House of Sand and Secrets by Cat Hellisen Page A

have a son … .
    I laugh at my own idiocy. I am no flower, pollinated by the wind.
    Come, Felicita, let us turn our attention to more practical things. Whether or not House Eline have anything to do with the dead vampires, it will not matter if I conduct business with them. Surely we are not pretending friendship if I invite Carien and her husband to my house, so that we can talk of the price of silks and scriv? Even so, I’m loath to allow Carien time to uncover all my secrets. I would have to be careful, perhaps take something to dull my emotions.
    Riona comes into the room and begins to clear away the lunch dishes. She hesitates by me, fiddling with the cutlery, straightening things that do not need straightening.
    I catch the troubled look that flutters across her face, the quick furrow before it is gone from her brow. “Is it your brother?”
    She shakes her head. “No, my lady.” But she continues to stand, her fingers dancing nervously along the edge of a spoon handle.
    I sigh. “What then?”
    “I don’t mean to be forward,” she says. “But you don’t look well. Is there something I can bring you?”
    “I’m tired,” I tell her, not certain how or what to explain. This thing with the Houses and the vampires is no concern of hers. What would she say if I were to explain? Perhaps she could be sympathetic, but how can I expect that from someone who looks at my troubles and compares them to her own, and can see only a vast gulf? I have money and privilege, what does it matter if others have more than me? I look away from her. We are not friends, and perhaps there is no way we ever can be. My time in Whelk Street taught me that much. Dash and his little gang never truly accepted me. He made me feel like I was a part of their group the better to use me, and the others knew it.
    He was one person. I can’t spend my life trapped in ever-diminishing circles, repeating the same tired paths because I once made a bad decision. A child does that, refusing to grow and learn from their mistakes, and I am so certain these days that I have left my childishness behind. I suppose then this is the proof that I haven’t.
    “Wait.” I reach one hand forward to touch her sleeve, to tell Riona all my fears, and hope that somehow this outpouring will fill the empty space between us.
    Before I reach her, the pealing bells of the Seven Widows slam and clang through the air, always so unexpectedly deafening, and whatever I had planned to say is rolled flat under their noise. I look down at the paper, at the review. I drop my hand.
    “Riona,” I say when the last chimes have faded. “It’s nothing. I just need a little fresh air. Have the grooms ready the chaise.” I will not sit in this house and rot, waiting for MallenIve to accept me. The heat is bearable; the winds are blowing the stench of funeral pyres out into the desert. There is an exhibition I would go see.

    * * *

    Iynast’s work is not on display at the MallenIve Gallery, but instead at a small house called the Sunstone. It’s far from grand. Low-Lammers are milling through the rooms, pointing and laughing at the paintings. They have a slapdash feel to them – broad brush strokes, bold black lines and vibrating colours. The themes are low-brow – serving Hobs doing dishes, or working in fields; studies of friends and acquaintances. No wonder the artistic elite of MallenIve loathe them. In our world only we are important, and our visages must be painted with restraint and lies.
    I stop before a portrait of a kitty-girl. Her hair is dyed flame-red and she’s wearing only a thin shift rolled up to her thighs as she washes her feet in a small stone basin.
    “Vulgar, don’t you think?” says a woman with a honey dark voice.
    My heart lurches, a little rabbit in a noose. “I like it,” I say, pretending to examine it more intently to give myself time to act as if this meeting were as casual to me as it must be to her. “It’s real.”
    The woman laughs.