The Spirit Ring by Lois McMaster Bujold Read Free Book Online Page A

wool. The dress had once belonged to Fiametta's mother; Fiametta and Ruberta had spent a week cutting it down and re-sewing it. Judging from the measurements, Fiametta was now nearly as tall as her mother had been, though more slender. Strange. She remembered her mother as tall, not short: tall and dark and warm.
           Fiametta held out her arms, and Ruberta pulled on the sleeves and tied them to the dress at the shoulders, fluffing out puffs of the underdress for contrast at the elbows. The red velvet sleeves were embroidered with silver thread, echoed by a silver band running all around that wonderful hem.
           "Don't bounce so, girl," Ruberta complained mildly, pinching her lower lip with her teeth in concentration as she knotted the bows just so. She stepped back and regarded Fiametta with judicious pride. "Now for your hair."
           "Oh, yes, please." Fiametta plunked down in obedience on the stool. No little girl's cap today, nor hair in a mere simple braid down her back. The dress had come with a matching hairnet of silver thread and pearls, magically untarnished with age. Ruberta parted Fiametta's hair in neat, if wavy, wings, wound it up on the back of her head, and fastened the net over the mass of it, except for two dark ringlets she made to bounce artfully in front of Fiametta's ears. Fiametta stared greedily into her little mirror, delighted, turning her head back and forth to make the ringlets jump. "Thank you, Ruberta!" She flung her arms around the housekeeper's aproned waist and hugged her. "You're so clever."
           "Oh, your slippers—they're still in the kitchen. I'll go get them." Ruberta hurried out. Fiametta tried the mirror at various angles, and ran her hands again over the soft sumptuous cloth. She sucked on her lower lip and, on impulse, rose and went to the chest at the end of her bed.
           She pushed aside linens and found a flat oaken casket. She opened it to reveal her mother's death mask. Many people kept death masks of wax; Prospero Beneforte had recast Fiametta's mother's in bronze, darkened by his art to a rich brown close to her original skin tones. The alert dark eyes were closed, now, like sleep, but a strangely sad sleep, above the soft curves of her nose and wide mouth. Fiametta held the mask up to her dress and peeked over it into her mirror, held out at arm's length. She squinted, in an effort to weld face and dress in the blur. Then she lowered the mask to her chin, comparing the two faces. How much of the paler one was Prospero Beneforte, how much this lost woman? Fiametta's nose had a definite bridge, and her jaw was more sharp-cut than this dark visage, but otherwise... Who am I? And whose am I? Where do I belong, Mother?
           Ruberta's step sounded on the gallery, and Fiametta hastily replaced the mask in its casket and locked it away again. Ruberta handed the polished shoes in through the door. "Hurry, now. Your Papa's waiting downstairs."
           Fiametta jammed her feet into the shoes, and skipped out of her bedroom and around the upper gallery overlooking the courtyard. She took up her skirts to descend the stairs, then shook them out and walked more sedately, as befit her lady's hairstyle. No slave's gown, this, nor mere servant's, but obvious proof that her mother had been the true Christian wife of a great artisan. Fiametta held her chin up firmly.
           Master Beneforte was standing in the stone-paved hallway. He looked splendid too, Fiametta decided. He wore a cloak of black velvet that swung to his knees, and a big hat of the same fabric, wound round like a turban with a jaunty fall of cloth to the side. His tunic was of honey-brown cut velvet, high to his neck where a bright white line of linen showed, with a pleated skirt to his knees and black hose. Despite his graying hairs Master Beneforte still resisted the long gowns of the aged, though the sober colors he'd chosen suggested a suitably powerful