One Good Knight

by Mercedes Lackey

“Well, this matches the last set I made you, but we might as well see if your eyes have changed in the interval. Now—” he muttered under his breath, something she didn’t quite catch, and she sensed the glass of the lenses warm, just a little “—better and clearer, or fuzzier?”

  “Better,” she said decisively. The lines on the card were sharper than they had been before.

  He muttered again; again the lenses warmed.

  “Better, or fuzzier and farther away?”

  They repeated this three more times, until the lines got oddly distant and did get a little fuzzier. He reversed his last spell, which was subtly changing the shape of the lenses, exactly as he would have if he had been grinding them by hand. And, as a matter of fact, he once had done just that. As he had shown her years ago, he wasn’t so much altering the lenses as matching them to sets he had hand-ground, when he first began making both telescopes and oculars down in his workshop. He had one master set of telescope lenses, and one of ocular lenses, which had taken him more than a year to make.

  Those were carefully stored away, but he had 70

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  touched this set to every set in his workshop, and as he had explained to Andie, by the arcane Law of Contamination, that meant that these lenses “knew”

  how the others were shaped and could mimic that shape at his command.

  “So,” he said, taking out a scrap of paper and writing down the number of the lenses to which he had matched these new ones. “I’ll have three more sets up to you by day’s end. Lady Kyria has astoundingly sound design sense—you ought to go have a look at yourself in a mirror. She gave me the design she wanted, properly limned out, and it was a pleasure to cast the frames. Don’t know why I didn’t think to make cast frames before. They must be more comfortable than my wire frames.”

  “Uh—” she said, not wanting to agree because he’d been so good as to make her oculars in the first place.

  “Never mind, I’ll take that as a yes.” He laughed.

  “Anyway, you’re to have four sets—to match jewels, I suppose—white gold, pale gold, yellow gold and rose gold. Can’t have your oculars clashing with your bracelets, I suppose. I’ll send the ’prentice up with them later. I’m waiting for the frames to cool now.”

  “If the Princess is not here, you can leave them with her handmaiden Iris,” Lady Thalia put in, and came around to take a look at the Sophont’s handi-work. She blinked. “Good heavens. That is much more flattering!”

  “Yes, it is,” Balan agreed with a lopsided smile.

  “Now you can see what pretty eyes she has. Well, I’m One Good Knight

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  off! Lady Thalia, it was a pleasure meeting you.

  Princess, a delight to serve you!”

  As soon as he was out of the room, Andie was out of the chair. Picking up the skirt of her gown this time to keep it from tripping her, she ran to her bedroom to peer into the little mirror over her dressing table.

  The difference was astounding. The old oculars had been small, vaguely rectangular, and had cut across her face like a slash mark. These were large, circular and, for the first time, did not obscure her eyes. If anything, they made her eyes look bigger, like those of a young animal, soft and giving an impression of innocence and vulnerability. The frame, of white gold, was very simple and polished, somehow less fussy than Balan’s frame of twisted wire had been.

  “Gracious!” Iris exclaimed. “What a difference!”

  “You don’t think they look—well— owlish? ” Lady Thalia asked, a little doubtfully.

  “Not a bit!” Iris declared. “Just look how big they make her eyes look! And you’ve heard all those daft poets, my Lady, going on about a girl’s eyes supposed to be like a doe’s, or big pools of water! No, this suits her, it does. Lady Kyria knows what she’s doing, and that’s a fact!”

  The same sentiment was echoed by Lady Charis, who arrived moments later with the first of the new gowns and a wardrobe full of new under-gowns, chemises, petticoats and all other such necessaries. This first gown was a high-waisted col-

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  umn of dark blue silk twill, with little, fluttery sleeves. The high waist was accented by a silk and silver cord that tied just under the breasts, the sides were slit up to the hip, and this gown was meant to be worn over an under-gown of cream-colored silk tissue.

  “You’ll be having dinner tonight with Her Highness the Queen, and two of her guests, Princess,” Lady Charis told her, as Iris helped her into the new gowns, then sat her down to restyle her hair using cord that matched the gown. “This is not quite a state dinner but it will give the Ambassadors an opportunity to meet you under less formal circumstances than a presentation.”

  “Ambassadors?” Andie felt her stomach grow tense—was this going to be the situation every night?

  “No one of great consequence. One is from the island of Sarmacia, the other from the island of Keles. There will be, at most, ten persons there aside from yourself and the Queen. You will probably be taking your dinner with Her Highness most nights,”

  Lady Thalia said, confirming her worst fear.

  “Evening meals are an occasion, just like any other, to study one’s courtiers and visitors, and learn from that study. In fact, it would be wise if you ate and drank as little as possible, in order to concentrate on them and take advantage of seeing them in a relatively unguarded state. Say as little as you can, and listen as much as you can. I have called for a pre-din-ner meal of fruit and yogurt to sustain you, and I One Good Knight

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  shall have your cook prepare something that will be awaiting you when you return to your rooms.”

  She started to nod—stopped herself, since Iris was in the middle of doing something with her hair, and said, instead, “Thank you, Lady Thalia. I truly appreciate your experience and advice.”

  For the first time, the rather formidable lady smiled. “It was not in my orders from the Queen to give you advice, Princess,” she replied, resting her hand atop Andie’s for just a moment. “But I hoped you would not think me forward to do so.”

  “Oh no! Please! Continue doing so!” Andie said hastily, and sighed. “This is becoming a great deal more complicated than I had thought it would be—”

  “The business of a ruler always is, my dear,” Lady Thalia replied. “Now, if you are not to be late, as soon as Iris gets your slippers tied, you must be away.

  Collect one of your Guards at the door. You must not travel even within the Palace walls without an escort anymore. You are a lady of consequence now.”

  And the unspoken words rang loudly enough in Andie’s mind that Lady Thalia might just as well have said them.

  “You are no longer a child. And you must never forget it.”

  As each day passed into the next, Andie slowly settled into her new roles. That of researcher and adviser was the easiest, and the one that gave her the most pleasure. Being Princess was as restrictive, in 74

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  entirely new ways, as it had ever been, but she found that having real work to do made the restrictions less irksome. Lady Charis and Lady Kyria did not reappear after the last of her new wardrobe was completed, but Lady Thalia was a constant companion, and somewhat to Andie’s surprise, became a welcome one. She had been certain that Lady Thalia had been given charge over Andie’s household purely to report Andie’s failings back to the Queen. That might have been the case, but Lady Thalia had her own ideas of what she was to do, and that included patiently instructing Andie on the running of a royal household, on court protocol, and on how to watch other people, catch them in unguarded moments and learn something about them.

  And Iris was a treasure—far more of a friend, because she was near to Andie’s age, than Guard Merrha ever could have been. Between them, they turned what could have been an ordeal into something that was merely demanding, and could be quite interesting.

  The one thing she didn’t much care for
was that she had to wear gowns now, instead of tunics and bare legs. But a great deal of the rest of what Lady Charis deemed needful to a lady was rather pleasant.

  The daily massages, for one thing. So she didn’t miss running wild as much as she had thought she might.

  The only problem was that she kept turning up odd things in the records…. Such as the oddity that in her mother’s lifetime, a substantial percentage of the scav-

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  engers’ rights along the coast had reverted to the Crown, and none had been parceled back out again.

  Now, since such rights were a traditional way of rewarding good service, that was historically out of the ordinary. Even stranger, it seemed as if every one of the rights that reverted was always the center of a tangle of subdivisions, sales and inheritances that came out to favor a party who was either dead or vanished.

  It was enough to send a shiver up her back as she thought about the old stories of cursed treasures, and ghosts taking revenge on those who profited, however obliquely, by their deaths.

  When she looked back over the old records of her mother’s reign, she discovered this had been happening, off and on, ever since her father died and her mother began to rule alone. It appeared that the pol-icy of generations, to use scavengers’ rights to reward those who in other Kingdoms might be given lands and titles, had been reversed. She wondered, though the Queen ruled in her own name and right, was this Cassiopeia’s idea, or had someone advised her to it?

  The source of the Queen’s personal wealth, which had been puzzling her a little, was revealed in this, however. No wonder Cassiopeia was able to afford silk, where her predecessor had made do with linen!

  Andie frowned a little and stopped herself just before she began chewing on her nail. Lady Charis would have a kitten—

  It was true that this was a way—without raising taxes or harming anyone—for Cassiopeia to increase 76

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  her “discretionary” income. Seen in that light, there wasn’t anything to find fault with. And it was also true that since Andie had begun paying attention, there hadn’t been much that she would have chosen to reward anyone for—or at least, nothing that would merit the sort of permanent reward that salvage rights represented. The Queen loved luxury, loved beautiful things, loved ornaments and extrava-gant entertainment; richer countries than Acadia had been bankrupt by such Queens and Kings. But Cassiopeia seemed to have found a way to indulge herself without bankrupting her country or impover-ishing her people. Maybe she was going against Acadian custom, but in this case, it was hard to dis-parage her.

  But then there was the other disturbing thing: the number of shipwrecks was also increasing. Thus, increasing the Queen’s revenue…

  Now, there always had been and always would be merchants who sought to bypass Acadian harbor taxes, unloading fees and inspections by bypassing the port at Ethanos altogether and meeting up with a caravan at some shallow or less-protected bay or river mouth or minor fishing harbor where there were no harbor officials, no tax inspectors matching what was unloaded with what was being declared, and no laws saying that they had to pay the long-shoremen of Ethanos to offload their ship. And there were always smugglers who wished to bypass all Acadian taxes entirely, and elude customs officials to One Good Knight

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  bring in items that had been banned. But it seemed that to an increasing extent, such scofflaws had found themselves facing storm and wreck, almost as if some divine hand was at work. Some, when not wrecked, found themselves driven into port before a storm, willing or not.

  But there was something very troubling about those lists of wrecked ships, because there was another trend for which Andie truly could not find any sensible reason.

  Not only were there more wrecks, but there were more wrecks every year from merchants and countries that had never traded out of Ethanos. Places where the sunken ships gave up corpses that had dark brown, black or yellow skin, where the cargos were things that had never passed through any market in Acadia, where no Acadian but a Sophont could read the lettering on the barrels and bales, and only then by bespelling the letters into something recognizable.

  Where were they coming from? When Andie sorted through older and older records, she saw that such a prodigy would occur now and again, once every ten or twenty years at most for the entire length of the Acadian shoreline, and be talked about by the scavengers who found it for a generation or more.

  Not now. Now the exotic ships were washing up once a month in the stormy season, as if some inimical hand had dragged them off course and then thrown them onto Acadian rocks. And it made no 78

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  sense. This was like finding strawberries in winter, or a gryphon cub among the kittens in a farmhouse litter. Those vessels should not have been anywhere near Acadia—yet there they were, coming to grief, spilling their goods out onto Acadian shores.

  More wrecks—wrecks from foreign lands…Andie had a hunch, and looked in still another set of records, to discover that, yes, the storms of the storm season were getting worse, stronger, lasting longer, and the season beginning earlier and ending later.

  Away from Ethanos, fisherfolk were suffering, unable to put to sea to make their winter catches, and farmers were suffering, too, as their growing season shortened. So although prosperity was coming to Acadia as a whole in the form of treasure, it was passing the people who formed the backbone of Acadia, the coastal farmers and fisherfolk.

  She closed that book and sat staring into space for a moment. A horrible thought dawned on her.

  What if the storms are being sent?

  It was true that the wrecks were bringing a certain amount of prosperity to Acadia, but only to a few.

  The rest were suffering. Smaller harvests meant less to eat; so far, the difference hadn’t shown up in the marketplace that she knew of, but the area around Ethanos seemed free of these prodigal storms. The rest of the coastline was not doing as well. And if there was one thing that Andie saw in history, it was that if you wanted to bring a country to its knees, you began by starving it.

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  Though, it might not be Acadia that was the target here. It could be some other land, whose merchants were being driven off course, whose cargos were being lost. Acadia could be both the unwitting victim of and benefactor from someone else’s quarrels.

  So, it was a theory. The question was, could it be done, or was all this some Godmother tale she was frightening herself with? Can storms be sent? Can you perform some magic to bring them early, make them stronger and send them where they wouldn’t ordinarily go?

  Only one person in the Palace would know.

  Not long ago, she would have gone running down to Balan’s workshop herself. Now, with a sigh, she rang a little bell on her desk, and a servant appeared.

  “Do you know where Sophont Balan lodges?” she asked the boy.

  He nodded. Well, a boy would. Girls, many of them, at any rate tended to avoid the area of the Sophont’s quarters because of the odd smells, sounds and occasional sights, and a fear that some thing would jump out and bite them. Boys, on the other hand, tended to linger for precisely the same reasons.

  “Then take the Sophont my compliments and ask if he can spare me a moment.”

  The boy nodded again and ran off, probably eager to be granted a task that would allow him inside the Sophont’s door. Who could predict what he would see?

  Since Andie knew precisely what he would see, despite her concern she stifled a smile. In Balan’s 80

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  workshop, which was so neat that even the most exacting housekeeper would be unable to find fault with it, he would see nothing much more exotic than he’d see in the housekeeper’s still-room. Unless he happened to look up. Then he’d see the stuffed crocodile Balan kept hanging in the rafters.

  She’d asked him why years ago, and he’d laughed.

  �
��Tradition!” he’d said. “Tradition says that Acadian Sophonts have a stuffed crocodile hanging from the rafters! I never wanted one—I threw the first one I had away. In the morning, it was back up there. So I gave it away. In the morning, it had returned. I pitched it in the ocean. It was back the next day with a drape of seaweed across its back and a glitter in its glass eye. Finally I burned it. The next day— that was hanging up in the rafters, twice as big as the first! I gave up. There are just some things it’s not worth trying to fight The Tradition over.”

  She hoped fervently that she wasn’t interrupting some experiment, because as polite as he was, Balan would come whether he could spare the time or not.

  She was quite relieved when, following the boy, Balan arrived looking as relaxed as if he had been doing nothing more than a bit of light reading when she’d asked him to come. And she saw no stains on his fingers, and no burn holes in his vest, which argued the same conclusion.

  She gave him the bow of respect, then launched straight into her question. “Sophont, is it possible for a magician to change the weather?”

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  His brows wrinkled. “It depends on what you mean by ‘change,’” he said, finally. “Can they make weather vanish? No. Weather patterns have a lot of force behind them. The natural world is one of the hardest things for a magician to alter, because it resists change. Weather can be called, or sent, but that’s still tricky, and it takes a great deal of power. More than I’d have, unless, for instance, The Tradition decided to reinforce me to make weather behave the way The Tradition dictates for a particular time and place.”

  It was her turn to wrinkle her brows. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because weather is part of The Tradition,” he explained, waving his hand at the clouds outside.

  “Take Ethanos, for instance—in all the songs and stories about Ethanos, the Royal Family, and the port, you’ll never see one where the weather is bad, so The Tradition tends to insist that we have many more fine days than wretched ones. Every single song sung here talks about rainbows after the rain—and rainbows we have, after every single rain. We’ve got something of a reputation for it, in fact. So if I were going to try to change that, I’d have the entire weight of The Tradition mustered against me.”