Royal Airs

by Sharon Shinn

  “Nerri said much the same thing. I’m taking it all to heart, I assure you. I know I’m not the best role model.”

  Bors took a sip of his wine and changed the subject. “So how are things with you? Still getting along all right?”

  Rafe meant to say Yes and leave it at that. Bors always asked a variant of the same question and Rafe always replied with polite generalities; but tonight, unexpectedly, the truth crossed his lips. “Getting a little restless,” he admitted. “Asking myself questions. Maybe I’m older than Steff, but I don’t seem to have a much better sense of direction.”

  Bors’s brown eyes were alight with comprehension. “Met a girl, I take it.”

  Rafe laughed. “Is that such an obvious corollary?”

  Bors smiled slightly. “Women are about the only thing I ever knew could make a man stop and think, even if he wasn’t keen on thinking before.”

  “Somehow I find it hard to picture you as young and rash and thoughtless,” Rafe retorted.

  Bors’s smile widened. “I had my days.”

  “So were you in your wild phase when you met my mother?”

  Bors thought that over, taking Rafe’s question seriously. “Looking for reasons to settle down, I expect,” he said at last. “I’d been living in the city because I thought every man should get some experiences his father had never had, and my father had never set foot in Chialto. But I missed the land more than I thought I would. I just hadn’t been able to convince myself that it wasn’t a defeat to go back home. Then I met your mother, and you. I never saw any two people who needed a home more than you did. So it all came together for me. Provide for her, provide for you, and get what I wanted for myself, even though I hadn’t been able to put it into words.”

  And that, Rafe thought, neatly answered the question he’d had earlier in the evening. Of course that was how those two unlikely people had come together. They gave each other reasons to change; they gave each other the strength to continue. They each had what the other needed. “My memories of her aren’t that clear,” he admitted. “But I would have thought she was more of a city girl—that she wouldn’t have loved the farm life any more than I did.”

  “Some truth to that,” Bors said. “I think she missed almost everything about Chialto. The markets. The pretty things you could buy. The special foods you could eat. All the excitement—all the things you like about the city. But she felt safe on the farm, and that made it all worth it for her.”

  “Safe?” Rafe repeated. “What was she afraid of?”

  Bors shrugged. “Just the general ills of the city, I think. She’d seen some violence in the streets. She knew a girl or two who had been attacked.” He nodded across the table at Rafe. “Said she’d heard of children being snatched away from their mothers, sold as laborers or worse. She was always watching you, like she was terrified someone would steal you away. Once we moved to the farm, it was like she finally relaxed. She said no one would be able to find you out here.”

  More and more baffling. Unconsciously, Rafe put his hand up to smooth the edge of his serrated ear, run his finger around the mostly healed cut between the cartilage and his scalp. “Someone said something strange to me the other day,” he replied slowly. “He said he didn’t think either my mother or my father was from Welce. Do you know anything about that?”

  Bors’s forehead furrowed in concentration. “It might be true,” he said. “She always believed your father was a foreigner, though she never supplied too many details. I had the sense he was a wealthy man, maybe a merchant from somewhere overseas, and she got caught up in some girlish notion of romance. Which didn’t last too long after you were born.” He jerked his chin in Rafe’s direction. “After he cut up your ear that way and maybe did some other unsavory things.”

  “And then abandoned her.”

  Bors looked uncertain. “Or she left him. She had the strength of will to do it.”

  “So he came from somewhere else. What about her?”

  “Well, there was always a bit of mystery about her. She had an accent when she spoke, you know, though she told me she had been raised by a maid who was from somewhere else—Malinqua, maybe, though I don’t remember. She actually spoke Coziquela more fluently than Welchin. But I thought that must be the way rich families raised their children. It was always clear she came from money.”

  Rafe leaned his elbows on the table. “But you never met any of her family, did you? Never knew that much about her.”

  “I knew they disowned her when she turned up pregnant,” Bors said bluntly. “I knew she never wanted anything to do with them again, after the way they’d treated her.”

  “Didn’t you ever ask her for more details?”

  Bors shrugged. “I didn’t need to know them. I didn’t care what her background was.” He studied Rafe for a moment. “Why are you suddenly so interested?”

  “I told you. Someone said he thought I was a stranger here.”

  Bors could hardly have appeared more skeptical. “And how would he know?”

  Rafe laughed. “It was Kayle Dochenza. The elay prime. He says he can sense the essence of a man, and mine’s foreign.”

  Bors was thunderstruck. “You’ve met a prime? How did you manage that?”

  “That girl you were guessing about. She knows him. She introduced me.”

  “No wonder you want to impress her.”

  “Anyway, he seemed pretty certain. Though I have no idea if primes really have the ability to trace bloodlines and heritage, like this one claimed he could.”

  “What does it matter?” Bors asked. “Even if you knew you were from Soeche-Tas or Berringey, what would change? Unless you wanted to travel there and try to track down your father—but that would be an awfully cold trail by now.”

  “That it would,” Rafe agreed. “I was just curious.”

  “Better to look forward to the future than back to the past,” Bors told him. “That’s what I always say.”

  Rafe nodded again, using a joke to cover his disappointment. “And as I always say, I think you’re right.”

  • • •

  Rafe stayed another full day to spend more time with Steff, then caught a public omnibus that would get him back to Chialto before sunset on ninthday. Of course, he’d forgotten that before another firstday rolled around, he would have to endure Quinnahunti changeday. Well, he hadn’t forgotten, precisely, he just hadn’t factored in how much it would disrupt his life. The omnibus was packed with boors and yokels headed to the city for the festivals; there was barely room to breathe, let alone space to sit. If Rafe hadn’t been determined to make it back to Chialto in time for dinner with Josetta, he would have leapt from the vehicle and walked back to the city.

  Things were no better, of course, once they crossed the canal into Chialto proper, because every street, every building, every scrap of green lawn was bursting with five times the usual number of people. Quinnahunti changeday was the year’s most joyous celebration. Tomorrow the streets would be thronged with vendors, entertainers, and ordinary folks devouring whatever they had to offer. There were usually marvelous displays up at the palace—light shows visible from every corner of the city—and dozens of street fairs closer at hand. It was a prosperous day for pickpockets and prostitutes, who in their various ways preyed on the happy, drunken, or uninhibited souls roaming the streets looking for adventure. Generally speaking, it wasn’t quite as busy an occasion for career gamblers, who found their usual targets distracted by other pursuits. There had been some changedays that Rafe hadn’t even bothered to leave his room.

  Once the public conveyance turned onto the Cinque, Rafe fought his way off and finished his journey on foot. He made it to Samson’s place just as night was closing in, to find the tavern stuffed with loud and rowdy patrons. “Good thing you’re back,” Samson observed. “I was about to give your room away to a family in town for the big fe
stival. Don’t suppose you’d want to make yourself a couple of quint-golds by renting out your bed for a couple of nights.”

  “I’m not that hard up for cash,” Rafe replied. “So, no.”

  Samson nodded. “Well, step carefully when you leave in the morning. There might be people bedded down in the hall.”

  Rafe couldn’t tell if he should laugh or groan, so he just collected his dinner and carried it up to his room. Once he’d firmly locked the door behind him, he pulled back the curtains and stared through the gathering dark at what revelry he could see in the streets below. Mostly what worked its way up to him was noise, not light—the sounds of people laughing, shrieking, cursing, singing, breaking glass, breaking promises, breaking hearts. Probably breaking a few heads, too, he thought, and wondered how many of the hurt, sick, lost, and lonely would make their way to Josetta’s shelter tonight. He wondered if she was there, just a few streets away, or up at the palace, where there were surely official celebrations she had been asked to attend. He wondered what she was viewing, what she was experiencing, if she was thinking about him the way he was thinking about her.

  Probably not. He turned away from the window and settled in to his supper.

  TWELVE

  It was almost impossible not to dislike the crown prince of Berringey.

  Darien had insisted that a royal contingent be on hand to welcome the prince when he arrived at the palace courtyard two days before changeday, so there they all were—Josetta, Corene, Natalie, Mally, all four queens, all five primes, and assorted other members of Chialto’s ruling families. Josetta had been informed that her job was to make sure Alys kept away from Corene, but it didn’t prove too difficult. Alys was far more focused on the visitors than she was on her daughter, and she did her best to be at the forefront of the crowd when the prince and his escort arrived.

  They made an impressive sight—four huge, highly decorated carriages pulled by matched teams of plumed white horses and accompanied by at least fifty soldiers in gold-and-white uniforms. By contrast, the Welchin guards looked a little drab in their dark livery lightened only by shoulder patches with the royal insignia, a small rosette featuring the five intertwined colors of the elemental affiliations.

  “Has he come to start a war?” Zoe muttered to Josetta and Corene as they clustered at the very back of the crowd. “How many guards does one man need?”

  “How do they keep white uniforms clean if they’ve been traveling?” Josetta wondered, which made the others giggle.

  “I don’t like him,” Corene announced.

  Zoe glanced at her. “You haven’t even laid eyes on him yet.”

  “I can already tell that he’s arrogant. He thinks he’s important.”

  “I suppose a crown prince is important,” Josetta acknowledged.

  “There’s a difference between being important and acting that way,” Corene said.

  Zoe was laughing. “I can almost hear Elidon teaching you that lesson.”

  “Well, I think she was right!”

  The lead carriage was the largest and most heavily ornamented, so they assumed it was the one that held the prince, but the door to the second one opened first. Three servants bustled up to the main carriage; one positioned a footstool right under the door while another reverently pulled it open. It was another five minutes before the prince stepped out and, standing on the footstool, looked around.

  He was sumptuously dressed in what looked like cloth of gold heavily decorated with jewels, lace, and intricate embroidery. The stiff metallic trousers were tucked into gleaming black boots buckled with gold; across the bright jacket lay a purple sash glittering with more gems. His head was wrapped in a cloth-of-gold turban set with an amethyst the size of an egg. Wisps of black hair escaped around the edges, somewhat softening the effect. By Welchin standards, he had an exotic look, with deep olive skin and huge dark eyes tilted slightly upward at the outer corners. A handsome man, or he would have been, if his expression hadn’t hovered somewhere between haughty and discontented.

  “Oh, tell me I wasn’t right,” Corene breathed.

  Zoe, never impressed by excess, was trying to muffle a laugh. “He’s almost a caricature of a prince, don’t you think?”

  “Except he seems to be taking himself very seriously,” Josetta said.

  “How long is he staying?” Corene demanded. “This might be the worst Quinnahunti ever.”

  • • •

  The prince’s first hour at the palace was spent meeting the Chialto elite. Darien had settled him in an ornate chair on a dais in the great hall; four of the prince’s resplendent guards stood right behind him, and another six were stationed around the dais. Josetta didn’t know if the prince wanted them there to protect him or merely to give him consequence.

  The gathered Welchins queued up to present themselves, with members of the royal family in the lead. Darien performed the introductions.

  “Josetta, this is Ghyaneth Werbane Kolavar, crown prince of Berringey,” he said when she stepped up. She made her deepest bow, the one she would have offered to Vernon had he still been alive. “Prince, this is our eldest princess, one of those in line for the crown.”

  The prince held out his hand, gloved in purple leather, and she touched it briefly with her fingertips as she straightened from her bow. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said in Coziquela. “I hope the travel has not been too tiring.”

  Up close his dark eyes were startlingly beautiful, a complex brown flecked with gold and sharp with intelligence. He stared at her with disconcerting intensity. “Travel is always tiring,” he said in the same language, though his accent was much different. “I prefer to stay in Berringey.”

  Well, how did she answer that? Why didn’t you stay home, then? “I hope the sights you see on your journey make the exertion worthwhile,” was all she came up with.

  “So far I have not been much impressed with Welce,” he said. “It is a small country, is it not? The mountains are pretty, but the countryside is dull, and there is too much of it.”

  “We are mostly a farming nation, but we have turned our fertile land into a great resource,” Josetta replied civilly enough, but inside she was starting to laugh. Oh, if Elidon could only hear her now, parroting back the history and commerce lessons she had despised so much! “We sell our grain and produce to many other countries, and even during droughts we have never had a serious famine. This prosperity has kept us peaceful through countless generations.”

  Prince Ghyaneth’s sulky face looked even more dissatisfied. “Yes—you are right—a nation that cannot feed itself sometimes experiences great turbulence. And sometimes becomes dangerously dependent on its neighbors.”

  Again, she wasn’t sure how to answer him. “So we take pride in our self-sufficiency,” she said.

  “It is good to be proud of something, I suppose. How old are you?” he demanded abruptly.

  “Twenty. How old are you?”

  He looked annoyed, as if she was rude to ask or stupid not to know already. “I am twenty-five. I have traveled to eighteen different countries and met the ruling families of each. How many countries have you been to?”

  “None,” she said, keeping the smile on her face with some difficulty, “but I have met the viceroy of Soeche-Tas and his entourage.” And I disliked them all, possibly even more than I dislike you.

  “A princess should not be so provincial,” he said.

  “A prince should not be so rude,” she replied.

  There was a moment’s silence while he tried to assimilate the fact that he had been insulted, and in such a cordial voice. Then his handsome face gathered into a scowl and he sat up a little straighter in the ornate chair. “You should not say such things to me! I am a guest in your house!”

  She wondered how much of their conversation anyone else could hear. Surely Darien must not be close enough to catch the
ir words, or he would have stepped in by now. Corene would be crowing with delight if she had managed to hear even half of it.

  “I am polite to anyone who is polite to me,” she said. “But you haven’t been.”

  “It is not rude to speak the truth,” he said.

  “Sometimes it is.”

  He sat back in his chair, curling his fingers around the carved armrests, and regarded her for a moment from those dark eyes. “I want you to sit beside me at the dinner,” he said suddenly.

  She felt her eyes widen in dismay. “What? Why? I believe all your dinner companions have already been decided.”

  “One of them can sit elsewhere. I want to talk to you,” he said.

  She knew without asking what Darien would say to that, so she summoned a courteous smile. “Then, majesty, I will be happy to provide conversation.”

  • • •

  Of course, it was another hour before the meal was served, and the Welchins spent that time gathering in small groups and comparing their first impressions of the visiting prince. Josetta wasn’t surprised to find that her mother had been won over by his regal bearing and air of entitlement.

  “He’s very handsome,” Seterre observed. “And he holds himself like a king, did you notice? Vernon was always a bit too eager to have common men and women approve of him. I think this Ghyaneth will make a formidable ruler.”

  “Did you flirt with him?” Josetta teased.

  Seterre laughed and fanned herself with her hand. “Of course I didn’t! I might be his mother’s age! But I did compliment his taste in clothing and said that I had always had great admiration for Berringey’s culture, and he told me I was very kind.”

  Corene’s assessment more closely tallied with Josetta’s. “What a slit-shafter,” she remarked.

  The phrase was so vulgar that Josetta actually gasped. “Where did you learn such an ugly expression?” she demanded.