Aterat began to move her foot and Tsu Lai jerked his hand away so as not to smudge the paint. She had been particularly fidgety all morning. A week before, there had been an e-mail from Precia stating that Desiderius had awakened and that they would be arriving on this day.
It had been six years since they’d had one of Aterat’s children living with them. She pretended her usual nonchalance, but Tsu Lai could tell she was nervous and excited. He knew she had been lonely without one of her own around. He just hoped that Desiderius wanted to see her as much as she wanted to see him.
The domestics were all busy making everything perfect for Desiderius’s arrival, so Tsu Lai had been the only one to attend Aterat herself today. He enjoyed being able to serve her like this. He had prepared her breakfast, helped her bathe, helped her dress, arranged her hair . . . and now he was very carefully applying enamel to her toenails. They were red, with a gold latticework design on the tips. It was very delicate work, and if he messed one up and had to start it over, he knew she would be very irritated with him.
Her foot stopped moving, and he gently took it up again so that he could continue applying the gold paint, smiling to himself as he did so. Aterat wasn’t the only one who was excited about Desiderius’s return. Tsu Lai had been lonely as well, over the past few years. He hadn’t had an equal to talk to in so long. And he hadn’t seen Precia in decades. They had always gotten along well.
He finished the last thin line of gold and sat back to close up the bottle. Aterat lifted her foot to inspect his work. “Good,” she said, then added, “Shoes.”
Tsu Lai stood and nodded, then left the dressing room. He placed the two bottles of nail enamel in the box where they belonged, then entered her shoe closet to select the appropriate footwear. He stared at the shelves with their rows of shoes, trying to remember which ones belonged with that red silk dress she had on. He was fairly certain it was a pair of sandals with lots of straps on it. There were three shelves that held strappy sandals. He closed his eyes and tried to picture what her feet had looked like the last time he’d seen her in that particular dress.
He sighed. This was not his area of expertise.
He knew Aterat would be irritated with him if he chose the wrong ones. He was tempted to call the girl who usually dressed her, to ask which shoes he should pick. But she was helping to prepare Desiderius’s rooms, and besides, asking her would just be too humiliating for him. This was something he should be able to do himself.
He tried thinking logically. Red dress. Red and gold paint on her toes. Gold ribbons and red flowers in her hair. It would only make sense that the shoes would be either red or gold. He took down the seven pair of sandals that met that criteria and arranged them on the floor. Then he cast aside the two red pair that were darker than her dress. That narrowed it down to five pair. Tsu Lai leaned against the closet door and groaned. Did every woman have this many shoes?
Tsu Lai heard a loud sigh from the dressing room. Aterat was getting impatient with him. He needed to hurry. He grabbed a pair of nice-looking gold ones and left the closet.
He tried to be casual and not call any attention to the shoes in his hand as he reentered the dressing room, but Aterat’s eyes went straight to them. She frowned. “Those aren’t the ones I wear with this dress,” she said in a confused tone.
“I’m sorry,” Tsu Lai replied with an apologetic bow. He turned back toward the closet to make a second attempt.
“Oh, forget it,” she snapped. “Those will do. I don’t have time to waste.”
She was irritated with him. He could tell. But she wasn’t as upset as he’d thought she would be. He knelt down and strapped the little gold sandals onto her feet. Then he slipped a small gold ring onto the middle toe of each foot and fastened a gold chain around her left ankle. He placed rings on her fingers and bracelets on her arms, a pair of gold earrings in her ears, and a gold chain set with rubies around her neck.
He showed her a mirror. She smiled. Tsu Lai’s breath caught in his chest. Aterat looked like a divine goddess when she smiled. “Now do my face.”
Tsu Lai balked. Her face? As in . . . cosmetics?
Aterat’s eyes left the mirror and looked up at him, reading his expression. She tsked and stood up. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself,” she declared with a wave of her hand. “You’d just make me look like a clown anyway.” She seated herself in front of the vanity table in the corner and began opening a jar of some sort of green oily substance. “Just go . . . prepare something. Desiderius will be here in less than three hours.”
Tsu Lai left the room. He went to the kitchen to check on the preparations for the evening’s meal, then he went to Desiderius’s suite to see how it was coming along. His rooms were beautiful. Every amenity had been prepared for him. There were new logs in the fireplace in his sitting room– the good madrone wood that had been seasoning in the woodshed for almost two years. The bath had been supplied with various fine salts and oils, as well as a few strategically-placed scented candles. The dressing room had new furniture, and the closets had new cedar clothes-hangers and sachets of dried flowers and cedar chips. There were fresh flowers in the bedroom and new coverings on the bed. And on one bedside table was a small stack of books– a gift for Desiderius from Aterat herself. Tsu Lai inspected everything and ordered the windows opened to air out the residual smells of furniture polish and bleach water.
He then headed up toward his own room, stopping along the way to check Precia’s room. It was clean. The floor had been swept, the furniture had been dusted, and the window had been washed. The sheets on the bed had been changed and the curtains on the window were fresh. He peeked into her bathroom. It was clean as well– there was toilet paper and fresh soap, and some clean towels in the cabinet by the bathtub. Good.
Upon entering his own room, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection and decided a quick shower would not be remiss. He washed, and then he dried and combed out his silky, knee-length black hair. He brushed his teeth and shaved off the light sprinkling of stubble that had appeared on his chin and upper lip. Since Aterat had been so particular about her own appearance today, Tsu Lai decided that he would also be expected to dress for the occasion. He donned his best black tunic and the matching black pants and, thinking to please Aterat, he wrapped a bright red sash around his waist. He laughed to himself as he slipped on his “special occasion” shoes, thinking of Aterat’s shoe closet. He glanced at the clock. It had been about an hour since he’d left her. He wanted to be by her side when Desiderius arrived.
Tsu Lai opened the large wooden armoir in the corner of the room and perused its contents, trying to select a weapon. He fingered his favorite katana. No. A long sword like that might call too much attention to itself. He wanted to be subtle about it, so he wouldn’t risk offending anyone. He looked over a few of his shorter blades, hesitating for a moment over a three-hundred-year-old sgian dubh that he had kept as a relic from their time spent in Scotland. Then he saw it. A beautiful Mughal dagger with an ornate gilded hilt and matching sheath. It had been a gift from Desiderius himself, so long ago that Tsu Lai had almost forgotten about it. He lifted it out and unsheathed it. The blade was good. And it was so ostentatious-looking that it could easily be seen as merely decorative.
Tsu Lai smiled. It was only appropriate that he be wearing the dagger that Desiderius had given him when he went to greet the man. He selected his finest sharpening stone and began to run it down the edge of the blade.
It wasn’t that he particularly mistrusted Desiderius or Precia. He happened to really like them both. He just knew better than to blindly trust anyone, especially where Aterat’s own safety was concerned. He knew Precia would understand this, and in fact he was certain that she would be armed today, as well. It had nothing to do with their personal feelings.
But he also knew that it was best to be always prepared for a change of fealty. If Desiderius ever did decide to revolt against Aterat, he wouldn’t be the first to do so. Or even the second.
Just because Aterat was the one who first brought Desiderius into this world– just because she loved him and treated him as her own son– that did not mean that he would remain eternally loyal to her. After all, Aterat had left Shepetheleh. And that had marked the beginning of a violent struggle that had been going on for over a millenium now.
Of course, not every falling-out had started a war. Tsu Lai remembered when M’boku and Nadina had left. Aterat had been so glad to finally be rid of that lunatic that she had calmly allowed them to go, asking only that they never return. And when Lyudmila and Alexei had decided to follow after them, Aterat had put up very little resistance, claiming that Mila simply wasn’t worth fighting for.
But then, a few centuries later, when Dellanira and Xerondar had chosen to break their ties with her, Aterat had been furious. She’d tried everything in her power to prevent Nira from leaving, until the day Shepetheleh came to take advantage of their in-fighting and attacked while Aterat’s attention was divided. She had been forced to shift her focus to him, and she’d had to let Dellanira go as a result. To this day, Aterat was still dreaming up ways to convince Nira to return to her.
Tsu Lai looked down the edge of the blade, then tested it by shaving the fine little hairs off of one of his knuckles. It was perfect. He wiped it down with an oilcloth and slipped it back into its sheath, then tucked it neatly into his sash.
He glanced at the clock. Desiderius and Precia would be arriving in about an hour and a half. He decided it was time to get back to Aterat. On his way, he caught the attention of a boy with a dustcloth and instructed him to have someone send a large vase of fresh flowers to Precia’s room.
He found Aterat in her study, pacing back and forth in front of her desk with an unopened book in her hand, thin layers of red silk swirling around her ankles as she moved. Even in this nervous state, she made an impressive sight. “Where do you plan to greet them?” he asked her.
She stopped and turned to look at him. “Would it be too old-fashioned to have him come to me in the main hall, like we used to?”
Tsu Lai smiled. Before, whenever one of Aterat’s children had awakened and come to her, they had been presented to her in a large hall and had knelt at her feet while she sat imperiously on a dias in the center of the room. But these days it was a little ridiculous to greet someone that way, and even modern royalty almost never behaved like that. “I think you’re right,” he replied. “It might seem . . . impersonal.”
“I see.”
“Especially considering that Desiderius is newly awakened,” he reminded her.
“Of course. His head is still full of his modern lifestyle.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll meet him in the sun-room,” she decided. “We can . . . have tea together.” She left to give the orders about the sun-room and the tea service.
Tsu Lai followed her out, smiling at her awkward, anxious manner. Most people never really tried to understand Aterat, and as a result she was often perceived as a cold, shrewd woman who only cared about her own self-importance. But that simply wasn’t the truth. He supposed he might be a little biased toward her, but Tsu Lai knew that Aterat had never bothered to hide any part of herself from him. He knew her better than anyone, and in his view, she was a soft and vulnerable person with plenty of insecurities and a deep loneliness inside her.
He also knew that if he ever described her that way to anyone, she would flog him mercilessly for it, just to prove him wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment