The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 4: The Princess's Suitor, Part 1

 The Princess Carala, youngest legitimate child of the Emperor Somilius Deyn III, was among the best educated people in the Anointed Realms, but once she fled the city of Talinara she began to understand how little she really knew of the great wide world beyond its walls. The business of trying to win her father's favor was something she left to her elder siblings. The Malachite Throne held no interest for her, and she was perfectly comfortable resting so far down the line of succession. That, along with her father's affection for her (or what passed for such in Somilius Deyn III), gave her a little more protection from assassins' knives than she might have otherwise enjoyed. So she had focused on books, and histories, and the great tales, and tried her hand at music (at which she had inherited some of her father's talent), at dancing (at which she had inherited a great deal of her mother's talent), and at painting (at which she grudgingly admitted she had no talent at all). All her life she had rested easily in the assurance that, no matter what else happened, as long as the House of Deyn persisted she would be allowed to pursue her own pleasures and her own curiosities.

And so when her father had summoned her and informed her he intended to marry her off to Denisius Gallis of Marhollow, she had accepted it agreeably if not passionately. She had known Denisius a little bit since she had come of age, and enjoyed the fact that he was neither a craven liar like Varallo Thray nor a swaggering blowhard like her brother Silenio, who still boasted about the stable boy he had eviscerated for insulting him during one Weektide riding lesson, as if that were a feat worthy of Il-Hethma the First Knight himself. If nothing else Denisius seemed unlikely to forbid her from continuing her studies, her dancing lessons, or her attempts at poetry . . . though she supposed if he insisted she abandon her efforts at painting, she would give it up with the slightest sensation of relief. Repeatedly she had asked her mother to take down the landscape painting of the lost city of Atrolom that hung in the Empress-Consort's private salon since Carala had presented it to her on her fifteenth birthday, but Yvelle wouldn't hear of it. At least she had the good sense not to lavish praise on it to her salon's infrequent visitors.

The Empress-Consort's salon was, of course, one of dozens in Talinara (though undoubtedly the finest), and it was because of one of these many salons that Carala ran afoul of the creature who irreparably altered the course of her young life.

Paela Greythorne, who had returned to using her family's name after observing the minimum six weeks' period of mourning prescribed in the Chronicle of Sorrows following the sudden death of her husband Tomas Rial, had been in the process of dedicating just such a salon. There was no better way to celebrate her return to Talinara's high society now that she was no longer expected to wear black and adorn herself with grim iron replicas of her fine jeweled brooches, rings, and bangles, and she intended to make as gaudy a splash as possible. If that included a painting by the Emperor's beautiful and unattached daughter, then what did it matter if she wasn't exactly a grand master of the palette? Madame Greythorne did, however, seem a little less thrilled at the prospect upon learning Carala had been promised to Lord Marhollow.

"Still," she had said, taking Carala by the arm and patting her gloved hand as she led her through the banquet hall where a portrait of her departed husband on one wall was draped with black, watching her with greedy little teardrop eyes, "perhaps this can serve as a bit of an announcement to the city before the Cathedral of the Graces cries the banns? Or is the Lord Marhollow of another faith? I don't know much about the Gallises, I'm afraid. Had you decided on a subject for my little gathering?"

"I had considered the Gates of Ismene at sunset, perhaps with sailing vessels passing beneath them." This had been a calculated decision, as the Rials were a powerful merchant family whose wealth had derived from a shipping company that plied the routes of the Azure Sea, whose southwestern end was marked by the Gates.