by Paul Kidd
"What wish?" Bird and nobleman both hung close, locked anxious gazes, and tried to coax the girl out of her shell. "What wish, Miliana?"
Miliana emerged-small, brown, and crushed by one inarguable misery.
"If I had a wish, then maybe I could be pretty. Really pretty."
The girl hid her face away from Lorenzo and the bird.
"Someone beautiful. Just-just not Miliana. Just for one single day…"
The girl clung against Lorenzo's chest and wept. Locking tortured glances, Tekoriikii and Lorenzo quietly stroked at Miliana's hair.
"Princess Miliana is beautiful. And I'll prove you wrong. Tomorrow I'll show you just exactly what I see.
"I'll show you. I'll make you open your eyes."
"Glub glub!"
Sick, swaying, and miserable, Miliana's whisper barely carried to Lorenzo's ears.
"I'm just so frightened. So frightened…" The girl curled fingers into Lorenzo's tunic. "I wanted to be like my father. I wanted to be… to be… proud.
"But I'm just so scared of the… futility. The dances and the husbands." Miliana swallowed back another surge of nausea. "Don't let them put me in the finishing school. I'd rather die… I'd rather die… I'd rather die…"
Crying herself to sleep, Miliana hung like a rag doll in Lorenzo's arms.
Tekoriikii spared the girl a long, sad gaze, and then quietly led the way back home. Behind him, Lorenzo hoisted Miliana like a treasured child and wandered carefully back to the palace doors.
7
From his perch high up in Miliana's attic, Tekoriikii had most of the Mannicci palace under his muddle-headed gaze. Holes in the roofing gave him a splendid vantage point for viewing the central courtyards and the stables, the kitchen doors and the colonnades. He saw the slim, gray-headed Prince Cappa Mannicci escaping for his early morning ride before his wife could stir from bed and exercise her tongue. Soldiers marched and servants cleaned; bright bunting was wound about every object found readily at hand. All in all, the Festival of Blades had begun with a flawless summer's day.
Waddling happily across the floor of his gloomy kingdom, Tekoriikii bathed in beams of light and listened contentedly to the dawn chorus of birds. A marvelous new treasure had come into his life, and the bird need only close his eyes and sigh just to savor its gentle glow.
His journeys had first brought him to a treasure trove of people and places, songs and lights; it had brought him a bounty of shiny baubles, and day by day Tekoriikii's collection grew.
And now, most miraculous of all-the journey had given him a friend.
Hanging his head down through the broken ceiling, Tekoriikii watched the human girl in her sleep. She fed him food and taught him songs; she had shown him magic picture books, and recited aloud from the pages for hours on end.
And yet last night the little female had been so very sad.
Her lack of plumes was a terrible, crippling disfigurement. The male human Lorenzo kept a feather in his hat as though making up for the lack. Tekoriikii turned his head this way and that, regarding Miliana as she slept off her wine, and pitied her for her naked, unsightly skin.
She needed cheering-and Tekoriikii had just the thing!
With a bright burst of inspiration, the bird jerked his head back up through the hole. He warbled happily, and did a little dance to celebrate his own magnificent cleverness-Tekoriikii, the handsomest and smartest of all the birds!
Tekoriikii's sleeping nest consisted of green branches, leaves and twigs all lined with the finest silk taken from a massive set of underwear found hanging from the palace washing line. The bird upended a great sack made from a set of Lady Ulia's frilly pink drawers and spilled a dragon's hoard of jewelry out across the wooden floors.
Spread out in all their glory, Tekoriikii's gems simply stunned the eye. There were great rubies and strings of emeralds. Zircons and costume jewelry rubbed shoulders with sapphires and pearls. Bits of mirror and polished glass had caught his eye just as surely as platinum and gold. All in all, the bird's collection made an eccentric display.
Rooting happily about amongst a king's ransom in jewels, the bird pulled out a few choice pieces and hung them up from rusty nails to turn and sparkle in the sun.
Three offerings glittered before the bird's giddy yellow eyes: a looking glass, a rope of emeralds, and a single, gigantic rose-pink pearl.
In addition to being the most handsome creature ever to stalk the world, Tekoriikii was an educated bird. He knew that nothing could cheer a female quite so much as finding herself being courted and so, therefore, secret advances would make Miliana smile.
She must be given a gift-enough to let her know how deeply she was honored, for few females were ever chased by a male. It simply wasn't done. The flattery would raise her spirits, and Tekoriikii would be glad.
The bird considered his potential offerings. The mirror? Too bright and shiny. She must not be overwhelmed by the very nature of the gift. The bird peered this way and that at his own reflection, and moved on.
The emeralds? No. Too dull; too common. Although they sparkled, they were the same color as fresh new leaves and, that being the case, she might not value them. The bird regarded the gigantic pink pearl with pleasure, and then took the offering up into his bill.
The pearl had been regurgitated from his crop this self-same morning. With a brisk wash beneath a rainwater pipe, the gem sparkled bright as morning dew. Tekoriikii hopped down the broken hole in the ceiling and landed on the bathroom floor with a distinct, feathery thump.
Miliana turned over in her bed, groaning in distant agony. Beside her bed there lay a bucket as well as a pointy hat, which presumably was for use if the bucket should grow full. Tekoriikii crept toward the girl with exaggerated stealth, cunningly laid the pearl pendant on her pillowslip, then withdrew to gaze down at her in love.
Very, very small, and speckled delicately with brown; she should not let her lack of feathers distress her so. After all, not everyone could be a handsome firebird.
Tekoriikii drew the blankets up around Miliana's slender neck, clucked like a broody hen, then hopped back up into the ceiling to go about his own affairs.
The Palace of the Manniccis decked itself out gaily for the Festival of Blades. The ritual never failed to amuse Miliana, who thought the candy daggers and swords now being hung from all the roof beams were particularly inappropriate for a happy festival.
Passing along the courtyard, Miliana maneuvered oh-so-carefully, balancing her head atop her neck as though it weighed five hundred pounds.
Miliana had just been through the most unspeakable experience of her life. She had awoken to find herself still thoroughly drunk; the whole bed had been spinning, and the room shifted like a child's kite blown willy-nilly through the sky. She had somehow made her way to the palace shrine and had begged a blessing against poison from the family's private priests, claiming that she had eaten Lady Ulia's infamous blowfish casserole. Now, with her bloodstream purged but her body still feeling as delicate as glass, the girl took a quiet turn about the palace and tried to gather strength for the evening's affairs.
The breeze blew cool and calming; the promised headache never came. All she needed was a few moments of absolute peace, and she would feel her old self again.
On a fine silver chain about Miliana's neck, there swung a single rose-pink pearl-a large, teardrop-shaped affair that perfectly complimented her coloring. Feeling its unfamiliar weight settling on her skin, the princess drew out the pendant and eyed it with a soft, fond smile.
"Miliaaaa-naaaaaaa!"
The piercing summons caused the girl to close her eyes and freeze, waiting for a migraine headache to begin; luckily, the priest's spells had been first class. With an air of deep and quiet calm, Miliana managed to face Lady Ulia and her father with a smile.
Plucking out her skirts and sinking a wee curtsy, Miliana nodded her tall hat in gentle greeting to her stepmother. Her father-rigid, dignified, and foreboding-gave a brisk nod of his gr
ay beard to his daughter.
"Ah. Miliana." The prince gazed at his daughter without any real interest. "You appear to be well. How do your lessons go?"
The man had hardly spoken more than five sentences to his daughter in her entire life. Cowed, Miliana made a set of suitably dutiful noises-the lessons went well, she found needlepoint occupied most of her time, and the lavender smoke which yesterday exploded from her fireplace was most definitely the result of diseased firewood. Her father nodded, not bothering to listen to a word she had to say.
Her duty done, Miliana turned herself to the ziggurat of silk that was Lady Ulia. Swallowing carefully, Miliana congratulated herself on her survival thus far, and wished Lady Ulia the best of the day.
"Lady Ulia-is it not a perfect evening? I trust you find the airs as pleasant as I?"
"Pleasant?"
The cry caused Miliana to draw a little breath in pain. Coiling her head backward atop its great abundance of chins, Lady Ulia Mannicci blinked in horror at the girl. "Have you heard what the caterers are doing to my feast? There is still no centerpiece for the table. I desired a great bird, and what am I offered? A cuttlefish of the most revolting size! I can hardly have a mass of tentacles splayed out amongst the silverware before all of our guests!"
The tirade of woes quickly lost its force; Lady Ulia had dragged in the whalebone and case-hardened steel of her corsets several inches too tight, and the constriction left her short of breath. The woman retreated into the solace of her waving fan and cast her eyes across her stepdaughter's decolletage.
Spying the pearly pendant about Miliana's tender neck, she suddenly snatched up a quizzing glass and bent her head down to examine the object in suspicion and alarm.
"A pearl?" Ulia blinked in blubbering surprise. "Sooth, it is a pearl. A pearl of the first quality!" Miliana's stepmother drew in a breath and examined her smiling stepdaughter with a great, foreboding eye. "And just where, my lass, did this come from?"
Something stirred under Miliana's hat. Peeling a dizzy swoop of headache threatening to emerge, Miliana attempted to turn her face into a model of unconcern.
"It just came from… an admirer."
"And who, pray tell, is this admirer?
"Well-I don't actually know." Miliana felt a warm glow as she felt the pearl between her breasts; she polished one of her reserve pair of spectacles to cover her unconscious blush. "Just… someone."
"A young lady does not accept gifts from unknown sources." Lady Ulia reexamined the pearl with a mixed air of outrage, pomposity, and scorn. "Particularly not young ladies who already have approved, valid suitors seeking for their hand!"
Suddenly, the entire palace shuddered to an enormous bang. Miliana staggered, went green, and clapped her hands across her aching brow.
Prince Cappa Mannicci stared in the direction of the guest quarters in alarm.
"Great Lords of Baator! What was that?"
Miliana looked up in alarm.
"It wasn't me!"
"Of course it wasn't you! How can a mere girl make an explosion?" The Prince separated himself from Lady Ulia. "It's from that boy's quarters… the one from Lomatra…"
Lomatra. The thought made Prince Mannicci turn a cold gaze to the palace's west wing.
"Tonight, daughter, you shall devote an evening to our errant suitor. This time next year, I wish you to be a Lomatran bride."
"Father!" Miliana's eyes blinked wide; appalled, she took a step closer to the prince. "Father, no!"
"I wish it. It shall be done."
Face set and angry, Miliana used the mask of her great lenses to hide her cold, determined eyes. Headache forgotten, the girl gave an obedient curtsy, then smartly turned about and marched herself away.
A Lomatran bride indeed! Miliana clenched a hand about her brand new pearl-Lorenzo's pearl-and felt it spread a spell of warmth past the fury in her soul.
She had a friend now-a real friend. And a more-or-less magical bird monster-thing to stay by her side. Between them, they would blow her father's plans straight to the Abyss!
Back in the courtyard, Lady Ulia watched Miliana leave and let a crease of suspicion gouge a line across her brows.
"Why, my dear, do you suppose your daughter is so compliant today?"
The Prince of Sumbria focused his attentions on the girl.
"Perhaps the seriousness of life has finally sunk home."
"Yes-or, perhaps, a double life…" Lady Ulia turned the horns of her great lime-green hat belligerently toward her prey. "There have been some very strange things going on within this palace.
"I think Miliana's activities deserve a closer scrutiny, my dear. It may prove to be the very-pearl-of the problem."
"Lorenzo? Lorenzo!"
Moving with all due caution, Luccio Irozzi peeked his head about his apartment's door, then edged into his quarters at the head of a band of nervous palace workmen. Moving like men venturing into a dragon's lair, the little procession scanned the room's bewildering array of pipe work, burners, and bubbling pots; they crept across the floor as though expecting pitfalls or showers of burning oil.
No new explosions seemed imminent. Luccio strode across the pitted carpet to Lorenzo's bedroom door, tried the lock, then rapped lightly on the woodwork with his fist.
"Lorenzo? Lorenzo, it is I!" The man's knuckles rippled as he drummed a dirty ditty on the door. "Be a good little pyromaniac and open up the door before I blow your house down…"
Movement came from behind the door-a hiss, an eerie flicker of light from under the doorjamb, and a sudden smell of scorching metal. A muffled and somewhat distracted voice wafted through to Luccio from the far side of the wall.
"Not now! I need five minutes."
"Five minutes?" Luccio puffed out his chest like a fighting rooster and nearly capsized a pile of glassware with his waving arms. "Lorenzo, my dressing routine has been disturbed. The delight of a hundred eager young damsels hangs in the balance! I have not a minute to spare, let alone five!" Pained by the potential disaster, Luccio hurtled himself against the portal in theatrical dismay.
"Think, Lorenzo, think! Consider their anguish; the screams, the wails, the suicides! Temples swamped as vast columns of poor, disillusioned girls sorrowfully line up to take their chastity vows."
The door opened just a crack, and a vague, disoriented Lorenzo stuck his head out into the room.
"I am trying to prepare a demonstration. Can't you leave me in peace?"
"Alas, O Lord of Soot, I wish it could be so." Luccio performed a bow and elegantly indicated the workmen ranked at his rear. "These noble minions of mine host wish to take possession of the famous painting of the sea goddess. It is to be prepared for display."
With a frustrated sigh, Lorenzo withdrew back into his room.
"It's in the sitting room, just by the door. Don't lift the covers if there's any dust around-the varnish is still not completely dry. And don't take the easel!"
With a flourish of his hat, Luccio allowed the door to be slammed shut in his face. He indicated the sitting room to his tail of servants, then threw himself into a chair to relax as the workmen maneuvered the awkward canvas out into the corridor.
Luccio's preparations actually required very little work; why bother trying to improve on perfection? The man's clothes were deliriously and scandalously slipshod; marked cards were in his pocket, weighted dice in his belt. The Mannicci's reception offered gaming tables, business contacts, and an endless ocean of curvaceous companions. A secret note had been slid beneath his door in the wee hours of the dawn-a note in feminine handwriting carved upon a sheet of purest mother-of-pearl. All in all, Luccio's evening promised glorious possibilities.
Again a flash of light came from beneath Lorenzo's door; a spot on the wall glowed cherry red, and the wall plaster flaked off with a disappointed little sigh.
"Damn!"
Lorenzo seemed to be having his own troubles. Luccio rested his feet on a table and helped himself to a half-empty bottle of wine.
"Lorenzo, O heart and soul of science, do be careful with your toys…"
Luccio sipped his wine, then almost catapulted clean across the room; some suicidal varlet had laced the stuff with raw liquor. Luccio could already feel his lips turning numb. He raced for the water jug, rinsed his mouth, and prayed for sensation to return before the evening began.
"Lorenzo-what in Talona's name have you been drinking?"
"What?"
"This-this paint stripper, this vile incendiary-this distilled sunfish urine left upon your desk!" Luccio made a face and searched for a piece of fruit to help drive any lingering taste away.
"It's not mine…" The door latch fumbled itself open, and Lorenzo's face appeared in the door. "It's left over from last night. Miliana drank about two bottles of it."
Luccio flicked his gaze from the bottle to his companion in alarm.
"Dear gods! Do you mean to tell me that the woman you've been mooning over drinks this by choice?"
"Well… not by choice." Lorenzo emerged from his room, bringing with him the smell of scorched metal and cherry fondant. "It was more sort of an accident. I coaxed her into escaping from the palace with me last night, and we went to a tavern. She just started, well… drinking it. First she laughed a lot, and then she told us she was a princess. Finally, she just fell over and threw up for most of the rest of the evening."
"Miliana?" Luccio sat bolt upright in his chair. "Princess Miliana?"
"Yes, that's the one."
Discomforted and somewhat alarmed, Luccio raised his brows.
"We are speaking, dear heart, of the flower of the Mannicci house? The woman, I believe, I once begged you to pursue?"
"Oh, I couldn't pursue her!" Lorenzo scowled in clear disapproval. "She's my friend."
A knock came at the door. Lorenzo frantically dusted off his clothes as though he had one chance in a million of restoring the ravaged cloth back to life.
"They're here! Now Luccio, please keep out of sight and keep your comments to yourself. These people are very, very nice, and very, very important to me."