Folio Two, Page Twenty-Nine (svegra mos rokron tal-tusjga)
Matriarch Nikis cleared her throat and looked at each of us in turn. The look in her eyes made the hair on my arms stand on end. “In our family, we have a tradition of keeping secrets from one another and from the world at large. The death of our sister Salus has brought some of these things into the public eye. Ordinarily, scandals bring only the attention of the vermin in the press, but the visibility of our family and the amount of time we have kept it under wraps has attracted the attention of certain members of society at large.
“At the reception, some of you may have seen the ghost” — ghost being a slang term we called people with pale skin, as established in the epic Impermanence — “who chaperoned our own Eràsis at the funeral reception. His name is Senet, and he is a member of the Karatha.”
Kurannyi looked as though she might faint. “The Karatha usually send someone to official receptions when someone’s important enough. Why should this mean anything to us?”
“Senet asked to board with us. As you are well aware, I could not have refused — it would have seemed suspicious, such an absurd breach of hospitality. Combined with recent events, I believe that he has been assigned to us by whoever is in control of them to spy on the family. Now, none of what they find will be usable in a court of law, but the Children of Sehìnta have their own infrastructure of retribution that none of us wants to trifle with.”
My face grew hot. I wondered why she hadn’t told me the truth — that I had invited Senet to live with us. He couldn’t be as bad as she makes him out, I thought. Senet was a perfect gentleman to me.
“Some of us here have made pacts and agreements that the Karatha would not like. Others have taken actions they might find untoward. We have arranged for him to move in following the end of this week. I suggest that you relocate any compromising materials.
“Furthermore, I cannot stress enough that our family must appear stable. We must present the appearance of acting with one mind. To this effect, I would encourage those of you who have spent time and energy cultivating rivalries with other family members to desist. I will not tolerate any more destruction of our family.
“And I’m sorry, Hiret, but this means that you must patch up the disagreement with your wife. You have lived for the past two years under my roof and have not once set forth in her house. I will give you two weeks to get back in her good graces and reestablish your commitment to her family. Otherwise, we will annul the marriage and you will join my son in the bachelors’ quarters.”
Hiret looked a bit ill, and several people repressed their laughter. Anumë whispered something in her husband’s ear that made him frown.
“Do you have any questions?”
This was the boring part. Every time we had an emergency meeting about anything, practically everyone would chime in with advice on how they would handle the situation. Thank Gods Nikis had decided not to put something to a vote.
As for me, I curled up deeper into the branches and tried not to let anyone see how upset everything had made me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment