[Witches' Horses] Falcons' Feathers
Title: face to face
'Verse/characters: Falcons' Feathers; Khenbish, Yevgenia, Irina
Prompt: 50F "snore"
Word Count: 3603
Notes: dormouse_in_tea Demanded more Falcons' Feathers. Specifically the later stages of Part 2 (the fairytale section, which doesn't exactly play out quite the way the fairytale does anyway); this includes the spark copper ornaments. Contrasting this piece with good days come with stunt riding and explosions may be . . illuminating.
In other news, many commas died to bring you this piece.
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Yevgenia had asked him to come along on a tour of her domain, and he'd had no reason to decline. The nagging feeling that he needed to do something, to be somewhere, wasn't enough to keep him in the quarters he shared with Yevgenia, and once he got moving it mostly faded away.
After elbowing and pulling his way into the clothes she'd arranged to leave near him, he ran careless hands over his head, trying to smooth his hair down. His fingers caught on the beads woven in--again--and he winced, reaching for a knife that wasn't in his belt. Closing his fingers over empty air jolted him a pace forward, the hand still in his hair coming free to slap at a panel in the wall that should have spat another blade into his hand.
Nothing happened. The panel he'd slapped hard enough to echo a little was seamless under his palm, and after a moment he shook his head at himself. Must've been thinking of another room.
The door swished open, near-noiseless, but he still looked over. Found Yevgenia blinking at him from the threshold, the golden feather-sections at the edges of her eyelashes transforming an almost invisible motion into a soundless clear question.
He shook his head, and she came softly in, the door swishing closed behind her, to brush her hands over his shoulders. After a moment, she reached up and sleeked her fingers over the crown of his head, smoothing down the tangles from getting dressed and snagging his fingers. He bowed his head toward her, eyes half-closed, and caught a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she pulled one of the gold-printed black beads forward, twisting the section of hair it was braided into around another few sections so that it would stay visible when she took her hand away.
"The brown?" she asked, stepping away towards his wardrobe, and he almost shook his head, answered 'the yellow', but caught himself. He didn't have a yellow headband, much less one decorated with steel and tarnished silver thickly enough to clash with Yevgenia's red and gold and brown.
"The red," he said instead, and dipped his head to let her slip the band over his head, then pushed it up from his neck to guard his hairline.
She smiled at him, lashes dipping and feathers nearly winging across her cheekbones, then took his hand and pulled him gently with her towards the door. He was close enough to hear her earrings chime, to examine the delicate curve of the back of her neck as she moved ahead of him, smiling a little over her shoulder as she did.
Her guards made space for him, tucked him four paces behind her, and they moved off slowly, giving her time to accept message slips or to touch companionable hands with the people who lined every corridor they approached.
Her processions were almost necessary just to keep track of everyone she employed, he thought, not for the first time, and let his mind drift.
Some time later--he thought they'd made a full circuit of this level of her terem but couldn't be certain--he heard metal chiming. It caught his attention, made some bit of his mind sit up and take notice, and he had to think about why. Yevgenia's earrings chimed together more often than not, there were wind-catchers set up near several of the vents, even the guards occasionally clanked as they moved. So it wasn't just the noise.
Another chime, and that time he could identify it: copper bells tinkling against one another. Nobody here used copper like that--he'd have noticed if he'd heard that sound before--but he couldn't shake the certainty. Copper bells, the sound of faraway places, of faraway, familiar people, though he couldn't put a single face to the sound at the moment. It'd come to him, he knew, and he shook his head at himself, half-smiling at Yevgenia's back as he set off after her.
He'd barely taken three steps when he heard the bells again, and that time he craned his head, looking at the sea of Yevgenia's staff as his stride faltered. He could see Yevgenia pausing from the corner of his eye, the slim line of her figure turning towards him, but they'd been in no hurry and he felt no need to apologise.
'No married woman's necklace,' he thought, peering over a guard's shoulder, 'not a young man's bracelet,' as he ducked his head a little to look past a kerchiefed woman's head into the crowd of Yevgenia's servants, past two broad-shouldered men, and down to find a gleam of copper.
The men parted immediately when he ducked between them, and the girl they exposed froze, blue eyes wide as she saw his face.
She caught herself quickly, looked down, focusing on the floor--or maybe his shoes, it was hard to tell. She was a pale little thing, paler than Yevgenia, almost washed out by the lights overhead. Unfamiliar, until he looked down her body, mostly obscured by one of Yevgenia's servants' aprons, past her work reddened, bruised fingers, and saw the edges of a broad belt behind the fabric. She wore it low--lower than he expected--but there it was, thickly stitched in familiar colours, and bordered with small hammered-copper bells.
"Where'd you get that?" he demanded, and her head jerked up to glare at him, but the narrow-eyed fury in her eyes quickly disappeared as she looked past his shoulder.
"It was a gift," she answered him, voice forced even, still looking over his shoulder, and he wasn't surprised to feel Yevgenia's hand curl over his shirt, her fingers warm. He shifted slightly to the side so she could get a good look, and she squeezed her hand companionably.
"What is your name, my dear?" Yevgenia asked, and the girl dipped herself in a deep curtsey, pale head dropped low, tilted down to expose a strand of dark pearls braided into her hair.
He blinked. Blinked again, barely heard the girl say "Irina, mistress," in response to Yevgenia's question because he was noticing how the dark pearls reflected green and faint iridescent blue back up at the terem lights, not Yevgenia's gold or red, but oddly familiar, nonetheless. He tilted his head, thinking, and it was almost accidental that he got a look down the front of the girl's apron as she began to rise.
"Where in Tengri's domain did you find that?" he demanded, then realised that hadn't been in Russian. Drew in a breath to try again, but paused when the girl pulled her chin in towards her throat to look down her own apron, looked back up at him, and all but shrugged. Not so much it even moved the vane of the red feather pinned to her apron's shoulder, but he knew. It was almost enough to pull him a step closer, to crowd the girl backwards until she gave him a real answer--
"Do stop harassing my servants," Yevgenia murmured into his ear, one of her feathers tickling at his cheek as he let the breath out. "I'll have her in for a meeting when we're done."
He nodded, half unwilling, and stepped back to let Yevgenia have a few quiet words with the girl, before the procession moved on.
If the pace had felt slow before, it positively dragged now, runners emerging from the crowd and pressing notes into Yevgenia's hands, to be sent away with a few words or a near-silent command. If he could've slipped away unnoticed, he would have, doubled back to see if he could find that girl and get a better look at the thing around her neck, but Yevgenia looked over her shoulder too often, asked questions with her eyelashes and the curve of her mouth, and he was forced to shake his head every time. 'No, I'm fine, it wasn't that important, really,' he tried to say with his own face, and she'd nod, turn back to her people.
By the time they'd returned to the quarters they shared, he wanted to pick a fight just for something to do.
---
The summons came later than Irina had sort of expected; she'd had time to lose a brush and give herself several new bruises trying to get at it by the time the higher-ranking servant who set her tasks appeared with one of the men in the grafayina's guard-livery in tow. Irina paused, fingers just barely touching the end of the brush, and stared up at them, waiting. She didn't think she'd done anything else today to warrant a visit from the guard, but she was so bad at figuring out what they actually meant with their abbreviated task-lists that it was possible.
"You're to go with him," the servant ordered, and Irina gave up on the Devil-touched brush--instantly regretting it and sketching a cross as she extracted her arm from the panel--scrambling up. She dropped a quick curtsey once she was upright, not as deep as the one she'd given the grafayina earlier, and slotted the tools she'd had scattered around her skirts into their spaces as quickly as she could. She hated this, hated that she wasn't any good at the tasks she was set and unable to ask for stable duty, which she would probably even be good at. There were too many people wearing feathers down in the stables already, and adding to their number would get her no closer to her goal.
Pressing her temper down as the guard rolled his eyes at the other servant gave her something to do besides worry about how this was going to go. As the final tool locked in, she curtseyed again, this time only to the servant, and fell in behind the guard as he turned on his heel and set off down the corridor.
They left the grey walls behind quickly, climbing into brown and then eventually into a creamy-gold. She didn't quite have to trot to keep up, kept her head bowed just a little to ape the attitude of a servant. She still snuck glances every chance she got, looking for corner markings, the numbers of the emergency supplies in the corridors, the colours of the overhead lights.
It wouldn't hurt to know where he was to be found, after all.
The final door was edged in metallic red, and another guard--in nicer livery--opened the door in answer to her guard's firm tap. Irina couldn't help feeling like a parcel as the two guards exchanged nods and then the one she'd been following jerked his chin towards the door. The higher ranked guard closed the door behind her as she slipped through, locked it. Turning on his heel, he gestured for her to follow, and they set off again.
This trip was shorter, at least, ending with the guard sticking his head through a door, announcing "Dzhenshina, the girl you requested is here."
"Send her in, please," the grafayina's smooth voice answered from beyond the door, and Irina--irrationally seething at being called a girl instead of a dyevuschka--stepped through, carefully silent. As the door slid closed behind her, she dropped into another deep curtsey, directing her eyes at the floor.
"Up, up, my dear," the grafayina commanded, honey sweet but amused too. "Let me look at you."
Irina stood up, biting back the urge to stand properly, like the merchant's daughter she was instead of the servant she was aping.
The grafayina Yevgenia hadn't removed the golden feathers that had framed her eyes earlier, though she'd changed her formal dress. The new one looked softer, embroidered with golden flowers at the bodice and down the front to meet a thick hem that whispered as the grafayina moved. There were feathers printed at the cuffs of the chemise she was wearing underneath it, fading from gold to red and back again. Irina's sisters would have tried to move mountains for clothes like that. All Irina could think was how many repair parts a dress like that could be traded for, how much ice it might buy.
It kept her from meeting the grafayina's eyes, which was something, and she tried not to shiver as the whisper of the grafayina's dress and slippers padded around behind her. She'd faced down grandmothers alone and desperate. A human woman shouldn't be so worrying.
"That's a beautiful belt," the grafayina said eventually from behind her right shoulder, startling Irina more than she cared to admit.
"Thank you, mistress," she replied, trying not to clench her hands defensively. "It was a gift."
"And your necklace?" the hem of the beautiful dress came into view again, closer this time, and Irina moved her gaze up slightly, biting down on a laugh. It would never do to laugh and say it wasn't a necklace he'd seen.
She hadn't meant for him to spot her so soon, had expected a shout of recognition or perhaps a shout for the guards, but there'd been nothing. Not until he'd looked down her apron, and that hadn't even been for her. She probably would have punched him if it had, no matter the consequences.
Her hand was tighter on the synthetic cord that it should have been as she fished the little knife out, but "Oh," was all the grafayina murmured, coming closer, until Irina couldn't help but look her in the beautiful face. Fortunately the grafayina's attention was wholly on the knife.
"Was that a gift, too?" the grafayina asked, reaching out to brush at the filigree of the sheathe, and Irina tugged the cord up over her head without thinking about it, flipping the knife up into the palm of her receiving hand. Praying the grafayina didn't spend enough time around riders that the ease of motion would ring bells, she held her palm out a little, offering.
After a moment's hesitation, the grafayina reached out, down to touch the knife with admiring fingers. "That's lovely," she said, and Irina felt the corners of her mouth tug upwards.
"Thank you, mistress," she said again, and didn't clench her hand protectively closed as the grafayina lifted the knife, cord and all, into her own hands, turning it round with the pads of uncalloused fingers. Irina was trying not to look, but she couldn't help seeing the way the feathers attached to the grafayina's eyelashes drifted nearly together as she examined the blade.
"What would you like for this?" she asked, and Irina blinked involuntarily.
"Mistress?" she asked back, and the grafayina looked up at her, feathers spreading out to frame dark eyes that weren't laughing, no matter the way their owner's mouth was curved.
"This is lovely," the grafayina repeated herself, like she was speaking to someone slow, "I would love to have it. What would you like?"
"I want to see him," Irina said without thinking. She would have clapped a hand over her face, mortified at her lack of subtlety, but the grafayina only blinked.
"My consort?" she asked silkily, and Irina wanted to scream at her, wanted to crack the infuriating confidence written all over the woman's face, but held her tongue and nodded.
The grafayina looked down at the knife again, weighing it absently in her palm, then looked back up, directly at Irina for the first time. "I'll give you an hour, in exchange for the knife."
"Counting from the moment we're in the same room?" Irina shot back. It was unnerving to look the grafayina in the face; the feathers at the edges of her eyes made her seem less human.
"Done," the grafayina said, dropping her hand to her side and looking over Irina's shoulder towards the door. "I'll have Oleg show you where to come when your work shift is finished."
"Thank you, mistress." Irina dropped into another deep curtsey, held it long enough that her knees trembled, and meekly followed the guard who responded to the grafayina's summons.
That evening, feeling oddly naked without the little knife around her neck, she returned to the door she'd been told to come to, tapped just loud enough to carry at the knocker-panel.
The deal, she absolutely knew, had been with the grafayina, not with them both. No deal that involved Khenbish--or Bikram, or Thakur, or Nergüi, or Kavin or whatever name he drew around his skin like a silk shirt when he woke up--would ever have been so open-ended. Or so small; he had a weakness for grand dramatic gestures.
It had hurt to give up something she knew was his. The reaction he'd had to the knife all but shouted that he'd stolen it, or found it somewhere, the way he'd found that balalaika. But an hour with him? Worth the price. Even if it was all shouting and accusations and at least one of them bleeding by the end.
She almost knocked again, but heard the door cycling as she lifted her hand. She was sort of expecting the grafayina, in yet another beautiful dress, come to tell her that when asked, he'd refused to see her. She was hoping for him, mentally deciding to call him Kavin when she saw him even as the door slid open, but it was only a servant on the other side of the door.
After a moment of mentally tripping over her own feet, she nodded politely to the servant, not bothering to essay a smile, and was let in, led through a room filled with beautifully painted furniture and embroidered pillows, and deposited in front of another door.
She debated knocking, chewing at her bottom lip, then reached out a shaking hand and pressed the marked panel.
The door slid aside, just loud enough to register, and when nothing else happened she stepped forward into the dusk-gloom. Clearing the threshold let the door slide shut behind her, this time with a faint chime that sounded like a clock's bell, and the reminder of her time limit made her reach over and slap the light control to the right of the door.
Light all but exploded out of the ceiling, and she winced, turned it down to a tolerable day level with her eyes mostly closed, then wondered why there hadn't been shouting yet. She'd expected it as soon as the outer door had opened, almost hoped for it instead of a cold question as to what she thought she was doing, but the silence was frightening.
Had the grafayina locked her in an empty room to teach her a lesson? She thought she'd seen the outline of a mussed bed on the other side of the room, half-obscured by a painted screen, but it was still hard to see past the afterimages.
She was about to turn around and try opening the door again when she heard it.
She paused, tilting her head to one side, and listened a little harder. That wasn't the air vent; the pattern was too close together. Soft, regular noise, almost like breathing--it was a little familiar. When she closed her eyes it became more so, strangely comforting as well as familiar.
"Are you asleep?" she demanded of the air when she finally put the last piece in place, snapping her eyes open and stomping towards the bed. It was a ridiculous idea, he'd woken up when she turned around in a separate cocoon of blankets, let alone cycled a door near him and flicked on every light in the room.
But there he was, sprawled face down with one arm drawn up to hide his face. The blankets--and it was a surprise that he was lying in a bed at all, instead of tucked away in a corner, but maybe he'd gotten used to the heavier terem gravity?--were rumpled, rucked down to expose what little of his face showed between the dark mess of his hair and his arm, down past his shoulder, nearly to his waist, and she ached to see him.
"Kavin," she said, not softly, but her only answer was another tiny little snore. She scowled down at him; that he snored at all had been a massive surprise, a long time ago, but this wasn't endearing, a strange expression of trust that he was asleep and she was awake next to him. "Khenbish, wake up," she tried again, this time in his language, not Russian, but he didn't stir.
He did grumble a little when she poked him in the exposed shoulder, but didn't even bat at her. She'd expected to need to throw herself backwards, out of knifing range, and nearly fell down on her rear when nothing happened.
Eventually, she sat down against the wall nearest him, and started talking. Not about anything that really mattered, because she wasn't sure if the grafayina was listening, and she didn't have the vocabulary to say everything she wanted to, but she tried. Let herself get angry, talking about her sisters, talking about how he'd left, but he never moved, just snored quietly.
When the outer door cycled open, she'd turned the lights back down and was sitting in the plainest of the chairs near the door.
She didn't think she looked like she'd been crying, but the servant who collected her and ushered her back out of the grafayina's quarters told her where to find tea in the morning.
Trying to take it in the spirit it seemed to be meant, she nodded, and trudged back to her grey-walled room, stripped down to her chemise and hid under her pillow until it was time to work again.
'Verse/characters: Falcons' Feathers; Khenbish, Yevgenia, Irina
Prompt: 50F "snore"
Word Count: 3603
Notes: dormouse_in_tea Demanded more Falcons' Feathers. Specifically the later stages of Part 2 (the fairytale section, which doesn't exactly play out quite the way the fairytale does anyway); this includes the spark copper ornaments. Contrasting this piece with good days come with stunt riding and explosions may be . . illuminating.
In other news, many commas died to bring you this piece.
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Yevgenia had asked him to come along on a tour of her domain, and he'd had no reason to decline. The nagging feeling that he needed to do something, to be somewhere, wasn't enough to keep him in the quarters he shared with Yevgenia, and once he got moving it mostly faded away.
After elbowing and pulling his way into the clothes she'd arranged to leave near him, he ran careless hands over his head, trying to smooth his hair down. His fingers caught on the beads woven in--again--and he winced, reaching for a knife that wasn't in his belt. Closing his fingers over empty air jolted him a pace forward, the hand still in his hair coming free to slap at a panel in the wall that should have spat another blade into his hand.
Nothing happened. The panel he'd slapped hard enough to echo a little was seamless under his palm, and after a moment he shook his head at himself. Must've been thinking of another room.
The door swished open, near-noiseless, but he still looked over. Found Yevgenia blinking at him from the threshold, the golden feather-sections at the edges of her eyelashes transforming an almost invisible motion into a soundless clear question.
He shook his head, and she came softly in, the door swishing closed behind her, to brush her hands over his shoulders. After a moment, she reached up and sleeked her fingers over the crown of his head, smoothing down the tangles from getting dressed and snagging his fingers. He bowed his head toward her, eyes half-closed, and caught a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she pulled one of the gold-printed black beads forward, twisting the section of hair it was braided into around another few sections so that it would stay visible when she took her hand away.
"The brown?" she asked, stepping away towards his wardrobe, and he almost shook his head, answered 'the yellow', but caught himself. He didn't have a yellow headband, much less one decorated with steel and tarnished silver thickly enough to clash with Yevgenia's red and gold and brown.
"The red," he said instead, and dipped his head to let her slip the band over his head, then pushed it up from his neck to guard his hairline.
She smiled at him, lashes dipping and feathers nearly winging across her cheekbones, then took his hand and pulled him gently with her towards the door. He was close enough to hear her earrings chime, to examine the delicate curve of the back of her neck as she moved ahead of him, smiling a little over her shoulder as she did.
Her guards made space for him, tucked him four paces behind her, and they moved off slowly, giving her time to accept message slips or to touch companionable hands with the people who lined every corridor they approached.
Her processions were almost necessary just to keep track of everyone she employed, he thought, not for the first time, and let his mind drift.
Some time later--he thought they'd made a full circuit of this level of her terem but couldn't be certain--he heard metal chiming. It caught his attention, made some bit of his mind sit up and take notice, and he had to think about why. Yevgenia's earrings chimed together more often than not, there were wind-catchers set up near several of the vents, even the guards occasionally clanked as they moved. So it wasn't just the noise.
Another chime, and that time he could identify it: copper bells tinkling against one another. Nobody here used copper like that--he'd have noticed if he'd heard that sound before--but he couldn't shake the certainty. Copper bells, the sound of faraway places, of faraway, familiar people, though he couldn't put a single face to the sound at the moment. It'd come to him, he knew, and he shook his head at himself, half-smiling at Yevgenia's back as he set off after her.
He'd barely taken three steps when he heard the bells again, and that time he craned his head, looking at the sea of Yevgenia's staff as his stride faltered. He could see Yevgenia pausing from the corner of his eye, the slim line of her figure turning towards him, but they'd been in no hurry and he felt no need to apologise.
'No married woman's necklace,' he thought, peering over a guard's shoulder, 'not a young man's bracelet,' as he ducked his head a little to look past a kerchiefed woman's head into the crowd of Yevgenia's servants, past two broad-shouldered men, and down to find a gleam of copper.
The men parted immediately when he ducked between them, and the girl they exposed froze, blue eyes wide as she saw his face.
She caught herself quickly, looked down, focusing on the floor--or maybe his shoes, it was hard to tell. She was a pale little thing, paler than Yevgenia, almost washed out by the lights overhead. Unfamiliar, until he looked down her body, mostly obscured by one of Yevgenia's servants' aprons, past her work reddened, bruised fingers, and saw the edges of a broad belt behind the fabric. She wore it low--lower than he expected--but there it was, thickly stitched in familiar colours, and bordered with small hammered-copper bells.
"Where'd you get that?" he demanded, and her head jerked up to glare at him, but the narrow-eyed fury in her eyes quickly disappeared as she looked past his shoulder.
"It was a gift," she answered him, voice forced even, still looking over his shoulder, and he wasn't surprised to feel Yevgenia's hand curl over his shirt, her fingers warm. He shifted slightly to the side so she could get a good look, and she squeezed her hand companionably.
"What is your name, my dear?" Yevgenia asked, and the girl dipped herself in a deep curtsey, pale head dropped low, tilted down to expose a strand of dark pearls braided into her hair.
He blinked. Blinked again, barely heard the girl say "Irina, mistress," in response to Yevgenia's question because he was noticing how the dark pearls reflected green and faint iridescent blue back up at the terem lights, not Yevgenia's gold or red, but oddly familiar, nonetheless. He tilted his head, thinking, and it was almost accidental that he got a look down the front of the girl's apron as she began to rise.
"Where in Tengri's domain did you find that?" he demanded, then realised that hadn't been in Russian. Drew in a breath to try again, but paused when the girl pulled her chin in towards her throat to look down her own apron, looked back up at him, and all but shrugged. Not so much it even moved the vane of the red feather pinned to her apron's shoulder, but he knew. It was almost enough to pull him a step closer, to crowd the girl backwards until she gave him a real answer--
"Do stop harassing my servants," Yevgenia murmured into his ear, one of her feathers tickling at his cheek as he let the breath out. "I'll have her in for a meeting when we're done."
He nodded, half unwilling, and stepped back to let Yevgenia have a few quiet words with the girl, before the procession moved on.
If the pace had felt slow before, it positively dragged now, runners emerging from the crowd and pressing notes into Yevgenia's hands, to be sent away with a few words or a near-silent command. If he could've slipped away unnoticed, he would have, doubled back to see if he could find that girl and get a better look at the thing around her neck, but Yevgenia looked over her shoulder too often, asked questions with her eyelashes and the curve of her mouth, and he was forced to shake his head every time. 'No, I'm fine, it wasn't that important, really,' he tried to say with his own face, and she'd nod, turn back to her people.
By the time they'd returned to the quarters they shared, he wanted to pick a fight just for something to do.
---
The summons came later than Irina had sort of expected; she'd had time to lose a brush and give herself several new bruises trying to get at it by the time the higher-ranking servant who set her tasks appeared with one of the men in the grafayina's guard-livery in tow. Irina paused, fingers just barely touching the end of the brush, and stared up at them, waiting. She didn't think she'd done anything else today to warrant a visit from the guard, but she was so bad at figuring out what they actually meant with their abbreviated task-lists that it was possible.
"You're to go with him," the servant ordered, and Irina gave up on the Devil-touched brush--instantly regretting it and sketching a cross as she extracted her arm from the panel--scrambling up. She dropped a quick curtsey once she was upright, not as deep as the one she'd given the grafayina earlier, and slotted the tools she'd had scattered around her skirts into their spaces as quickly as she could. She hated this, hated that she wasn't any good at the tasks she was set and unable to ask for stable duty, which she would probably even be good at. There were too many people wearing feathers down in the stables already, and adding to their number would get her no closer to her goal.
Pressing her temper down as the guard rolled his eyes at the other servant gave her something to do besides worry about how this was going to go. As the final tool locked in, she curtseyed again, this time only to the servant, and fell in behind the guard as he turned on his heel and set off down the corridor.
They left the grey walls behind quickly, climbing into brown and then eventually into a creamy-gold. She didn't quite have to trot to keep up, kept her head bowed just a little to ape the attitude of a servant. She still snuck glances every chance she got, looking for corner markings, the numbers of the emergency supplies in the corridors, the colours of the overhead lights.
It wouldn't hurt to know where he was to be found, after all.
The final door was edged in metallic red, and another guard--in nicer livery--opened the door in answer to her guard's firm tap. Irina couldn't help feeling like a parcel as the two guards exchanged nods and then the one she'd been following jerked his chin towards the door. The higher ranked guard closed the door behind her as she slipped through, locked it. Turning on his heel, he gestured for her to follow, and they set off again.
This trip was shorter, at least, ending with the guard sticking his head through a door, announcing "Dzhenshina, the girl you requested is here."
"Send her in, please," the grafayina's smooth voice answered from beyond the door, and Irina--irrationally seething at being called a girl instead of a dyevuschka--stepped through, carefully silent. As the door slid closed behind her, she dropped into another deep curtsey, directing her eyes at the floor.
"Up, up, my dear," the grafayina commanded, honey sweet but amused too. "Let me look at you."
Irina stood up, biting back the urge to stand properly, like the merchant's daughter she was instead of the servant she was aping.
The grafayina Yevgenia hadn't removed the golden feathers that had framed her eyes earlier, though she'd changed her formal dress. The new one looked softer, embroidered with golden flowers at the bodice and down the front to meet a thick hem that whispered as the grafayina moved. There were feathers printed at the cuffs of the chemise she was wearing underneath it, fading from gold to red and back again. Irina's sisters would have tried to move mountains for clothes like that. All Irina could think was how many repair parts a dress like that could be traded for, how much ice it might buy.
It kept her from meeting the grafayina's eyes, which was something, and she tried not to shiver as the whisper of the grafayina's dress and slippers padded around behind her. She'd faced down grandmothers alone and desperate. A human woman shouldn't be so worrying.
"That's a beautiful belt," the grafayina said eventually from behind her right shoulder, startling Irina more than she cared to admit.
"Thank you, mistress," she replied, trying not to clench her hands defensively. "It was a gift."
"And your necklace?" the hem of the beautiful dress came into view again, closer this time, and Irina moved her gaze up slightly, biting down on a laugh. It would never do to laugh and say it wasn't a necklace he'd seen.
She hadn't meant for him to spot her so soon, had expected a shout of recognition or perhaps a shout for the guards, but there'd been nothing. Not until he'd looked down her apron, and that hadn't even been for her. She probably would have punched him if it had, no matter the consequences.
Her hand was tighter on the synthetic cord that it should have been as she fished the little knife out, but "Oh," was all the grafayina murmured, coming closer, until Irina couldn't help but look her in the beautiful face. Fortunately the grafayina's attention was wholly on the knife.
"Was that a gift, too?" the grafayina asked, reaching out to brush at the filigree of the sheathe, and Irina tugged the cord up over her head without thinking about it, flipping the knife up into the palm of her receiving hand. Praying the grafayina didn't spend enough time around riders that the ease of motion would ring bells, she held her palm out a little, offering.
After a moment's hesitation, the grafayina reached out, down to touch the knife with admiring fingers. "That's lovely," she said, and Irina felt the corners of her mouth tug upwards.
"Thank you, mistress," she said again, and didn't clench her hand protectively closed as the grafayina lifted the knife, cord and all, into her own hands, turning it round with the pads of uncalloused fingers. Irina was trying not to look, but she couldn't help seeing the way the feathers attached to the grafayina's eyelashes drifted nearly together as she examined the blade.
"What would you like for this?" she asked, and Irina blinked involuntarily.
"Mistress?" she asked back, and the grafayina looked up at her, feathers spreading out to frame dark eyes that weren't laughing, no matter the way their owner's mouth was curved.
"This is lovely," the grafayina repeated herself, like she was speaking to someone slow, "I would love to have it. What would you like?"
"I want to see him," Irina said without thinking. She would have clapped a hand over her face, mortified at her lack of subtlety, but the grafayina only blinked.
"My consort?" she asked silkily, and Irina wanted to scream at her, wanted to crack the infuriating confidence written all over the woman's face, but held her tongue and nodded.
The grafayina looked down at the knife again, weighing it absently in her palm, then looked back up, directly at Irina for the first time. "I'll give you an hour, in exchange for the knife."
"Counting from the moment we're in the same room?" Irina shot back. It was unnerving to look the grafayina in the face; the feathers at the edges of her eyes made her seem less human.
"Done," the grafayina said, dropping her hand to her side and looking over Irina's shoulder towards the door. "I'll have Oleg show you where to come when your work shift is finished."
"Thank you, mistress." Irina dropped into another deep curtsey, held it long enough that her knees trembled, and meekly followed the guard who responded to the grafayina's summons.
That evening, feeling oddly naked without the little knife around her neck, she returned to the door she'd been told to come to, tapped just loud enough to carry at the knocker-panel.
The deal, she absolutely knew, had been with the grafayina, not with them both. No deal that involved Khenbish--or Bikram, or Thakur, or Nergüi, or Kavin or whatever name he drew around his skin like a silk shirt when he woke up--would ever have been so open-ended. Or so small; he had a weakness for grand dramatic gestures.
It had hurt to give up something she knew was his. The reaction he'd had to the knife all but shouted that he'd stolen it, or found it somewhere, the way he'd found that balalaika. But an hour with him? Worth the price. Even if it was all shouting and accusations and at least one of them bleeding by the end.
She almost knocked again, but heard the door cycling as she lifted her hand. She was sort of expecting the grafayina, in yet another beautiful dress, come to tell her that when asked, he'd refused to see her. She was hoping for him, mentally deciding to call him Kavin when she saw him even as the door slid open, but it was only a servant on the other side of the door.
After a moment of mentally tripping over her own feet, she nodded politely to the servant, not bothering to essay a smile, and was let in, led through a room filled with beautifully painted furniture and embroidered pillows, and deposited in front of another door.
She debated knocking, chewing at her bottom lip, then reached out a shaking hand and pressed the marked panel.
The door slid aside, just loud enough to register, and when nothing else happened she stepped forward into the dusk-gloom. Clearing the threshold let the door slide shut behind her, this time with a faint chime that sounded like a clock's bell, and the reminder of her time limit made her reach over and slap the light control to the right of the door.
Light all but exploded out of the ceiling, and she winced, turned it down to a tolerable day level with her eyes mostly closed, then wondered why there hadn't been shouting yet. She'd expected it as soon as the outer door had opened, almost hoped for it instead of a cold question as to what she thought she was doing, but the silence was frightening.
Had the grafayina locked her in an empty room to teach her a lesson? She thought she'd seen the outline of a mussed bed on the other side of the room, half-obscured by a painted screen, but it was still hard to see past the afterimages.
She was about to turn around and try opening the door again when she heard it.
She paused, tilting her head to one side, and listened a little harder. That wasn't the air vent; the pattern was too close together. Soft, regular noise, almost like breathing--it was a little familiar. When she closed her eyes it became more so, strangely comforting as well as familiar.
"Are you asleep?" she demanded of the air when she finally put the last piece in place, snapping her eyes open and stomping towards the bed. It was a ridiculous idea, he'd woken up when she turned around in a separate cocoon of blankets, let alone cycled a door near him and flicked on every light in the room.
But there he was, sprawled face down with one arm drawn up to hide his face. The blankets--and it was a surprise that he was lying in a bed at all, instead of tucked away in a corner, but maybe he'd gotten used to the heavier terem gravity?--were rumpled, rucked down to expose what little of his face showed between the dark mess of his hair and his arm, down past his shoulder, nearly to his waist, and she ached to see him.
"Kavin," she said, not softly, but her only answer was another tiny little snore. She scowled down at him; that he snored at all had been a massive surprise, a long time ago, but this wasn't endearing, a strange expression of trust that he was asleep and she was awake next to him. "Khenbish, wake up," she tried again, this time in his language, not Russian, but he didn't stir.
He did grumble a little when she poked him in the exposed shoulder, but didn't even bat at her. She'd expected to need to throw herself backwards, out of knifing range, and nearly fell down on her rear when nothing happened.
Eventually, she sat down against the wall nearest him, and started talking. Not about anything that really mattered, because she wasn't sure if the grafayina was listening, and she didn't have the vocabulary to say everything she wanted to, but she tried. Let herself get angry, talking about her sisters, talking about how he'd left, but he never moved, just snored quietly.
When the outer door cycled open, she'd turned the lights back down and was sitting in the plainest of the chairs near the door.
She didn't think she looked like she'd been crying, but the servant who collected her and ushered her back out of the grafayina's quarters told her where to find tea in the morning.
Trying to take it in the spirit it seemed to be meant, she nodded, and trudged back to her grey-walled room, stripped down to her chemise and hid under her pillow until it was time to work again.