The Dragonbone Petticoat

Chapter 14

"Leonidas?"

Hearing his cousin's name dispelled Ilmar's illusion, for his former assistant should both know his face and shudder to speak his name.

While dressed as girls, the four women wore vintage fashions, designs popular when Ilmar studied in Ardem.

"You can't be here."

In the moment, frozen over a sweet mouthful of lemon ice, she had looked like Elessa Andercruik, but Ilmar now saw the changes of well-preserved middle age: her firey red hair was browning, and glinting with silver stragglers; her mouth and cheeks were painted to the blush Elessa had by her natural youth; and, her much trimmer waist showed a maturer inclination to deny sweets,

having only relented in this instance, perhaps, to enjoy the festival atmosphere.

"You are not Elessa Cavarah," said Ilmar Andercruik.

"And you are neither Leonidas Andercruik, nor worthy of my daughter."

Despite himself, Ilmar beamed a broad smile. His desires having been tainted by a tantalizing memory of the father's roasting aroma, the spicy mother might make a route to the succulent daughter. "My lady, trust to my taste, and you will find it the final authority in discriminating refinement."

"Kala, why dally with this minstrel?" If this powder-faced crone was the same age as Elessa's mother, Ilmar conceived an immediate respect for Kala, for they seemed like mother and daughter, not two old college friends.

"I had thought such tawdry lines too quaint to truck out in public," said Ilmar, "but you breathe life into antiquity faster than dragons breathe fire into virgin maidens. That said, think twice next time before lending your full figure to the fashions of yesteryear."

While the women did not laugh, Ilmar saw an amused flicker in Kala's eyes.

"Please." The unfamiliar word stuck in Ilmar's throat. He was unaccustomed to saying it, even in polite society. "How could you mistake me for my cousin? While we each took after our fathers, they were not brothers, and our resemblance is slight."

"I don't know what to say," said Kala. "Perhaps you absorbed the man's image? Less a human mirror than a cannibal of reflections, so impressed by the man in the flesh that you've consumed it and made it your own."

Having literally eaten Kala's husband, this remark hit so close to home that Ilmar tittered. While it scored deep and wounded his pride, as she intended, she must be ignorant of just how deep she ran him through—or was she? Perhaps their meeting was no accident, but by her design. "Very droll. Where is Shaul?"

"Is he here?" Kala's shame-faced fear seemed genuine. She looked over her shoulder, then down an adjoining alley, as if she expected him to come up upon her unawares.

"I might have passed him recently." Ilmar smirked. "What would he look like, were he here in the flesh?"

"He would have nothing to do with you," scowled Kala.

Ilmar shrugged. "Then he is with us in spirit, for you are unaccountably rude, Mrs. Cavarah."

"It's Venihault." Rolling her eyes, Kala turned her shoulder, locked arms with her friends, and strutted down Everlam.

Ilmar's eyes and nostrils narrowed as he pinched off a slow, frustrated exhalation. It was inconceivable. First, that fat, lurching toady had talked back before all his followers. Then that inventor had rejected his advances, in more ways than one. Now, his apprentice's mother snubbed him. How far he had fallen since last year, when he always had the upper hand. When famishment pounced hard, he swayed, and mourned his old appetite, before he was tainted by a griffon's tastes. Was he so defeated that he couldn't eat what he wanted, when he wanted?