Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [91]
Ista bit hard into a large mouthful of bread.
The food, in any case, was excellent. Lady Cattilara, or her castle cook, at least did not attempt to ape the excesses, or worse, what they imagined to be the excesses, of Cardegoss court feasting, but served simple, fresh fare. There did seem to be more sweets tonight, which Ista could not fault, and which Liss plainly relished, consuming an enviable portion. She was very quiet in this company, in what seemed to Ista unnecessary awe of her surroundings. Ista thought she would rather have heard Liss’s tales than the local gossip that filled the time. When they had escaped the ladies and returned to the square stone court, Ista told her so, and chided her for her shyness.
“Truly,” Liss admitted, “I think it’s the dress. I felt a great gawk next to those highborn girls. I don’t know how they manage all this fancy cloth. I’m sure I shall trip over myself and tear something.”
“Then let us walk about in the colonnade, that I may stretch my scabs as the acolyte instructs, and that you may practice swishing in silks to do me honor in this court. And tell me more of your ride.”
Liss shortened her steps in a most ladylike fashion, keeping to Ista’s slow limp in the cool of the cloistered walkway. Ista primed her with questions about every aspect of her journey. Not that Ista needed a catalogue of every hair, fault, virtue, and quirk of every horse Liss had ridden for the past several days, but Liss’s voice was such welcome music, it hardly mattered what it dwelt upon. Ista had less to report, she found, of her own ride, certainly not details of the Jokonan horseflesh, which she had mainly experienced as a penance. Nor had she desire to recall green flies gathering to feed on thickening blood.
Passing a pillar, Liss reached out to trail her fingers over the carved tracery. “It looks like stone brocade. Porifors is a far more beautiful castle than I was expecting. Is Lord Arhys dy Lutez as great a swordmaster as the marchess was bragging?”
“Yes, in fact. He slew four of the enemy who attempted to ride off with me. Two escaped.” She had not forgotten them. She was almost glad, in retrospect, that the translator officer had been one of those fled. She had spoken with him, eye to eye, a few too many times for her to imagine him as a cipher, blurred into the faceless ranks of the fallen. A feminine weakness, that, perhaps, like refusing to eat any animal one had named as a pet.
“Was it true the march rode in with you upon his saddlebow?”
“Yes,” said Ista shortly.
Liss’s eyes crinkled with delight. “How splendid! Too bad he’s so married, eh? Is he really as handsome as his wife seems to think?”
“I can’t say,” Ista growled. She added in reluctant fairness, “He is, however, quite handsome.”
“How fine, to have such a lord at your feet, though. I am glad you have come to such a place, after all this.”
Ista changed He wasn’t exactly at my feet to, “I do not plan to linger here.”
Liss’s brows rose. “The Mother’s acolyte said you could not ride far yet.”
“Ought not, perhaps. Not comfortably. I could at need.” Ista followed Liss’s admiring glance around the court, shaded in the slanting light of the late day, and tried to evolve a reason for her unease that did not involve bad dreams. A rational, sensible reason, for a woman who was not mad in the least. She rubbed at the itch on her forehead. “We are too close to Jokona, here. I do not know what treaties of mutual aid presently exist between Jokona and Borasnen, but everyone knows the port of Visping is the prize of my royal daughter’s eye. What is planned to happen in the fall will be no mere border raid. And there was a terrible event here this spring that can’t have helped relations with the prince of Jokona in any way.” Ista did not look toward that corner room.
“You mean how Porifors’s master of horse