The Wives of the Doge
Connects to: 04.05, 25.15, 28.04, 29.14.07, 29.14.30, 29.14.38, 30.03 and 32.22.
When the twin daughters Lord Tristifer Bartley of Blackhorn Keep (30.03) came of age they were such beauties that all men wondered if they had elven blood.
Considering the history of the second Lady Bartley, it is easy to see how people could come to such a misapprehension, but the girls were human. But such humans they were! Seline was as pale as the moon and with hair as dark as the night sky, but nevertheless it shone brighter than a thousand stars. Her sister Eliana had such skin that, even though she led the sunless life of the night men, it remained golden but not near as golden as the bright and curling wreath of her hair.
For long years Lord Bartley refused all suitors, cleverly playing the other lords of the Lands of the Night Cattle off against each other until many, his brother chief among them, feared that he sought to name one of them his heir, for he had no sons. But then, during one Long Night (28.04) some years past, the great Doge of the City of Shuttered Windows paid a visit to the market pits (28.04) and, blind though he was and is, he was enchanted by the sisters.
The thought of his house allied to Shuttered itself brought great joy to Lord Bartley but precious little to the Doge or his daughters. How could the Doge choose either one of the beauties and how could the twins be separated by the lonely miles between Blackhorn Keep and the Shuttered City? Finally a priest of the Alberon, the god of the City of Shuttered Windows who traveled in the Doge’s revenue arrived at a solution: by his interpretation of the laws of the Temple Invisible the sisters had but one soul and thus the Doge was free to marry both of them, which he did in the greatest festivity that Blackhorn Keep had ever seen.
At first the Great Families seethed at the presence of the twin wives and some in the Temple Indivisible muttered darkly, but Eliana soon won them over with her bright smiles and ready charm. Soon the entire city was following the fashion of the feather dresses that she favored, though few could match her firebird dresses in which the feathers of the firebirds were so freshly plucked that they yet glowed. Under even the pale sun that shines on the Shuttered City Eliana blossomed, her beauty seeming to grow greater by the day.
Celine fared differently. The face of the sun, which she had never before seen, filled her with terror and she had the windows of her apartments replaced with the solid walls of home. Yet that was not enough, for she thought that she could smell the sun on the people who surrounded her and soon took to stalking the lonely halls of the Doge’s palace by night. Her only comfort was her husband and, as he often worked through the night, Celine soon became his secretary. She had a quick mind and a sharper nose for lies, which pleased the Doge. But Celine found that the reports of assassins, cults and mad wizards that she now read nightly bred with her mad fear of the sun and produced a brood of a thousand terrors. Chief among them is her fear of the Whispering Sisters, who she is convinced are dedicated to her destruction above all else.
Thus, while it is Eliana who speaks about organizing a company of female warriors to attack to citadel of the Whispering Sisters (32.22), she does it out of love for her sister as when they meet at every dawn and every dusk Celine never fails to speak of the peril of the Sisters.
Connections:
- The wives favor the clocks made at the works of Albus Flidge, which may not be wise.
- One of Flidge’s watches is whispering to the wives when they sleep alongside the Blind Doge
- Selene owns a pearl shop that she uses to keep tabs on who is buying pearls as the material component of identify spells (29.14.38).
Hooks:
- Do the Whispering Sisters truly seek to destroy Celine?
- What other fashions has Eliana popularized?
- What is life like within the keeps of the Land of the Night Cattle?
- What other paranoid whisperings is Celine engaged in?
- Have either of the twins had children by the blind Doge?
- Was the priest’s ruling that the twins share one soul true? What temple law is he basing that interpretation on?