The Wicked Skill by Sherwood Smith

Author:Sherwood Smith [Smith, Sherwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy of manners, epic fantasy, love and revolution, female agency
ISBN: 9781636320601
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2022-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

The next few days were a repeat of the first. Shontande Lirendi was the perfect guest, impeccably clothed, polite, well-spoken, attentive. It occurred to Atan that he had been performing that part since the sudden death of his father when he was small. Of course he’d know exactly what to say at every formal occasion: a whole lot of airy nothing, elegantly spoken.

The night before the ball, she had dictated to her personal scribe the changes she wanted in the following day’s schedule (for she did not have the luxury of a day spent lying about); by the time the ball ended, a beautifully written invitation, on gold-embossed paper, would be slipped under his door.

Thad, who had spent a week renovating the embassy, was waiting for Shontande when he returned from a concert. The seal invitation sat on the low table before him.

Shontande had intended to write a letter, but he recognized the Sartoran royal seal on the folded paper, and dropped down beside Thad. He picked up the heavy paper, but instead of reading it, leaned back on the low couch, his formal robe spilling in shimmering folds around him. “All evening as I listened to Austere Era polyphonies, I was trying to word a letter to Senrid. How does one say, ‘Friend, how could you be so wrong?’”

“You think it was a mistake to come to Sartor?” Thad was aghast. This had been the most exhausting week yet: he’d labored hard at refurbishing the entire embassy, and then there was overseeing the secondary task he’d been assigned, not even a third complete.

“Ah-ye, forgive me for being unclear, Thad.” Shontande made the peace, bowing as if Thad were the master and he the servant, for he knew quite well how hard Thad had been working. “I complain merely because my gift was a disaster,” Shontande said. “I should have foreseen it. Nor am I blaming Senrid, because he has never been to Colend during the Music Festival. For all I know, Marlovens don’t even have music. He can’t know how important it is to us—and, I’m beginning to perceive, to the Sartorans. That, I ought to have anticipated. I think that my welcome, surrounded by music, was in hopes that I was here to give it back. As if I could! Probably as well they don’t understand that I don’t have anything to give outside of my personal belongings, and even those, I had to smuggle out lest I be interrogated.”

Thad agreed with an unhappy bow. “I am also at fault. I’ve known Senrid longer, but somehow I expected he knew.”

“We can share the fault, for whatever that will bring us,” Shontande said with a wry smile. “Secondly, Senrid could not have known just how assiduously the court here would be weighing me up as a prospective consort. The first day I attributed to curiosity, but it has become more, ah, intent.”

“How is your being a consort even possible? Colend is so far away.”

“They ruled us once. I’m certain they’d find a way to do it again.

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