That morning, I brought my mistress her breakfast tray. I laid out her clothing and left her dressing maid to attend her. In my tiny chamber, I bathed and dressed as carefully as if it were my wedding day. At my pendant`s bidding, the hoarded coins I had earned had gone for enamelled pins and a choker of lace. I swept my hair high and secured it. When I slipped into my mistress’s room to steal a glance in her mirror, I stared at my reflection. My mistress, setting down her teacup, opened her eyes wider at sight of me. ‘You remind me of someone,’ she said sleepily. She sat up in her bed, regarding me more closely. As is I were her daughter, she commanded me to turn before her, and then to turn my face to the light. ‘Paint your lips with my carmine,’ she instructed me suddenly. ‘And touch your eyes with black.’ When I had done so, she inspected me critically. ‘You’ll do,’ she observed. ‘There’s Bingtown in your bloodline, my little country wren,’ she added with satisfaction. ‘So I’ve been telling those old biddies I call my friends. Off you go, to whomever you’ve chosen to captivate. He won’t stand a chance before those eyes.’
Her words heartened me as much as the approving murmur from my pendant. I returned to my room, to don my final layer of courage. The saffron wool of my grandmother’s Trader robe was soft against my skin. It fitted as if made for me. My determination swelled as I set out through the morning streets of the city I had made mine. The bustle of commerce no longer daunted me, nor did I look aside from the approving glance a Trader’s son sent my way. Like me, he wore his Trader’s robe today. The garment proclaimed me his equal, and by his glance, I could tell he accepted me as that. I held my head higher. I made my way confidently into the heart of the city. Occasionally, an older Trader would regard me with a puzzled stare. I knew it had been years since anyone had worn the saffron Trader robes of the Lantis family. I smiled at their puzzlement and strode on. The festive crowds grew denser yet it seemed they parted for me. The music drew me, as did the savoury aromas that floated on the morning air.
I reached the great circle of the Market. Today, the centre had been cleared. Music was playing, and sailors and shopgirls were already dancing in the morning sun. On the edges of the circle, pavilions had been raised, and people of social note welcomed their friends and business associates. The grandest ones belonged to Bingtown Trader families and bore their colours, but the tents of the wealthy merchants of lesser bloodlines competed to draw the eye. The sides of the pavilions had been roped open to reveal carpets and expensive furniture. Trader families welcomed one another with tables of dainty foods in these temporary dwellings, competing in opulence and comfort. No expense had been spared for this single day of celebration. I walked a slow circuit of these, listening to the murmur of my pendant as it peeked through the lacy choker that concealed it.
‘Those are the Hardesty colours - well, they seem to have prospered in the last generation. And that tasselled one would be the Beckerts: they were always given to show. Wait. Stop here.’
I halted, and I swear I felt a vibration of tension from the pendant. The pavilion before us was pitched almost in line with those of the Bingtown Traders’ tents, as if to claim near-equal status. Whereas the Trader pavilions bore the simple colours of each of the old Bingtown families, the newcomers’ tents were striped or particoloured. The pavilion before me was white and green. The family was arrayed within as if for a portrait; parents and grown children sat about a table heavy with a rich morning repast. Two young men in the robes of Bingtown Traders were guests there. From a separate, higher table, on tall chairs almost like thrones, an elderly couple looked down benevolently on their family. The matriarch was a small plump woman. Her thinning white hair was carefully coiffed and rings adorned her pale little hands. The emerald at her throat seemed to burn with a green fire. Beside her sat a handsome old man, as elegantly dressed and groomed. As I looked at him, I felt the pendant share my glance. From it, I felt a sudden wave of hatred greater than any I had ever known. Mingled with it was fury, and outrage that he and the wife he had bought with Aubretia’s money had both outlived her in luxury aid grace. Hardship and privation, I now saw, had cut short my grandmother’s life. Not just wealth and respect, but life itself he had stolen from her.
‘But for your betrayal, Howarth, Aubretia Lantis would still be alive!’
The words rang out from my throat. I scarce recognized my own voice. All about me, the festivities faltered. Conversation in the adjoining pavilions ceased. All eyes were turned towards the scene I had abruptly created. My heart near stopped in my chest, but I found myself going on without it, stepping forward without conscious volition, shouting words whose source was not myself. ‘I bring you word of her death. Poverty and privation shortened her life, but it was your betrayal of her heart that killed her, Howarth. Aubretia Lantis was my grandmother. I give to you now the last bit of wealth that you were unable to strip from her: this ring, as empty as your promise. Keep it, along with all else you swindled from her.’ I pulled the silver circle from my hand and threw the empty setting with a skill not my own. It sparkled as it flew through the air, and it landed squarely in Howarth’s empty glass, setting it ringing in the silence that followed my words. The old man’s eyes stood out from his face, and a vein pulsed wildly on his brow. I suspected he thought he saw a ghost, come back to waken old scandal just when his reputation most needed to be sound. I looked aside from him to his wife. She was scarlet with humiliation. ‘Study it well, Howarth’s wife,’ I bade her disdainfully. ‘Would not the Lantis emerald you wear about your neck fit well in its setting? Believe what you have denied to yourself all these years; a dead woman’s wealth bought you. Know that you married a liar and an upstart; know that your whole family is founded on his betrayal of a Bingtown Trader.’ I rounded disdainfully on the two young Trader men who sat at his table. The young women beside them, obviously Howarth’s daughters, stared at me in white-faced horror. ‘Consider well what you join your names to, Traders’ sons,’ I told them. ‘It is the Lantis wealth you are marrying, stripped of the Lantis name.’
Howarth had found his tongue. The dapper old man now looked drawn and pale. He pointed a shaking finger at me but spoke to his wife in the pitched voice of the near-deaf. ‘She can prove nothing! Nothing! The money Aubretia gave me, she gave me for love of me. She cannot legally force me to return it.’
His wife’s jaw dropped open. I thought she would faint from mortification. I let the silence gather, then floated my words upon it. ‘And with those words, you admit a guilt and a shame greater than anything I could wish to prove. Keep the wealth, Howarth. Choke on it. You have dirtied it, and I have no need of anything you have touched.’
I turned on my heel then and walked away. A stunned silence hung behind me like a curtain, one that was suddenly rent by the wind of a thousand tongues flapping. Like a stirred beehive, all of the great Market circle hummed and buzzed. The scandal that Howarth thought he had left behind him would now mark his declining years.
‘Nor will his daughters wed Traders’ sons. His wife would do best to sweep them back to Jamaillia and marry them off where she can, for after this, they will never mount into Bingtown society,’ my pendant Whispered to me in savage joy. ‘You have done it, my dear. You have done us all proud with your success.’
I made no reply, but cut my way through the crowds, ignoring the comments and stares that followed me. My steady walk slowly cooled the angry flush from my cheeks and calmed the thundering of my heart. I had found my way down to the Bingtown docks where the cool wind off the water swept the heat from my face. I pondered the words I had said and what I had done. At the time it had seemed so perfectly fulfilling. Now I wondered at it.