The City in the Lake

by Rachel Neumeier

  “She was more than civil,” he said. “She was trying very hard to be kind.”

  Cassiel studied him. “She doesn’t trust you. Even now?”

  “She does, in fact, I think. Her doubts of me now are merely habit, and she is, I believe, trying not to listen to them.”

  The Prince turned and leaned his arms on the balcony railing. “In time she will learn to trust you with her heart. I wish she would begin to throw things again.”

  Neill smiled. “Then we would both know she was recovered.”

  An attendant appeared tentatively at the door of the balcony and said, “Your Highness . . .”

  “Later,” commanded the Prince. He said to Neill as the man vanished again, “They pretend to believe we will not be ready for the coronation tonight, but of course we will be.” His tone was light, but grief moved suddenly in his eyes.

  “He would be proud of you,” Neill said gently.

  “I don’t know why. I did very little.”

  Neill tilted his head. “You were kind as well as brave. I remember a certain offer, made at the end, that was very like a King. You will be a fine King. Of course he would be proud.”

  Cassiel, faintly embarrassed, made a noncommittal sound. He turned suddenly, as though gathering courage from the cold air. He said, eyes searching his brother’s face, “Neill, do you mind?”

  After the briefest pause, Neill said lightly, “So you doubt me as well. You need not.”

  Despite the lightness, his brother heard the hurt in that pause. He said swiftly, taking Neill’s arm again in a grip so hard it almost bruised, “No. Not your heart, nor your patience, nor your resolve, nor your courage, nor your ability to stand next to me for the next fifty years, if you must, and never show the slightest trace of regret. Even if regret is what you feel. You say I will be a fine King. But I know you could be a great King, and you are the elder. . . .”

  “But you are the only son of the Queen,” said Neill softly. “And the heart of the Kingdom. My heritage is not . . . not so comfortable. I could be clever and ruthless and powerful, and those are all good qualities in a King. But you will shine like the sun in the sky and bring joy to all the Kingdom. Besides,” he said, and smiled suddenly, “I do not want it. If I learned anything in my brief week of rule, it was that. I want you to have it, and I wish you all possible joy of it.”

  Cassiel gave him a searching look. “Do you mean that?”

  “Certainly,” Neill said, and took care that this time there was no trace of hesitation.

  “All right,” said Cassiel softly, and drew him forward into an abrupt, fierce embrace. “I love you,” he said, with simple sincerity. “I trust you. Always. Never doubt it, brother.”

  Neill swallowed a sudden, surprising lump in his throat and returned his brother’s embrace, not trying to speak.

  Cassiel pushed him back again, smiling, eyes sparkling with sudden mischief. “And since I love you, I have sent your servants suitable clothing for you to wear tonight.”

  “Oh . . .,” said Neill, recovering all his accustomed selfpossession as he made a rapid leap of imagination. “No, Cassiel—”

  “Your tastes are far too plain. You know that.”

  “Cassiel—”

  His younger brother only laughed. “You should see what I sent to Timou. Well, you will, of course, tonight.”

  Neill smiled reluctantly. “Not white, I hope?”

  “Thunder and ice, no,” Cassiel said cheerfully. “She needs to look like herself, not like your mother.” He said this with a lightness that suggested he had already forgotten that night of terror and despair at the heights of the Palace, though Neill knew he had not. But his tone made it clear he meant to dismiss any importance Lelienne had ever had for either of them. “But all that white hair! And that skin! Those eyes! I asked Jesse’s advice—Jesse has an eye for women’s fashions that might surprise you.”

  Neill studied him with a sudden faint concern. “Cassiel, you’re not—You don’t see Timou’s face in the falling rain, surely?”

  “What?” his brother said, surprised, and then laughed. “Neill, she’s your sister, and you’re my brother. It would hardly be right. No. But I can appreciate beauty when I see it. She will be exquisite.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

  Neill said warningly, “If mine is too exquisite, I won’t wear it.”

  “You will. To please me.” Cassiel turned back toward the door, making a slight face. “And I will wear all the regalia my attendants insist upon, so you’ve no cause to complain.”

  Neill did complain, at length, when he saw the clothing his brother had sent to his rooms. But he did it with a lightness to his tone that set the servants to smiling behind their hands.

  His brother had sent him a shirt like midnight, with the puffed sleeves slashed up to the elbow to show the silvery blue lining. The leggings were black, traced with intricate silver-blue embroidery that ran in a narrow line down from his right hip to swirl around his calf. The embroidery continued down his right boot, picked out in silk and sapphire. The other boot was plain. The boots had, Neill judged, undoubtedly been a special order. Someone had probably stayed up for several nights in a row to finish them in time.

  Cassiel had sent ribbons for his hair: midnight-blue and silvery blue and, the one concession to mourning, a single ribbon of lavender. There was a silver hair clasp, set with tiny sapphires.

  “The ladies of the court will fall at your feet,” said an elderly servant, braiding the ribbons into Neill’s hair.

  “Wonderful,” Neill said drily.

  “If you do not look at them, my lord, you will break their hearts.” The servant, who was the man who had watched Neill take a coal out of the fire at his mother’s command, came around in front of him and opened a little rosewood box to show him a ring. It was made of strands of braided silver, set with sapphires and pearls. It had belonged to the King, who had worn it on special occasions. “Prince Cassiel sent it,” the servant said gently. “It will break his heart if you do not wear it.”

  After a moment Neill extended his hand.

  The servant slid the ring onto his thumb—the King had worn it on the third finger of his right hand, but Neill’s hands were not so heavy. Then the servant bowed his head and touched his lips to the hand he held. Startled, Neill did not move.

  “All the court should kiss your hands,” said the servant softly. “Some of them know it. All of us know it.”

  Too much touched to speak, Neill laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. All the servants bowed, one after another, very carefully and seriously, and retired quietly afterward, to leave Neill standing by himself in the privacy of his room. He found, to his considerable surprise, that for once he did not feel that he stood alone in the heart of the court.

  The coronation occurred at dusk, the correct and proper time to recognize all moments of change. And what could be more momentous a change than the recognition of a new King after the death of the old?

  Garlands and ribbons dressed the great hall, which had been flung open to all the Kingdom for the evening; in practice this meant that the hall thronged with courtiers, while people from the City and beyond filled the streets outside the Palace.

  Tables along the sides of the hall held platters of thin-sliced beef, soft white rolls, tiny pastries filled with thick cream, cakes garnished with nets of caramelized sugar, and pyramids of glistening red berries that seemed to glow with their own contained light. The same fare, Neill knew, was being offered all through the courtyards and gardens surrounding the Palace, and it was a very good thing the evening sky was cloudless.

  No one wore overt mourning on this evening: nothing brought worse luck to the coronation of a new King than extravagant mourning for the old. Courtiers wore bright jewel tones. sEven the widowed Queen had put aside her black and lavender; she wore instead a gown in a pure deep blue, embroidered with traceries of creamy thread and white pearls. A strand of pearls and amethysts dressed her hair. She
moved through the gathered courtiers with a slightly abstracted air that suggested her attention was elsewhere: thinking of her absent husband, Neill guessed, or of her son, waiting to be crowned in his place. Or most likely both.

  Timou, when she entered, wore a confection of silvery colors—blue and green and rose—that poured like water down her slight form. Pearls and softly colored opals swept down the left side of the gown and were stitched onto her left slipper in a stylistic gesture Neill recognized; pearls and more opals dressed her hair, which had been gathered up to show off her slender neck. The gown and the upswept hair made her seem older than she was; the delicate colors and her air of unstudied grace made her seem like herself and less like her mother.

  The court had been wary of Timou, seeing her mother’s face stamped so clearly in hers, and never mind that she plainly held the favor of their Prince. Now, however, Jesse and some of the other young men drifted toward the girl, as automatically as clouds follow the wind. Neill came down among them like a tiger among the sheep and sent the lot of them scattering away again in all directions with ruthless dispatch.

  Timou watched him with a lifted brow and a wry look in her pale eyes. “Do I need protection?”

  “They do,” Neill assured her gravely. “They will cast themselves at your feet and beg you to tread over them. You are lovely.” She was. The faint air of sadness she had carried with her back into the ordinary Kingdom from the City in the Lake only added to her beauty.

  “She is,” agreed a familiar voice.

  Neill turned to find Marcos standing attentively and hopefully at his elbow.

  “She is wasted on a brother,” Marcos continued earnestly, and smiled at Timou. “You should adorn my arm, not Neill’s. I brought you a bribe.” With an expression of wistful optimism, he offered her a plate of cream-filled pastries. “This is the best kind, you know.”

  “Marcos,” the girl murmured with the slightest inclination of her head and a smile that told Neill the mage was familiar and welcome company. “Thank you.” She accepted a pastry and asked in a perfectly conversational tone, “Is Trevennen still a tree?”

  “I thought he would find his way out of that spell in hours,” Marcos confided with a pleased expression. “Days, at the most. He must have underestimated Russe very badly. So must I. I had no idea she could so thoroughly persuade a tree that it really is a tree. She has set the spell so deep by now that he may stand in our house for the next thousand years. We may have to rearrange the kitchen around him. It’s inconvenient,” he said solemnly, to a faint sound Neill made. “One has to make breakfast ducking under branches. And he sheds leaves into the porridge.”

  The girl smiled—a smile with a hard edge to it. The idea of Trevennen being turned into a tree for a thousand years clearly pleased her. It certainly pleased Neill. He inquired, “But Russe could undo the spell if she wished? Cassiel may not be content to leave Trevennen standing for a thousand years, even as a tree.”

  “Of course, if he wishes,” agreed Marcos. “At his pleasure. There does not appear to be any need to hurry.”

  “It is a beautiful spell,” Timou said to Neill quite earnestly. She shaped a circle in the air. “It goes around and around, and every layer says, This is a tree. It’s very convincing. My . . . my father showed me how to listen to the voices of the trees, but he never showed me how to change myself into one.”

  “Russe spent many seasons as a tree standing at the edge of the great forest when she was young,” Marcos told her. He eyed the girl speculatively. “She could teach you to do that, I am sure. sIf that is something you would like to learn.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Eventually. But—”

  “You are going home, of course,” Neill finished for her. “You are more than welcome to stay, if you wish.” A glance at Marcos caused the mage to second this with an emphatic nod. “But I can understand if you want distance. Or time.”

  The girl shook her head. Light from lanterns and candles slid through her eyes, now pale blue, now almost green, now faintly lavender. There was in fact a kind of distance, an unbreakable calm, to her gaze that the crowds in this hall could not touch. sShe said softly, “I could love this City. I love it already. I would like to stay here in this Palace. Or go into the City and stay with the mages and learn from Russe. And from you,” she added to Marcos. “But, yes, I must go home. I promised everyone I would come back.”

  “Make us the same promise,” suggested Neill. He touched her wrist lightly. “You will break a hundred hearts when you go. And,” he said softly, “I should be sorry to lose a sister so soon after gaining one.”

  She bowed her head a little. “I told those I left behind that I would go to the City to find my father. I think in truth I came here to find my mother. But what I found was not what I had hoped to find.” Lifting her head, she met his eyes. “But I found a brother here I had not even known to look for. That makes me glad.”

  Neill tried to produce a smile. After a moment he succeeded. “You must surely return to us.”

  “I will try,” she answered, pale eyes meeting dark. He understood at that moment that she did not know whether she would be able to return, and guessed by that where she meant to go.

  He said slowly, “I see, of course, that you must try.” He did not mean try to come back, and she knew that; she glanced down, recognizing, perhaps, that he had understood more than she had intended. He said, “I could come with you, you know. You need not go alone.”

  Marcos said plaintively, “What are you two talking about?”

  Timou did not even seem to hear the mage. She said quietly, “No, really. I think I do need to go alone. You see . . . you must see . . . it was I whom Jonas followed into the dark.” The calm in her pale eyes had become serious.

  “An obligation you assuredly need not meet alone,” Neill said gently. “It’s one we all share.”

  Delicate color rose into the girl’s face. “Oh, well . . . obligation would do for any of us, I am sure. But for me . . . it’s not merely obligation.”

  “Ah,” Neill murmured. “I had not known.”

  “Nor I. Until . . . well.” Timou bowed her head a little.

  Neill said after a moment, “I would still be honored to accompany you, Timou.”

  “To where?” Marcos inquired, eyebrows rising. He glanced from one of them to the other, uneasy at their serious tones.

  Timou said, still to Neill, “I do not think your brother would thank you for making that offer . . . though I do.”

  “You underestimate him. He would go with you himself. . . . In fact, I think it is better if he does not know where you intend to go. Much better. Much.” Neill’s skin prickled all the way down his spine to think of his young brother riding blithely along the road this girl meant to take.

  “Where does she intend to go?” said Marcos again, and then at last, with sudden, dawning comprehension, “Oh . . .”

  “Yes,” said Timou, still speaking only to Neill. She understood him perfectly. “That would not do. So I will go by myself.”

  “And leave me wondering. That is unkind. I will come with you.”

  “No,” the girl said patiently. At that moment, Neill reflected, she sounded very like a mage. “I will come back. In the spring, when the apples bloom. If I do not, then you will know I could not. All right?”

  Neill hesitated.

  “You certainly cannot ride off and lose yourself in the forest, Neill,” Marcos observed in a tone he made carefully neutral. “Or . . . wherever. Your brother would be extremely upset if . . . something happened to you. And he will need your help, you know, especially during the next year or so. He never paid enough attention to the nails and hammers of holding the rule. Not like you.”

  This was undeniable. The pause lengthened. Before Neill could speak again, horns sang out, flinging a staccato flurry of notes across the hall. The court moved instantly, shifting expectantly into the ordained patterns of rank and precedence, and the moment was lost. Guardsmen took their a
ppointed stations along both sides of the hall, swords drawn and held upright in salute. Galef stood at the foot of the dais, standing so that he could keep both the throne and anyone approaching it under his eye. He held his sword in both hands, its tip grounded against the stone of the floor, his face professionally blank.

  Reserving all questions and remonstrations for a later moment, Neill moved toward the front of the hall, drawing Timou with him.

  The horns called again, scattering mellow notes like drops of gold into the air, and Cassiel came in while the court called out in acclamation. He wore russet and dark green and gold; gold showed at his wrists and wound in narrow ribbons through the oak-dark braid of his hair. Traceries of gold and copper wound around the tops of his boots and across his broad belt. Buoyed up by the applause of the crowd, Prince Cassiel looked young and full of life, as though he had never been touched by grief or fear. He crossed the hall with a bounce in his step, leapt up onto the low dais that held the throne, and swung around to view the assembly, lifting his hands with a merry, conspiratorial gesture to still their acclaim.

  Neill left his sister with a hasty touch on her hand and a word of reassurance and strode forward. Assuming the solemn mien appropriate to the moment, he went first to the Queen, where she stood in her place on the first step of the dais, just to the left of the throne. She held a velvet cushion in both hands, with the King’s circlet of golden leaves resting upon it. Neill met her eyes, inclining his head in sober salute. He was rewarded, as he lifted the circlet, by seeing her stiff smile become for an instant warm.

  He bore the circlet to Cassiel. Then, as the nearest heir, he stepped up onto the dais and knelt before his brother, offering him the circlet of the King. Cassiel touched his hands first, looking seriously into his eyes, and then, smiling, took the circlet and placed it carefully on his own head. The horns sang for the third time, and the court cried out three times in acclamation. Beyond the hall, out in the City, Neill could hear that cry picked up and thrown onward by a thousand voices.