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We can and we will build wide and straight, the people of Avalle had said; even in the very beginning, when towns everywhere else were tortuous warrens of twisty alleys and crooked lanes easy to defendThere will be no city like ours in all the world, and if need comes for defense we will defend ourselves from our towersThe squat ugly skyline jarred Dianora with a painful discontinuityIt was as if the eye was tricked, looking ceaselessly for something it knew had to be there
From the earliest days of that broad, elegant city on the banks of the Sperion towers had been associated with AvalleAssertions of Tiganese pride, sheer arrogance they called it in the provinces of Corte and Chiara and AstibarThey were symbols of internecine rivalry as well, as each noble family or wealthy guild of bankers or traders or artisans thrust its own tower as high as and then higher than they could truly affordGraceful or warlike, red stone or sandy or grey, the towers of Avalle pushed up towards Eanna's heaven like a forest within the city walls
The domestic conflicts had actually become dangerous for a time, with murder and sabotage not nearly uncommon enough, and the best masons and architects claiming stupefying feesIt had been the third Prince Alessan in Tigana by the sea who had put an end to the insanity in the simplest possible way more than two hundred years ago
He commissioned Orsaria, the most celebrated of the architects, to build for him a palace in AvalleAnd that palace was to have a tower, said Prince Alessan, that would be, and would remain, by patent leather chanel handbag force of law, the highest in the cityThe spire of the Prince's Tower, slender and graceful, wrapped in bands of green and white to serve as a memory of the sea this far inland, put an end to the competition for the summit of AvalleAnd from then on also, by that Prince Alessan's example which became custom and then tradition, the princes and princesses of Tigana were born in Avalle, in the palace beneath that spire, to mark them as belonging to both of the cities-, to Tigana of the Waves and Avalle of the Towers
There had been over seventy towers once, Dianora knew, crowned in glory by that green and white preeminence
What, Dianora thought, her vision hurting for that absence, is a person who moves through her days as she has always moved, who speaks and walks and labors, eats, makes love, sleeps, sometimes even finds access to laughter, but whose heart has been cut out from her living body? Leaving no scar at all to be seenNo wound by which to remember the sliding blade
The rubble had all been cleared awayThere was no smoke, save from over by the dyeworks, to mar the clear blue of the skyThe day was mild and bright, birds sang a welcome to the coming warmthThere was nothing, nothing at all to show that there had ever been towers in this placeIn this low, steadily dwindling town of Stevanien here in its remote corner of the Peninsula of the Palm, in the most oppressed province of them all
What is such a person? Dianora thought againThat person whose heart was gone? She had no answer, how could she have an answer? Loss coiled to life within her, and tiffany bean earrings hate followed it again, as if both of them were new-born, colder and sharper than before
She walked up that wide boulevard into the center of StevanienShe passed the soldiers' barracks and the doors of the Governor's PalaceNot far away she found The QueenShe was hired immediatelyTo start that same nightHelp was badly neededHelp was hard to findArduini of Ygrath, who did all his own hiring, decided that this pretty creature from Certando had a certain style to herShe would have to do something though, he admonished her, about that wretchedly vulgar highland accent
Within six months she was speaking almost like a native of the city, he observedBy then he had her out of the kitchen and into the front room waiting on tables, clad in the cream and dark-brown colors around which he had designed his establishmentColors that happened to suit her very well
She was quiet, deft, unassuming, and politeShe remembered names and patrons' preferencesFour months later, in the spring before she turned twenty-one, Arduini offered her the coveted position at the front of The Queen greeting guests and supervising the staff in the three rooms of dining
She astonished him by refusingShe astonished a great many peopleBut Dianora knew that this would be far too prominent a position for her own purposesWhich had not changedIf she was to travel north into Corte soon, and clearly marked by now as being from Certando, she needed to have been associated with The Queen, but not so very prominentlyProminent people had questions asked about them, that much she knew
So she feigned gucci knockoff handbags an attack of country-girl anxiety the night Arduini made his offerShe broke two glasses and dropped a platterThen she spilled Senzian green wine on the Governor himself
Tearfully she went to Arduini and begged for more time to grow sure of herselfIt helped that he was in love with her by thenHe invited her, gracefully, to become his mistressIn this, too, she demurred, pleading the inevitable tension that such a liaison would elicit within the staff, badly damaging The QueenIt was the right argument; his establishment was Arduini's true mistress
In fact, Dianora had resolved to let no man touch her nowShe was in Ygrathen territory and she had a purposeThe rules had changedShe had tentatively decided to leave in the fall, north towards CorteShe had been weighing possibilities and excuses for doing so when events had overtaken her so spectacularly
Slowly circling the Audience Chamber, Dianora paused to greet Doarde's wife whom she likedThe poet seized the opportunity to present his daughterThe girl blushed, but dipped her head, hands pressed together, in a creditable mannerDianora smiled at her and moved on
A steward caught up to her, bearing khav in a black chalice set with red gemstonesA gift, years ago, from BrandinIt was her trademark on occasions such as this: she never drank anything stronger than khav at public receptionsWith a guilty glance towards the doorway where she knew Scelto would be stationed against the wall, she took a grateful sip of the hot drinkPraise the Triad and the growers of Tregea, it was dark and rich and very strong
"My louis vuitton multicolor speedy dear lady Dianora, you are looking more magnificent than ever
She turned, smoothly suppressing an expression of distasteShe had recognized the voice: Neso of Ygrath, a minor nobleman from overseas who had recently arrived at Brandin's court on the first ship of the season, solely in the hope of becoming a major nobleman in the colonyHe was, so far as Dianora had been able to tell, talentless and venal
She smiled radiantly at him and allowed him to touch her hand"My dear Neso, how kind of you to lie so skillfully to an aging woman
She rather liked saying that sort of thing: for, as Scelto had shrewdly observed once, if she was old, what did that make Solores?
Neso hastened to offer all the emphatic, predictable denialsHe praised her gown and the vairstone, noting with a courtier's eye and tongue how exquisitely the stones of her chalice echoed her colors that dayThen, lowering his voice towards an unearned intimacy he asked her for the eighth time at least if she happened to have heard anything further about the planned disposition of that very trivial office of Taxing Master in north Asoli
It was, in fact, a lucrative positionThe incumbent had made his fortune, or enough for his own purposes evidently, and was returning to Ygrath in a few weeksDianora hated that sort of graft and she had even been bold enough to say so to Brandin onceA little amused, which had irritated her, he had prosaically pointed out how difficult it was to get men to serve in places as devoid of attraction as the north of Asoli without offering them a chance at modest rolex watches ladies wea |
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