The Totem-Maker (part ninety-six)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Ten

Crafter Becomes Maker

(part ninety-six)

I was given to Noakale to entertain, or be entertained by. Please allow me, I told her, to share in the needlework. For as Shenath’s visit will have had you guessing, the household prepared for a wedding.

“Do you do such things? You?”

“I do any chore, as need be. And I am happy to learn…happy always to be of help. Vlanna, you do not find me grand-mannered?”

“Not at all.”

And these three words I must accept as offered. The women I sat with were Noakale and her two maidservants, her cousin Darsale, and Darsale’s sister, Jute. The company being so, you may guess too that Jute was the bride. I was curious to know Darsale, and what I could know, for she sat mostly silent, was spoken in her frosty coloring, and her armored garb.

The phrase rose inside me, sardonic…I thought of Sente, and saw no joy for my friend here.

Noakale, her face strong-boned, wore her dark hair plaited, singly. A furred skin fell from her shoulders as tunic over her gown, and her feet were bare. Darsale’s hair sat woven through a golden cage, an artifact never seen…one of the north, of the Wolgan tribe. It gave another head to her height. Her wrists were metaled and her neck collared in metal.

“She should not by rights hold this place,” Jute said to me. I had taken a cushion beside her, in case she would confide. It was Noakale she meant.

“You mean to say the Prince, because she is good and generous, is truly fond of her, and has married for love, not birth.”

I was hard with Jute in my determined mishearing, because she invited me to dislike Noakale’s antecedents, for such reasons as northern people disliked one another. I knew none of it, and would have none.

“Oh, is that so, wise creature? Her father paid his price. It is all the price, to gain or to lose, and the bit more, if the bargain comes too readily. The Prince has agreed to take…”

When I’d sorted her pause, I said: “Take? Some other father’s purse of gold…his cattle, soldiers. You are not grateful.”

“At my age! But then, there are old men who rule countries. Yes, my promised’s soldiers are needed. Their blood is hungered after. His younger wives I will put aside.”

“Bless you, then.”

I was not surprised that she made a face as though I’d said curse you.

100

The Recalcitrant One

The Totem-Maker (part ninety-seven)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)