The Shape-Changer's Wife Read online

  “Looks like there’s nothing much wrong with him,” Aubrey said, coming to his feet. “I’m sure he’ll be better by this afternoon.”

  “Thankee, sir,” the woman said. She leaned closer to her son. “Kennie, darling, can ye hear me? Ah, that’s my boy, I like to see those big eyes—”

  Aubrey turned and stepped back toward Orion—and found the tavernkeeper’s daughter beside him. “He will be all right, won’t he?” she asked.

  “I think so. He wasn’t hurt badly.” Aubrey glanced at Orion, who watched him fixedly, then turned to face the young woman. “But I thank you for speaking up when you did. Those men were in a mood to lynch my friend.”

  She shrugged. “Folks here don’t care much for the people the wizard keeps at his house,” she said. “They don’t care much for the wizard either.” She smiled quickly. “But you don’t tell a sorcerer you don’t like him, or it may be the last thing you ever say.”

  Aubrey smiled back, liking her more and more. “There’s no harm in Glyrenden,” he said. “Or his servants. Or his wife. I admit they’re strange—or at least, the servants are. But I don’t think Orion would have attacked anyone without provocation. He’s more afraid of other people than they are of him.”

  “Well, there’s apt to be trouble if you send him to town again,” she said. “I wouldn’t let him come alone.”

  Aubrey laughed. “I’ve been escorting one or the other to town the past few times we’ve been to market,” he said, “and there’s been trouble each time. Maybe it’s me, and not them.”

  She flashed her pretty smile at him. “Try coming alone next time and see,” she suggested.

  “I might,” he said.

  “And then stop by my pa’s place, and I’ll give you an ale. And maybe a bit of lunch.”

  He grinned at her. “Now, didn’t you tell me you had some nice young fellow picked out to keep you company?”

  She tossed her hair back. “All I was offering was a meal,” she said, but she was smiling. “A girl can talk to a man or two before she settles down and marries.”

  “Agreed then,” Aubrey said, smiling back. “Next time I come, if I come alone, I’ll stop by for some of your father’s home-brewed ale.”

  She looked as if she would say something more, but just then someone called out to her, waving from across the road. Aubrey thus learned her name, which was Veryl. “I’ve got to be going along,” she said. “Don’t forget now.” She gave him that rogue’s smile again and left him, running daintily through the heavy dust of the road.

  Aubrey watched her go, a smile lingering on his mouth. He was startled to feel a touch on his elbow, and swung around quickly to find Orion had climbed down to stand beside him.

  “Go now,” the big man insisted. “Go now. Home. Now.”

  Aubrey turned his hands up, empty. “I dropped the fruit,” he said. “Let’s get another bag; then we’ll go.”

  “Go now,” Orion repeated. He hesitated, searching for a word; his dark eyes were pleading and doglike. “Please,” he said.

  Aubrey sighed, but he was not in the mood to be heartless. “All right,” he said. “Let’s just go home. We’ll get more fruit some other day.”

  This time, as they walked along the forest road, Orion seemed much less interested in his surroundings. He plodded beside Aubrey with his head down and his sacks clutched to his chest, saying almost nothing. Once in a while he looked up, tracking some sound or scent that Aubrey did not catch, but then he sighed and looked down at the road again. Aubrey found himself wondering how many times in the past, forced to go alone to market, Orion had been ridiculed and persecuted. Did Glyrenden know? How would he respond if he did know? Aubrey decided, without examining his motives closely, that he would not be the one to tell him.

  But the next time they needed groceries, he would go to town alone. And then quite possibly he might stop at the tavern for lunch; it sounded like a pleasant diversion, and a man, after all, must eat. And it would be no bad thing, he thought, for him to flirt with another woman, one who was pretty and lively and blond. He had grown so accustomed to Lilith and Arachne that he was forgetting what ordinary women were like—he was forgetting, even, that they were the strange ones, yes, even Lilith, with whom he found it so easy to spend the greatest portion of his days. She was strange, and she was married, and it would do him good to go to town alone now and then. Perhaps he would not even wait until the next time supplies were low.

  WHEN GLYRENDEN CAME home two days later, he was filled with a sly elation. Everyone noticed it, but no one troubled to ask what made him so happy. Not until dinner was over did he volunteer his news, lifting his wineglass high as if to toast someone not present.

  “Lilith, my love,” he said. “Guess where you will be spending the harvest holidays?”

  She looked over at him with perfect indifference. “Here, I suppose.”

  “Indeed, no. You and I have been invited to be guests at Lord Rochester’s home. For the week.”

  Lilith merely nodded and turned her eyes back to her empty plate. Aubrey admitted to a feeling of surprise and reluctant admiration. Lord Rochester was the richest noble in the county, the king’s cousin, and a highly influential man. Glyrenden, who had talked of the nobleman often, had long coveted his favor.

  “What do the celebrations entail?” Aubrey asked.

  Glyrenden turned his fever-bright eyes on his apprentice. “Ah, the usual. Hunting, feasts, balls, musical competitions.”

  “I had not realized Lord Rochester was a religious man,” Aubrey said, for in the kingdom where he had been born, only the peasants and devout women celebrated the harvest holidays. There, as here, they were observed at the very end of summer, to thank the gods for a good growing season and to ensure a bountiful harvest to come.

  Glyrenden laughed. “He is not. Far from it. We are pagans here, or mostly. Faren Rochester certainly is. In the eastern kingdoms, the harvest is not a sacred time, but rather a festive one. I think you will enjoy yourself.”

  “Am I to go with you, then?”

  “But of course! You are my apprentice, are you not? You must learn how to comport yourself at the house of a noble—for, believe me, when I am done with you, you will be sought after by the wealthiest men on the continent.”

  Smiling, Aubrey replied, “Well, when I was with Cyril, I was in a palace or two. I did not behave so ill then.”

  “Old Cyril,” said Glyrenden with a strange inflection, “would never take you to some of the places you could visit with me.”

  Aubrey was unsure of what reply to make to that. “Well, he never took me to Lord Rochester’s,” was all he could think of, but it was good enough; Glyrenden smiled.

  “When do we leave?” Lilith asked. She was still looking at her plate.

  “A week from today. We had best begin packing soon.”

  She lifted her eyes. “I have nothing fine enough to wear to the lord’s balls and dinners.”

  “My love, my angel, you could appear in rags and you would put all the other women to shame.”

  She shrugged and returned her gaze to the table.

  “But as it happens,” her husband continued, “I have anticipated your distress.” In an aside to Aubrey, he added, “Women do so fret over their gowns and their fal-lals.” Aubrey thought he had never met a woman who cared less for her appearance than Lilith; but he did not say so.

  The wizard went on. “I ordered seven gowns made for you when I was passing through town. They will be delivered in four days. You will be clothed magnificently.” And he sat back in his chair with an air of triumph, as if waiting to be congratulated.

  Lilith looked over at him expressionlessly. “You ordered seven gowns for me?”

  “I did.”

  “What if I do not like them?”

  Glyrenden laughed merrily, as if she had said something amusing beyond reason. “Have I ever given you anything you did not like, my precious?”

  She seemed to consider. “One thing,�
� she said at last.

  He raised his wineglass again, this time in tribute to her. “And in time you shall come to value even that, my dear. Even that.”

  Aubrey had no idea what they were talking about, but it seemed an oddly intimate conversation for married people to conduct in the presence of a guest. He stood up hastily and excused himself. Glyrenden, still watching his wife, merely waved a careless hand in his direction; but Lilith looked over at Aubrey with an expression so heavy and so unfathomable that for a moment it stilled him where he stood. Then he muttered something inarticulate and left the room.

  Four days later the gowns were delivered while both Glyrenden and Aubrey were out of the house. Aubrey returned first, to find the dressmaker’s box sitting in the front hall, still corded with the carter’s ropes. He went back to the kitchen to find Lilith sitting at the table, doing nothing.

  “Why, don’t you know that your gowns are here?” he exclaimed, laughing at her. “Aren’t you excited? Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to see what your husband ordered for you?”

  She looked up at him calmly. “All right,” she said. “We’ll have to get a knife to cut the ropes.”

  “Then get a knife!” he said gaily. Arachne, muttering under her breath, pushed him aside when he reached for the cutlery, and dug through the tray herself. The knife she handed him was dull from much usage and no whetting, but it would do, Aubrey supposed, to cut a rope. “My thanks,” he said with somewhat ironic courtesy, and waited for Lilith to precede him down the hall.

  Lilith’s gray dress swept up three inches of dust as she strolled to the front entry way; Aubrey’s boots sank into it up to his ankles. “Isn’t there a clean room anywhere in the house?” he demanded as they reached the trunk. “You can’t look at your new dresses here in the hallway. They’ll be filthy before you’ve even worn them.”

  “We can take the box to my room,” she said. “It’s clean enough there.”

  Aubrey bent to test his strength against the weight of the trunk, cautiously lifting it by two of the crossed ropes. “Is it too heavy?” Lilith asked.

  Aubrey grunted and swung it to his shoulder. “Not quite,” he said, managing to smile at her. “Lead on.”

  The bedroom was upstairs, and the uneven surface of the stairway treads gave him a little trouble. The trunk itself was not heavy so much as cumbersome; he banged it against the wall, and then against his throat, more than once in the ascent, so that he was panting a little when they finally gained the upper story.

  “This way,” she said, and led him down the hallway.

  Aubrey had never been in the bedroom Lilith shared with Glyrenden, and once he set the box down, he looked around with frank interest. It was an odd-shaped room, with five walls, and a high ceiling that stooped to a low point over an arched window. There was very little furniture—a bed covered with a burgundy velvet quilt, a washstand, a frayed chair, and a large oak armoire. An open window admitted cool air but very little light, as it was practically covered with a thick interweave of ivy. In fact, the vines had curled over the windowsill and crept into the room itself, snaking along the imperfect seams of the bricks to the place where the wide bed was pushed against the wall. A few tendrils had even dared to twine across the headboard and wrap around the pineapple-shaped ornamentation of the four-poster frame.

  “Look at that!” Aubrey said. “I’ve never seen ivy come inside a house before.”

  “That’s the side of the bed where I sleep,” Lilith replied.

  Aubrey went closer to investigate. The tight green vines seemed tough and sentient under his hand. “Aren’t you afraid of waking up in the middle of the night to find yourself being strangled?” he asked, only half-jesting.

  Her sudden smile gleamed and vanished. “Glyrenden is,” she said.

  “I wonder why he lets the ivy grow into the room, then.”

  “He doesn’t. He cuts it back all the time. But it keeps growing.”

  “Do you want me to cut it back for you now? I don’t think Glyrenden will be home till after nightfall.”

  She had come to stand beside him and her hand rested, briefly, on one of the flat, heart-shaped leaves. “No,” she said. “I like it.”

  A moment they stood so, side by side; then Aubrey turned away. “So!” he said, his voice sounding a little too hearty. “Let’s see what your husband has bought you.”

  He knelt beside the trunk and cut its cords, then stood aside to let Lilith have the pleasure of seeing what gifts lay inside. She hesitated a moment, then bent, and with a single quick motion lifted the heavy black lid.

  Glyrenden had indeed done well by his wife. One after the other, Lilith pulled out the treasures—gowns of green silk, of red taffeta, of black velvet. He had bought her fringed scarves and lace gloves and delicate satin slippers beaded with pearls. And more—enameled combs for her hair, silver bracelets for her wrist, bottles of perfume and boxes of cosmetics. One by one, Lilith laid these items on the burgundy coverlet, and when she was done she stood back and stared at them.

  She did not look at all like a woman delighted at her husband’s generosity. She looked more like a woman who had been offered two poisoned cups, and had resigned herself to drinking one of them, and now was trying to decide which would be the least terrible.

  Aubrey picked up the gown he liked best, the one of emerald silk, cut with a deep V-neckline and narrow three-quarter sleeves. “This is pretty,” he said. “Don’t you think so?”

  “Very nice,” she said.

  “Of course you haven’t tried them on yet,” he said. He felt that he was talking just to fill the space, that one of them should be talking; one of them should be pleased. “You don’t know if they will fit.”

  “They will fit,” she said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Glyrenden purchased them for me, and he knows how I am made.”

  It was such an odd answer—and yet so typical of her—that Aubrey could not any longer pretend he sensed nothing wrong.

  “Lilith, why don’t you want to go to Lord Rochester’s festival? I would think you’d be happy to go. You never get away from here, and you should—you should be around other people, enjoying yourself, making friends—”

  “I enjoy myself most when I am not around other people,” she said coolly.

  “I think you’re just afraid of people,” he said.

  She looked at him. “Do you?”

  “Yes, you are afraid they will be hostile or sarcastic. Many people are afraid of others, you know. You just have to be nice to them first, and most people are very willing to be friends.”

  “That has not been my experience,” she said dryly.

  “But you are not very welcoming, as a rule,” he said in a little rush. “I mean, you do not seem interested in what others have to say, or—or to be interested in their lives at all. It puts others off. If people have been unkind to you in the past, perhaps it is because you have not been warm to them to begin with.”

  “Warm,” she repeated. “No, I would not describe myself so.”

  “And at Lord Rochester‘s—”

  “At Lord Rochester’s, there will be a hundred strange people, and I will be the strangest,” she interrupted, with a curious passion very unlike her. “I will be gazed at askance. I will be talked of in the hallways. I will be more alone there than I am here. You will see.”

  “You won’t be alone,” Aubrey said. “Your husband—”

  “My husband will be currying favor with Faren Rochester and his friends.”

  “Well, I will be there. Glyrenden said so. I will stand by you”

  Again she looked at him, that measuring, considering look that he found so disconcerting and so compelling. “Will you?” she said.

  “Of course! I will fetch drinks for you and fan you when you’re hot and dance with you, if you’ll let me. Do you dance?”

  “Glyrenden taught me once,” she said. “I can’t remember why, because he never took me
any place where I might dance again.”

  Aubrey had a momentary sense of blinding insight: Was this her trouble after all? She was resentful that her husband kept her immured at this lonely fortress, away from all other eyes, forgetting the small social skills that made strangers acceptable to each other. It was not that she was displeased with the invitation, the opportunity and the new clothes—as it might appear—but that she was angry these things had not come her way sooner.

  “Come,” he said, smiling, “tell me which of these new gowns you love the best.”

  A quick frown swept across her face; she watched him briefly, as if surprised, as if he had somehow misunderstood her and she was disappointed. Then her face cleared to its usual serene mask, and she turned her attention to the items on the bed.

  “I don’t love any of them,” she said.

  “Well, which one do you like the best?”

  She shrugged; now, he thought, she was being deliberately petulant. “They are all the same to me. I like the one I’m wearing just as well.”

  “The one you’re wearing!” he repeated. “Your old gray gown that you wear every day!”

  “It’s comfortable and I’m used to it.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand you,” he said, but he smiled, as if he were teasing her. “Any other woman whose husband had brought her such things would be thrilled. Any other woman I know—”