Emerald House Rising, page 1
EMERALD
HOUSE RISING
Peg Kerr
First published in 1997 by Warner Books, Inc.
Copyright © Peg Kerr 1997
This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books
30 Great Guildford Street,
Borough, SE1 0HS
The right of Peg Kerr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
For my parents,
the first to tell me I could write
and for Rob,
with love
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter
One
In the summer of her eighteenth year, every evening she could get away from her household duties, Jena came to the acacia grove to watch the sunset over the harbor of Piyar. The weather was oppressively sultry that year, shortening the tempers of everyone in the city. But in the grove at the south end of her father’s garden, high above the central city, Jena forgot the heat, and the flies, and the stink of the pushing crowds.
The city had been constructed on a series of semicircular terraces cut into the hillside from the top of the ridge down to the Koh River. The residents imagined the city’s layout as resembling a set of nested rimmed bowls of graduating sizes. By custom, the uppermost terrace was called the Golden Rim. Beneath that, each “rim” was numbered, starting from the top, and corresponded to the slope, or “bowl,” below it. Collas the Gemcutter’s residence, along with others of the wealthier merchant and artisan classes, stood on the terrace known as the Rim of the Third Bowl. Only the nobles’ houses, built on the First and Second Rims, and the Winter Palace itself on the Golden Rim, were built higher up. Here in the garden, the flower-scented breeze through the grove was cool, and Jena’s favorite stone bench offered a splendid view. She would bring her mending or embroidery to work on as she sat in order to placate Collas, who could not bear that anyone should ever be idle, least of all his only child. Most often, it was only a pretense: although she began her stitches dutifully enough, eventually her work would fall forgotten to her lap as she looked out over Piyar, drinking in the view long after her eyes could possibly distinguish the color of the silks in her bag or find her needle if she dropped it.
At the end of one such evening, just as Jena was gathering her handiwork to go inside, she heard the scraping sound of footsteps. A man was climbing up the terrace staircase from the street below. She could make out that he was tall, with narrow shoulders, and his silhouette suggested a summer-weight cloak partially draped over a long knife. When he came to the top of the stairs, he called out to her: “Mistress? Is this the way to the home of Collas the Gemcutter?”
“This is his home,” she replied. “I’m his daughter, and his apprentice.”
“His apprentice? And you are?”
“Jena, sir.”
“Jena. Is your father within?”
“May I tell him your name and business, sir?”
“I should like to speak with him about a commission.” He stepped closer to her, and in the faint light from the rising moon, she saw for the first time the thickly knotted cord at the shoulder of his outer gown.
She dropped a hasty curtsy. “Your pardon, my lord—”
“It’s of no consequence,” he said smoothly. “Is he engaged?”
“No, my lord.” Jena did her best to hide her surprise. How strange for a lord to be coming up from the inner city rather than down from the Golden Rim, or the First or Second Rim. Moreover, for a lord to deign to come calling at the home of a gemcutter, even the best gemcutter in the city, was most unusual. Generally, nobles expected Collas to wait upon them in their palazzi and to be grateful if they didn’t leave him cooling his heels in one of their anterooms for half the day.
Despite knowing her name, he clearly didn’t intend to offer his own. She knew better than to allow any annoyance at the insult to show. After all, he was a lord, although one wouldn’t have been able to tell from the hour he chose to come calling for gemcutting commissions. As Jena’s father had often pointed out to her, there was no use in taking offense at anything a lord did. Much more to the point was avoiding having a lord take offense with you. “Follow me, if you please,” she said quietly.
He followed her through the grove, up the steps, and into the sitting room overlooking the garden. The shutters stood open, leaving the furniture just visible in the last of the fading twilight. “There is a chair by the window, my lord, which I hope you will find comfortable.” After putting her embroidery bag away in a storage cupboard, she twitched a straw from the broom in the corner and lit one end in the small corner brazier.
“I’m sure it will serve.” He seated himself as she brought the burning straw over and lit the candle on the table at his elbow.
The flame caught, and as the light strengthened, she saw him frankly appraising her. He looked younger than she had supposed from his voice, perhaps ten or fifteen years older than she. His pourpoint and jerkin were lightweight silk dyed a rich blue, without the slashed sleeves or exaggeratedly high collar most nobles were wearing this season. A color that dark was usually worn to set off jewelry but, except for the small round brooches holding the pleats in place at the shoulders of his outer gown, he wore only a simple gold chain. His hair, under a matching blue velvet cap, was russet or brown; the uncertain light made it difficult to tell. The shadows exaggerated the line of a jaw which, she reflected, would probably be judged by most as being too angular to be handsome. His neatly trimmed mustache completed the violation of the courtly standards of fashion. Jena liked his face the better for it.
She blew out the straw and reached out to place it on the candleholder base. Somehow her hand collided with his as he brought it up to rest it casually on the table. At the touch, Jena felt something that somehow jolted. She gave a little gasp and clutched at his hand for balance.
“Is something amiss?” he said pleasantly enough, but his eyes narrowed as they studied her.
With an effort, she pried her hand from his, her face heating in embarrassment. “Pardon, my lord. I’m not usually that clumsy. Something …” she stopped. Her hand still tingled, the way it did sometimes when she slept on it wrong and then awoke and tried to move it.
“Yes?” he asked solicitously.
“I touched something cold. It startled me, somehow.” He moved his right hand, and she saw the ring glittering in the candlelight on his fourth finger, a large piece with the rich sheen of a heavy grade of gold. “It must have been your ring.”
He did not answer at first, but curiously, she had the impression that somehow she had in turn immensely startled him. “My ring?” After a moment, a rather forced smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “I suppose you must share your father’s professional interest?”
“Yes, I do, my lord.” She bent forward to study the gray, faceted gem; was that stone cut in the brilliant style? The candlelight glinted off the top facet in an oddly bright reflection. She tilted her head to avoid the tiny glare and drew in a surprised breath. The facets seemed to disappear with her change of angle, so the stone now appeared to be a smoothly rounded cabochon. And it was no longer gray, but black. Like obsidian, perhaps. No … there was a subtle glimmer suspended in the black, rather like the flecks in goldstone, only finer.
Something about it nudged a memory. A picture welled up in her mind, superimposing itself over the gem. Of course, how silly of her! She wasn’t looking at a ring gemstone at all. No, she was leaning over something … she thought she felt rough-hewn stone and mortar under her palms. She was leaning over the lip of a well she had seen once as a child, peering down into the velvety black water. The sun shone directly on it, and suspended particles of minerals glimmered up at her, dazzling her eyes. But the blackness remained as obdurate as ever, hiding its secrets even as it drew the eye in, so that she could no longer see the stone edge of the well, the gold setting of the ring. It thwarted the sunlight, ate up the candlelight. It made her vision go dim, and a distant hum rang faintly in her ears. Now, what does that remind me of? she wondered fuzzily. Oh, yes, the time when I was twelve, when I fainted; am I fainting now? The hum grew louder and the thought drifted away, down into the waves of soothing dark nothingness.
And then she found herself blinking stupidly at the polished tabletop. The nameless lord’s hand had withdrawn from the circle of candlelight. How much time had passed? A moment? She shivered once, violently. “I … I will fetch my father for you now,” she stammered.
In the hallway leading back toward the workroom, she stopped to lean against the wall and take a deep breath. What had happened to her? Hallucinating with her eyes open! Surely she wasn’t sick? Her knees shook, and she tucked her trembling hands under her arms, trying to make them stop.
Well, if she wasn’t sick, what else could it be? There is a reason for everything. The magician Arikan, who had tutored her in her letters, always said that. Jena caught her breath and frowned, remembering another time she had shaken like this. The time she fainted. She had surprised Arikan, walking in on him in his shop in the middle of the casting of a major spell, and so he hadn’t prepared any wards to protect her.
Was it magic, then, she had felt just now? She remembered how Arikan had held her for a long time afterward until she stopped shaking, and he hadn’t even scolded her for interrupting the spell.
Her father had done that for him, when he found out.
Her father. Jena pushed herself away from the wall and looked back doubtfully. The hall was dark. Perhaps she should go back and get another candle?
No. She didn’t want to go in there alone. Instead, Jena walked forward, following the glimmer spilling around the corner from her father’s workroom.
Inside, candles set in sconces and lanterns warmed the large room with golden light. From force of habit, Jena looked around with a critical eye, but all was ordered with Collas’ characteristic neatness. A large oak cabinet dominated the wall opposite the window; here the gemcutter kept his polished and unpolished stones, sorted into tiny hand-tooled drawers by type and color. Sketches of commissioned pieces hung tacked in orderly rows on the walls; dop sticks and jamb pegs for faceting work bristled in stands along the work counters underneath. In a corner beside the small fireplace, a free-standing frame held soldering irons and heavy spools of gold, silver, and brass wire, organized by thickness. The parquet floor was swept clean; at least the servants were getting that right now. The smell of clove and wintergreen oil filled the air.
Collas, clad in his usual sober black, sat hunched over the central worktable, his narrow fingers tinkering delicately with the disassembled links of a heavy necklace. He was an unprepossessing man with receding light brown hair and soft blue eyes, at the moment squinted in concentration. Jena sighed inwardly at the sight of the almost untouched dinner plate he had, as usual, absently shoved aside. Putting down an engraving tool, Collas saw Jena and gave her his quick smile as he rose and went over to the racks by the shuttered window to find another.
“Well, then! Come to say good night?”
“Not yet, Father,” Jena replied, twitching her skirts out of the way of the lap-wheel benches as she came forward into the room. “There’s a lord waiting to see you in the sitting room; he spoke of a commission.…” She ran a testing finger over the splash guard on the nearest wheel. The wood felt dry and rough to her touch; she’d have to remember to coat the guards with linseed oil tomorrow to keep them from warping.
“A lord come here? At this hour?” Collas removed the loupe from his eye and stretched, wincing. Jena went over to massage his shoulders. “Mmm, thank you, my dear. Well, who is he, then?”
“I didn’t recognize him, and he wouldn’t give me his name.” She hesitated, wondering whether to tell him about the ring.
“Strange.” Collas sighed. “I hope it doesn’t mean he won’t pay for whatever he orders.” He reached over his shoulder to pat her hand on his back. “Perhaps you could bring some wine to the sitting room, while I speak with this mysterious gentleman.”
So Jena fetched a jug of wine from the cold room and brought it on a tray, along with two of her father’s prized blue-stemmed glass goblets and a plate of cheeses, to the sitting room. Collas, already seated and chatting with the lord, nodded toward the table. “Put it right down here. Would you honor us, my dear, by pouring the wine, and then light more candles?” He cut a few slices of cheese as she filled the goblets and set them down very carefully on the table. “So, then,” Collas continued, addressing his guest again as Jena went toward the cupboard that contained the tapers, “there is no change in the Diamond’s condition?”
“I’m afraid not. He did rally a bit after Equinox, but now he is worse. The physicians have declared he can’t be moved.”
“Hmm, yes. It seems quite strange for me to be calling on the members of the Court here at this time of year rather than at the Summer Palace in Chulipse.” Collas shook his head. “This is the first summer in twenty years I’ve stayed in Piyar.”
“Oh? You follow the Court then, too?”
Collas smiled. “I follow my business, my lord.”
“Yes, I have heard of your work from a number of your patrons. Your skill is renowned throughout Piyanthia and highly recommended in Court circles, Master Collas.”
“I’m honored.” Collas acknowledged the accolade with a little nod. “And you, too, have a summer home? Your ancestral seat?”
“Yes.”
Collas waited, but the visitor didn’t offer the name of the house, which would reveal his identity.
Eventually, Collas cleared his throat as Jena finished lighting the last of the tapers. “Thank you, my dear,” he said to Jena, and she turned to go.
“No, stay,” said the lord, putting down his goblet. “I understand, Master Collas, that your daughter is also your apprentice?”
“Jena has applied to the Guild to be elevated to journeyman.”
“Well, then,” the lord said, reaching for a pouch on his belt. “Perhaps she’d like to see the stone I want you to cut for me.”
At a look from her father, Jena swallowed her first impulse, which was to reply she’d seen all of his lordship’s jewelry she’d care to see. Her father leaned forward to examine the stone in the visitor’s palm. “Hmm. You want this prepared for any particular setting?”
“I’d like to wear it as a ring, and I’ll leave the setting to your discretion.”
“A ring, yes. We’ll take your size before you leave tonight, my lord.” Collas’ voice, although polite, sounded puzzled, and Jena could appreciate why. The stone in the lord’s palm was notably unspectacular. Just a mottled gray, which, unlike the stone in the ring he was wearing, had no inner fire or interesting crystalline structure whatsoever. Why, wondered Jena, would a nobleman want to use such an ordinary stone as an adornment?
Collas gently took hold of the nobleman’s other hand and turned it over. “I should think an oval would suit the shape of your nails best. You’d like it to be smooth-polished, perhaps?”
“It can’t be faceted?”
Collas shrugged. “Well, the stone is opaque, my lord. I hardly see the point.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out the hand-length polished hazel wand Arikan had given him, and extended it to touch the stone.
But the lord’s hand jerked back. “No.”
The gemcutter looked up in surprise. “Forgive me, my lord, but it’s a very simple spell.”
“I know. But I don’t want it done.”
Collas assumed his most reasonable voice, the one he used when humoring highly unreasonable nobility. “It won’t hurt the stone. It’s simply a protective procedure to keep it from being stolen while it’s in my custody. I’ve known the magician Arikan for years; we have a longstanding professional relationship.”
“Nevertheless,” the lord replied, smiling, but with a definite edge to his voice, “I would prefer that you not use the spell. Call it a whim of mine, if you will. I’ll assume the responsibility,” he said, lifting his hand as Collas tried to speak again. “Besides, it’s generally known you do place a guard on stones customers bring you, am I correct?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.” The lord waved a hand. “I imagine you haven’t had any attempted thefts in years, have you?”
“No.”
“Of course not. Why would any thief bother, since that is common knowledge? At any rate”—he gestured, holding the stone between thumb and forefinger—“if, by a remote chance, a thief should break in during the next day or so, I don’t think this would be the first thing he’d try to take, do you?” He glanced at Jena. “It is a very ordinary stone.”
