Baron Ottaviano spent some days reckoning and re-reckoning the ways to and from Lys and finally concluded that it could not be done. Moreover, by now, he thought, Luneté would have received her own summons to the great midwinter court, via an imperial courier, and he regretted the bravado that had inspired him to refuse Prince Gaston's offer to enclose a letter from Otto for the Countess in the courier's pouch. ``No, thanks, sir, I'll be there before the courier,'' Otto had declared, and Prince Gaston had said only, ``Very well.'' Now the Countess would have received that summons to court, with no word from him on what he was about, and as she had recently been eloquent on the subject of correspondence, Otto understood that it would be well for him to contrive some consolation, or conciliation, quickly.
His solution was not quite so perilous as the snow-filled passes of Ascolet, but was nearly as toilsome in its way. Otto gathered together a handful of the Ascolet men who had supported him through his travails, tallied up his ready money and then cheerfully reckoned that a baron had credit enough to travel on a light purse (for the collection of tax revenues had been---perhaps willfully---confused by the late alterations in Ascolet's status from imperial possession to independent kingdom to barony), and set out back toward Landuc, on a well-travelled king's highway. Prudently, he appointed a burly man a handspan bigger than himself as his Chancellor of the Exchequer for the duration of the journey, and although this soldier was inept at figures, he was proficient at diplomatically explaining to innkeepers and hostlers that His Excellency the Baron of Ascolet would pay later. And therefore they made good time and were well-housed and well-entertained each night.
They crossed the rolling lowlands at a good pace and reached the city of Landuc with sixteen days to spare before the court, and so Otto did not even pause at the Palace gates (he did spend little more than a quarter of an hour in a jeweler's shop, with his Chancellor, selecting a rope of pearls to grace the throat of the Countess of Lys), but set out immediately again on the king's highway southward, along which he reckoned the Countess must come. Now that he was struggling against the road's current, Otto noticed how much traffic there was. Every noble in Landuc who could move was travelling to the midwinter court for the spectacle of Prince Prospero's formal surrender; the highway was snowless and frozen solid in the dry deep cold, and caravans of painted coaches and horses and baggage rumbled rapidly along, sweeping into inn-yards and occupying every room in a place. The expenses were much higher on this leg of the trip, and the innkeepers were far less receptive to the idea of the Baron's travelling on credit: there was so much good solid gold and silver flowing along the road that they had but to hold out a hand to catch a fistful, and so the Baron's ethereal money bought him nothing. Thereafter, he and his party travelled incognito; they did not declare themselves and slept in stable-lofts; and they breakfasted, dined, and supped on onions, coarse bread, hard cheese, and sour beer or cider, all these cold comforts bought dearer than Otto's rustic Chancellor could believe. The chambermaids and serving-girls were all busy with the cash-rich customers, too, and the Baron consoled himself with the reflection that it would be prudent to keep a low profile going out, in order to avoid embarrassment on his way back, with his wife.
It was therefore with sincere joy that, on the sixth day of their journey from Landuc, Ottaviano espied the Countess of Lys's arms on a coach at a crowded inn where, it seemed, most of the nobility of the southern part of the realm had halted for food and fodder. He and his party clattered into the inn-yard, and Ottaviano made his way through a throng of gentlemen and ladies to inquire of the preoccupied host where he might look to find the Countess of Lys.
``Lys! Back there,'' said the host, jerking his chin toward the stairs and back. So Otto, leaving his men to forage in the public room, went upstairs and intruded on three other private parties, largely composed of ladies, until he found the right door.
``This is not the public dining-room, sir,'' said a hawk-faced lady he didn't recognize, as he stepped into the chamber, but Otto did recognize Luneté, with a little leap of his heart, before she turned to see him. ``Sirrah---!''
Otto took two more steps and put his arms around his wife, giving her a squeeze by way of greeting, and kissed the back of her neck soundly. ``Hello, Lu!''
Without a sound, Luneté spun around on the bench (the older lady had taken the only high-backed chair) and leapt to her feet; her maid squeaked with surprise, and the fourth woman, who must be the hawk-faced lady's maid, gasped. The Countess's hand was lifted and she was very close to boxing his ears, but Otto caught her wrist, laughing.
``I've been looking for you,'' Otto announced, grinning, and kissed his wife again before she had quite caught her breath.
``Otto!'' Luneté said then, drawing back as far from him as she could, encircled still by his arms.
``Yours to command, my lady.''
``I, I, I did not know you---you sent no word that you would meet me on the way,'' she said.
``I missed the courier and came myself, as fast as I could. Had some work to do in Ascolet first.'' Otto kissed her once more. ``You're a sight for sore eyes, Lu! And who's this?''
Luneté turned, extricating herself from his embrace as she did, and introduced him to the Countess of Surluse, her neighbor south-west of Lys, who held herself starchily and disapprovingly aloof from the Baron of Ascolet.
``Liker a highwayman than a prince's son,'' said the Countess of Surluse with a meaning-laden sniff.
Ottaviano disregarded the sniff and found another bench along the wall; he pulled it over to the table and joined them in their lunch, which was an unidentifiable scrawny fowl, a few chops, pickled crabs, white bread that tasted of other things than meal, and a greasy pudding. The ladies were drinking the fortified and fortifying hot punch known as glog, which Otto found to be a great improvement over the thinner brews he had been served on this trip. Likewise, the chops and pudding were welcome after the onions and black bread he had been travelling on, and he did them better justice than they deserved. The ladies dined, as ladies will, delicately, and with little conversation. Laudine, a maid to Luneté of Lys; was dispatched to chivvy the kitchen sluts (as the Countess of Surluse referred to them) into providing them the coffee they had ordered with their food, ``for they've charged us for it, sure as sundown, my dear; these highway innkeepers are sharp as skewers, specially before a court.''
Laudine was reduced to carrying the coffee up herself, which agreed poorly with her idea of the sort of service the Countess of Lys ought to have in an inn. The rest of the small Lys party---a footman, a page, and a coachman---had dined in the common room, which was so crowded and tumultuous with arrivals and departures that there was no seating the Emperor himself there, should he have come. Otto found the coffee, although weak, to be an excellent completion to the restorative meal, ignoring the dry biscuits with it. Those the Countess of Surluse wrapped up thriftily in her handkerchief for later, giving them to her maid to carry. ``They have charged us for them, certainly,'' she said, as if daring either Lys or Ascolet to think anything of it.
The reckoning had been paid in advance, an unusual practice prompted by the high volume of traffic coming through the inn's dining-rooms. The Countess of Surluse muttered approvingly that they should not have to pay anything extra for Otto, at least, although he had eaten more than anyone, and Otto handed her and her maid into the rugged old Surluse coach with all the grace he could muster before attending to Luneté. ``Where shall you stop the night, sir?'' the Countess of Surluse asked him, before closing her coach door.
``I guess that'll depend on how much progress we make,'' he said.
``I have sent one of my boys on to Savarin's, at Galisbridge, to take rooms for my party and the Lys people,'' she said. ``He won't rob me as badly as some of the others. He knows me.''
``I'm sure he does,'' said Otto. ``You've been very kind to my lady wife, and thank you. We'll see you at Galisbridge, then.'' And he bowed, stepped back, and closed the door before she could say anything else.
Luneté's coach was being brought around from the stubbled, muddy field where vehicles had been left in ranks and rows, owing to the impossibility of fitting them all in the yard.
``How about if I come ride with you to Galisbridge?'' Otto suggested to his wife, leading her to her coach-door.
``Um,'' said Luneté.
``There's room,'' he said, opening the door. It was a six-seater, and only Luneté, her maid, and her page were there to occupy it.
``Laudine, Dinas, get in,'' said Luneté, and moved back a few steps with Otto.
``What's wrong?''
``What in the holy Fire have you been doing?'' she whispered.
``What do you mean, doing?''
``You smell like, like a brewery and a midden! When did you last shave? Your clothes---''
``Oh,'' said Otto. He shrugged, rubbed his hand over his raspy coppery-bristled chin, slapped at his leather leggings. ``I hurried to get here, that's all. I didn't know you were friendly with Surluse.''
``We met on the way,'' said Luneté, sighing a little, ``and she was very thick with my parents, or so she says, although I rather think she didn't like my mother. She means well. And she has been very kind to me.''
``Tough old bird. Wouldn't be surprised if she came over with Panurgus,'' Otto said. ``I'll clean up when we get to Galisbridge, all right?''
``I wish you'd told me you were coming. I'd have been able to put off the Countess a bit. She's arranged our stops all the way to the city.''
``That's no bad thing, believe me. The road's only going to get more crowded.''
Luneté nodded. ``Otto, dear, I'm getting cold standing here. I'll see you at Galisbridge.''
``If I take a bath and shave first.'' He laughed.
``At least change your linen,'' Luneté said, and kissed his cheek. ``There. I am happy to see you, you know: you just look as though you've come from the battlefield. Now hand me up.''
Otto did so, closed the door on her (she lowered the shutter and blew him a kiss) and the coach rolled out of the yard.
``My lord,'' said his Chancellor of the Exchequer, ``this stop here done cleaned us out, sir.''
``Don't worry about it,'' said Otto cheerfully. ``From here on we'll be travelling with the Countess of Lys. Get the horses out here and let's go!''
``And where are your lodgings?'' asked the Countess of Surluse.
``We shall go to Lys House, of course,'' said Luneté of Lys. ``I sent a letter by the Emperor's courier, telling the steward to open the place and prepare it for me. It must be in a sad state, though---it cannot have been used for more than twenty years.''
``And all that time, the staff have been boarded and paid for no service! A bad business. Sarsemar would have been wiser to lease it.''
Luneté pressed her lips together. ``That would have been unseemly, I think,'' she said. Sarsemar had taken liberties in his position as it was.
``But it is in Firdrake Square, still a very favored area, and he would have had no difficulty finding a tenant. A careless man, Sarsemar. I am pleased never to have had much to do with him. Such people will chill the prospects of everyone around them.'' The Countess shot as significant a glance as possible at the Baron of Ascolet, of whom she had formed an opinion that he was rackety, an upstart, and not at all what he claimed to be.
Luneté caught the insult, though Otto, who was supervising the loading of the Surluse coach, did not, and Luneté's previous patience with the Countess of Surluse's sharpness vanished. Ottaviano had behaved entirely like a gentleman to the rasp-tongued lady, and she had no business disparaging him in the slightest matter.
``Madame,'' said Luneté, ``I must remind you that I cannot hear such things said of a gentleman as close to me as my former guardian.'' And she added a significant look of her own.
The Countess of Surluse humphed, but wisely left the issue: Lys House was, to be sure, in a favored part of the town, and it would not do to chill her welcome there. The tumult of the inn-yard, their last stop before the city, prevented much more conversation between them, and the Countess of Surluse was handed into her coach not long after with great address by the Baron of Ascolet, and was wished farewell very gratefully by the Countess of Lys---who did, after all, bid Surluse to call upon Lys when she had settled herself, and Surluse in turn bid Lys and Ascolet come dine the next day but one, the day before the great Court assembled, and so they all parted as amiably as might be hoped for, for near-strangers who had shared a difficult and crowded journey in midwinter.
Otto rode inside the Lys coach with his wife, her maid, and the page on this last half-day's stage to the city. The Countess of Surluse had explained to them that, as desirable as it might seem to press on and arrive late at night at one's own house, in practice a house that has only just been opened for one's arrival is usually less ready to receive one than an inn, no matter how many preparatory commands have been sent in letters. And since many did press on to reach the city in the weariest hours of the night, the inn was not as crowded as the worst they had seen on the trip; and Luneté in particular, wondering what sort of servants the Lys House steward might have been able to hire in such a brief time, saw the wisdom of this approach. They halted thrice---once to let Dinas out to climb onto the box beside the coachman, once to rest and care for the horses and themselves, and once to stand on Hunter's Hill outside the city, the famous panoramic view of land and harbor spread before them on this very cold, very clear day. A weathered kingstone smiled over carved numbers telling them that it wanted but ten miles to the city center. Otto, who had been to the city more than once before, pointed out an assortment of monuments, arches, and towers to his wife, who really wanted to know where Firdrake Square was and how much longer she must rattle along to get there. And over the whole city, behind it as it were, backed by the tongue of the great forest that was part of the Emperor's own preserve, watched the Palace, whose angled high white walls were clearly seen, and the golden-domed building within them glimpsed behind trees and lesser buildings. Within those walls was the Well: Luneté did not think of this, but Otto did.
Firdrake Square lay near the Palace. Luneté realized she should have guessed that, and wished, as her coach stopped and rumbled and stopped and rumbled over the cobbled streets, that Lys had been just a little less favored---just a little, so as to be closer to the city gates, sparing her this last, most fatiguing piece of the journey. Otto had left the coach and was riding, leading the coach and deploying his men to push through the crowded streets when such was possible. Laudine had a headache and was as out-of-sorts as Luneté, wondering that the Emperor would put up with such conditions in his own city. Dinas was in raptures, having a grand view of more houses, more shop-windows, more fine horses, more carriages, more chairs, and more people than he had ever imagined there could be in the world, and the coachman and footman were reminding one another that there would be some kind of punch, and some kind of food, and a good welcome generally, at Lys House when it opened its doors to the long-awaited new Countess.
They made one last, climbing turn; they left, of a sudden, the clamorous traffic behind them; the horses put their shoulders to it and drew the Countess of Lys's coach up a curving street that led into a closed loop of road, which was Firdrake Square. Otto tapped at the window and told Luneté so, and she could not resist leaving the shutter down and leaning this way and that, looking at the houses of her neighbors and their carriage-entrances and the trees that curved over the street. Everything looked very tidy and well-kept: she saw a child playing hoop, with four attendants; bare tree-branches reaching above high garden walls; a pair of liveried maids with covered baskets followed by two liveried footmen with greater baskets, all marching along decorously quiet; she saw window-boxes of late greenery and a muffled-up gentleman in a light, dangerous-looking open carriage. They all glanced at the coach, at the Lys shield on the coach-door, and looked away, not staring. A very good neighborhood, thought Luneté. Outside one door, across from her own, stood a horse and eight soldiers, the horse like a statue,uncommonly still, and the soldiers ranked in neat order, four and four to each side of the iron gate. But she hardly noticed that: it was across from her own house.
``Lys House,'' said Otto, for it was carved, though not painted, over the arched front door, and he sent his Chancellor of the Exchequer to bang on the closed door of the carriage-entry.
There ought to have been people watching for her, thought Luneté. She had written to them; they knew she'd be arriving. It looked too quiet.
No one came to the door.
``Knock again,'' Otto said, and he sent the footman up to yank the bell as well, and the page to knock and ring at the front door.
``Why aren't we in?'' Luneté demanded, sticking her head out of the coach.
``Something's amiss,'' said Otto. ``Did you---''
The Chancellor's hammerings had attracted some attention: the muffled-up gentleman had turned his carriage back to them. Now the house-door opened and a portly man came out, and with him a handful of others, footmen and valets by the looks of them. Otto seized the first fellow at once.
``Are you deaf? The Countess of Lys bids you open the door of her house and has been so doing for the past ten minutes.''
``Unhand my steward, sirrah!'' said the muffled gentleman.
``Your steward? Lys's steward, I should think,'' said Luneté, who had left her coach with Laudine. ``Are you not Pometer?''
A small number of passersby, appearing as by magic, began to take an interest in the proceedings.
``Pometer is my steward, and this is my home,'' said the muffled gentleman.
``Pellico Sarsemar!'' cried Luneté, a peal of rage in her voice. ``This is Lys House and it is mine! You will remove yourself in the instant, sir!''
``The so-called Countess of Lys, I take it,'' said Sarsemar.
``I remember you,'' said Otto, nearly snarling. ``I remember that I saw you in the stables buffling that dairy-maid on your last visit to Sarsemar. What the hell are you doing in the Countess of Lys's house, and how fast can you run?'' He too had been seized by a rush of anger: to have come so far and find the Baron of Sarsemar's oily son squatting here was too much.
``Otto!'' said Luneté.
``The pretender of Ascolet, as well,'' said Pellico. ``I must ask you to leave; you are blocking the street before my carriage-way, and I have no intention of receiving such distinguished company. The neighborhood is slipping as it is,'' he said, gesturing toward the house guarded by eight of the Emperor's soldiers, ``and I am sure no one would desire it to go any further.''
``It's gone already, if you're here,'' said Otto. ``This is Lys House; Sarsemar has no more business with it than Sarsemar has with the Countess of Lys.''
``The house has long been an emolument of Sarsemar, by the Emperor's grace,'' said Pellico Sarsemar, ``and---''
``It has not,'' said Luneté.
The bystanders began to offer opinions and histories among themselves.
``You lie,'' said Otto, and he bounced up and lifted Sarsemar out of his carriage, onto the pavement, releasing him. Otto's men pressed around him, as much as they could. A certain amount of shoving began among the Sarsemar men and the Ascolet men.
``You jack-knave,'' said Sarsemar, and struck at Otto with his stick; Otto caught it, tore it from him, and broke it on his knee.
``Pometer, give me your keys,'' said Luneté, drawing herself up and holding out her hand. ``You are relieved of your duties.''
Pometer fidgeted from foot to foot, pale with fear, wringing his hands. ``Your Grace, with greatest respects, I cannot, I---''
``Kester,'' (for this was the Chancellor's name) ``relieve Pometer of his key-ring,'' said Otto.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ascolet seized Pometer by the collar, but Pometer showed exceptional spirit and wriggled out of his coat. Voices were being raised now among the bystanders, who were drawing back to give the confrontation breathing-room, and among the disputants, who were calling one another liars and worse and beginning to finger their weapons. It must go badly with the Sarsemar side, who were unarmed, save that more people were beginning to come from the house (though still the carriage-entry remained closed).
``This is outrageous,'' declared Luneté, angrier than she had ever been.
``You have no business here, madame,'' said Pellico. ``Begone. The decent inns are no doubt full, but you can certainly find some doss-house suited to you and your company.''
``That's it,'' said Otto, and began wading through the crowd with murder in his eye. Pellico backed around, separated from his carriage and trying to reach it.
On the other side of the square, the front door of the house guarded by eight soldiers and a patient horse opened. A tall man, crimson-cloaked, came out, and the movement and color caught Otto's eye as he lunged to grab Pellico. Otto froze, then stood quite still. Pellico sprang into his carriage.
As the attention of most present had been on Otto, their heads were turned by his distraction, to look at the guarded house and the man speaking to the soldiers outside it.
``By the Fire, it's the Prince Marshal,'' said Otto quietly.
Luneté of Lys, mortified beyond belief, wished the earth might open and swallow her: a wish unlikely to be granted even in former days of the Well's most overt potency and presence. That so august a person as Prince Marshal Gaston should see her in the middle of a street brawl ought to be a fatal humiliation. Laudine gasped and curtseyed, staying down.
``Bosh,'' said Pellico Sarsemar, uncertainly.
``Calling on old Valgalant, the traitor,'' whispered someone. ``The great fool he; should have stayed out of town.''
The Prince Marshal had taken the bridle of his horse in hand and turned, and now his eye lit on the drama across the pavement, really seeing it for the first time. His distant, serene expression shifted slightly as he focused on the street and the coach and the people arguing there, whose voices had all dropped in an instant when Otto had said, ``It's the Prince Marshal.'' For everyone knew who Prince Gaston was, and no one particularly desired to be singled out for his notice at the moment, not in the throes of an altercation they all felt to be crass and common, though of enormous importance.
Luneté prayed in her thoughts, a heartfelt prayer of but a breath's duration, that the Well might take pity on her embarrassment and send the Prince on quickly before he recognized the Baron of Ascolet, who had fought against and then under him in the recent wars.
But the Well was deaf, or busy, and instead of mounting his enormous horse and taking his regal self elsewhere, Prince Gaston walked toward them, leading the horse, and six of the eight foot-soldiers who had waited for him followed. The other two opened the ironwork gate of the house and took places to either side of the door.
The voices raised in argument in the street had fallen utterly silent when Prince Gaston had taken his first step toward them. Now the bodies fell as well, bowing. Despite the dirt, Luneté curtseyed, a presentation curtsey; so did Pellico's housekeeper, even deeper. Pellico managed some awkward repositioning of himself in his carriage, which he feared to leave. Ottaviano, however, straightened, his backbone arranging itself into the habitual military erectness it had learned to assume in the vicinity of the Fireduke or Prince Herne.
``Ascolet,'' said the Prince Marshal.
``Sir.''
``And Lys.''
``My lady wife, sir, Luneté, who comes to take oath for Lys.''
Luneté dared look up and met the Fireduke's gaze on her. ``Your Highness,'' she said, dry-throated. He hardly seemed to see her; the Countess of Lys was no part of the deeper matters that held his attention at the moment; she was an ephemeral movement in the landscape around his thought. But the Countess saw the Prince Marshal, a being from whom all adjectives had long been burned away, leaving only the essence of what he was. She tried to picture him later, and despite the daylight, despite the clarity of her vision, she had only an impression of vast height (of course, she nearly knelt), of brightness, of a balanced and pensive soul pausing in its business to glance at her. A crimson cloak, and the pale horse beyond. She did not think he had spoken to her.
Prince Gaston looked away from the Countess of Lys; it had only been half a heartbeat that he saw her at all, perhaps. No one else in the pack of disputants raised his head, all waiting to be addressed or dismissed, all hoping to be overlooked.
``What's debated here?'' the Prince said to Otto.
``Lys House has been wrongly given to kin of Sarsemar's to use,'' said Otto.
Prince Gaston nodded once, up, down; no further explanation was needed, as Otto had guessed. ``Go to the Palace,'' he said. ``Tell Lord Teppick to accommodate thee.''
``Yes, sir.''
``Whatever else may pass, th'art Sebastiano's son,'' said Prince Gaston, in a voice only Ottaviano heard.
Otto looked down. ``Yes, sir,'' he agreed, the blood flushing over his face.
The Prince turned away; he mounted his horse; the foot-soldiers remained behind him, going to the house of Valgalant (four went in, no doubt to its back gates). Before the hoofbeats of the Prince's horse had faded in the air, Ottaviano had tugged Luneté to her feet, was wordlessly bundling her into her coach, pushing the stunned maid Laudine and the page in after her. Sarsemar's son and servants looked at one another, discomfited, as the Lys coach and the Ascolet horsemen clattered off down the street, following the Prince Marshal, and the soldiers that stood before the Valgalant house watched the knot of people dissolve into the afternoon's usual foot-traffic once more.
The potentate might arrive in a sedan-chair shaded by lofty, rippling feathers dyed the hues of the rainbow, riding a high-stepping panoplied horse, or in an open carriage or closed coach discreetly or ostentatiously blazoned with arms and devices. The lackeys might be naked, or nearly so, or plainly dressed, or frothed with gold and silver lace; they might be men or not, armed or not, imposing or not, but they would be legion, and would affect to be unawed at the sight of the famous gold-leafed dome of the Palace, at the sweeping stairs leading to the impossibly tall white doors inlaid with gold flames, at the ranks of cold-eyed guards, never at ease, who watch the approach of all who come.
Beneath the eyes of the guards, even the potentate is diminished, for the guards know that all are subservient to the Emperor, from the mightiest to the lowliest, and that, be the petitioners ever so powerful, their petitions might be denied, their plans dismissed, their kingdoms taken from them and sucked dry as an orange, on the Emperor's nod.
The guards' eyes watch the arrival of lesser creatures too, as closely and as cynically as they watch the monarchs and magnificences who travel in state. Goldsmiths, jewelers, architects, armorers, usurers, playwrights, poets, portrait-painters, philosophers, fools, sea-captains, shipwrights, bankers, guildsmen, dwarves, landscape-designers, ladies' maids with messages, gentlemen's men with gifts---all pass to and fro in compact review of the realm before the eyes of the guards. Among them go counts and earls, barons and lords, knights and marquises, swarmed by their followers, friends, and companions, full of the importance of themselves and their errands and never admitting that the guards, at any instant, might step forward and seize any one of them, for any reason. It had happened once: Baron Beort of Gonlingfast had been taken on the third step---the very spot struck a thousand times a day by slippered soles and booted heels---taken and hauled to the sixth step and beheaded, and his body thrown to Prince Herne's yellow-toothed pack. Everyone knows it; but it is history now, and such things cannot happen to loyal supporters of the Emperor.
Not all visitors come to the Palace through the east door. Some come to the side doors with laces, linen, perfumes, poisons, gowns, gloves, shoes, hats, tapestries, carpets, furniture; some come to the rear doors with laundry, music, dogs, horses, candles, coal, wood, beer, wine, vegetables, poultry, meat, fish, flowers to sell, buttons to peddle, alms to beg, fortunes to tell. Some---a very few---scale ivied walls or copper-green drain-spouts and slip in through the thousands of windows or down the hundreds of chimneys, and most of those are clever enough not to boast later if they succeed in leaving. And some of those who come and go thus furtively are as those who enter through the east door, but do not wish their calls to be noted by the gold-cuffed clerk who stands at a tall writing-desk inside the door and sets down names in his great ledgers.
The Princes of the realm come and go freely through any door or window they please, Prince Marshal Gaston or Prince Herne causing a nearly imperceptible straightening and stiffening of the spine to ripple through the guards; Prince Heir Josquin's leisurely arrivals and departures, borne along in a chattering cloud of noble admirers dimming their glories and giving their ears, eyes, and anything else he might desire; Princess Evote aloof and Princess Viola running an appraising eye over the ranks; blue-coated Prince Fulgens scowling over some slight new-minted (genuine or imagined); and, but recently after long absence, brooding Prince Prospero, unaccompanied save by his muffled daughter. A wave of alert apprehension had gone through the guards as the Prince of Air passed, his dark cloak floating and casting swirling shadows on the white stone, for although the guards saw everything and everyone come and go, all sorts, all day, if there was one kind of visitor they would gladly never have seen at all, it was a sorcerer.
For sorcerers arrive differently. They come unannounced, as Prospero did, alone and more dangerous than a phalanx of Lys pikemen, a crackling aura warning even the insects to stay away from them. Oriana of the Glass Castle had lately come in a chariot, drawn by horned creatures which had bitten the throat out of the groom who ran to hold them for her. Esclados the Red had liked to travel in a sedan-chair carried by wide-eyed near-naked virgins chained with rings of gold and ropes of pearls; the Spider King's method of travel was unnerving to the most stalwart of the guard; Acrasia the Foul came and went in a black, dark-draped closed coach which left a reek of corruption in its wake. But of these only Oriana had been to the east door since the Emperor's accession.
That a sorcerer had, very lately, been about the Palace, had burgled the place and carried off Prospero's Well-guarded daughter from under Prince Gaston the Marshal's very nose (the same girl who now trotted in Prospero's shadow), was whispered, but the subject displeased the Emperor and was not openly discussed. It had been a long time since the Palace Guard met sorcery head-on, and, when faced with a sudden explosion of flame and a hot draught of ashes beneath the portico, they reacted with admirable aplomb.
As this explosion occurred, the guards ducked and shielded their faces even as they brought weapons to bear on the source. The flames and cinders blew away as suddenly as they had come. Their source, the sorcerer, stood on the white, unscorched marble, nonchalantly brushing ashes off his handsome turquoise-blue cloak's shoulder cape with a hand gloved in matching leather. He doffed his black hat and blew ashes from the blue-green-silver cockade, then donned it again at a jaunty angle. His other hand held a long black staff. He ignored the guards; he ignored the gasps and a cerise-cheeked baroness swooning on the steps; he stood in a perfect silence, turning on his heel to look over the place with an appraiser's perspicacious eye. He had not been to the east door before and was wondering how to proceed.
``Let go of me, wolf!'' someone cried, and then, ``Dewar!''
He whirled.
Some distance below him on the steps was tall, frowning Prince Herne, and Prince Herne's left hand gripped the upper right arm of a woman whose brown cloak was thrown back to show her gold-and-brown brocaded dress. The woman was struggling, pushing at Herne, who was as little troubled by her resistance as might have been one of the columns under the portico.
The visitors to the Palace discreetly and prudently drew back, out of the way between Herne and the sorcerer. Herne's choleric humor was famous, and one never knew what a sorcerer might do.
``Why, Prince Herne,'' Dewar said, smiling.
``Take him!'' Herne ordered the guards.
The sorcerer spun around again, drawing a line on the white marble with his staff-end; a sheet of fire leapt up, rippling in the cold winter air. The guards tried to flank it, and it danced before them, hissing. Dewar descended toward Herne.
``Hello, Freia,'' the sorcerer said.
``Let me go!'' cried Freia, prying at Herne's hand, wrapped round her arm as a root grows round a stone.
Herne drew his saber from its scabbard slowly, caressing the air with it. ``In a clean fight I'll gut thee, turncoat,'' he said softly, with a joyless smile.
``I'm not interested in fighting with you or anyone right now, Herne. What are you doing trolling young women around by the arm?''
``The baggage sought to steal a horse,'' said Herne. ``The Emperor's hospitality is not to her liking. We've other things to discuss. Draw.'' The steel of his blade flashed as he gestured at the hilt of Dewar's sword.
``I couldn't dream of duelling with you, Herne, not with you incapacitated so,'' Dewar said pleasantly. ``You're far too honorable a man to, for instance, use her as a shield, eh? Yet you can't let go of her; she's quick, she'll take to her heels and begone.''
Herne laughed. ``Aye, I'll turn her loose to go. And whither? She's not been to the Well, not passed the Fire. How far to thy earth, tender pretty vixen? Where's thy Map, thy Ephemeris?'' He shook Freia. She kicked him, hampered by skirts and manure-stained cloak.
Dewar's staff swung in his hand, a glowing haze trailing it, cometlike. ``Come, Freia,'' he said to her. ``Bring me to your father. Herne, I strongly suggest that you release her, now.''
``Take her,'' Herne suggested, and moved up a step closer to Dewar, lifting his sword, dragging Freia.
``How now, Herne; what's toward?'' someone called from above. A whisper passed among the onlookers who had not inconspicuously slunk away, fearful of sorcery.
Herne glanced past Dewar. His eyes narrowed. ``A horse-thief and a traitor,'' he said. ``Beneath you, Gaston.''
Dewar's shoulders prickled; he heard Gaston behind him and glanced around. The guards were still fenced with flames; the Prince Marshal approached alone, passing indifferently through the fire.
Gaston paused in mid-step, met Dewar's look, and his brows drew slightly together.
``What's thy errand here, Dewar?''
``A professional call,'' Dewar said. ``On this lady's father.''
``On her father,'' the Marshal repeated, eyeing Dewar thoughtfully.
``I've a prior call upon thee, bastard,'' Herne said.
``'Ware thy tongue, Herne; what know'st thou of his parentage?'' Gaston said. ``Meseems the lady finds thy arm little to her liking.''
``The wench was in the stables trying to steal a horse,'' Herne said.
``He's Papa's horse,'' Freia said. ``Liar!'' She landed a kick on Herne's high-booted shins.
``Trying to steal thyself away, then,'' Gaston said, ``and couldst not go a furlong ere wert taken again. The Emperor desires that thou shouldst stay, Lady Freia, and---''
``He's nothing to me! Nobody orders me!''
``So 'tis seen,'' Gaston said, ``yet hast no choice but stay. What's thy office with Prospero, Dewar?''
``It is domestic in nature,'' Dewar said, and they regarded one another again.
``Th'art acquainted with the lady.''
``Well enough to guess that she prefers my arm to Herne's,'' Dewar replied in the same dry tone.
``Herne, release her, and I'll see them both within,'' Gaston said.
``A fine guard wert thou aforetimes,'' Herne said. ``She's a very vixen, and he's cunning and without honor---''
``Watch it, Herne,'' Dewar snapped.
``Herne, release her,'' Gaston repeated.
With a glare, Herne opened his hand. Freia stood still for a heartbeat; Dewar smiled at her, and she sprang up to stand at his side. He slipped his arm familiarly around her waist and embraced her. Freia clung to him, hugged him trembling around the neck.
``Well met,'' said he. ``Glad to see me?''
``I hoped and hoped you'd come,'' she said, low in his ear. ``I was afraid you wouldn't.''
``I had vital matters of my own, elsewhere, but it would have been ungentlemanly not to come. Your fears were baseless, madame.''
She nodded. ``I thought so,'' Freia whispered, and leaned against him, relaxing. ``I trust you.''
``Thank you.'' He looked down into her strained face, then pressed her against him, a reassuring squeeze. Was she his sister? Well, Prospero named her daughter; he had made up his mind to claim her as his own, and since Dewar was Prospero's son then Freia must be his sister. It certainly accounted for her devotion to her father. But it was a queer notion. He looked up at the Princes again, the corner of his mouth quirking.
``Gaston, thou chivalrous blockhead,'' Herne snarled, and stalked away.
``Perhaps,'' Gaston agreed indifferently, and he turned and looked down at Freia, at Dewar. ``Herne is no friend to thee, Dewar, but I am not thy enemy. Nor would gladly be.''
``I understand,'' Dewar said, half-smiling. ``Freia,'' he said, lowering his gaze from Gaston's, ``I have some unfinished business with Prospero.''
``He's here,'' she said, straightening and moving away from him a little.
``I know. Will you take me to him?''
``He's with that weaselly Emperor,'' Freia said, and her look became colder.
``Perhaps I should speak to this Emperor also,'' Dewar mused. ``Yes. I think that might be best. It's time.''
Freia folded her arms, pulling her cloak tight around her. Her expression had changed, closed and cooled and become inward-looking, though she watched Dewar and Gaston narrowly.
``I'll escort thee, Dewar, but must first extract thy word of---''
``I won't kill anyone if I'm not attacked,'' Dewar said, smiling, glancing significantly after Herne.
``'Twill serve. Come with me. And thou, lass,'' he caught Freia's eye, ``come also, for th'art too precious to cast lightly loose.''
Dewar drew her hand through his arm; she went with him, her face an unsmiling mask. The flames he had conjured fell down and extinguished themselves as he approached, and the guards saluted Gaston and let them pass.
Count Pallgrave, to his own great humiliation, had been expelled at Prince Prospero's behest from the chamber where Prince Prospero and the Emperor were now having a loud, but unintelligible, argument. He sat stiffly outside, waiting until he should be called again to advise and annotate points of discussion and agreement. The Emperor's secretary Cremmin, who had taken his portable desk out with him into hallway exile, sat busily polishing his minutes of the meeting thus far today. They were not a pretty sight, full of blasphemies and ad hominem slurs from both parties, and the Emperor's remarks about Prince Prospero's daughter, the Lady Freia, really ought to be struck altogether. Cremmin instead filled them in, perhaps embroidering slightly. Even so, His Majesty's invective came off a poor second to Prospero's.
The hall leading to the chamber was long, its floor of cold polished white marble and its walls decorated with cameolike, allegorical white-and-salmon bas-reliefs of Panurgus's nonmilitary conquests, each panel picked out with gilding on fingertips, arrow-heads, nipples. There was light from thin windows between the bas-relief panels and from freestanding candelabra; the arm-thick candles were lit, though storm-tinted late-afternoon winter sun was making the hall as warm as it ever could appear. The approach of Prince Gaston with two persons in his wake was thus immediately visible, as well as audible.
Cremmin rose, as did Count Pallgrave. The four guards to either side of the salmon-and-white door squared their shoulders and set their eyes resolutely forward. The Marshal was accompanied by the very Lady Freia whose name had arisen in discussion and by a bearded, cloaked young gentleman whose air of insouciant superiority could not be due to the metal-shod staff he carried like a sceptre.
``The Emperor desires not to be interrupted, Your Highness,'' Cremmin said respectfully, bowing. ``I will announce you when---''
``Don't bother,'' said the young gentleman, somehow lightly sidestepping Prince Gaston and nearly getting to the door.
Two of the guards stepped together in front of it, shoulder-to-shoulder.
Count Pallgrave inhaled, a hissing sound. ``Young man, this is not---''
The Marshal interrupted him. ``Aside,'' he said. His mouth might have twitched in a faint smile. Was Gaston amused at Pallgrave's discomfiture? The guards stepped aside as precisely and impassively as they had stepped together.
The young man inclined his head courteously to Prince Gaston, smiling sardonically.
``Your hat, sir,'' Pallgrave growled, placing his monocle in his eye for a better look at this would-be jester.
The gentleman, who was clearly no gentleman at all, opened the door, hatted still. ``Hello, hello,'' he said, ``I do hope I'm interrupting something.''
``Pallgrave!'' shouted the Emperor.
Lady Freia, startlingly, giggled, then sniffled and sighed. She turned away from the door and went back down the corridor alone. Two of the guards followed her at four paces' distance after Gaston paused in entering the conference room and ordered them softly to do so.
Count Pallgrave drew himself up stiffly as the door was closed in his face. Cremmin hid a smirk and sat down again.
Lady Freia didn't look back at the guards escorting her, but her shoulders hunched as she crossed her arms and she walked with her eyes on the floor.
Prince Prospero had turned from giving the fire a wholehearted kick as the door opened; the Emperor, seated at the table, started to his feet.
The smile on the face of the man who opened the door was anything but deferential. ``Hello, hello,'' he said insolently. ``I do hope I'm interrupting something.''
``Pallgrave!''
Prince Gaston stepped in, closing the door on Pallgrave and, merely fortuitously, setting his shoulder-blades to it. The handle turned frantically, unheeded behind his back.
``Gaston, we hope this jackass is a prisoner who has slipped from your custody. Get him out of here and have him hanged.''
``'Twere ill-conceived of thee to pick a quarrel here, Avril,'' Prospero warned, watching Dewar. ``What's thy errand, sir?''
``You left me incapacitated,'' Dewar said, deliberately oblique, ``and we left matters between us in some suspense.''
``Time pressed me to leave thee and hasten hither, to waste time,'' Prince Prospero said. ``We'll make an end of our dealings anon.''
``Who is this?'' demanded the Emperor.
``So you're the Emperor,'' Dewar said, regarding him. ``Hm.''
``Get---him---out,'' the Emperor ordered Prince Gaston.
``No man orders such as he,'' Prince Gaston replied.
``Indeed,'' Dewar agreed, ``though had you bargained with me in the past, brought me under contract, Emperor, you might be able to bargain now. As it is---''
``You're that Dewar of whom we've heard.''
``There could be more than one man of the name about,'' Dewar said. ``What have you heard?'' he inquired, in a tone of mock-dismay.
Prospero laughed outright, a dark sound.
The Emperor glared at him, and Dewar shook off his flippancy. ``My errand's mainly with Prince Prospero,'' he said to the Emperor then, businesslike. ``But since you're here I may as well tell you a thing, one that may benefit us all.''
``And what is that,'' the Emperor said.
``Prince Prospero's welfare is of dear concern to me, and if he were to meet with mishap here---for example, dine upon a meal that disagreed with him, or cut himself shaving in the bath or fencing, or perchance an accident with rope--- I see you take my meaning. Be his well-being less tenderly cherished than your own, Emperor, I shall take your blood for his in filial vendetta.''
``What---'' began the Emperor, and stopped.
Prince Gaston closed his eyes a moment, then looked at Prince Prospero, who had folded his arms and stood watching Dewar with half-raised eyebrows, his expression betraying only calm interest and perhaps a touch of pride. There it was. Avril's and Prospero's feud had just become broader and more dangerous.
``Your Marshal here can assure you that I'm well able to do so,'' Dewar said.
``You knew of this,'' the Emperor accused the Marshal, rising from his seat as his anger rose.
``Your Majesty, I did not,'' Prince Gaston said sharply.
``Of course he did not,'' Prince Prospero snapped.
``How not?'' demanded the Emperor.
``I'm not in the habit of announcing my lineage, nor are most sorcerers,'' Dewar said drily. ``However, Emperor, I make an exception in this case. You crow over the defeat of your brother. Take your delight in moderation this time, or you'll find yourself facing me---and you're not competent to do so, ignorant as you are of the Art. You're undefended, unshielded here, even though hard by your own Well. You have relied on oaths and old treaties to protect you from sorcery, but I have sworn no vows to you or the Well. I could kill you now. I will not. And you shall remember that you are hostage to your own good conduct toward my father.''
``You dare to stand here and threaten us---''
``I could extinguish you before Gaston could draw, and his sword is of no use against me,'' Dewar said, motionless but tense. ``But I have no real quarrel with you. I do not involve myself in politics, and I shall not take sides in Prospero's dispute with the Empire. That's his, not mine. Just remember that I'm here, Avril, Uncle Avril, and that I have an interest.''
``We shall certainly remember that, sorcerer,'' the Emperor said, narrow-eyed, ``nephew.''
``Good,'' Dewar said. ``Free for dinner?'' he asked, turning to his father.
``Not free, but available,'' Prince Prospero said, the corner of his mouth lifting in half a smile. ``Aye, let us dine; thy uncle hath much to chew on and digest ere we fare further with his reprehensible ideas.''
``You demanded a judge,'' the Emperor said.
``Aye, and a clean one, if there be such in the realm, which I doubt.''
``It will be settled by the Imperial Court,'' the Emperor said, smiling, ``as it is a lofty matter.''
``Imperial Court?'' Prince Prospero repeated derisively.
The Emperor continued to smile. ``Tomorrow afternoon,'' he said.
Freia knew the guards were there. Since arriving in the Palace, she and her father had been under house arrest. The guards were always there.
She closed the door to her apartments and left them outside. She'd managed to lose a pair today, and had crept out of the Palace with no clear destination beyond not-there, but Herne had caught her in the stables. Freia felt a taste of despair in her throat; she swallowed it. Dewar was here now. He must have come to get her out, to get Prospero out, away from the cruel Emperor, from Prince Herne who made her tremble when he looked at her, from raging Prince Fulgens, from Golias. Prince Gaston was a cipher, a background figure, always watching, as he had watched before. He wasn't on her side, though she thought he wished to be kind.
Dewar would help them.
Freia left the door. The room was dim, though its tall windows were uncovered. On the unfavored north side of the building, it overlooked a fir-ringed ornamental lake which was frozen and dead for the season. Rushes poked through the ice at broken angles, yellow against the black. The hearth was empty; the fire had gone out and there was no wood. The servants were as ungracious as their Emperor. There was never any wood; they'd built a fire once, on the first day, and it died of starvation. She was always cold here. She had been warmer in that snowbound house in Chenay, where she had met Dewar, where her gryphon Trixie had barely fit into the barn. There'd been firewood, anyway, and better food than the overdone, inedible messes they served here.
She stopped at the narrow black table which stood like a bar to entry in front of the door, noticing that it held something new: flowers. Yellow roses, the edges of their furled petals blushing peach, and cream-white lilies were joined by soft, trailing gossamer ferns that spilled over the edge of their silver trumpet-vase and brushed the table. It was midwinter here---where could the flowers have come from? Freia sniffed cautiously at a half-opened rose: its perfume was spicy-sweet and sharp, weak in the cold chamber. The lilies cupped a heavy, drowsy scent. The lush flowers were nearly too rich, nearly cloying; drawing back, she carefully stroked a fern's delightfully soft frond.
Under the frond was something white and sharp-cornered. Freia's fingers knocked it down; she lifted it and found it was an envelope. She looked at it, puzzled.
In a book of Prospero's, she had read about people in Landuc sending one another messages in bouquets of flowers, but in the book there had been meanings in the flowers themselves, which ones were chosen and how they were arranged. Prospero had said it was a fool's tale and that nobody did that, at least nobody of sense, although he'd not answer for idiotic fops and flirts. The people in the poem had all been shepherds and shepherdesses, not courtiers, and Freia had concluded that they sent messages with flowers because they couldn't write. But why send both flowers and a letter? Who would do that?
Her name was on the envelope: Lady Freia. She had never had a letter before. Prospero had lately received letters from acquaintances and men of business, but she had neither. This must be for him. She picked at the wax carefully: her name was on the outside, and she could give it to him after she had looked to see who had sent it by mistake. The wax resisted her fingernail, and finally she had to tear the envelope to open it.
Inside was a piece of paper folded once. On it was written:
To the worshipful Lady Freia, with most respectful greetings. We have met and parted in vile and harrowing circumstances, and since then my heart is deeply weighed by my trespasses against your liberty and by the sufferings you bore after being removed from my hands. Alas, had I known that leaving you in care of Golias would redound so to your harm I had never done it. For I do love you as my cousin and as the most courageous and right noble lady in the Well's great realm of Pheyarcet, and I would never that so fair a creature should be so basely used as you have been. I beg you grant me some sign of compassion that will redeem my unhappy soul from its wretched perdition. I would prove me to you a more courteous gentleman and more loving friend than I have shewed myself hitherto. I am yours to command to any task and any favor of notice from you would be treasured by your most miserable cousin and devoted servant Ottaviano.
The ornamented Court-hand in which the letter was written took some minutes for Freia to read, and as she deciphered its meaning her hands trembled and her face became pale.
When she had reached the end and Ottaviano's swashing signature, she stared at the letter again, frozen with fear, and then crumpled it and threw the ball of paper into the cold hearth. The envelope followed, and Freia flew to the gloomy corner where the bed, festooned with brown curtains and dull crimson tassels, stood high and square. She kicked off her muddy shoes and spread her muck-hemmed cloak across the bed for an additional blanket, her outer dress on top of it. Shivering, she pulled the covers down, tugged the heavy, cumbersome bed-hangings around, and got in, wrapping the blankets and pillows around herself to make a warm nest.
Here. He was here. Ottaviano was here in the Palace---he had been in her rooms---he was here, and Golias was here too. She had seen him in a hallway when Prospero brought her to meet his sisters and then had glimpsed him that very morning in the breakfast-room and fled without eating. Now Ottaviano was here also, and with fear-sickness she wished she had been able to get away from the Palace today.
She had stopped attending the formal Palace luncheons and dinners days ago. People stared at her. They whispered, but no one talked to her. Prince Josquin was courteously distant, but she never knew what to say, and after a few empty politenesses he had said no more than ``Good evening'' to her. The Empress Glencora had an odd accent, and she spoke quickly and brightly, and Freia couldn't quite follow what she said. The others didn't try. Prince Fulgens bellowed at her once when she'd failed understand his ``Heave it here, girl'' to mean ``Pass the salt'', and after that Freia had deserted the Emperor's table.
Prospero had scolded her about that. He scolded her about everything. He had lectured her as they rode here on the Road, and he had chivvied her relentlessly since arriving. Their every conversation had revolved on her behavior, her disobedience, her folly; any word she spoke to Prospero brought a scolding. All the ill-hap and evil that he now suffered was her fault, according to him.
Was it her fault? Freia had no notion of her own blamelessness. She had had no chance to tell Prospero what Golias had done to her; it had hurt her deeply, true, but perhaps it mattered less than what had been done to Prospero, which would hurt him longer and more than her transient physical pains. Hitherto unaccustomed to hypothetical cases, Freia had hours now to teach herself their construction and bitter use. Had she but remained at home, waiting, while Prospero went to war---but she still saw no wrong in following him. Had she not sought the place where she could free herself of the burden of Golias's rape, had she instead insisted that Dewar carry her directly home to Prospero---why, they would have arrived in Argylle in time, before Prospero left again for Landuc, and all would have been well for Papa. He would have kept his sorcery even though he'd lost his war.
But it was his war, Freia thought. His war. She hadn't wanted anything to be different and he had.
She squeezed her eyes shut. It was harder and harder to imagine herself home again. Home was gone; Prospero had changed; she was as much a prisoner as she had ever been, but her father had joined the enemy.
For perhaps an hour she worked on being asleep, achieving only a dreamless, unrelaxed doze that was often the best she could do now. The sound of someone saying her name made her startle awake, clammy and disoriented. It wasn't home; the voice wasn't quite Papa's---
``What?''
``Freia? You're in bed? Hell, I'm making a light,'' Dewar announced irritably, and light flared, a bright line between the curtains. Freia pushed one aside, sitting up, pulling the blankets around her.
``Hullo.''
Holding a triple candlestick, Dewar came around the bed and sat on its edge. His eyes were black in the candles' wavering light; he wore different clothes now---snug-fitting silvery-grey breeches; blue stockings; a waistcoat embroidered with sea-shells; a sea-blue coat, deep-cuffed, silver-buttoned, silver-laced. Fair Prince Josquin wore such garb, and the other men of the Court; Freia could not quite fathom Dewar so dressed. He nearly glowed. He said, ``Hello yourself. Are you being spartan for any particular reason?''
``Spartan?''
``No light, no fire, no maid, no dinner.'' Dewar gestured at the cheerless chamber. ``And a surpassingly hideous tapestry,'' he added.
``This is where they told me to stay. There isn't any wood.''
``Tell your maid to bring it to you. You do have a maid?'' He looked around: clothes on the floor, general disorder in the room, and Freia's tangled hair something less than fashionably dressed.
``The Empress sent one. She was nasty; she pulled my hair and pinched me. I told her to go away and she did,'' Freia said. ``I can comb my own hair. Nobody brought wood ever. Maybe they're afraid I'll set the room on fire.''
``Would you?''
``I'd burn it piece by piece in the fireplace,'' she said, wanly humorless.
Dewar grinned, white teeth flashing in his dark beard. ``Start with that tapestry, and I'm with you all the way. How are you? What's news?''
She shrugged. ``Nothing.''
``Nothing?''
``Prospero talks to the Emperor and nobody tells me what about. I don't know what's happening. I'm afraid to ask. Papa's so angry all the time, and I'm---Dewar, I'm afraid. This is a bad place. I don't know what's going to happen.'' She stared at him, pleading in her heart for him to offer her a way out.
``Ask Prospero.''
``He won't answer. He---he growls at me.''
``Ask Josquin or somebody. He'd tell you if he knew. He's not a bad fellow.''
``I don't know anybody. I---Dewar, I want to go home. I don't want to be here,'' she whispered, her throat tight.
Dewar frowned. ``Then you shouldn't have come.''
``Tell Papa that! He brought me. Dewar---''
``I can't help you leave,'' Dewar said. He looked down at the candles and pinched a bit of soft wax from the side of each one.
Freia didn't finish speaking, forestalled.
He went on, ``Prospero asked me not to.''
``Oh.''
``Freia, this is not, not--- It is not an unpleasant place. You could enjoy yourself. You could be of great assistance to Prospero if you tried being charming to some of the people who have it in for him here. Admittedly that's most of them, but you could try. And this is me telling you this, not Prospero speaking through me.'' Dewar rolled his wax into a ball. ``Jos, as I said, is really very pleasant, and Ottaviano's not bad---just ambitious. Gaston's quiet, but he has a mind of his own, and he has a lot of influence on the Emperor---if only because the Emperor can't afford to lose his support.''
``Ottaviano . . . he's here,'' Freia said.
``Have you seen him? Spoken?''
``No! Oh, no. No. But he's here. What if---he can---''
``He's not going to hurt you.'' Dewar gestured, brushing the notion aside.
``Golias is here,'' Freia whispered, drawing her knees up. ``I saw him.''
Dewar looked at her over the flames, waiting. ``Did you---say anything---to Prospero?'' he asked hesitantly when she said no more.
``He won't listen to me. I---I tried to tell him. He never let me. He's so preoccupied. His horrible war. ---It doesn't matter. It's over.''
Dewar nodded. The subject made him uncomfortable. He shifted, turning away.
``Why did you come here?'' Freia asked, hoping he wouldn't go.
``I fear someone will try to kill Prospero. The Emperor had someone ready to poison him when Gaston captured him the first time, and I wanted to be sure nothing of the kind happened here. I told the Emperor that I'll kill him if anything happens to Father.''
``Would you?''
``Yes.''
``He didn't think he'd be---executed, he said,'' she said.
``Indeed he did. He may not have said so, but he knew it was highly probable. But he's safe now, at least from the Emperor, because the Emperor is an ignoramus and dares not pick a fight with me.'' Dewar smiled, pleased with himself. ``Simple, eh?''
Freia nodded.
``I'll leave you to rest,'' Dewar said, standing. ``And perhaps I'll see you in the morning.''
``Good night.''
``Good night,'' he said, and the little constellation of the candles' light moved away, reflected in the black windows, across the room, and stopped. She saw him open the door and the candles went out, pinched or blown. The door closed.
His whisper fell into the footstep-metered silence of the long cloister. In the early days of Panurgus's rule of the Well, this had been small cell-like clerks' chambers opening onto a courtyard; the Palace had devoured the courtyard over time, and now it was covered and enclosed, starved of daylight, though still paved with mosaics of swirling flames. There had been a time---Prospero recalled it well---when this had been known as the Poets' Court, for Queen Diote had smiled on poets and artists; and they had held little courts, reflections of the great Court, exclusive gatherings of the devotees of eight or a score of poets clumped among the arches and columns, seated on the mongrel assortment of chairs, tripod-stools, and divans that had furnished the place, declaiming, debating, drinking, delaying, deifying. It was silent space now, a between-place unseen by its transients, and forgetful centuries had passed since the last poem hymning Diote's beauty was composed here.
Lord Gonzalo turned, shadowed; the oil lamps that lit the place were not spaced widely enough to brighten it. He leaned upon his stick, then straightened, squaring his thin shoulders as Prospero's quiet feet bore the Prince to the Lord of Valgalant.
``Old friend,'' Prospero whispered---three footmen on some errand hurried past---``Come, step aside, or if we shall not speak, say so.''
``Old friend,'' Gonzalo replied, a low creak, ``how, not speak? Have we forgotten the words men use, our tongues dumbed of intelligence, our intellects numbed of sense? Not speak, and hear naught, no tidings nor comforts nor joys? Ah, the world is retrograde; time's past when an hour's parting furnished meat for three hours' conversation, when a month's absence fed a year's vigorous debate. But with long fasting, the appetite dieth; the belly forgets that it must have food---and when it hath, betimes it swoons. So I, when your voice came again to my ears. My lord.'' He bowed.
Prospero closed his eyes, opened them, smiled sadly, swallowed. ``They have silvered thy head, Gonzalo, but they cannot tarnish thy tongue; robbed thy estate, but not thy wit. Let me embrace thee; I have lived in barbarity, Gonzalo, I have famished of conversation, and I prithee forgive my empty silences, my unsavory words, my ill-chosen condiments of wit.''
``I was brazen and gilt,'' Gonzalo said, ``and I have blessed Fortuna's alchemy that gave me silver for my pains, not steel. She hath transmuted us all, in her inconstant way: I see you have become a father, and twice over, that grudged an hour from your books and sorceries to dine, and never a day for dalliance---I e'en now recall you saying, 'twas business for the morrow. And some fair morrow caught you at last and you are become flesh withal. How is she called, this morrow?''
``There is no morrow such as you envision. I'd fain not speak of my daughter,'' Prospero replied, bitterness tinting his tone; ``she is base motherless matter, a rocky field to my cultivating and a stone ear to my will, that hath brought us into such peril as you witness. And for my son: in shaping yon piece of work I lifted ne'er a hand, and a very marvel, is he not? I scantly know him, nor doth 'a know himself; he's young, my eye tells me, and quick, my ear tells me, a prodigy of sorcery and an elegant fellow with a sword---and more I cannot say, naught knowing. Let us speak rather of your daughter, thereby to brighten our souls in her reflection.''
``Of my daughter,'' said Gonzalo.
``Miranda, aye; how fares she? Came she hither? Avril consented to lift the sentence of banishment 'pon you both, though 'twas little to his liking.''
Gonzalo looked away, past Prospero's shoulder at the line of long-flamed lamps that led to the doorway, to the side at the scuffed, once-brilliant tiling of the floor. ``Nay, my lord, she is not here.''
``Is she returned home to thee? I know not the particulars,'' Prospero lowered his voice, looked about them quickly---no one there now, the dinner-hour had come, ``but here's my ring, that I gave thee, and got of my son in Chenay, that said he had it of a lady there---Miranda, she---with news that mattered nearly to me. 'Twas a great thing, a deed worthy of herself and her house.''
``She's---returned, aye,'' Gonzalo said. He placed his hand on Prospero's shoulder. ``My lord, I cannot spare thee pain, save by quickly wounding, taking no delight as some do in ascending the gradients of agony. I'll say it, then: Miranda's dead.''
The stillness of the cloister hung; it seemed to Prospero that it expanded, and pressed into him, and pressed outward and silenced all the world to its outermost wastes, the Well itself stifled: and then he breathed again, and looked on Gonzalo's sad lean face, recognizing there for the first time the burnishing of new grief.
``Dead,'' Prospero repeated.
Gonzalo bowed his head.
``How? Who? When?''
``These things I too ask, and asked, and no answers have come; she was brought to Valgalant, encoffined, enshrouded, and there I consigned her to her tomb. The Emperor's men that brought her told no tale of how this ending came, and I thus have only grief to tell. Yet if she did give that ring to your son, which I lent her to lead her to you, then I know she was in Chenay. Therefore shall I apply to those who were there, to tell what was betided. 'Tis possible a general silence will prevail, from the Crown's wish to rule in darkness, without the Well's truth to light the world. But I shall ask.''
They stood in the flat silence. Prospero's heart sank in him: Miranda, dead; hope, dead. How cunning Avril's evil was---as subtle as the Well---insinuating itself everywhere, leaving nothing untainted.
``This is heavy news, old friend,'' the Prince said. ``The very life is gone from the world with her passing. What good is left, I cannot see.''
``It wounds you as it wounds me, my lord, a death so nigh the heart to leave it stone-still with surprise: how could a cold husk hold such vitality? We are but vessels; the vessel destroyed, Miranda's gone, her essence sublimated to purer form. You spoke of your daughter as base matter a moment past; we are all base matter, unrefined, while we eat and breathe and soil the world around us. Surely that essence within your daughter's form is nothing base.''
Prospero snorted. ``There is no cure for this in philosophy. I have no daughter, Gonzalo; heard you not the clack o' the day?''
``Is aught befallen your daughter too? O Fire of my soul!''
``Naught's befallen her; she's arrogated from me, a puppet-judge hath so decreed. Understand that afore I began this past battle of the war, I did wish to assure me of her freedom, were I taken, and her of good estate, thus filed an endowerment and emancipation.''
``Ah. Fidelio.''
``E'en he, good fellow, but never say his name again, that he may continue among us. In her I vested title and rights to all my lands and holdings, to keep them from th' usurper's claws. I knew no glimmer of the boy, else I'd have made them to him, and 'twere a better thing, for 'tis done oft enough that a son cometh to his father's estate afore his father's death. For this very morn hath th' Emperor's judge decreed that a daughter may not be emancipated, which hath been done before three times in my memory and doubtless others; by nature's law he saith the blood-bond must be inviolate. And therefore hath Avril the right by treaty, a treaty forced on me by her own ungrateful folly, to seize her of me and bestow her on his corrupt Madanese heir, and to seize likewise mine earthly holdings. I have a daughter, and no daughter, by a legal wonder that no honest hedge-magistrate could countenance. An ill day was she shapened.''
Gonzalo nodded sagely. ``I do recall when Fensdarggan's estates were so confused, by reason of the second wife's children---''
``E'en so, Lord Fedo took counsel and emancipated the two daughters of the first wife, to simplify the inheritance of his sons by the second---dowered 'em richly and the thing withstood three challenges from the sons, 'twas legal as the King's will would have it. And 'twas done again thereafter: but Avril's puppet hath purblinded himself to serve the dark-witted fool.'' Prospero's jaw clenched; Gonzalo shook his head, his shoulders falling. ``Yet still I have a son.''
``Prince Prospero's son?'' the Countess of Lys repeated, wide-eyed, as that individual entered the Emperor's throne room. Her breath caught as she saw him, and an involuntary chill of recognition and remembered excitement rippled across her skin. Dewar wore deep sea-green, a sheeny mutable brocade dark and cold, and a handsome emerald glittered in his ear. He carried a walking-stick, too, silver-knobbed and slender.
``Indeed, if you can imagine any woman having anything to do with Prospero,'' Princess Viola said, ``oh, but you haven't met him yet, well, you shall; I will introduce you, certainly. It sounds utterly untrue to me, but Prospero says so and so does Dewar, or should one say Lord Dewar---although the Emperor has not granted him any formal title---and certainly they do look alike, although it is unfortunate that his daughter takes after him, especially in her bad temper.''
``Lord Dewar's daughter?'' Luneté asked, bewildered by the Princess's fount of wisdom and by her own memories of Dewar's breath on her neck, of her hands on his body. She had not imagined he could be here. She had told herself they would never meet again. He was Prince Prospero's son. He was here.
``No, no,'' Viola said impatiently, wondering what kind of country goose this Countess was, ``Prince Prospero's daughter.''
``I do not believe I have met her,'' Luneté said, grabbing at safe ground, tearing her gaze from Dewar, who had not seen her, barely registering the existence of Prince Prospero's daughter. ``But I have met so many people, you have been so very kind---and yes, they are very like, aren't they. Tall.''
``Exactly, although he doesn't have Prospero's nose, which frankly one must hope never appears in the family again. Really, he's a very pretty fellow, and he dresses well and dances ever so nicely. Such legs. You wouldn't imagine him a sorcerer at all, he's a perfect gentleman at Court! I cannot wait until he's called into a duel.''
``A duel? Why? Has he quarrelled?'' Her heart thudded: she could imagine a quarrel, oh, yes.
``No, but---well.'' Princess Viola suppressed some interesting speculation involving the Baroness of Broul, Lord Dewar, and a closed carriage. The girl was quite green, much too easily shocked, but she was trying very hard, much more promising than Prospero's unpleasant daughter, and the Empress was particularly interested in her, having been close to her mother. ``I suppose you must meet her, eventually,'' Viola said, ``but I don't think she's right in the head, and it doesn't seem wise to me that His Highness the Heir should wed her, really, not until we've seen more of her, it wouldn't do for him to marry a madwoman or a commoner, and she is very common, common as dirt. Oh, dear me, yes---I've shocked you again, but you'll see her, my dear Countess, you'd be a fitter match for His Highness, more nobility in your ancestry and bearing, than that staring, shivering rat. We wonder, you know, if she isn't lying. I can't imagine her being connected with the family at all. Really. Golias at least is courageous, and has a sense of style, one can see that he's a Prince. And she has the most peculiar habits---isn't that the Baron your husband there?''
``Yes, he---''
``A very handsome fellow, and the image of Panurgus. Really. You haven't seen the Gallery? Oh, it's frightfully tedious, nobody ever goes, but in winter, you know, one can at least take exercise by walking there, and I can never count the portraits, I declare they move around, I never find the one I want twice, but they all laugh and say I'm just being silly. Really. I suppose I am. There are more interesting things to do than count portraits here, I assure you. The conservatories are very pleasant, Princess Evote and I often have--- Oh, here's Prospero.'' Viola's voice dropped; her fan went up; and Luneté turned to see the Princess attempting an expression of faintly veiled disdain. On her plump face, it appeared as a pout.
The Countess of Lys looked back toward Prince Prospero, the man whose ambitions had so disrupted her own life. She had already decided she loathed him, and she viewed his nose with particular intent to dislike it, but his nose was inoffensive---aquiline, but inoffensive---and his eyes were intense and intelligent, his brow high and his mien all that befitted a son of the great King Panurgus, princely and austere. He wore a black-sheathed sword, and Luneté remembered from her etiquette book that the Princes, initiates of the Well, could bear arms in the presence of their ruler. His severely-cut clothing was restrained, of near-black blue satin unornamented with jewels or laces; his bearing was dignified, and he surveyed the company coldly, detached and above them.
The Countess was reminded forcefully of Prince Gaston, whom she had met but three days before as she and Ottaviano arrived, who had looked through her in a glance and, she thought, comprehended her at once. He too had seemed remote, preoccupied with more important things than the Countess of Lys, though the Baron of Ascolet had gotten a few low words that had made him look down, words which he had declined to repeat to his wife.
Prince Prospero was inclining his head, speaking to Dewar, and Princess Viola was whispering behind her fan with someone else now, so that Luneté watched undistracted as her husband the Baron of Ascolet was presented to Prince Prospero by Prospero's son. They straightened, Otto's bow decently formal and deep, the Prince barely nodding (but princes need bow to no one); Dewar said something, smiling with one side of his mouth, and Otto nodded and looked around them. The room was becoming crowded, but there was space around Prospero and his son, an arm's length at least. Prince Prospero turned his head and gazed straight at Luneté, into her and through her, just as Prince Gaston had.
She felt her face growing red; it was rude to stare so, unless one were flirting in the most obvious way---she knew that much about Court manners---but Prospero was staring too, calmly, assaying her with the eye he might use for a landscape or a fine ship.
Luneté looked away, lowering her eyes and recollecting her fan; and as she lifted the silly feathered thing, she met Prospero's eyes again. His mouth was quirking at the corner, just as Dewar's did. She liked him in the instant, her prejudice overthrown. Prospero returned his look to Otto, who was still craning his neck, trying to see through the crowd, and Luneté realized that he was searching for her.
There was space around Prospero and Dewar, but little elsewhere; Luneté sidled through clouds of scent and jostled fragile hothouse posies, brushed silver- and gold-laced sleeves and detoured around wide, expensive gowns shimmering in the candlelight.
``Countess,'' said Dewar, touching her sleeve, and suddenly she was out of the crowd, in the bubble of silence around Prospero and his son and her husband. Her eyes crossed Dewar's; she knew she spoke, faltering, some word of greeting, but he only bowed to her and turned his attention back to Prospero. She was trembling. She held herself still: Otto was right there.
``There you are,'' Ottaviano said; ``I'd begun to think you'd left.''
``I'm not about to leave now, I assure you,'' Luneté replied. The food at the Palace had been disagreeing with her, and she had jokingly threatened to go to the nearest ale-house and seek better fare.
Otto said, ``Uh, sir, my wife, the Countess of Lys, daughter---''
``Bors's girl,'' Prospero said, and he took her hand and bowed, more deeply than he had to Ottaviano. ``Thou'rt the image of thy gracious mother, madame. It is a pleasure to behold thee.''
``Thank you,'' Luneté said, amazed, and a smile joined her blushes, embarrassing her further---she would be the laughingstock of the Court, she thought, if she could not better govern herself. She wondered for an instant if he were mocking her---her gown had been her mother's, made over in newer style---but the Prince straightened, releasing her hand, and gave her an approving nod.
``But thy good father's eyes betray his wit in thee,'' said Prospero, fixing her with his cloud-grey gaze, ``and thy deeds as well. Blend thou thy mother's grace therewith and Lys shall thrive in thy hand.''
Otto was wearing a face Luneté had known well in Sarsemar: neutral, opinionless, hiding his thoughts.
``Thank you, Your Highness,'' Luneté murmured, curtseying.
``No thanks are due,'' Prospero replied, ``'tis simple truth. ---Dewar, hast seen thy sister?''
``Hm. No,'' Dewar said apprehensively.
``Comes the Emperor, led by his dogs and trained apes,'' Prospero said beneath a brassy fanfare of trumpets, ``Dewar, do thou go to her chamber; ascertain that she's gowned and fetch her hence.''
Luneté backed away, dismissed; the hard note in his voice as he spoke to Dewar was utterly different from the kindness she had heard. It was just as well; she did not know what to say to Dewar, how to look at him without blushing to think of what she had done, and her husband was here.
Otto caught her elbow. ``Court's opening,'' he whispered, ``you go there, see, and that guy in the curly hat will tell you where you stand. We don't stand together.''
``I know,'' she said, although she hadn't, and went to find her place alone in the stir of the crowd.
People jostled and pushed as if they were in the market-square. Luneté tried to be polite, but her patience failed her and she began nudging and shoving like the rest, all of whom were hurrying to sort themselves into the proper ranks. She found her place between a very tall, thin old man in unrelieved ash-grey mourning and a cask-bellied wine-smelling fellow whose wispy beard did not enhance his leering smile. Luneté remembered her fan and used it.
``Pardon my forwardness,'' murmured a dry voice above her, ``madame . . .''
Luneté looked up. The gentleman in mourning addressed her; his face was lined and his eyes sad, yet she thought he looked good-humored though terribly old---how old must he be, if he lived here in Landuc, where a favored man could live forever blessed by the Well? Or was he out of favor?---and so she smiled a little, still screening her face from the gentleman on her left.
``. . . yet when we are forced into such close quarters, as cattle in the slaughter-pens, we need must take some note of one another,'' the ancient man said in the same dry, low voice.
The simile was startling; Luneté's eyes widened. Maybe he too was drunk, she feared.
``You are the Countess of Lys,'' he said.
Luneté blinked. How had he known that? Gossip travelled fast here. ``Who has told you that?'' she whispered.
He smiled, barely. ``Why, you yourself, Countess, standing there. For there did Bors your father stand through many an hour in Court, beside me for many a year. And the place hath been empty long and long. Welcome.''
``Oh, I see,'' she said, understanding. There was a place for everyone, and everyone stood in his proper place, and if no one was there, the place was vacant.
``The Count of Punt hath taken advantage of the vacancy to flood himself and o'erspread his allotted banks,'' observed the man in mourning, in the same emotionless undertone, ``yet I misdoubt he resenteth your intrusion. The ranks be not so rigid that we may not change our places, you and I, should you find that such a small alteration would please you.''
Luneté unravelled the courtly speech and smiled, warmly this time. ``For now I will hold my father's place,'' she whispered, ``but if your courtesy will allow it I may beg the favor of you later, should it be needful.''
He nodded a hair's-breadth and looked away, up the ranks of people and along, toward the empty throne. Luneté looked too, between the exceedingly high hair-sculptures of two outlandish noblemen in front of her who were muttering gutturally to one another and shrugging often. She saw Prince Marshal Gaston in blood-red unadorned with frills, without jewels save his sword and a dagger; dark Prince Herne, green-coated, who glowered toward the other end of the room; and, dwarfed by his brothers, Prince Fulgens in frothing diamond-dewed lace and pale blue. But where was Prince Prospero? Luneté could not see him at the throne, with his brothers, where she supposed he ought to be. These were the four great Princes, the four eldest sons of King Panurgus, who had endowed each with dominion over an Element and set them above his other children forever.
Luneté of Lys shivered, moving from side to side to see them. She had never thought of Court, when she had thought of being Countess of Lys; she had thought of the castle in Lys and its gardens, the high-walled city and the long plains. But never had she thought of going to Landuc, seeing Princes and Emperor and people whose names were in histories and ballads. She felt small and insignificantly young.
A little distance from their mightier brothers stood the Princesses Evote and Viola and new-made Prince Golias; Golias wore no sword. Panurgus had had other sons---dead Sebastiano, exiled Esclados the dabbler in sorcery, and long-vanished Hyetos the Philosopher Sublime. What would crude Golias do, Luneté wondered, to distinguish himself in such a company? Had he passed the Well's fire yet, as the children of Panurgus were entitled to do? She supposed not, or he would have been permitted the privilege of bearing arms. Even rattle-tongued Princess Viola had stood that test; what would it do to Golias? She studied him, looking for resemblances between him and the other sons and daughters of Panurgus, and gave it up; she saw none. Sometimes it was obvious even to Luneté that members of a family shared features, but, she thought, as often as not strangers do as well.
A stir at the other end of the hall---Luneté looked that way, toward laughter and a murmur of voices. With a shock she recognized Prince Prospero there---as far from the throne as one could stand and still be in the room. Disseized of his estates, out of favor, the fallen Prince's position in the world was shown by his position in the Court. The untidy crowd of the least-favored there gathered parted, bowing deeply and obsequiously. Prince Josquin the Heir emerged, all in cloth-of-silver, shining and fair as a fountain, and strode quickly down the hall, smiling, greeting his Princess aunts with bows and hand-kisses, slapping Prince Golias on the shoulder, moving like quicksilver upward toward the dais. The Master of Protocol intercepted him and (with respectful gestures and bows) directed him to stand above Gaston, on a step; Josquin rolled his eyes comically (even Luneté could see it), smiled indulgently, nodded condescendingly, stood with one hand on hip, bent slightly to conduct a whispered conversation with Fulgens, smiling still. Luneté thought she had never seen anyone so elegant in her life.
The Master of Protocol seemed twittered about something; he paraded down the length of the room to approach Prince Prospero skittishly and Prince Prospero glared down at him and shrugged, very slightly, as if the gesture were not worth the energy to make it. As before, there was an empty space around Prince Prospero, despite the crowd: as though the Emperor's displeasure might be catching.
Something was wrong, Luneté guessed, and she remembered that Dewar had been sent to find Prince Prospero's daughter---his sister---and the chief spectacle of the evening's ceremonies was to be the girl's betrothal to the Prince Heir. Under the circumstances, Luneté supposed that she'd be late herself, dressing, putting on cosmetics and jewels, getting her hair to go right. She patted it; the ribbons and the aromatic hot-house flowers Otto had brought her were still in place, and if the whole elaborate pile hadn't fallen down by now she supposed it wouldn't. Laudine had anchored everything firmly with pins and tight curls, and it felt more like a strange hat than Luneté's own hair.
She wondered what Dewar's sister, Prospero's daughter, might be like. Luneté had never heard of such a person before, but she had never heard of Prospero's son until recently, either. It seemed to be the custom here not to mention one's offspring until they were well grown.
A sweet trumpet sounded, high and long, and a cascade of notes followed. Luneté straightened and told herself to stop gaping. It was Court, not a mummers' show. She managed not to gape, and even, she thought, to look blandly respectful as everyone else did, lowering herself as everyone around her did, as even more courtiers and footmen and guards streamed in to fill the room and the Emperor led the Empress past the kneeling Court (Luneté, not daring to crane her neck, saw only the top of Her Majesty's crowned head) up to the dais and left Her Majesty at the bottom and seated himself slowly, surveying the Court assembled with, it seemed to Luneté, a cold and calculating expression, all as wonderful sweet music such as Luneté had never in her life heard before played on and on. She felt light-headed with excitement.
The music crescendoed and stopped, and a man whose title Luneté couldn't recall cried out, in a long and involved way, that the Emperor was here and Court assembled before him, which Luneté thought must be plain to a blind idiot. And then she remembered that she was here to take her oath, and she panicked that she had forgotten it, and a great deal of Court business and trumpeting and music went on while Luneté stood, looking fixedly at nothing, running over and over her words. She would have to say them in front of everybody, everyone important in the world, she, Luneté of Lys, and she would have to get them right, and she was certain she would get them wrong like the princess who jumbled her prince's name in the wedding-vows and the marriage was cursed thereafter---
Luneté wished very much she had not come to Landuc.
A ``hm'' from the sad gentleman in mourning-clothes beside her started Luneté out of her iteration of the oath. A stir in the crowd up near the dais; heads turned, all along the room with a gust of whispers; Prince Gaston moved slightly and then resumed his hands-behind-his-back watchful stance. Prince Herne tossed his head and snorted; Prince Fulgens scowled and looked coldly, and Luneté could not see the Princesses or Golias. The towering hair-sculptures moved together, apart, together, conferring.
The Emperor himself bestowed a searing glare on the disturbance and then on the Master of Protocol, who had stepped forward---to sort things out, Luneté supposed. He stepped back so quickly he trod on someone's foot. Luneté glimpsed Prince Josquin, whose face was immobile and bland as a porcelain statue's.
The man kneeling before the Emperor rose and stepped back, bowing deeply, and with a shock Luneté recognized Ottaviano. She had missed his oath! She blushed with guilt. Why, that meant she had missed Prince Prospero's oath as well, she had been so preoccupied with---
``Luneté who claimeth the County of Lys, approach the Throne,'' cried the Master of Protocol, consulting a list.
Luneté went ice-cold and red-hot and stepped forward, murmuring excuses to the tower-headed gentlemen, who parted with ill grace before her. She remembered the approach. Deep curtsey. Walk. Curtsey again. She hoped by the Well she was getting it right. Nobody was laughing, anyway. Walk. Now she was at the dais. Curtsey and stay down.
She felt herself sway, almost faint.
By what right did she claim the title of Countess of Lys and the lands and privileges and forces and duties thereto pertaining?
She claimed the title of Countess of Lys by the Fire of Landuc that leapt in her father and now in herself and the lands and privileges and forces and duties thereto pertaining. Oh, she had muffed it, would he say anything?
The Emperor acknowledged that the Fire that leapt in Luneté and in Lys were one.
Approach the Throne.
Stand, not falling over, up the steps (hold the long heavy gown correctly), kneel on the flame-patterned carpet where Otto knelt a few minutes ago. That was heartening. Look up---oh, one isn't supposed to, or is one---
The Emperor folded Luneté's hands in his. He leaned forward, his eyes bright and sharp-pupilled. ``Very like your mother,'' the Emperor observed. ``Uncanny.'' He studied her a moment longer, nodded. ``We receive Luneté daughter of Bors of Lys in our Presence,'' he said more loudly, ``and do countenance her claim to the County of Lys and do consent to grant to her the governance of the County of Lys for so long as our Well shall sustain her, in exchange for her devotion of her person to the office of Countess of Lys.''
Now for the hard-to-remember part. Luneté took a breath and said, ``I Luneté do solemnly swear by the Well of Landuc that nourishes me to devote my person to the County of Lys and to the Well of Landuc that sustains it, and to undertake no act against the Well. . . .'' It wasn't difficult at all; Luneté listened, amazed, as her voice pronounced all the words in the correct order, vowing her person and her life to the service of the Well, the Emperor, and Lys.
The Emperor accepted her fealty and appointed her Countess of Lys with all the rights honors and obligations pertaining thereto, and Luneté's mind skipped ahead and recalled the formula for thanking the Emperor, backing away from him, descending the steps and returning to her place---more curtseys, careful small steps down, curtsey, back away, be dismissed from the Presence, rise, back to her place.
When she was once again standing between the dignified man in mourning and the bibulous glutton, Luneté felt suddenly hot and giddy. She had done it, she had taken her vow, she had escaped Sarsemar, no one could take Lys from her now, the Emperor had granted it; Lys was hers at last, and she was Lys's; she was suddenly homesick with a throbbing, resonating pang. . . .
Something touched her right arm; she shook her head and jerked herself. The elderly gentleman was supporting her.
``Oh, pardon me,'' Luneté whispered, horrified. Had she swooned? She tried to stand alone, and he insisted on holding her arm.
``Madame, I recommend you breathe slowly,'' he said, and Luneté, ashamed of her weakness, did so, closing her eyes and concentrating. The swimming feeling left her head. Someone else was taking a vow. She listened; it was a child's voice piping the words, some boy requesting the Emperor's guardianship on the death of his father. Luneté licked her lips and opened her eyes, smiled at the kind gentleman in mourning gratefully.
``I was nervous,'' she whispered. She shouldn't have had Laudine lace her so tightly. The rich food here and the lack of exercise had had an immediate and annoying effect on Luneté, discovered as she tried on sleek-fashioned gowns that had fit perfectly in Lys. She would have to be mindful at meals or she'd end up as round as Princess Viola.
``Still in these ashen days, to some few it cometh hotly on,'' said the gentleman cryptically. He patted her hand gently, nodded once, and looked back at the Court proceedings. Music was playing; a whisper ran through the room. Luneté heard someone whisper ``Josquin,'' and sure enough the Prince Heir's expression of polite inattention had changed to something more alert. The betrothal, Luneté guessed.
Yes. The Master of Protocol was talking about Prince Josquin, his titles and radiantness and the strength of the Well in him and on and on.
``Blether,'' muttered the old man contemptuously, very much under his breath.
``They do go on,'' whispered Luneté as softly as she could.
``Words have no power in his mouth.''
Luneté wondered what that meant, but now the Master of Protocol had paused for breath. He went on to say that the Emperor (another tangle of titles and radiance and eternities) had decided to bestow upon his son (more improbable descriptions of Prince Josquin) the hand of his ward Lady Freia (who had not a single title, eminence, or radiance to her name) in union of the Well.
The corpulent man snorted to himself, not quite laughing.
``But,'' Luneté murmured, puzzled, not aware she had spoken aloud.
Lady Freia was apparently supposed to present herself at the dais. Luneté sensed, rather than saw, some movement at the front of the room again; everyone was leaning, looking, and a few people gasped and shook their heads, whispering again; and all she could see was the Emperor, and he was smiling a small and unhumorous smile with no warmth of the Well's blessing to it.
``I will not,'' Luneté heard a woman say, low but intense enough to carry far. Luneté couldn't see who had spoken, there at the foot of the dais.
Silence followed. The jostlings and whisperings were stilled, dread-struck.
A murmur from the Master of Protocol, who was visibly distressed---Luneté saw him come down the steps, pale-faced and indignant.
``I'm not your ward or anybody's!'' Lady Freia cried.
Luneté, who had thought Lady Freia was Prince Prospero's daughter, glanced up at the man in mourning, who seemed to know things. He was watching with a Court-face that did not conceal anger.
``Carry on,'' the Emperor said, icily, not smiling. Luneté could see him clearly; people had drawn back, away, and the Emperor's face was narrow-eyed, looking down with anger---or was it contempt?---at Lady Freia, out of sight to Luneté. She could see Prince Josquin, though, and his expression was the same polite mask as before.
``You can only pretend I'm your ward, it's all lies you made up for yourself!'' Lady Freia retorted. ``You cannot make something true just by saying it is so!''
The Court gasped.
The man in mourning chuckled. ``From innocent lips,'' he observed, but did not complete the proverb.
``What?'' wondered Luneté.
``Madame,'' the Emperor said, leaning forward, ``you are a guest in our Palace---''
``A prisoner,'' Lady Freia hissed back.
A storm of whispers rustled through the assembly now.
``---and your status and your family's are precarious---''
A glove flew through the air to land at the Emperor's feet; Luneté craned her neck to see it. The whispers were silent. Prince Gaston moved a step forward; the Emperor gestured slightly to him and he waited.
``I remind you, Avril, that I have promised to avenge any injury to my father, and I shall champion my lady sister as well.'' It was Dewar who spoke, his voice melodious, even cheerful; Luneté couldn't see him either---he and his sister stood across from the Princes, on the same side of the room as she did.
The man in mourning was smiling thin-lipped.
The Master of Protocol was fuming crimson-faced, his ceremony in tatters.
``Lord Dewar, your filial and fraternal sentiments are to be lauded,'' the Emperor said, ignoring the glove, ``though your enthusiasm is misplaced; no injury is offered your father or your sister.''
``Take care that none is,'' Dewar said. ``I warn you that in dispossessing my father of his daughter you have made a fiction which cannot be sustained by the truth of the Well, and which will annihilate you if you attempt to invoke it there. For example, by calling on the Well when you name her your ward.''
``The girl's father,'' the Emperor said coldly, ``has legally dispossessed himself of her and of all his goods and chattels, by treaty, and since she cannot exist in a vacuum---''
``I'm not your ward!'' Lady Freia cried out. ``Papa! Papa, say so!''
Luneté glimpsed her then: a blur of brown everyday gown, loose dark curls trailing down from a thick, unadorned hair-knot, and grim white face, springing a step toward Prince Prospero, restrained by Dewar who caught her arm and pulled her back.
``---in Landuc, the Crown stands, as it does for all minor orphans, in loco parentis, which is so established and precedented as to withstand, we imagine, even a sorcerer's logic,'' the Emperor concluded. ``And since the Crown's ward cannot speak for herself, the Crown will speak for her in her nonage. Do you challenge the Crown and therefore the Well, sorcerer?''
``No,'' Dewar said. ``You have Summoned the Well and its consequences on yourself. I remind you: I have an interest, and I will oppose any violence offered to either.''
``Dewar!'' cried Lady Freia, sounding frantic. ``Papa!''
``Then let the matter be closed,'' the Emperor said, ``with the understanding that, of course, no violence shall be offered the Crown's ward, who is not competent to speak for herself. The Crown appoints Princess Evote to appear before us in her stead.''
Princess Evote came forward, in coppery silk satin and ivory lace, curtseying to the Emperor, and took a place where Luneté could not see her. There was a stir, and Lady Freia's voice rose saying, ``Let go of me, let me go---'' and a flurry of movement and murmurs, and the Emperor said, ``Her presence is not necessary,'' and a door slammed.
The Court barely breathed as the ceremony of betrothal continued to its end, Prince Josquin's voice cool and detached, Princess Evote's formal and exactly enunciating every word on behalf of absent Lady Freia. The dowry was small: just four estates, of none of which Luneté had heard. It seemed very little for a Princess to have. Luneté listened, still astounded; how could anyone behave like that in Court? At her own betrothal to the Prince Heir? As the ceremony concluded with the Emperor's blessing on the union, the Count of Punt interrupted her thoughts.
``Reckon she'll stand in later, too?'' He grinned. ``Or maybe they'll get a stableboy.''
Luneté stared at him, uncertain what he meant but shocked by the lewdness of his grin, and lifted her fan.
The Count of Punt leaned closer, though, and then leaned away with a faint sneer; the kindly gentleman in mourning turned and now looked at Punt in such a way as to repel his attention from Luneté.
The Emperor was blessing the Court and the Empire and Pheyarcet. Luneté knelt as everyone else did, and music played, and the Emperor and Empress went out followed by all the Princes and Princesses, and Court was over. There would now be a procession into the ballroom, Luneté recalled, and she was unsure whether they would go in this order or whether she should go with Otto. She thanked the gentleman in mourning, cut the Count of Punt, and was stepping into the milling, sorting collection of nobles when a page tugged her sleeve.
``Your Ladyship is requested to attend the Empress,'' he said.
``Oh!'' Luneté exclaimed, ``I---now?''
``Yes, Your Ladyship.'' He turned and ducked into the crowd, and Luneté followed him to a side door where they passed through a press of lords and ladies. Some frowned at Luneté as the page announced her brightly to the footmen; others scowled in annoyance as the doors were opened and the Countess of Lys went past them with the Empress's page into Her Majesty's drawing-room.
-end-