Court of Fives (Page 12)

I snort. My pounding pulse is finally slowing. “As if bugs ever scare you. You’re the one who flattens them with your sandal. Bett’s the screamer.”

“Father doesn’t know that, does he?” She yanks my hair back into an unfashionable puff-tail, a quick way to make my coily hair look neat. “It was a close call. If he found out, my life would be over! I’m done covering for you, Jes! This is the last time!”

“The oracle speaks,” I mutter.

“Don’t say that! It’s bad fortune to mock the oracles!”

She stamps a foot, which makes me giggle, which makes her pull my hair even harder. In all fairness she makes it look good, and afterward pauses to stare at her own tresses all tied up in pretty ribbons. She drinks in every bit of Patron beauty she has inherited from our father: the perfect bow of her eyes, her straight black hair, the lips whose color she emphasizes with carmine stick. Yet even Amaya can’t quite pass as a Patron. In the way her lips part slightly I see how it hurts her, knowing she will always be second best in the circles we live in.

“You look lovely,” I say.

“Amaya? Are you in here?” Her friend Denya waits behind the closed entry drape for permission to enter. “Lord Ottonor is about to receive visitors! You better hurry!”

I grab my linen finery as a servant lifts the drape. Denya steps into our little refuge and stops, trying not to stare at me pulling the long sheath of a gown down over my dark body.

Amaya places herself between Denya and the couch to hide the Fives clothes draped in full view. “Glad tidings! Who is coming, Denya?” she asks in what Maraya calls her bird-twitter voice. “I simply can’t wait to see!”

“A party from Garon Palace. It’s a great honor for Lord Ottonor to host a palace lord at his balcony!” Denya is a soldier’s daughter, like us, but both her parents are Patron-born. She has the courtesy to be embarrassed at being caught staring, for which I like her. Her gaze catches on the tunic and leggings, and her forehead wrinkles as she puzzles. “Is your headache better, Jessamy Tonor?”

“Salutations, Denya Tonor,” I reply, for every person who lives under a lord’s sponsorship takes the clan name as their surname to mark their allegiance. “While languishing here with a headache I have been reciting poetry to improve my character:

At dawn face the east to sing in the new day.

What the oracle speaks, your heart yearns to obey.”

“You are so dutiful, Jessamy Tonor,” Denya says politely as she grabs Amaya’s hand and hauls her to the entry drape. For all that Denya is pure Patron and pretty enough, she knows Amaya is the lamp that draws the moths. “If we hurry we won’t miss Lord Gargaron’s party as they arrive. I’ve seen them on their balcony. His nephew is really good-looking. If we pick the right place to stand, he might speak to us!”

“Truly?” Amaya’s interest shifts away from the damning clothes to the far more interesting prospect of flirting.

They slip outside just as a roar of disappointment bellows from the spectators. An adversary has failed to complete one of the obstacles. I slowly tuck the clothes away in my satchel. It was far easier to climb up the ladder onto the Fives court than it is to go stand among people who will stare, wondering why Father allows a daughter who looks like me out in public. But I don’t want him to think I’m a coward. And hiding will dishonor Mother. So I walk out along the cloth-walled passageway to the balcony where Lord Ottonor and his entourage watch the trials under the shaded comfort of an awning.

Lord Ottonor sits on a cushioned chair with an excellent view of the playing court below. My father’s sponsor is an avid spectator of the Fives. He ran them himself when he was young. I find it hard to look at this old man with his sagging jowls, patchy breathing, and complexion gray from ill health, and imagine him as a Fives adversary good enough to compete at the Royal Court, much less as an Illustrious.

“This set has no adversary as adept as that last pair,” he wheezes as everyone listens attentively. They don’t even notice me enter. “Look at the fellow wearing the green belt. He’ll never get past the rope bridge if he can’t figure out it is rigged to collapse. I put no odds on the red-belt girl. She’s slow like day-old porridge, ha ha!”

The men standing beside his chair all laugh politely. A table laden with fruit, roasted shrimp, spicy beans, and sweet finger-cakes dusted with sugar sits close enough that he can gesture to whatever he wants. Right now my father is offering him a platter of shrimp from which Lord Ottonor is picking off the fattest and juiciest with a pair of lacquered tongs.