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Chapter#03

Down the veranda all the bedroom doors were latched. Her father by marriage Lord van Sietter lived with his second wife, a Vilandian Princess, in a new palace he had built himself over the hills in the town of Arventa. Arianna had no idea where her husband currently was and she tried not to care. Her brother by marriage Captain-Lord Tashka el Maien van Sietter was out on summer manoeuvres.

Gently Arianna opened the door opposite her own. Light fell dimly in the nursery through the curtains patterned with dancing animals. She went to the little bed and stooped over, her face suddenly golden warm with tenderness.

Arkyll was still asleep. He had black curling hair like Clair's, his sturdy bone structure was from Arianna and his whole face was so mixed between her features and Clair's that you could not say whom he resembled. Only when he cried, the tears welling up in his exquisite slanted blue eyes, he looked like his Uncle Tashka.

Arianna left him sleeping and went back to her room where her maid-servant was laying out a pretty blue and white frock on a chair. Arianna caught sight of a faded cotton dress tossed on the bed and picked it up with a fond smile. "Oh um, that dress," Lisette said, "I was about to give it away ...." Lady Arianna said: "I am only going about the kitchens and whatever, this will do." She pressed the soft old cotton affectionately to her cheek. Lisette turned her head down with a rueful grimace.

Arianna sat down at the beautiful inlaid dressing table that had been her husband's wedding present to her. It was very elegant, someone had made an excellent choice of it for him. Her eyes slid to a pile of scrolls which lay to one side, pushing some delicate glass perfume flasks out of their place. She edged one of the scrolls further down round its wooden baton. Lisette made a grumble because she had moved her head and she frowned into the looking glass. An unattractive motionless pale visage frowned back at her. No wonder the men let her alone, what man would be interested in such a face? As Lisette finished, Arianna turned her head and smiled; her face broke suddenly into a mobile loveliness sweet as the summer dawn. The maid-servant could not forbear to lean closer to her, before leaning hurriedly away again.

Passing from the corridors into the big entrance hall, Arianna saw that the castle doors were open. She went through the dim echoing space out into the daylight and stood on the broad top step, with the new ramp on her left running down the side of the steps.

She always felt bad at heart when she saw the ramp. Her husband had wanted it built for soldiers he brought back from the war who were now in wheelchairs but the work was delayed for several months because Lord van Sietter quibbled over the cost. Arianna felt guilty that it had taken her so long to understand what was to do. Her brother by marriage Tashka had finally brought the problem to her attention, then she had made the money surreptitiously available for the ramp from her own finances. She felt it that her quarrel with Clair had caused her to ignore what it was he was about with this and other projects for those of his people who were in need.

Early morning light fell brightly over the cobbled courtyard. They were opening up the castle gates. Arianna saw through the gates the road from the castle running into the rolling low hills to the left, splitting to the right to go down to Sietter town.

Through hills now green with summer, the River Arven carved out the passage that was the Maier Pass. Flowing down to the river port Paviat on the border with H'las and Vail, the snow-fed river which started as tumbling streams in the Northern Mountains, ran on to the sea at Port H'las. Arianna looked to the West, where the Maier Pass led to Arventa and to court.

Far to the South lay her childhood home Iarve, through many other regions; so far that it was easier to bring goods from Iarve across the sea and up the Maier Pass to Sietter and thence to court. Arianna thought of all the regions scattered between the fields of Iarve and the hills of Sietter, through which the merchants wove their webs of industry and trade. She thought of the bickering aristocrats bound together by marriages, of her own marriage which had brought the sunny lands of Iarve rich in wheat and flax and silk into accord with Sietter, with its weaving factories on the plains in the town of Arventa.

Arianna thought of the disastrous collapse of van Sietter's marriage to Lady Anastelle el F'lara. Lady el F'lara came down the river from the harsh rocky territory of the Northern mountains to live in these quiet hills. People did not of course speak of her in Castle Sietter but Arianna had heard whispers at court of how this seemingly perfect Lady had finished by flouting the code of honour in spectacular fashion. The scandalous breaking of her marriage threatened the bond between the V'ta region and Sietter. There was some extraordinary demand the el F'lara family were still making about which even her brother by marriage would say casually: "it is the Northern code, my dear." Arianna knew better than to interfere: a mere younger child, a woman to be moved about like a chess piece, not choose what part she might play in the game. Her lip curled. At least by remaining a chaste maiden in her husband's castle, she was not threatening political relations between her home and her marital regions. Yet.

She looked to the East where the scattered regions were not in secure alliance: the grassy plains of Vail, the woodland and fields of Thiel and the vineyards of Athagine. Her own first cousin, the young Lord who would inherit Vail, had served alongside Clair and Tashka el Maien: brother officers, but this close bond of honour was undermined by her marriage. Her cousin had once hoped for her hand himself even though their families were already inter-married. He had cut his friendship with Clair although he remained intimately close to Tashka.

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