Passion Play (River of Souls 1)

A maid sat there, mending stockings.

“Is she awake, Mina?”

Mina shook her head. “Sleeping, Mistress. Very lightly.”

The sleep of very old people. “What about her appetite? Did she eat today?”

“Three bites, Mistress.”

Therez glanced through the half-open door. The rooms beyond were dark, but a faint light edged the bedroom door. “I’ll just look in, then. I won’t wake her.”

She glided through a second, smaller sitting room, which was given over to dozens of porcelain figures, through the dressing room, to her grandmother’s bedroom door, which she eased open.

Bowls filled with fresh památka cuttings were set about on tables, the pale white blooms like candle flames in the semidarkness. Her grandmother had carried away a handful of seeds from her old home in faraway Duszranjo, in Károví, decades before. After they arrived in Melnek, and her son purchased this house, she had planted beds of them in their formal gardens, over his protests. Now that she was ill, she had the flowers brought to her. Off in one corner stood a thick crude figure of a gnarled bent woman. Lir, as the crone. She had another name in Károví, in the old days, but the goddess was still the same.

Another maid, Lisl, sat in one corner, knitting by the light of a shaded lamp. Therez signaled for her to remain still and tiptoed to her grandmother’s side.

Her grandmother lay with her head turned toward the window, snoring softly. She looked old, Therez thought. Old and frail. Her ruddy-brown skin was mottled, and her once-black hair lay scattered thinly over the pillow. Under the loose pouches of skin, you could just make out traces of the strong old woman from six months before.

Therez’s grandmother stirred. “Therez,” she whispered. “Hello, my sweet. Come closer.”

Therez touched the old woman’s cheek. “Are you well?”

“Dobrud’n. Good and not good, as they say.” Thirty years in Veraene had not erased her strong accent. “I was hoping you would visit.” She tried to sit up. Her face crumpled and she sank into her pillow again with a muttered curse. “I hate it,” she whispered angrily. “I hate sickness and— Ah, you didn’t come to hear my complaints.”

“I came to visit. If you’d rather complain, then I’ll listen.” Therez gathered her grandmother’s hands in hers and gently kissed them. She could feel how light and fragile the bones had become. The surgeons had warned them to expect her grandmother’s death within the next few months.

Already her grandmother had closed her eyes again, and her breathing turned soft and raspy, a sound like that of paper sliding over paper. Lisl’s knitting needles resumed their regular clicking. Therez gently withdrew her hands, thinking to let her grandmother sleep, when the old woman’s eyes fluttered open. “Tell me about the dinner party,” she whispered.

Therez suppressed a start of surprise. Of course her grandmother had heard. Probably from Lisl and Mina. “If you already know, Grandmama, what can I tell you?”

Her grandmother laughed softly. “Impertinent child. Tell me what these silly girls don’t know. What has your father planned?”

“He’s planned everything,” Therez said drily, which provoked another laugh from her grandmother. “But he’s left a few choices to me and my mother. We shall have Paschke for our music, if he has no other obligation, and I’ve written to Mistress Sobek, the theater artist, for advice on the decorations. I can tell you already that there will be flowers and sweet candles, dancing, and three courses of the finest dishes Mama could decide upon.”

“And the guests? Who are they?”

“Friends. Neighbors. He’s invited nearly all the chief merchants and anyone with a voice in the City Council.” She hesitated. “He’s even invited Baron Mann, if you can believe it.”

“Friends,” her grandmother said. “Those are not friends. Those are allies, rivals, partners. Sometimes I think your father— Well, never mind what I think. It should be an interesting evening. I wish I could watch. Pity. And with you the chief of everything. So big since last year. Soon you will find a husband.”

Not until Duenne, Therez thought, but she only smiled. “I’d rather wait another year, Grandmama. Sixteen or seventeen is old enough.”

A brief spasm passed over her grandmother’s face. “I was seventeen,” she whispered. “Saw your grandfather in his shop in the marketplace. He was young then, quieter, but that day he was laughing. Such a bright smile. Oh, I fell in love so quick, it hurt.”

Therez stroked her hands, not liking the quaver in her grandmother’s voice. “Maybe we should postpone the dinner party. It

’s not right. Not with you so … tired.”

“Bah. Don’t be foolish. I’ll see more dinner parties. I dream of them sometimes. Strong dreams, too, and all of them in the same palace. And always in winter, far to the north. About scrubbing, if you can believe it. Floors and walls. Tin plates. Silver plates. Once a platter of gold that I polished until it gleamed like the sun. I did well, they said, for someone so young. I almost told them I knew the work from lives and lives before, but I didn’t. I knew they wouldn’t like it.”

Therez’s skin prickled at her grandmother’s words. Strong dreams were always life dreams, the scattered memories of previous lives. Even those who dreamed faintly would find their life dreams more vivid as death approached. “Don’t talk like that,” she said fiercely.

Her grandmother made a tch-tch sound. “Ne. Not to worry, sweet. I only meant that I dreamed sometimes.” Another pause while she recovered her breath. “Therez, why is your father holding this dinner party?”

Therez blinked, startled by the question. “Business, my mother said. The autumn contracts.” She didn’t want to mention the part about Ehren’s studies, or her own trip to Duenne. That would only provoke another argument between her grandmother and her father.

But her grandmother was already muttering. “Business. Always business. Money. Contracts. Deals and trade. Sometimes I think your father forgets the famine was thirty years ago. Not yesterday.”