Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [102]
Cattilara’s spirit was the darkest and densest, roiling with strain and secret distress. Beneath its surface another boundary lurked, darker and tighter still, like a bead of red glass dropped in a glass of red wine. The demon seemed much more tightly closed this morning than it had last night. Hiding? From what?
From me, Ista realized. The god scars upon her that were invisible to mortal eyes would surely shine like watch fires in the dusk to a demon’s peculiar perceptions. But did the demon share all its observations with the mount it rode? How long, indeed, had Lady Cattilara been infested by her passenger? The dying bear had felt ragged, as if its demon were some ravenous tumor spreading tendrils into every part of it, consuming and replacing the bear’s soul-stuff with itself. Whatever else Cattilara’s soul was, it seemed still mostly her own.
“Did Lord Arhys return safely last night, to your heart’s ease?” Ista inquired.
“Oh, yes.” Cattilara’s smile grew warm and secret.
“Soon your prayers to the Mother will change from supplication to thanksgiving, I’ll warrant.”
“Oh, I hope it may it be so!” Cattilara signed herself. “My lord has only a daughter—although Liviana is a pretty child, rising nine years old, lives with her maternal grandparents—but I know he longs for a son. If I might bear him one, he would honor me above all women!”
Above, perhaps, the memory of his first wife? Do you compete with a dead woman, girl? The blurred light of retrospective could lend a perfection hard for breathing flesh to match. Despite herself, Ista was moved to pity. “I remember this awkward period of waiting—the monthly disappointments—my mother used to write me severe letters, full of advice on my diet, as if it were my fault that my womb did not fill.”
Cattilara’s face livened with eager interest. “How unjust! Roya Ias was quite an old man—much older than Arhys.” She hesitated curiously, then asked in a shyer voice, “Did you . . . do anything special? To get Iselle?”
Ista grimaced in remembered aggravation. “Every lady-in-waiting in the Zangre, whether they’d ever borne a child or not, had a dozen country remedies to press upon me.”
Cattilara inquired, with unexpected wryness, “Did they offer any to Ias?”
“A fresh young bride seemed tonic enough for him.” At first. Ias’s oddly diffident early lustfulness had faded over time and with his otherwise well-concealed disappointment at a girl child’s birth. Age and the curse more than accounted for the rest of his problems. Ista suspected that rather than swallowing noxious potions, he had taken to adding a private detour for stimulation by his lover before he visited her chamber. If she had continued infertile, might Lord dy Lutez have persuaded Ias to cut out the middle step and admit him directly to her bed? How long before the relentless expectation would have pressured Ista to compliance? Righteous indignation at such blandishment burned all the hotter when it concealed real temptation, for Arvol dy Lutez had been a striking man. That part, at least, of Cattilara’s strange rage at her brother-in-law Illvin presented no block to Ista’s understanding whatsoever.
Ista blinked, as a solution to the knotty problem of having Cattilara—and her demon—underfoot at Illvin’s noontime awakening occurred to her. An ugly ploy, but effective. She added smoothly, “For myself, the last thing I tried before I became pregnant with Teidez was the poultice of finger-lily flowers. That remedy was the contribution of Lady dy Vara’s old nurse, as I recall. Lady dy Vara swore by it. She’d had six children by then.”
Cattilara’s gaze grew suddenly intent. “Finger-lilies? I don’t believe I know that flower. Does it grow here in the north?”
“I don’t know. I thought I saw some growing near the meadow where Lord Arhys had his camp, the other day. Liss would recognize the plant, I’m sure.” Behind Cattilara