The Vauquelin Parlor
rs. Ibutatu’s handwriting was somehow precisely what she had expected – and, at the same time, wholly and completely unexpected.
Or perhaps it was the reply itself that was unexpected. She had stood in the foyer holding the small envelope and staring down at it, half-disbelieving. Then, having opened it, she had stared down at the neat hand-writing – clinical and precise, small but not cramped, curling and unmistakably Bastian – unmistakably feminine – with something like a rushing in her ears.
She might have had the Lord Chancellor’s lovely wife for tea whenever she pleased, provided both their schedules permitted; Fleurette Vaillancourt and Renée Guevremont, two of the most fashionable names in Vienda, were occasional guests in her parlor, and she had even had occasion to attend the High Judge’s dinners. Strange, then, that she had expected no response from Mrs. Ibutatu, and even stranger that she had been so hopeful for one.
She told herself she had very nearly forgotten the woman. Very nearly, but not quite. She supposed that Loshis had caught her idle enough to chase unwise curiosities.
There were what seemed to her a hundred pieces of the puzzle adrift on the water, and – for perhaps the first time in a long time – she found herself almost incapable of reaching for them. Of wading deeper into the water and gathering them up in her skirts, of sitting and turning them this way and that to see which edges fit into which grooves.
She thought that she had long learned not to ask questions of this nature. Perhaps it had been Anatole and his box and everything it had dredged up, another puzzle she had thought better left unsolved. It was perhaps the one that had taught her, even before they had come to the capital, even before the rest of it, the High Judge and the Pendulum wives and all the strange looks and whispers, to leave Anatole Vauquelin’s pieces be.
But Mrs. Ibutatu! Dueling, aeroships, hospital work; it was a puzzle of strange and tantalizing dimensions, and one she knew very well not to touch.
Enofe pez Okorie in one sphere, the one that should have meant more to her, and the Ibutatu name in another. The Ibutatu name meant something only in a distant, sunny place, or in kofi har’aqem to which she had never been. She did not particularly understand Anatole’s new fascination with kofi; he drank it constantly now – in quantity and frequency she thought somewhat unhealthy, in spite of dear Aurelien’s determination to acclimate himself to the stuff – but it was rather too strong and strange for her.
Dzhkar, on the other hand, she had taken to drinking quite often, and black.
It was the tea, of course, now. She had gotten the details from Rosmilda, but she had gotten word only that Mrs. Ibutatu was gone from the capital. At first, she had thought only to send the details, but the thought of sending an invitation instead had grown more and more appealing to her, and she was grateful now, perhaps, for the second chance.
It was a good tea to share during the chill of Loshis, with its deep, smoky notes, with its surprising strength and delicacy. That was all; that, and the strange emptiness of the capital and of the house, which was taking Diana rather more by surprise than she had thought.
She had been strangely unharried today, and it had given her rather too much time to think; in the last house, she had resolved rather firmly not to think at all. She was waiting now, in any case, for Mrs. Ibutatu’s arrival, and no one else’s.
She wore a rainy season tea gown in pale green, long and loose except where it was gathered at the waist; the sleeves were loose and layered, with scalloped edges and a great deal of lace inset. The asymmetry was in the pattern rather than the cut: it was heavily embroidered with eyelets, trailing down in vines and knots and flowers, with flashes of deep gold silk.
The rain had not asked politely on the doorstep this year if it might come in for tea, nor waited for an invitation. The rain had started, then swept up to a sort of thunderless, steady torrent. Diana had never much liked rain, but she liked this sort of rain the least, relentless and oppressive, and still with a month and a half to go before summer.
She stood at the atrium doors now watching the droplets tap and trail down the glass. She thought she heard noise, muffled, from the foyer, but she did not turn. She shut her eyes instead, thinking – not for the first time – of that sharp, strong field, and wondering how well she remembered the strange bright brush of living mona.