spreading my wings in virtual photography

High Hall dresses itself for conquest.

Every arch and pillar gleams as though the stone itself wishes to be thought wealthy. Candlelight trembles along gilded mouldings, gathers in the cut crystal of chandeliers, and scatters itself over silk, satin, jewels, polished boots, powdered throats, and every manner of self-satisfaction Baldur’s Gate manages to crowd beneath one roof. Music rises from the far end of the ballroom with an elegance so flawless it borders upon indifference. It does not invite feeling so much as instruct it where to stand. The occasion, if one believes the host, is a celebration.

The Dekarios family has arrived from Waterdeep. This, apparently, is reason enough to summon half the city into a fever of perfume and speculation. The noble houses come first, as they always do, drawn by rank as surely as moths to expensive flame. Then come the wealthy merchants, the old families with new fortunes, the new families with old pretensions, the daughters in pale gowns, the mothers with sharper eyes than any duelist, the fathers pretending not to calculate. The lesser relations, the useful widows, the ambitious cousins, the priests, the patrons, the artists, the mages, and all those curious creatures who belong nowhere in particular but have contrived, by invitation or audacity, to be present all the same.

And beneath them, between them, behind the moving screens of trays and folded linen, go the servants. No one looks at them for long. That, Deia finds, is the great convenience of service. A lady may be studied for the angle of her fan, a gentleman for the width of his smile, but a servant girl can pass within arm’s reach of a secret and be forgotten before the secret finishes drawing breath. She enters by the eastern passage with a tray balanced upon one palm and Lune half a step behind her, carrying folded cloths she does not need and wearing a cap that makes her look both younger and more frightened than she has any right to be.

“Stop staring,” Deia murmurs, without turning her head.

“I’m not staring.”

“You are staring with such devotion the walls may begin to blush.”

Lune swallows a laugh and nearly drops the linens.

“Gods, Deia, look at it. There’s more gold in this corridor than in the counting-house at the docks.”

“Then we must pity the corridor. It has been made vulgar without consent.”

Lune gives her a look from beneath the brim of her servant’s cap.

“You’ll mock gilding itself before the night’s done.”

“Only if it insists upon provoking me.”

They move past two footmen, a harried steward, and a young maid carrying a basket of glassware with both hands clutched white around the handles. No one stops them. No one asks where they have come from. High Hall has imported half its staff for the evening, or so the gossip in the lower passage claims, and where excess reigns, confusion is often mistaken for order. Deia has always thought noble houses safest when overcrowded. Too many people make certainty difficult. Too much noise makes truth shy. A girl can disappear in such a place, if she wishes. Or if someone else wishes it for her. Her fingers tighten upon the tray. Lune notices. Of course she does. Lune has a talent for noticing the things Deia would rather bury under sarcasm and forward motion.

“Not here,” Lune whispers.

Deia’s gaze cuts toward her. Lune lowers her voice further.

“I mean, they would not take anyone here. Not from a ball this grand.”

“No?”

“No one would dare.”

Deia’s mouth curves, not quite into a smile.

“My sweet Lune, daring is seldom in short supply among men convinced consequences were invented for others.”

The words settle between them, unwelcome but familiar. Beyond the corridor, music swells, bright and graceful, while somewhere below stairs a servant girl laughs too quickly at something a footman says. The sound tightens the air. There have been too many missing. Kitchen girls. Laundresses. Tavern maids. Seamstresses. Singers with no patrons and no fathers to make inquiries. Girls who change lodgings often enough that a gap in their absence may be explained away. Girls whose employers mutter about stolen coin, whose landlords shrug over unpaid rent, whose names are written nowhere that matters. The city has a remarkable talent for misplacing women it has never valued.

Lune knows two of them. Deia knows three. That is why they come to High Hall in caps and aprons, with borrowed trays and knives hidden where no gentleman’s gaze is permitted to wander. Not for the dancing. Not for the music. Certainly not for the pleasure of watching wealth perspire beneath chandeliers. There are letters somewhere in this house, according to a girl from the lower kitchens who has seen too much and grown wise enough to be afraid. A certain seal. A certain black ribbon. A list of names passed between gentlemen who speak of charity in public and purchases in private. High Hall, for all its polished marble and excessive floral arrangements, has become a place where whispers converge. And Deia has no intention of leaving empty-handed.

At the turn of the passage, she slips through a half-open door and into a narrow retiring room meant, perhaps, for some lady overcome by heat or humiliation. Lune follows, shuts the door gently, and leans her back against it. For one breath, both listen. Footsteps pass. Voices drift by. No shout comes. No alarm. No steward bursts in to demand their business. Lune exhales so hard she nearly folds over.

“I hate this.”

“You said you wished to see the ballroom.”

“I wished to see it while not committing three separate crimes.”

“Then you should have cultivated duller friendships.”

Deia sets the tray down, reaches behind her neck, and begins undoing the plain outer garment that marks her as staff. The grey cloth falls from her shoulders without ceremony. Beneath it she wears a gown of dark blue silk, almost black where the candlelight fails to touch it. It is not new. A fashionable eye would know so at once. The cut has been altered, the hem mended, the sleeves reworked with patience rather than coin. Yet it fits her figure cleanly, close enough to suggest intention, modest enough to avoid immediate scandal, and severe enough to look less like a plea than a warning. Lune stares. Deia looks down at herself.

“What?”

“You look…” Lune’s mouth twists, searching for a word grand enough and failing cheerfully. “You look like you robbed a widow and made it tasteful.”

“A generous review.”

“You did rob a widow, didn’t you?”

“She was not widowed at the time.”

“Deia.”

“She was also dreadful. Hold still.”

Lune laughs despite herself as Deia steps close and plucks the servant’s cap from her hair. Beneath her own plain covering, Lune has tucked soft brown curls into a knot too nervous to be called elegant. Her gown, when she shrugs free of the outer cloth, is pale green and simpler still, with a ribbon at the waist pressed smooth within an inch of its existence. She looks young. Pretty. Frightened. Too much like the kind of girl the world swallows and then insists has wandered willingly into its mouth. Deia’s fingers slow for the smallest moment as she adjusts one of Lune’s pins. Lune catches her wrist.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re already planning to stab someone on my behalf.”

“I often plan to stab people. You are not as singular as you imagine.”

Lune squeezes her wrist once, quick and fierce, then lets go. Deia turns to the mirror. A narrow crack runs through its lower corner, splitting her reflection from shoulder to hip. Her horns rise dark from the sweep of black hair she now loosens and rearranges with efficient hands. Tieflings are not unheard of in noble houses, particularly not in Baldur’s Gate, where money can soften many prejudices so long as it arrives properly laundered. There are two in the ballroom already, she has been told: one a merchant’s son with lacquered horns and rings enough to blind a saint, another a distant relation to some duchess or other who has learned to smile as though forgiveness were a currency.

Deia’s own horns are not what will betray her. It is everything else. The slight disorder no maid’s hands have corrected. The absence of jewels. The plain gloves. The too-watchful eyes. The scar at her collarbone half-hidden by dark lace. The faint scales near her temples that catch light without asking permission. The manner of a woman who has learned how to stand in beautiful rooms but not how to trust them. She looks good. She does not look refined. That, she suspects, is the difficulty. True refinement requires either long practice or an impressive willingness to lie to oneself. Deia possesses practice in abundance, but little talent for that second art. Lune comes to stand beside her in the mirror.

“We’ll be noticed.”

“Of course we shall.”

“That was not comforting.”

“It was not meant to be. Comfort breeds inaccuracy.”

“Could you try lying, once?”

“I am lying. Look at me.”

Lune looks, and her smile turns smaller. Deia softens before she can stop herself. She reaches up and straightens the ribbon at Lune’s waist.

“Keep to the edges. Do not drink anything you have not watched poured. Do not follow any man into a corridor, even if he speaks sweetly enough to rot your teeth. If we are separated, you go to the kitchens first. If you cannot reach them, the eastern passage. If that is blocked, the courtyard with the orange trees.”

“I remember.”

“Say it.”

“The kitchens. Eastern passage. Orange trees.”

“And if someone touches you?”

Lune’s chin lifts.

“I scream.”

“No.”

Lune blinks. Deia’s eyes hold hers in the mirror.

“You break something first. Then you scream.”

A beat passes. Then Lune nods. Satisfied, Deia takes a pair of little silver pins from her pocket and fixes back the front pieces of her hair so that the dark weight of it falls more neatly over her shoulders. The effect is not quite fashionable. It is not quite improper either. It lives in that precarious country between invitation and insult, where Deia spends much of her life.

“Come,” she says. “Let us go be decorative.”

“Gods save the decorations.”

“No one else will.”

They leave the retiring room as two women transformed by nothing more substantial than posture, silk, and a shared willingness to be mistaken for belonging. The nearer they draw to the ballroom, the more the sound of the assembly gathers itself: violins, laughter, the whisper of skirts, the formal announcement of names, the soft percussion of shoes upon polished floor.

At the threshold, Lune stops. Deia does not blame her. High Hall’s ballroom opens before them like a jewel box constructed by someone with more money than restraint. Tall windows reflect the candlelight until it seems the night itself has been invited indoors and persuaded to wear diamonds. Garlands of white flowers loop from pillar to pillar. The floor shines so brightly one might use it to examine one’s conscience, had conscience been fashionable. Everywhere, people move in circles of rank and desire.

Young ladies stand arranged in delicate clusters, each one a pastel hope with a mother nearby to interpret opportunity. Gentlemen linger with affected ease, speaking of horses, politics, and weather as though these subjects have not been exhausted by every generation before them. Older women watch with the grave intensity of generals. Older men watch the wine.

There are mages too, though they wear their art with varying degrees of taste. Rings glimmer with warding spells. Brooches hold minor enchantments. A few visible familiars perch upon shoulders or chair backs, tolerated so long as they do not shed. Near the upper end of the room, beneath a crest worked in silver thread, the host speaks animatedly with a priest of Mystra whose ceremonial blue robes seem determined to be seen from Waterdeep. Lune’s mouth falls open. Deia sighs.

“Close your mouth. You will catch a husband by accident.”

Lune shuts it at once, then opens it again to laugh.

“Would that be so terrible?”

“In this room? Statistically, yes.”

They move to the side of the assembly, near enough to observe, far enough to avoid immediate scrutiny. Deia accepts a glass of wine from a passing servant with a nod that makes him glance twice, uncertain whether she is above or below him. She enjoys that. Confusion is a small art, and she has cultivated it lovingly. Lune takes her own glass and stares at the chandeliers.

“I never thought I’d see it from this side.”

“This side?”

“The side with the wine.”

“Do not grow sentimental. It is poor wine.”

“You tasted it?”

“I suffered it.”

Lune hides her smile behind the rim of her glass.

“You’d call the heavens badly arranged if you found yourself among them.”

“Only if they hang the stars with such desperation.”

Lune’s shoulders shake. Deia watches the room over the edge of her glass. The laughter. The bowed heads. The fluttering fans. The measured glances exchanged between people who have perfected the art of never saying plainly what they mean to sell. It is not that she despises beauty. Beauty, in honest form, has always undone her a little. Music heard through an open tavern door. A field after rain. The first orange flame caught in a cold hearth. A child asleep with crumbs on her chin. The curve of a good blade. But this is not beauty. This is display.

“It affords me constant astonishment,” Deia says, “that gentlemen should profess such a fancy for assemblies so entirely devoid of necessity.”

Lune laughs outright this time, though she quickly turns it into a cough when a lady nearby glances in their direction.

“You may say so, but plenty find necessity in them.”

“Then they are too easily satisfied.”

“Aye, well, not everyone can be satisfied by lurking in corridors and frightening criminals.”

“I have many interests.”

“Name one that does not involve knives.”

“Wine.”

“You just insulted the wine.”

“I did not claim a lack of standards.”

Lune leans closer, eyes bright despite the lingering tension at their edges.

“You know why they’re all here, don’t you?”

“To impersonate peacocks and obstruct the floor?”

“For the Dekarios family.”

“So I gather from the excessive reverence paid to every person wearing blue.”

“They have come all the way from Waterdeep. The whole family, near enough. Or the important ones, at least.”

“Families are very fond of declaring which of their members matter. It saves strangers the trouble of judging incorrectly.”

Lune ignores that with admirable discipline.

“And Mr. Dekarios is to be here.”

Deia’s gaze does not move from the room.

“How fortunate for Mr. Dekarios.”

“You’ve heard of him, then?”

“I have ears.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is an explanation.”

“Deia.”

She sighs.

“Yes, I have heard of him. Half the city has contrived to speak of little else for three days.”

“Only three? At the tavern it has been five.”

“The tavern has always been ambitious in its sufferings.”

Lune nudges her lightly.

“They say he is handsome.”

“They say many things.”

“And brilliant.”

“A more dangerous accusation.”

“And rich.”

“The least imaginative of virtues.”

“And still unmarried.”

Deia finally looks at her. Lune has the good grace to look only partly guilty.

“No,” Deia says.

“I did not say anything.”

“You inhaled with intention.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because I possess a functioning mind.”

“An inconvenient possession for a woman, I am told.”

“By men who fear competition.”

Lune smiles, then softens her voice.

“I only mean that if he is half so pleasant to look upon as they say, and if he has even a quarter of the fortune, gaining his attention would not be the worst endeavour.”

“For whom?”

“For any woman with sense.”

“Then may she enjoy him.”

“For you, goose.”

Deia stares at her. Lune lifts both brows.

“What? You could do worse than a handsome rich mage from Waterdeep.”

“I could also throw myself into the harbour and achieve dampness more directly.”

“Deia.”

“Please.” Deia turns back to the ballroom, the glass stem cool between her fingers. “The gentleman would not grant me a second glance, much less offer a word of greeting. Moreover, however great his fortune or talent, it matters little if a man of such means possesses no true merit.”

She says it quietly enough that the words are meant for Lune alone. Unfortunately, ballrooms have a strange fondness for betrayal. A hush passes near the great doors, not silence exactly, but a rearrangement of attention. Conversations loosen, then tighten. Fans lift. Spines straighten. A mother in rose silk seizes her daughter’s wrist with such swiftness one might mistake the gesture for rescue. Lune’s eyes widen. Deia does not turn at once. She does not need to. The room already tells her enough. Some presence has entered and is immediately weighed, admired, appraised, desired, envied, and offered up to speculation. The air itself seems to adjust its posture. Lune whispers, with the doomed delight of a girl watching a carriage roll directly toward a puddle,

“I think Mr. Dekarios has arrived.”

Deia takes a slow sip of the poor wine. It has not improved.

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