Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey

Author:Candas Jane Dorsey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: speculative fiction
Publisher: Five Rivers Publishing
Published: 2013-09-16T16:00:00+00:00

An angry ennui still surrounds Essa. Her two lives are like two quarreling voices in her head. The party seems only an external manifestation.

The crowd swirls around her, all the court but the most loyal of the despot’s followers, who are probably searching the rooms of those who have ever expressed sympathy for the heir. For Essa.

Faces seem to streak toward her out of the gloom, ogle her, make some comment, and dwindle away. She would have suspected the buffet fare to be spiked with intoxicants, but she realizes that all the strangeness is outside herself. Even before she ate the sliced meats which had made her mouth numb, the spiky vegetables which had restored her taste, the smooth fruit libation poured by the mute slave who had once helped a waif from the south adjust to coastal servant life, even before this Essa had known the night would befuddle her. Just when she needs wit, too.

But it is too soon since she has had the tribal mind of the amnesiac. She can’t detach from the magics, take them for granted as a civilized person always should. She has forgotten her sophisticated manners. Everything presses on her senses as if her nerves have been abraded, all the nerve endings exposed to air and light and danger. It’s not unreasonable, she supposes, considering where I am. But she hates it nonetheless.

Across the room a woman is watching her. By her black attire she establishes herself in high society; by her wild black hair she shows her disdain for smoothness. Every time Essa looks at her, she is looking back, her eyes knowing Essa more than is comfortable. Essa forces herself time and time again to break the eye contact, to glance away as if casually.

The woman has wide, comfortable hips, a shapely body, and small hands and feet. From the distance across the hall, and in the dim light, her breast, exposed by the fashionable dress, seem decorated. Is that a new fashion too? Essa glances down involuntarily. She has chosen the most dramatic of the attire presented to her, a form- fitting net of black knit fabric decorated with iridescent overlay like the wings of that saucy bird which scavenges in mountain towns. Her own breasts are bare but for the slight shadow of makeup the dresser applied. She looks up again. The woman is grinning as if she has understood Essa’s sudden fashion problem. Essa has to laugh herself, which makes the nobleman close to her turn with a politely questioning look.

“Nothing. I saw something funny,” she says.

“You had better not tell me,” he says with what she supposes he thinks is wit. “This crowd is partisan. I am too. We defend our friends from even an imagined slight.”

“Or even an imagined threat?” Essa is working the crowd automatically, probing for supporters and enemies.

“Most certainly. Have you seen the blooming trees in the garden? My mother told me that your mother particularly loved the garden.”

“Yes, so the slaves say.”

“Say?”

“They have ways of telling me.

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