Lady Yala’s tone, she was simply remarking upon a difference. Her Zhaon had improved quite steadily, but the song of another language with much harsher consonants still wore through its rhythm. “Here, though, everything is strange.”
“Well, what else is there to talk about?” Lady Hansei set her cup down and fussed with her sleeves, settling them properly. The three ladies looked very much like a wall-hanging, and Anh lost herself in admiration of their clear smooth cheeks, their bright and prettily sewn dresses, their soft hands. “They are saying General Zakkar will be sent north, and Third Prince Takshin will go to Shan.”
“Now he gives me the shivers.” Lady Su shuddered delicately to prove it, her sleeves rustling a fraction as she turned her cup a quarter, to help the tea absorb both luck and the pleasure of conversation. “Do you think he will go?”
Anh watched her lady’s hands retreat into her own sleeves. There was no change in Yala’s expression, but Anh though it very unlikely indeed that the Third Prince would return to the pierced towers and barbarous bandit-hunting of Shan. The First Princess had been sent to that land to marry King Suon Kiron, and though Suon and the Third Prince were battle-brothers, there was very little affection between the Third Prince of Zhaon and First Princess Sabwone.