Court of Fives Read online

  “My lord,” says Father in a wooden tone.

  “Your exploits have been spoken into the ear of King Kliatemnos himself. Queen Serenissima has also heard your name mentioned in her royal salon. Their brother Prince Nikonos has been heard to speak of your distinguished service in the army. This is a high honor for a man who began life in the hill town of Heyeng in the remote province of Everlasting Janon. A sixth son so superfluous he could not even expect to inherit a share of his father’s humble bakery.”

  “My lord,” says Father.

  Lord Gargaron looks up, straight at me. He blinks but in no other way betrays my presence. Father cannot see me because I am behind him. Gargaron smiles just a little, like he takes pleasure in the fact that I have to stand here and listen.

  He sits in Father’s chair and turns over another page. “Your finances are in arrears, Captain. Yet you are no spendthrift. It looks as if you have gone into debt because of Ottonor’s demands on your purse. Not that I wish to speak ill of the dead, but the man was a fool, a weakling, a wastrel, and a bad manager besides, which in my opinion is the worst of it. A man of your capabilities should have years ago been given a larger command, not stuck in the desert. You should have been sent to the Eastern Reach where the real war is going on.”

  “Lord Ottonor’s purview was along the Reed Shore and in the northern desert, my lord. That is why I served there.”

  “Yes, but he is dead now, and his son and heirs are sunk in such a ditch of debt that I daresay as soon as the lord is entombed the family will be packing up to rusticate in the country for a generation. They cannot possibly afford to maintain a suitable household in the city, nor will the king and queen allow them to retain a presence at court. The royal family can forgive any transgression except financial stupidity and of course blasphemy against the gods. Yet when Ottonor’s household breaks up, what is to become of a competent military man like you, Captain?”

  Father does not reply. From the way Lord Gargaron smooths a hand over the last dispatch on the desk, rather in the way I imagine a man strokes a reluctant lover’s skin, I realize that Father has not been invited to speak. He is obliged to listen, just as I am.

  “It is a great expense to elevate a man of ordinary birth from a captain’s rank to that of general.”

  Father sucks in a breath as hard as if he has been punched in the gut. Impulsively I take a step forward with the ridiculous thought that I can somehow protect him from the very reward he must have dreamed of achieving all his life.

  Lord Gargaron’s gaze flashes up. The look he gives me stops me like a door slammed in my face.

  “First, your financial affairs must be disentangled from those of Ottonor’s heirs before the creditors descend. This must be accomplished at the same time your household scrupulously observes all the proper mourning rituals so your low birth is never a reason for suspicion.”

  He has arranged the papers into three stacks. One is the household financial records. One he has already pushed aside as of no interest to him. He keeps a hand open and flat atop the third stack. From this distance I cannot read the words but by the shape of them I can guess it is the careful record Father keeps of his day-to-day service, everything he has seen and done while at war.

  “Second, a general must have a proper wife. Not this infamous concubine. She is tempting in the way Efean women can be. How much more so she must have been twenty years ago, fresh and ripe and young. But you are no longer a young man. A young man’s toys and pets must be put aside if a man has ambition. Do you have ambition, Captain?”

  “To put aside my… my…” Father will not insult her by calling her his concubine, and he cannot call her his wife. “She is a woman, not a pet or a toy.”

  The thin smile I so dislike creeps onto Gargaron’s thin lips. I want to scrub its foul kiss off my skin.

  “Good Goat, man! How you struggle! Let me be plain. I can offer you a generalship in the Eastern Reach if you agree to marry my niece and enter my sponsorship with no encumbrances.”

  “Your niece?” Father sounds dumbstruck.

  I am sure I have misheard. But Lord Gargaron goes on quite matter-of-factly.

  “She is a lovely girl, unusually intelligent and showing an astute grasp of financial matters, like her grandmother.”

  “I beg your pardon, my lord, but I must ask why a highborn woman with royal lineage would be willing to marry a man like myself?”

  “Ah.” Lord Gargaron pushes the third stack of paper out of the way and pulls to him a bright blue butterfly mask. It is the only ornament Father keeps in his study, set on his desk to remind him of my mother. He didn’t burn it, even though he was supposed to. “My niece was married two years ago. There was an unpleasant parting of the ways and some unkindly gossip within the court. Not to put too fine a point on it, Captain, but among the matchmakers of the court she is now tainted goods. No lord will marry her, and as you know by law only a married woman can conduct business. By this means I crush two birds with one stone. She will gain the legal standing she needs to continue in the family business, and you will gain the respectability and connection you need to make your way as a general.”

  “To gain this exceptional reward I must put aside the woman I have lived with for the last twenty years. What if she gives birth to a boy?”

  “What if she does? Such a boy cannot legally inherit from you regardless. You can sire another son but this is the only chance you will ever receive to burnish your fame and reputation by being henceforth known and obeyed as General Esladas.”

  I wait for Father to shout Lord Gargaron down, to proclaim his undying loyalty to Mother and his daughters. I wait for him to claim us as the only legacy he cares about.

  Father says nothing.

  Gargaron is the one who speaks. “There would be one other stipulation. I want your daughter.”

  Father cracks. He takes an aggressive step forward, then stops himself. “How can I expect to maintain an honorable standing at court if it becomes commonly known that one of my daughters is being used as another man’s concubine? You cannot demand this of my honor.”

  “Concubine? Ah, you mean the pretty one. She is an attractive morsel, to be sure. But I mean the one who runs the Fives.”

  The simple words choke me.

  Did Kalliarkos confess the whole after telling me he would keep my secret?

  But it is too late now to hide the truth I have kept from Father for so long.

  Unaccountably, Father laughs. “None of my daughters runs the Fives, my lord. A man of my rank and position could never permit that.”

  Gargaron lifts an eyebrow. I think he is going to laugh out loud. Instead he turns the butterfly mask in his hands and raises it so he looks out at my father through slits cut for prettier eyes than his. “You have not permitted your daughter to run the Fives?”

  “Of course not! Why would you even insult me with such an accusation?”

  Gargaron lowers the mask. His gaze flickers to mark me as he covers his mouth with a hand as he smiles. What sort of awful man would enjoy my consternation and my father’s ignorance?

  “I fear I must then accuse you of a graver misapprehension, Captain Esladas. You seem not to know what is going on in your household at all. I would hate to think the entire scheming cabal of females has been concealing the truth from you all this time. For it is sure that one of your daughters has been running the Fives. But perhaps you would like to ask her yourself.”

  14

  Father did not become a highly decorated captain by being slow to observe the obvious. He turns. Surprise flashes through his face but he absorbs my presence swiftly, for he is a man who never hesitates, even when the tide of battle turns against him.

  “Jessamy! Tell Lord Gargaron that none of your sisters runs the Fives.”

  “None of my sisters runs the Fives,” I echo obediently.

  “There, my lord! Your accusation is unfounded.”

  “I have made no accusation,” says Lord Gargaron.
“There is nothing illegal or criminal in a girl wishing to run the Fives. Although I perfectly understand why you would not wish it known among your peers, Captain Esladas. The half-blood daughter of an ambitious man like yourself must behave in keeping with the old customs of the Saroese homeland, where daughters are few and kept indoors until they are safely married to a respectable husband. I would not like to see the lords and officials at court laughing at a man I had sponsored because his concubine’s daughter was running Rings around him.”

  The moment Father realizes what my echoed answer means, his expression darkens with a look of such betrayal that all I can think about is the recrimination in his eyes.

  “Come inside, Jessamy,” says Lord Gargaron in a voice that cannot be disobeyed.

  I enter the study. It would have been better to be crushed in turning Rings and my body dropped all bloody to the sand.

  All at once Father acts decisively. He strides forward without the lord’s permission, and rings the handbell on his desk to summon a steward. As we wait in silence, Father stares at the rug. The knotted wool is framed by a border of immortal firebirds as rosy as dawn. For years Mother saved coin from the household budget and engaged in a bit of marketing on the side to earn enough to buy him this carpet as a gift.

  Footsteps approach, and Polodos halts at the open door, eyes wide as he takes in the scene.

  Father speaks in a cold tone that scares me. “Polodos, go fetch…” He is about to say “the Doma” or “the mistress of the house” but these are titles he cannot give to my mother in front of Lord Gargaron. “I wish Jessamy’s mother to attend me at once. Then make sure we are not disturbed.”

  “As you command, Captain.”

  Polodos closes the door as he goes out.

  Lord Gargaron smiles his thin smile, and I shudder. The three tiny gold rings in his right ear mark him as a man who commands a palace household, although he is not himself born of royal lineage. “Tell me something, Jessamy,” he says.

  I wish desperately he would stop using my name in such a familiar way but I cannot object.

  “You ran impressively against my nephew. Why did you allow a lesser adversary to win?”

  Instead of answering I look at the rug. I have failed Father in the worst way: I have caused him to lose face. He knows it, and so do I.

  “Answer Lord Gargaron, Jessamy.”

  “I did not dare win, my lord,” I say in a low voice.

  “Why is that, Jessamy?” Gargaron asks.

  “Because the winner must unmask, my lord.”

  “You did not want your father to know you run the Fives, is that it?”

  “Yes, my lord.” I finally look up.

  Father is actually too stunned to speak as the extent of my insubordination hits him.

  Lord Gargaron oozes on, his unctuous tone like slime in the air. “Garon Stable is shorthanded in promising young Novice adversaries. Your daughter appears to have real skill. More than that, she possesses an aptitude for the finer points of the Fives. My nephew Kalliarkos is a good boy, a pleasant lad, but he doesn’t have the edge that determines loser and winner just through sheer guts. You know what I mean, Captain. You see it among the men you have fought beside, those who, like you, have the necessary grit to see the battle through. Your daughter takes after you in that way. Do you not think so?”

  “You, Jessamy? You were the one I trusted most.”

  I will not give Lord Gargaron the satisfaction of seeing me break down. But it is so hard to stand here with my father staring at me as if I am a scorpion crawled out of the night to sting him with its venom.

  A tap rattles the closed door.

  “Enter,” says Lord Gargaron.

  Mother comes into the room, and Polodos closes the door behind her to seal us in.

  Even in her shapeless mourning shroud and with the bulk of her pregnancy before her, she glides like the most beautiful of ships, resplendent, moving gracefully under sail.

  “My lord,” she says, and I am not sure which man she addresses.

  For an instant I think neither Father nor Lord Gargaron is sure either.

  Part of what makes her beautiful is that she has the discipline to regret nothing. Even under Gargaron’s censorious eye she does not wilt or fade.

  “What is your wish, my lord?” she asks, addressing Father directly.

  “Has Jessamy been running the Fives without my permission?”

  “She didn’t know!” I cry, for above all things I do not wish Mother to take the blame.

  She sighs with such gentle reproof that she could as well have slapped me. “Of course I knew, Jessamy. Do you think I don’t know everything that goes on in this household?”

  “You knew, Kiya?” Father raises a hand as if to strike in sheer, frustrated rage, glances at Lord Gargaron, and lowers the hand. “You let it go on despite knowing I could never allow it?”

  “What harm? Amaya is youngest of the four and she is now the age I was when you and I met. When I was her age, I worked in the market. I came and went as I pleased. It seems to me it was in part my freedom to come and go that attracted you because it was so different from how women behaved in the land of your birth. Our daughters are no longer girls. They are becoming young women. Do you mean them to live shut up in this house all their lives?”

  “As you have done? Is that what you mean? Was this house not good enough for you?” He is shouting. He has forgotten that Lord Gargaron watches all, a vulture waiting for the beast to die so he can consume the carrion.

  Mother never shouts but there is a stony weight to her voice that is worse than any chastisement. “I have no complaints nor have I ever made any. I chose this life with you. I knew what it would be. But our daughters have had no choice.”

  “So you let them sneak around. Good Goat, woman! What else have you allowed them to do?”

  “They are good girls, Esladas! There is nothing wrong with Jessamy running the Fives. Many girls run the Fives.”

  “Not my daughters! Not the daughters of men like me!”

  Always Mother has championed us and encouraged us. Defended us. “She is good at it. In all the months and years you have been gone to the wars, what harm? I have been careful and so has she. She does it for the love, not for glory, not to shame you. So I ask again, what harm?”

  “The harm is what falls on my honor and my reputation! But how can I expect you to understand a man’s honor? How can I expect you to understand the shame it brings on a man when his household of unruly women disobeys his few rules because he has wielded too generous a hand?”

  Mother is as tall as Gargaron and a little taller than Father. She does not shrink or slump as they stare at her. If anything, she grows more magnificent. “I acted as I thought best to make this household a peaceful refuge for you, my lord. No whisper of shame or disobedience has ever met my ears. Have such whispers reached you, Lord Gargaron?”

  “Indeed, none have,” he says with amusement and a flicker of respect. “The household of heroic Captain Esladas is never spoken of at all except as a curiosity. Yet it was not so difficult for me to discover the truth about this girl Jessamy.” Despite the brief courtesy he shows Mother, he bends the severity of his gaze on Father. “You have been imprudent in your supervision of your women. They have made a fool of you because you have been too compliant, more like an Efean man, henpecked and hog-tied by the women in his sad eunuch’s life. Yet I am willing to overlook the situation if you will agree to the offer I have set before you.”

  He speaks to Father, looks at Father. But like currents striking stepping stones in the obstacle called Rivers, the words flow toward a different shore.

  Mother blinks as their impact hits her. As she understands what this truly means for us. The radiance of her face dims. She staggers, and I grab her arm to support her.

  In all my life I have only seen my mother cry three times, twice when we carried stillborn boys to the City of the Dead and its Weeping Garden where infant sons of Patron father
s are buried. The third time was when my father left for the campaign in Oyia across the sea, because she knew he would be gone for years and might never return.

  Now she sucks in gasping, ragged breaths as she struggles not to break down right here in front of him and Lord Gargaron. Twenty years have been cut loose with casual words flung in her face.

  Father will not even look at her. He has already made up his mind.

  “How could you? You selfish pig!” I scream.

  “Jessamy!” Mother’s voice shatters into coarse slivers. “Do not humiliate us.”

  Lord Gargaron sighs. “I cannot spend all day enduring a woman’s tears. Steward!” He rings the handbell.

  The door opens and Polodos enters, bowing. “My lord?”

  “Take the concubine away,” says Gargaron.

  Father says nothing.

  Turning so I don’t have to see the man I have looked up to all my life, I help Mother toward the door.

  “The girl stays,” adds Gargaron. “She will come with me.”

  I stop dead.

  Mother’s shuddering and silent tears cease on the instant. Her gaze rises to Father’s shame-ridden expression.

  “Esladas, you cannot mean to hand Jessamy over to this man?”

  “Lord Gargaron is my lord now and thus my household is his to order as he wishes,” says Father in a tone so rough I suddenly realize he is on the edge of weeping.

  She steps between us. “I will not allow it! She stays with me!”

  “Ah,” murmurs Lord Gargaron. “Now at last we see the scorpion. Defiant and disloyal when her true face is revealed!”

  “Mother, it’s all right.” I am so afraid that Gargaron will demand Father punish her that my thoughts tangle up in a dead-end maze of terror. But I can sluggishly think through what Gargaron has already said. “He just wants me to go train for the Fives in the Garon Palace stable. That’s all.”

  “Of course that is all.” Gargaron laughs. “Please do not believe I would ever touch a woman of your blood and breeding, much less any of your litter. If I need a concubine, I can engage a woman of my own people. Ottonor has died in such destitution I can pick and choose from among the prettiest of his young kinswomen. Now, if you will, remove the concubine to her quarters.”