Abaddon's Call

Chapter Nineteen

Alena had tea with Lady Pan.

Trild sat off to the side as Alena and Lady Pan sat at a wonderful white iron table that looked out over a fountain and a birdbath.

She hesitated at the birdbath, having heard the story from her own cousin's mouth. Lady Pan had replaced the tulips with hydrangea, none the wiser.

Alena wasn't quite certain how one might explain that in polite company. She feared Lady Pan's barbed questions dragging the answer from her. That Lady Pan might be uncomfortable if she learned her son had sex with Alena's cousin over that birdbath and completely destroyed her tulips.

Lady Pan had lost that quality that made her so terrifying just that morning as Alena prepared for tea.

They talked about linens and laundry service, food budgets, and family. Lady Pan used the double-speak Alena had learned from her mother's gossip circle.

"Call me Elena," meant quite the opposite. "My husband is such a hail man," meant that Lord Pan's sexual appetites were more than Lady Pan was willing to give, such and so on for nearly an hour.

"Trild," Lord Pan said, arriving quite suddenly, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose and a book in hand.
"I don't believe I permitted you to be alone with my wife?"

It was a question and accusation at the same time.

Alena turned to Trild and saw the surprise play over Trild's features. Her husband looked between Elena and his feet with a bit of terror.

"Not far enough away?" Trild asked.

Lord Pan gave Trild an exasperated expression as he tilted his head back and looked through the reading glasses at Trild.

"Come along, then," Lord Pan sighed.

The conversation with Lady Pan took a sharp turn once the men were gone. She asked all sorts of questions after close details in the classes. She appeared to have a good working knowledge of the students.

Alena felt relief at being asked such questions. Lady Pan was demanding. She wanted answers and asked more detailed questions when Alena's answer fell short of her expectations. Alena understood where the questions came from, thanks to Selifer.

"I heard you took some classes when Lord Pan was representative," Alena said, recalling her mother's lectures on polite conversation.

This gave Lady Pan an opportunity to talk about herself. The women in her mother's circle of friends loved to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

"For a few weeks," she said. "My father decided I was an embarrassment and said it must stop before I embarrassed him further. Tell me, what are your thoughts on Naena?"

Lady Pan's tone was cutting. Alena knew asking after the woman's time in Amos wouldn't be prudent. That information was for friends and confidants.

She suspected the woman would question her about Naena as she had her schooling, though she wasn't certain where to begin.

Aside from finding Naena in the library and passing her in the halls, Alena hadn't interacted with the woman. The only real reason Alena knew when Naena passed her was the fact that she was the only other woman wandering the halls while dressed like a student.

Neana was a second year mage.

A second year mage wasn't capable of the things people claimed Naena had done. She might have been brilliant, certainly, but people acted like she could end the world, and she couldn't.