her.” He paused thoughtfully, his eyes on the lights beyond her. “Before you go, I wonder what you make of this letter? It arrived the other day.”
He took an object from behind the family book and held it across the mat. The paper was fine and thick, creamy. She turned it over and started to read. Diane, Duchess Tremontaine was the signature. Why did that name sound familiar? Ah, yes. The lady who had first served the saffron hares. Rafe had been positively irascible on the way back home, and on his lips the name of the duke—this lady’s husband, apparently—had nearly dripped poison. The duke sat on the Board of Governors.
The letter was short. It requested a meeting with Kaab’s uncle to discuss matters of trade that would be beneficial to them both. It gently stressed her political connections through her husband, and her place in polite society.
“I thought the nobility here did not interest themselves in trade?”
“As did I, Niece. This letter is . . . quite unusual.”
“Well, there can be no harm in seeing what she wants, can there? What does Aunt say?”
“She is inclined to agree with you.”
“But?”
Uncle Chuleb looked out at the lamp-lit garden, accurate as a drawing of home by a Trader too long away. “The lady is not to be underestimated. Her husband is very influential, but I suspect that she personally exercises more political power than her peers believe. Her hand in anything is a reason to be cautious.”
“How will you answer her?”
He shrugged. “I have petitioned Xamanek for guidance. May his star always guide us. And of course, I’ll speak to your aunt. We will decide after the feast.”
• • •
The doors to the courtyard thrown open, the arcaded peristyle draped in multicolored garlands of flowers sweet enough to coat the throat, the drums and flutes playing a song of welcome to the entering guests, a song of farewell to the flaming sun. The servants in mantles and draped loincloths of henequen carrying trays of wooden cups, filled with frothy chocolate prepared in the traditional style: cold, scented with honey and vanilla and blossoms of trees so exotic their names have yet to be made palatable to the Local tongue. The women of the house, as precious as flowers, as precious as jade in their skirts and blouses and wide belts stiff with precious jewels, multicolored embroidery whose meaning escapes the ant-egg skin guests and sings its own song to the Traders far from home. The altars to Xamanek and Chaacmul on the north and west sides of the portico are laden with offerings of burning copal resin, wafting pleasantly among the guests, and with figurines of amaranth dough mixed with the blood, ritually let, of the girl called Ixkaab and her family.
The Balam family greets their guests in the courtyard, smiling broadly as the Locals cast wide eyes at the pleasing extravagance of the flowers bought for the occasion, and of the formal attire of the hosts.
“By god, that man has a rock the size of my thumb up his nose!”
“It’s jade, dear. Inlaid with gold, if I’m not mistaken. A fine piece.”
“How does he breathe around that thing?”
“How do you talk around yours?”
The guests move on, gently steered by discreet servants. Chocolate is held to be intoxicating among the Kinwiinik. Only certain classes are allowed to taste its refined, prized flavor, which even the gods are said to hold in esteem. The Traders are willing to sell the processed beans to the Locals to do with as they please, but not even the most plebeian of country squires would dare ask one of those smooth-faced servants for cream to cut the bitterness of the frothy brew being served tonight. And if he did, they would just as impassively pretend not to understand him.
Ixkaab is resplendent in shades of red and green. She embroidered the blouse herself on the long boat journey. Her thick hair has been bound in two braids, wrapped around the back of her head and gathered into two small points in front, at the height of her fine brown eyes. This is a sign of respect: only married women and those dedicated to the service may bind their hair in this way. She is young, and so her jewels are modest, but Aunt Ixsaabim is a master of the art of personal adornment and they are brilliantly deployed. Her headdress is small, anchored to the back and shimmering with quetzal feathers that move in the brisk evening breeze like the river beneath the forest canopy: always green, but never quite the same shade. Her wide belt has been beaten with gold and layered with tiny jade beads in the motif of her father’s family. Her brown skin glows a shimmering yellow, tinted with the cream of axin brought especially from home. Her Uncle Chuleb and the male heads of the lesser Kinwiinik trading families who also live and trade in this city wear more elaborate headdresses of hardened cloth that support their expertly layered feathers, the pure jade of the quetzal, the flaming ruby of the spoonbill, the opalescent clarity of the bottom feathers of a Muscovy duck and tail feathers of a white heron. Their mantles are the product of a hundred hours of hard labor with loom and needle, and advertise their status as much as their jewels. At home, they could not chance such a public display of wealth. At home, Traders must engage in the fiction that they are not as wealthy as the nobles they serve. Here in the Land, money and power have a more open relationship.
The bustle in the courtyard flows through an open passageway, lit warmly by torches burning fragrant pine, and into a large banquet hall. The ceiling is arched, and the high windows have all been thrown open. The servants lead the Local guests, somewhat stiff and hampered by stays and petticoats and starched linen, to the long table high enough to fit several dozen chairs. The Fenton patriarch notes that the table at the front of the hall is low to the ground and surrounded by woven reed mats, and two squat chairs. The Kinwiinik guests who have been honored with invitations tonight remain standing near this low table. They appear content to wait. In their home, the Balam might occasionally be forced to prove their dominance over an upstart Trading family. In the land of the north, the great family maintains a careful, but unquestioned dominance.
Fenton’s wife, among the stiffest of the Local women present—her stays have been pulled so tightly against the fat of her stomach that a nervous laugh escapes her every time she breathes too deeply—agrees with her husband about the odd stature of the table. She is the sort of woman who generally finds it prudent to agree with her husband. Rafe Fenton, who loves his mother very much, despises this about her.
“Do you suppose they eat standing up?” Mistress Fenton ventures.
“I suppose they eat squatting on the floor. Odd folk.”
“They wear very fine cloth. And jewels. Rafe, dear, how do you think your sister would look with a few of those aquamarine feathers in her riding cap?”
“Like a ninny,” Rafe says. “So, entirely appropriate.”
“Oh, Rafe,” sighs the Fenton matriarch. The words have the melody of a song she has sung many times before. Rafe, with the look of a man with other things on his mind, mumbles an apology.
The Balams enter once their Local guests have been seated. They and their Kinwiinik guests indeed kneel at the low table, though the graceful way they fold their legs beneath the rich fabric of their skirts and mantles make the Fenton patriarch’s characterization of it as squatting seem satisfactorily churlish. To Rafe, at least. The lord and lady of the house occupy the two low stools and offer words of greeting to their assembled guests. The words, whatever they are, are lost on most listeners: the food has, at last, begun to arrive.
First comes a series of sauces studded with slices of meat only intermittently identifiable.
