Chapter Two
Mourning Gory

Paeia sat at the vanity and brushed her hair. She had required the servants to lace her into the dress but didn't like them to touch her any more than necessary. All the better for them to wring their hands uselessly and fret over Nevel, she thought. Her bedroom window was yet dark and already the house was busy preparing for the fair. As the sole lady in residence, Paeia had duties to prepare for as well. She stood and examined herself in the mirror. She was not truely a lady, or even a maiden. Such things seemed terribly distant to her and she was in no hurry but there was a role to be filled and roles need filling.

She tried an aristocratic woman's bow, back straight with a slight bending of the knees and hands clasped to the fronts of her thighs but discarded it almost immediately. Far too presumptuous, she thought. She tried another bow with her legs nearly straight, back low and bowed like a dancer, while pulling the hem of her dress with one hand and a flourishing gesture for the other. She liked the form but it was more suitable for an artisan or performer than for what her father aspired to be.

Proper etiquette was a confused affair among the free manors. There was no central court from which standards of conduct could be set. One house might be of highbred Cormyrean custom, another could be a family of upjumped squatters with no manners at all. Anyone from far and near who had the power to raise a house and keep it could call themselves a lord. Houses would also fall at times, sitting silent until someone ventured to claim them. Sometimes staying silent if claimed by stranger things.

"How do you do?" Paeia asked the mirror, trying yet another courtsey.

She repeated the phrase and gesture, varying her presentation with each iteration. Each syllable was exaggerated in its turn, each muscle of body and face was tightened and relaxed as she cleansed herself of all that was not deliberate. Seven faces were inset on the painted wooden border that surrounded the mirror. They were pale and expressionless, seeming more like masks than true faces. Their eyes were closed but the girl felt their presence upon her all the same. She smiled and blew them a kiss before turning to leave the room.

A jumble of noise greeted her. Nevel was screaming. Things were being jostled and dropped. Kuris and Jeorde were fighting exuberantly. Her father was yelling. Something broke. Sounds of dismay from the servants. The busy work of hammer and saw. In the house? Someone was weeping.

Paeia walked to the railing of the upper landing to assess what was being wrought in the foyer below. Flames flickered in the many crystal lanterns that hung on chains suspended from the cieling. Scaffolding was being hastily constructed by conscripted yeomen while her father was busy ordering with satisfaction and nodding with authority. Another of the fine vases lay in shatters. Two more tiles of the marble floor had also been broken. All to join the medly of things whose brokeness had not yet been undone. Mother will be furious.

"Father, what is all this?" Paeia asked as she descended the stairs.

Her father's bloodshot eyes flicked over her as he wiped his poorly shaven mouth with the back of his hand.

"Braken didn't come through on their part so now the rest of us has to pick up the slack. And if it don't get picked up right quick we'll all be sitting in the dirt with the rest of the lot!" He said, raising his voice for the workers' benefit.

Lord Medger of house Mayven was wearing his finery that morning, a creme colored doublet that went not well at all with his greasy dark hair and weathered face. Where are the clothes mother bought?

"In the house, though? What about this mess? What will mother say?"

Her father's lips curdled and he waved a dismissive hand. "I'll send to the dales for a mason to redo the floor. I'll buy your mother a new vase."

Kuris and Jeorde sat on a bench against the wall, trembling with barely restrained energy. Their faces were marked from where they had been cuffed a few times.

Paeia left the foyer through a side door. She walked through the day room, the side pantry, then through the maids' quarters. Nevel's screaming grew louder as she drew near. It was a loud, insistent, piercing shriek that the infant was given to whenever he wasn't given to sleeping, which wasn't nearly enough for the house's piece of mind.

Helda, Nevel's nursemaid, was a burly, haggard woman. She sat in a chair, bouncing the screeching bundle on her knee and making the perfunctory shooshing noises. Her face was a rictus of shattered nerve. She seemed to be rocking herself for comfort as much as anything.

"Oh, Paeia! He's so precious. Don't you want to--"

"No."

Paeia did not pause on her way through the nursery. She entered another room with many shuttered windows, the maids' 'tea room'. Tea was the least illicit of things plied in this room, she knew. Oh, to be a fly on the wall. She opened a door and walked outside.

Paeia could see little in the fog dulled moonlight but figured it would probably burn off later in the day. The mist season was just starting and had not yet become too obstinate. Hiking her dress around her knees to prevent it from getting wet, she walked into the woods. People of the manors referred to the treeline as the High Forest but Paeia dared not enter too deeply, to where the real High Forest began. There, the rules changed. And not all to Paeia's liking.

It was in a copse of trees that she had planted her trap and found that it still bore fruit. The trap was a circle of toadstools she had carefully cultivated for the purpose and then transplanted to the wood. The fruit was blue krissies this time. She pulled a wooden box from its hiding place beneath a shrub and rummaged for the tools she would need. The blue krissies began to weep, as if they knew what was coming. The sound was of tiny strings played almost too high to be audible. Paeia hummed along as she unhooded a lantern filled with glow flies. The soft green light illuminated her workspace well enough without threatening her privacy.

"Good morning, ladies. Did you have a nice dance?"

The blue krissies were a small huddle of pale, naked bodies, clinging to one another and trembling within the circle. Their large, slanted eyes lacked pupils or whites and were a polished blue that matched their translucent wings, hence the name. The sorrow and fear was a familiar scene that had become boring to Paiea. The scant remains of what she assumed to be the male lay at their feet.

The toadstools had been grown with a diet of iron rich soil and dappled with egg paints to present confounding patterns. Such a crude trap would never work long, if at all in snaring craftier, more powerful game, but was sufficent for those ruled by baser instincts. Apparently, the blue krissies had been sucessfuly wooed by a suitor who then led them in a frenzy to a suitable place for his first and final liaison. The females had then devoured him while taking turns mating with his twitching corpse.

Paeia slipped a heavy leather mit over one hand. Anything lighter could be sliced open by the krissies' wings. She grabbed one of the blue krissies with the mit, selected a small sharp knife from her tools, and began her work. Sitting on a blanket, she hummed a song of her own then. It was one that her mother had taught her called 'The Merry Widow'.

"Is all well, my lady?" asked Pick.

"Well enough. I will be attending the fair with my family soon. I dare say they will try something today."

Paeia could not see Pick's beady black eyes or twisted nose and teeth, but she knew they were out there, ugly and twitching. Pick was one of the few allowed to leave the table at night. Paeia tossed the krissie aside and selected another that squirmed and shrieked hysterically.

He hissed, "I wouldn't be surprised. We haven't discovered how they're crossing the river yet and we can't protect you at the fair. Perhaps you could find a way to beg off attending?"

"With my mother absent, my participation is mandatory, even if only as window dressing. I will have my father's men to protect me, such as they are."

"I see." Pick was silent. "...my lady?"

"Yes?"

"Uhm...Old Scratch saw Rolly last night. He's on his way home."

"Hmm. Is that all then?"

"Yes, my lady."

"You are dismissed."

Paeia tossed the krissie to the heap and grabbed the last. Rod'ger had been leaving the table at night for places and purposes unknown. Rod'ger was not allowed to leave the tea party at all. Paeia had said nothing yet, but she knew. Pick would have known but had said nothing to her either, even when given a private opportunity. What are they hiding? Who else is in on it? Intrigue in her own court irked her like no other threat could.

She regarded the krissie in her clutch who had passed beyond trembling to unresponsive flacidity. She was almost like a little doll with her high, sculpted cheek bones, parted mouth, and silk black hair. This one was scarred though. Something had clawed her across the chest and down one flank, tearing away a breast. The wounds looked as if they were old and had not healed well. Paeia touched her with a bare finger, feeling the supple softness of the krissie's flesh, and the twisted scar tissue of the torn breast. The girl marveled that she had survived long in a world that so mindlessly pursued beauty. The slight limbs and torso that were more elongated than a humans yet still aluring for their feminine promise lay lax between the soft strokes of Paeia's fingers. The krissie looked lifeless. But Paeia knew she wasn't dead, she was playing. She allowed herself a small smile and gently carresed the krissie's cheek.

"You're a clever one, aren't you? Do you like to play games? I like to play them to--"

The krissie hissed and spat into Paeia's eye, a silvery thread that seared and penetrated. Paeia snarled and squeezed until she heard the bones pop.