Telling Faces

I SPENT A FAIR PORTION of the next two days under Stapes’ tutelage, ensuring I knew the proper etiquette for a formal dinner. I was already familiar with a great deal of it from my early childhood, but I was glad for the review. Customs differ from place to place and year to year, and even small missteps can lead to great embarrassment.

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one’s knife clean. In fact, if you didn’t want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do.

It was improper to eat the entirety of a piece of bread. Some portion should always be left on the plate, preferably more than crust. The same was true of milk: the final swallow should always remain in the glass.

The next day Stapes staged another dinner and I made more mistakes. Commenting on the food wasn’t rude, but it was rustic. The same was true of smelling the wine. And, apparently, the small soft cheese I’d been served possessed a rind. A rind any civilized person would have recognized as inedible and meant to be pared away.

Barbarian that I am, I had eaten all of it. It had tasted quite nice too. Still, I took note of this fact and resigned myself to throw away half of a perfectly good cheese if it was set in front of me. Such is the price of civilization.

* * *

I arrived for the banquet wearing a suit of clothes tailored just for the occasion. The colors were good for me, leaf green and black. There was too much brocade for my taste, but tonight I made a grudging bow to fashion as I would be seated to the left of Meluan Lackless.

Stapes had staged six formal dinners for me in the last three days, and I felt prepared for anything. When I arrived outside the banquet hall, I expected the hardest part of the evening would be feigning interest in the food.

But while I might have been prepared for the meal, I was not prepared for the sight of Meluan Lackless herself. Luckily, my stage training took hold and I moved smoothly through the ritual motion of smiling and offering my arm. She nodded courteously and we made our procession to the table together.

There were tall candelabra with dozens of candles. Engraved silver pitchers held hot water for handbowls and cold water for drinking glasses. Old vases with elaborate floral arrangements sweetened the air. Cornucopia overflowed with polished fruit. Personally, I found it gaudy. But it was traditional, a showcase for the wealth of the host.

I walked the Lady Lackless to the table and held out her chair. I had avoided looking in her direction as we walked the length of the room, but as I helped her into her seat, her profile struck me with such a strong resemblance that I couldn’t help but stare. I knew her, I was certain of it. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember where we might have met. . . .

As I took my seat, I tried to guess where I might have seen her before. If the Lackless lands weren’t a thousand miles away, I would have thought I knew her from the University. But that was ridiculous. The Lackless heir wouldn’t study so far from home.

My eyes wandered over maddeningly familiar features. Might I have met her at the Eolian? That didn’t seem likely. I would have remembered. She was strikingly lovely, with a strong jaw and dark brown eyes. I’m sure if I’d seen her there . . .

“Do you see aught that interests you?” she asked without turning to look at me. Her tone was pleasant, but accusation lay not far beneath the surface.

I had been staring. Hardly a minute at table and I was already putting my elbow in the butter. “I beg your pardon. But I am a keen observer of faces, and yours struck me.”

Meluan turned to look at me, her irritation fading a bit. “Are you a turagior?”

Turagiors claimed to be able to tell your personality or future from your face, eyes, and the shape of your head. Pure-blooded Vintic superstition. “I dabble a bit, m’lady.”

“Really? What does my face tell you then?” She looked up and away from me.

I made a show of looking over Meluan’s features, taking note of her pale skin and artfully curled chestnut hair. Her mouth was full and red without the benefit of any paint. The line of her neck was proud and graceful.

I nodded. “I can see a piece of your future in it, m’lady.”

One of her eyebrows went up a bit. “Do tell.”

“You will be receiving an apology shortly. Forgive my eyes, they flit like the calanthis, place to place. I could not keep them from your fair flower face.”

Meluan smiled, but did not blush. Not immune to flattery, but no stranger to it either. I tucked that bit of information away. “That was a fairly easy fortune to tell,” she said. “See you anything else?”

I took another moment to search her face. “Two other things, m’lady. It tells me you are Meluan Lackless, and that I am at your service.”

She smiled and gave me her hand to kiss. I took hold of it and bowed my head over it. I didn’t actually kiss it, as would have been proper back in the Commonwealth, instead I pressed my lips briefly onto my own thumb that held her hand. Actually kissing her hand would have been terribly forward in this part of the world.

Our banter was stalled by the arrival of the soups, forty servants placing them before forty guests all at once. I tasted mine. Why in God’s name would anyone make a sweet soup?

I ate another spoonful and pretended to enjoy it. From the corner of my eye, I watched my neighbor, a tiny, older man I knew to be the Viceroy of Bannis. His face and hands were wrinkled and spotted, his hair a disarrayed tousle of grey. I watched him put a finger into his soup without a hint of self-consciousness, taste it, then push the bowl aside.

He rummaged in his pockets and opened his hand to show me what he’d found. “I always bring a pocket full of candy almonds to these things,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, his eyes as cunning as a child’s. “You never know what they’ll try to feed you.” He held his hand out. “You can have one if you like.”

I took one, thanked him, and faded from his awareness for the rest of the evening. When I glanced back several minutes later, he was eating unabashedly from his pocket and bickering with his wife about whether or not the peasantry could make bread from acorns. From the sound of it, I guessed it was a small piece of a larger argument that they had been having their entire lives.

To Meluan’s right there was a Yllish couple, chatting away in their own lilting language. Combined with strategically placed decorations that made it difficult to see the guests on the other side of the table, Meluan and I were more alone than if we had been walking together in the gardens. The Maer had arranged his seating well.

The soup was taken away and replaced with a piece of meat I assumed was pheasant covered in a thick cream sauce. I was surprised to find it quite to my taste.

“So how do you think we came to be paired?” Meluan asked conversationally. “Mister . . .”

“Kvothe.” I made a small seated bow. “It could be because the Maer wished you to be entertained, and I am at times entertaining.”

“Quite.”

“Or it could be I paid the steward an incredible sum of money.” Her smile flickered again as she took a drink of water. Enjoys boldness , I thought to myself.

I wiped my fingers and almost set the napkin on the table, which would have been a terrible mistake. That was a signal to remove whatever course was currently being served. Done too soon, it implied a silent but scathing criticism of the host’s hospitality. I felt a bead of sweat begin to trickle down my back between my shoulder blades as I deliberately folded the napkin and laid it on my lap.

“So how do you occupy yourself, Mr. Kvothe?”

She hadn’t asked as to my employment, which meant she assumed I was a member of the nobility. Luckily, I’d already laid the groundwork for this. “I write a bit. Genealogies. A play or two. Do you enjoy the theater?”

“Occasionally. Depending.”

“Depending on the play?”

“Depending on the performers,” she said, an odd tension touching her voice.

I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been watching her so closely. I decided to change the subject to safer ground.

“How did you find the roads on your way to Severen?” I asked. Everyone loves to complain about the roads. It’s as safe a topic as the weather. “I heard there has been some difficulty with bandits to the north.” I hoped to excite the conversation a little. The more she talked, the better I could get to know her.

“The roads are always thick with Ruh bandits this time of year,” Meluan said coldly.

Not just bandits, Ruh bandits. She said the word with such a weight of cold loathing in her voice that I was chilled to hear it. She hated the Ruh. Not the simple distaste most people feel for us, but a true, sharp hate with teeth in it.

I was saved from making a response by the arrival of chilled fruit pastries. To my left the viceroy argued acorns to his wife. To my right, Meluan slowly tore a strawberry pastry in half, her face pale as an ivory mask. Watching her flawless polished nails tear the pastry into pieces, I knew her thoughts were dwelling on the Ruh.

* * *

Aside from her brief mention of the Edema Ruh, the evening went quite well. I slowly set Meluan at her ease, talking casually of small things. The elaborate dinner lasted two hours, giving us ample time for discussion. I found her to be everything Alveron had suggested: intelligent, attractive, and well-spoken. Even the knowledge that she loathed the Ruh could not entirely keep me from enjoying her company.

I returned to my room immediately after dinner and began to write. By the time the Maer came to call I had three drafts of a letter, an outline of a song, and five sheets filled with notes and phrases I hoped to use later.

“Come in, your grace.” I glanced up as he entered. He hardly seemed the same sickly, doddering man I’d nursed back to health. He’d put on some weight and looked five years younger.

“What did you think of her?” Alveron said. “Did she mention any suitors when you spoke?”

“No, your grace,” I said, handing him a folded piece of paper. “Here is the first letter you will want to send to her. I trust you can find a way of delivering it to her secretly?”

He unfolded it and began to read, his lips moving silently. I labored out another line of song, scratching out the chording alongside the words.

Eventually the Maer looked up. “Don’t you think this is a little much?” he said uncomfortably.

“No.” I paused in my writing long enough to gesture with my pen toward a different piece of paper.“That one is too much. The one in your hand is just enough. She’s got a streak of romance in her. She wants to be swept from her feet, though she’d probably deny it.”

The Maer’s expression was still doubtful so I pushed myself away from the table and set down my quill. “Your grace, you were right. She is a woman well worthy of pursuit. In a handful of days there will be a dozen men in the estates who would gladly take her to wife, am I right?”

“There are already a dozen here,” he said grimly. “Soon there will be three dozen.”

“Add another dozen she will meet at dinner or walking in the garden. Then another dozen who will court her merely for the chase. Of those dozens, how many will write her letters and poems? They will send her flowers, trinkets, tokens of affection. Soon she will be receiving a deluge of attention. You have one, best hope.”

I pointed to the letter. “Act quickly. That letter will catch her imagination, her curiosity. In a day or two, when the other notes are cluttering her desk, she will already be awaiting the second one of ours.”

He seemed to hesitate a moment, then his shoulders bowed. “Are you sure?”

I shook my head. “There are no certainties in this, your grace. Only hopes. That is the best one I can give you.”

Alveron hesitated. “I know nothing of this,” he said with a hint of petulance. “I wish there were some book of rules a man could follow.” For a moment he looked very much like an ordinary man and very little like the Maer Alveron at all.

Truthfully, I was more than slightly concerned myself. What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first.

On the other hand, I had a vast wealth of secondary knowledge. Ten thousand romantic songs, plays, and stories taken all together had to be worth something. And on the negative side, I’d seen Simmon pursue nearly every woman within three miles of the University with the doomed enthusiasm of a child trying to fly. What’s more, I had watched a hundred men dash themselves to pieces against Denna like ships attempting to ignore the tide.

Alveron looked at me, his face still showing honest concern. “Will a month be enough time, do you think?”

When I spoke, I was surprised by the confidence in my own voice. “Your grace, if I cannot help you catch her in the space of a month, then it cannot be done.”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 849