by K. Eason
“I never said it’d be steel, did I?” Grytt grinned. “Don’t worry, Rupert. Metal’s not the only thing you can sharpen. Besides. I got it this far, you not knowing, or the bloody ’bots. Moss won’t know, either. But you’ll have to be careful, Rory. It’ll hold an edge until the sun dies, but it’s brittle.”
* * *
• • •
And so it was that Rory arrived at her first formal reception on Urse
welded
laced into a black velvet dress, with a finger-slim dart of bone and hex-grown diamond for company, snug in its Grytt-sewn sheath. Rory kept her fingers balled at her side, to resist both checking the blade’s presence—which she could feel very clearly running a line from sternum to navel—and making fists in her skirt, which only small children or nervous adults did. The knife was entirely invisible from the exterior. Rory was quite certain of that. The slightest bulge, and Messer Rupert would have insisted she leave it behind.
Besides. She was, she told herself sternly, not nervous.
The Princess was also not alone among skirt-wearers. At least four diplomats from Lanscot were in attendance, wrapped in swathes of an itchy-looking fabric that concealed their bodies from knee to forehead, leaving only eyes and mouth exposed. The garment, traditional to the Lanscottar, evolved as a response to the climate of the planet’s habitable zone, which was cold, wet, and generally miserable. The colonists who live there take great pride in surviving the inconvenience, and in pointing out that at least Lanscot had breathable atmosphere and, despite its propensity to precipitation, was actually quite fecund. Further, the planet possessed a rich collection of native flora quite edible for imported livestock, the husbandry of which formed the backbone of the Lanscottar economy, which survived on meat and wool exports.
Rory thought the Lanscottar must be very warm under all that wool, and very stubborn to continue wearing it, when most of the other guests eyed them sidelong, wearing little superior smirks with which Rory was quite familiar, having grown up among courtiers. She resolved to visit Lanscot at the earliest opportunity, with as much public fanfare as she could manage.
Most of the Tadeshi women wore slim-fitting trousers and shirts that rivaled Rory’s own bodice for minimalism, without the boning and laces to make sure that everything inside stayed that way. The presence of so many steep necklines was both reassuring and disconcerting. Some kinds of familiarity only serve to reinforce the depressing truth that people everywhere are capable of developing the same foolish customs. At least the Lanscottar costume rendered everyone equally unappealing.
The upshot, however, of the sea of plunging necklines, was that no one was making a special effort to stare at Rory.
She squirmed away from Messer Rupert relatively early, and explored the reception at her own pace and leisure. She was partly aided by the venue itself. There were trees, and bushes, and great vines holding the multiple levels together like twine. It was, Messer Rupert said, a favorite place for diplomatic meetings which, while not precisely clandestine, were at least largely proof against both ’bots and traditional eavesdropping. It was also, he had added, after a moment, quite popular among young couples for, ah, well. It was just popular. Tonight, for the reception, there were tiny teslas strung through trees, which winked like little white stars caught among the leaves, and rendered the overall ambiance somewhat crepuscular.
Rory spent longer than was strictly proper with the Lanscottar, who seemed pleased to have the foreign princess’s attention, and genuinely delighted to go on at length about the habits of their sheep and the cleverness of their dogs. Rory, who had never had a dog, and had only a passing academic knowledge of sheep (ate grass, made wool), made an excellent audience. She was perhaps halfway through a recitation of the exploits of a dog named Robbie and a clever sheep-thief when she heard Regent Moss call her name from a distance that required him to raise his voice to attract her attention: something, she had been told, a ruling scion never did.
Well of course, Rory thought. He’s no scion. He’s a jumped-up Minister with delusions of royalty and a talent for seizing power.
Rory examined that moment of smug condescension. She considered, briefly, ignoring him. Pretending she had not heard him, engrossed as she was in the tales of a clever canine and his woolly charges. Indeed, she did not turn at once.
But the Lanscottar had heard, despite all the layers of wool. The tallest, a woman named Maggie, straightened first, her eyes flashing past Rory’s shoulder. The other three followed suit, stiffening to their full height, chins migrating upward and outward, under their woolens, until the face-wrapping stretched tight. Rory guessed there were tight, square jaws hidden under there. Their eyes, all four sets, were hard and flat as deckplate.
“The Regent,” muttered Maggie.
“Aye,” hissed the shortest Lanscottar, whose wrap was a particularly startling combination of reds, blues, and bright green lines.
Rory made a note to check the history of diplomatic relations between Moss and the Lanscottar when she got back to the suite. She also revised her assumptions about the logic and inconvenience of Lanscottar dress customs. The facial wrap alleviated any need to keep one’s feelings off one’s face. In a court environment, that could be a very useful concealment.
Then, thus forewarned, she turned around.
The Regent was alarmingly close already, and, even more alarmingly, not alone. A pair of young men trailed in his wake, both alike enough to each other and to the Regent himself that their identities were easy to ascertain.
“Princess,” said Moss, with a precisely correct bow. “You are looking lovely this evening.”
Rory smiled, her very sweetest, and dropped into a Thorne-style curtsy, arms spread, chin lowered, chest just so slightly out-thrust. Her gaze remained fixed on Moss, unblinking.
“Regent. What a delightful gathering.”
“You are too kind, Princess.” He tilted his head. His gaze wandered over the Lanscottar, and his lip curled. “I see that you have found some of the Free Worlds’ more, hm, eccentric inhabitants. The Lanscottar do love their stories, and those stories are very diverting. I hope you’ve enjoyed them.”
His tone suggested that, whether or not she had, her time with Robbie the very clever dog and the sheep-thief of the Clarster Moors had come to an end. Behind Moss’s shoulder, the young men traded sly, knowing looks. The taller of them kept trying for Rory’s eye, slinging his smirk at her like a grappling hook.
Rory wished for more room in the bodice, so that she might take the deep and slow breaths necessary to douse her temper. Then she turned a shoulder to Moss, and looked back at the Lanscottar.
“Thank you for the conversation,” she said. “I look forward to hearing the rest of Robbie’s tale at a later date.”
“Your Highness,” said Maggie. The Lanscottar bowed, of a piece, and shuffled away into the arboretum. The smell of overwarmed human and wet sheep trailed after them.
“Much better,” muttered the taller boy. “You don’t have to flatter them, Princess.”
Rory had practiced this particular gesture a dozen times in the mirror. Chin up. Shoulders back. Eyebrow . . . just the one on the left . . . up, up. There.
“I’m sorry,” she said crisply. “I don’t believe I know you.”
The taller boy’s cheeks turned red. The shorter one caught his sniggering in his hand, which he turned into an unconvincing cough when his father turned to glare at him.
A cold little smile took up residence in the corner of Moss’s mouth, as if it were trying to get as far away from its wearer as possible. “Indeed. My apologies, Princess. Allow me to introduce my sons, Merrick and Jaed.”
Merrick and Jaed shared their father’s striking good looks: blond, both of them, tall and wide-shouldered, with narrow hips and long legs. Merrick was the taller, the one with the sense to blush. Jaed was perhaps four centimeters sho
rter, which he made up for in the increased breadth of his shoulders. His hair was perhaps two shades darker, as well, bronze rather than gilt.
Rory suffered the obligatory hand-kissing, all the while battling twin impulses of regret and relief at Grytt’s absence. Not that Grytt could have done anything about the social niceties. She did catch sight of Messer Rupert, trapped on the edge of the room. His expression suggested he wished Merrick and Jaed reduced to insectivore amphibians on the spot.
Unfortunately the only remedy to Rory’s situation was diplomacy. She decided she’d have to rescue herself.
Rory plucked her hand out of Jaed’s fingers (still damp from his coughing) and took a neat little half-step back, twitching her skirts to their widest circumference, making a border of velvet and lace that, together with custom, would keep young men just out of easy hand-grasping range.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintances,” she said. “Regent, your sons do you credit.”
“They are at your disposal, Princess. They would be delighted to show you around Urse at your earliest convenience.”
Rory folded her fingers together at her waist, smiling from one Moss to the other. She waited until Jaed opened his mouth, and then said, “How kind. Do you both also serve with the Tadeshi marines, like Prince Ivar?”
Merrick blinked. Jaed, caught open-mouthed, remained in that condition. “Uh,” he said.
“No, your Highness,” said Merrick. His fine brows had drawn together.
“Oh?” Rory affected surprise. “But I understood that service, here in the Free Worlds, is compulsory. Or is that only for Princes?”
Moss’s face transformed, becoming all ice and hard angles, anger and a malice that raised chill-pimples along her exposed flesh. Then he pinned his lips into a smile, and Rory wondered if she’d seen the lapse at all.
“Your Highness, I have some good news. The Prince is here, on Urse. He will be joining us later this very evening.”
A suspicious person—or one, perhaps, raised in a court environment and tutored by a vizier to believe that people were capable of all manner of deceit, and one was only prudent to suspect it—might have wondered at the promptness of Ivar’s arrival. And indeed, Rory did wonder. She also retained enough wit to refrain from asking.
She checked the disposition of her smile, shined it up a bit, and dipped again into a curtsy. Merrick’s and Jaed’s gaze slipped from her face. Their chins mirrored the dip and rise of their gaze. Regent Moss’s eyes, however, stayed steady, and Rory found herself fighting an urge to blink and look elsewhere as she said,
“Thank you, Regent. I appreciate the extraordinary efforts to which you must have gone, retrieving Prince Ivar from that dreadful moon.”
“Not at all, Princess. It was no trouble.”
Her heart would have sunk, had the dress permitted. Instead it fluttered unhappily, battering itself against bone and bodice.
It continued to do so for the next nearly hour, while Merrick and Jaed attached themselves one to a side and steered her through the twinkling trees. For Rory, however, the magic of the evening was quite extinguished. The lights instead seemed dim, the shadows ominous, and every hiss of the doors made her start and turn, craning past branch and bough to see if this time the arrival was Ivar’s.
She had begun to imagine his arrival as the event which would give her excuse to shed her escort. She had begun to imagine him as, well, her rescuer. She wasn’t entirely certain how a rescue would look, having never before imagined needing one, and in truth, she needed no rescue now. Merrick and Jaed, while vexing, hardly offered her any danger. But perhaps she can be forgiven for the lapse, having never before been pursued quite so aggressively or so trapped in anyone’s (or in this case, anytwo’s) company.
And then, very suddenly, the moment arrived, and reality and Ivar made their entrance. The arboretum doors labored open, letting station-cool air invade the warm, somewhat humid arboretum like a snake across the top of a bare foot. The reception’s murmur faded to the sort of expectant quiet that seems to hum, at the limits of one’s hearing.
Rory stopped, forcing Merrick and Jaed to stop, as well. She rearranged herself, stretching onto her toes and tilting alarmingly sideways—using a tree for balance, much to Merrick’s visible disappointment—to catch a clear view of the door.
A middle-aged man in Valenko colors, velvet cut in the local Ursan style, stepped into the doorway and paused, looking dramatically around the room.
“Prince Ivar Valenko,” the herald shouted. His voice filled the arboretum, nudging the trees aside, filling all the aether. No sooner had the heraldic echoes died than Prince Ivar Valenko stepped into the arboretum. He blinked at the teslas. He blinked at the trees. His glance skipped from face to face, wide-eyed, until it found the one it sought and settled. Then he blinked again, decisively.
Regent Moss approached, bowed, and said something Rory couldn’t hear. Then, using the Prince’s elbow as a rudder, the Regent guided the Prince into the arboretum and unerringly in her direction.
As we have noted, Rory had allowed herself only a small, prudent measure of imagining, where Prince Ivar was concerned. She had not wished to begin their relationship with any preconceptions. There were facts, which one might read on a dossier. There was the added knowledge of the Prince’s deployment on Beo, and the basic expectation of the sort of young man who might serve on dangerous off-world bases. Even the most diligent and practical of minds might be forgiven a little fantasizing, in those circumstances.
But then that mind was confronted by the reality of the Prince, which proved only that dossiers were, at the end, merely data, and as such were vulnerable to arithmancy or good old-fashioned fabrications.
Prince Ivar did not enjoy the same cosmetic arithmancy as his Regent. Nor did he display any of the physical symptoms of a man accustomed to martial exertion. He did not march. He shuffled. His body expanded into the folds and corners of his garments much as Rory imagined rising dough would, if it were dressed in a velvet coat.
“Your Highness,” the Regent murmured. “May I present the Princess Rory Thorne.”
Ivar blinked at Rory. His right eye appeared to harbor some sort of minor infection. It was red, watery, and a little bit swollen. Rory tried not to look too closely at it. Instead, she gathered up every scrap of the etiquette Messer Rupert had drilled into her.
“Your Highness,” she said.
“Er,” said Ivar. He stared at her outstretched hand as if it were a live snake studded with mines.
“You must forgive his Highness,” said Regent Moss. “He is unaccustomed to courtly manners.” Moss waited half a beat, then leaned down and said against Ivar’s ear, “Kiss the Princess’s hand, your Highness.”
Jaed suffered another small coughing fit. Moss ignored him. Ivar did, too. He set his jaw and took Rory’s hand, still behaving as if it were a reptile wired with explosives, and brought his lips to a parchment’s distance from her knuckles. She felt the warm brush of his exhale on her skin, thin and shaky. Then he let go as if the snake had caught fire and begun reciting poetry at the same moment. His eyes were a little wide and glassy.
“Your Highness.”
Rory dipped into a curtsy, intending a gesture of depth and dexterity befitting a monarch, and to buy herself time to gain control of her features.
The tiny knife in her bodice had other ideas. It poked into her belly as she folded, its sharp tip threatening the integrity of Grytt’s sheath, and Rory straightened more quickly than she’d intended. Ivar hadn’t had time to turn away yet, and so he, like Merrick and Jaed, was still staring at her. Ivar, at least, was looking at her face, his own mouth wrung out, his watery eyes blank as a koi’s.
Protocol, in this case, dictates that a monarch-to-be should speak first. Rory gave that exactly two seconds’ consideration, apologized in her head to Messer Rupert, and said in a strong, clear voi
ce:
“It’s good to see you again, Highness.”
Ivar’s mouth wrung even tighter, tighter, and then snapped slack. “Right. Er. Yes. Very nice to see you again. Er. Your Highness.” He cast a hopeful gaze at the Regent, like a man on the rack imploring his torturer to please, yes, just crank it back a couple of notches.
Ordinarily the thirteenth fairy’s gift came to Rory as a whisper, one that she felt, more than heard. A certainty in her belly, and in her heart. But this time was not ordinary, the whisper was a shout, and Rory’s head fairly rang with the echoes.
who is she why is she looking at me no one said what I should say WHO IS SHE
She was a little dazed as Regent Moss steered the Prince away, and toward a waiting knot of courtiers. She managed the appropriate murmurings of leave-taking, and the barest and most pathetic of curtseys. She guessed, from the looks Merrick cast at her, that her discomfiture was visible.
“Princess,” he said. “Are you all right? Do you feel faint?”
To be fair, lest one believe Merrick more of a churl than is warranted, his hesitation to inquire after the Princess’s well-being was born of native custom. It is not polite to acknowledge others’ distress, in the Free Worlds. He should have pretended ignorance, while waiting for Rory to gather her wits. By acknowledging her distress, Merrick feared he was rendering insult.
“Fine,” Rory said; and under the camouflage of that same custom, Merrick dismissed the terseness of her response as an indication that yes, he had insulted her. He sagged back a step, quite crestfallen, his magnificent shoulders bowing inward like a tree coated in ice.
Jaed, who had observed this exchange, calculated his own position improved by his brother’s failure. He took a step closer to Rory, and risked the barest of finger-touches to the inside of her elbow.
“We’re lucky the Prince came at all,” he said. “Must’ve had someone helping him with his buttons.”