Scents of incense and perfume lingered in the air of the hall. Sheer curtains hung down from the balcony of the second floor, dividing the main hall with the hallway leading to private rooms. Morning had yet to come, but servants where busying themselves with sweeping the floors and wiping tables, washing dishes and nibbling on food leftover by the guests and would go bad.
Two servants carried cushion to air them out in the backyard and to clean some of them up. Another one was bringing new cushions to be used.
The third floor of the Pavillion was still, the silence light and comfortable. The sweet scents of perfume were stronger here, the scent drifting out of the bedrooms. It was dark, as all windows having been covered a long time ago.
A maidservant was nodding off where she sat on a stool, very tired after another night of bustle.
At the end of the hallway, someone began snoring softly. At the other come a couple of soft coughs.
Laž’ar sat at the edge of the bed. He could barely make out anything in the dark room, and he didn’t dare to light a lantern or candle. The night was cold and he had a blanket covering him while he listened to his mother’s breathing. She coughed another two or three times and stirred again.
Laž’ar turned and stroke her hair. “Are you cold?” he whispered, but as expected got no answer.
Regardless, he let down the bed curtains and laid down. But even if he closed his eyes, he seemed to be staring at that surface above him, and couldn’t fall asleep. As to why, he wasn’t sure, and he moved closer to his mother. Even if she wasn’t cold, he certainly was.
As if she noticed in her sleep that he had moved closer for warmth and comfort, she turned and pulled her half-grown child into her arms, murmuring so softly Laž’ar couldn’t hear the difference between it and an exhale.
He slowly drifted off to sleep.
With a sharp inhale, Laž’ar opened his eyes. He couldn’t remember the dream, but it hadn’t been a comfortable one, making him incredibly ill at ease. He slowly sat up, rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes, looking toward the little gap to see it was bright outside. He listened closely, but it seemed that the noise he heard was simply the liveliness of the day, while the Pavillion still remained tranquil.
He slowly moved from the bed, leaving the curtain down, and walked over to a low table. After pouring some water into a bowl, he washed his face. He used his sleeve to dry it as he stepped over to a chest and rack. With great care, he folded the robe and dress that he had hung up a few hour earlier and put them in a basket where he had thrown his own robe from the night before. He then chose a new dress and robe for his mother.
Tapping his bottom lip a few times he looked at the collection of jewellery of his mothers. He picked out a few that would suit the robes he had chosen and placed them next to the bronze mirror, and finally picked out some rouge, using the scent to know shich one he was choosing.
He had done this so many times before, and would do this many times more, that it didn’t matter anymore that the light was limited.
It was only now that he went to choose what he would wear. Choosing first what he would wear in the evening, he just places the robes to the side together with the veil. He then spent a considerably longer time to determine what was proper for him to wear.
In reality, it didn’t actually matter that much. Oldest of the children of the Pavillion, it was his siblings that needed to consider what he wore, yet he took time not to seem like he looked down on them either. He had no reason to go anywhere, assuming the proprietress didn’t think of reason to send him on an errand, so in the end he chose some of his simplest clothes, with only a subtle pattern.
He had already noted a long time ago that the clothes of the few children of the Rose Pavillion often differed from the children of other places of similar nature. He naturally didn’t see the women and divine from these establishments very often, having his own chores to do, but the children of the Emerald Silk district he caught sight of more.
Dressing up quickly, he tied his long hair up while looking at the silhouette in the mirror.
Before stepping out with the basket under his arm, he lit incense, asking the maidservant outside to keep an eye on it for him while he was out for a while.
The Rose Pavillion consisted of the Pavillion itself, which faced the main street, and then a courtyard surrounded by three smaller buildings, with the garden well-maintained with a pond. Those who came to visit the Pavillion sometimes would look over at the garden through the small windows, but they never got to go there, nor would the know how.
Despite the larger hall for food and entertainment one would enter from the main street, the Pavillion was not easy to find the way in. The garden could only be accessed through two place: the kitch, and the third floor.
Laž’ar walked down the stone stairs, a candle the maid gave him lighting the way in the small space that had no windows. There were many stories of palace with secret passageways and noble estates with mazes, and many of the children who grew up in the Rose Pavillion all believed these to be true. Laž’ar himself had asked his mother many times if she thought the Governor’s estate had secret passages like the hidden stairs to the garden, but he only ever received a smile. With time he had stopped asking, but he never stopped wondering.
Just as he stepped out of the hidden stairs, he had a secret hope, so deep within his heart he wasn’t fully aware of it, that he would one day like to see the secret passageways of the grand estates he could only look at from a distance.
A maidservant saw him step out and immediately hurried over to him where he stood beneath a canopy that shaded him from the late morning sun.
“These need to washed,” Laž’ar simply stated, smiling warmly at the servant, and handed her the basket.
She nodded and walked over to the building to the east where some of the servants resided. The rest lived in the building to the north. What the west building was for, no one seemed to know, and though curious, Laž’ar knew better than try to sneak a look.
After blowing out the candle and putting it on a shelf next to the door, he put his hands behind his back and looked at the water lily pond for a long time. He turned and headed over to the kitchen to wake up the cook, seeing as he was the first of the children to wake up this day.