by Sharon Shinn
This time I did not imagine that there was a slightly awkward pause. “I’m not aware that my brother is about to make any such announcement,” Jordan said.
“Really?” Bentam asked. “I thought it was long understood that Cormac and Vivienne were to marry.”
“I’m not sure Cormac is eager to marry anyone,” said the Pandrean lord. “He is enjoying being a handsome young prince for as long as he can.”
His words elicited a light laugh from the others in his party, and even Hodia smiled. Elyssa was too clever to dwell on a topic that her guest clearly wanted to abandon, so she introduced a new subject. “What else has been happening in Camarria?” she asked. “I know better than to ask a pack of men about the latest fashions, but surely you can tell me what new color is all the rage? And don’t say you don’t know because I’m positive that your sister Annery has been wearing it all season.”
“Oh, then, in that case it must be a very odd shade of yellow,” Jordan answered. “I think my stepmother called it ‘melted saffron.’”
“That’s it,” said one of his friends. “My sister is wearing it, too. I didn’t think it was very flattering, but of course I didn’t say so.”
“But this is excellent news!” Elyssa exclaimed. “I have a new gown in that very color!”
Jordan saluted her with his glass of wine. “Then it appears you already have a dress in hand for next year’s gala.”
She laughed at him. “Silly man! By next spring, everyone will be wearing a different color entirely.”
Bentam rolled his eyes and changed the subject with no pretense at subtlety. “Tell me, Highness, how goes the trade with Ferrenlea? I have been considering buying into a company that is shipping overseas, but I wasn’t sure if the investment would pay off.”
Jordan instantly grew serious. “I think it would. Recent talks have gone well, and my father plans to send another delegation to Ferrenlea’s capital city. Trade is never a sure thing, of course, but the merchants I’ve talked to have been pleased at their returns.”
“Do you have a sense of what items are proving most successful? I have a stake in a number of lavender farms—a product that’s always found a market here in the Seven Jewels, but will it hold the same value overseas?”
Talk of commerce dominated the rest of the meal. It was not a topic that interested Elyssa; I could feel her growing restlessness, though she kept a pleasant expression on her face and didn’t try to redirect the conversation. But her attention wandered, and within fifteen minutes she was offering a sly smile to the man sitting on her right. He was the fellow with only a single echo, and he hadn’t said much since they arrived.
“Does your family engage in trade?” she asked him in a low voice.
“Not so far,” he answered. “My parents seem to have all they can handle just to manage the manor farms.”
“Oh, good,” she said, smiling even more widely. “Then you and I can talk about something else.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The rest of Prince Jordan’s visit, which lasted three days, proceeded along the same lines. Everyone made an effort to be agreeable, though all conversations were a bit strained and no one ever entirely relaxed. I had the sense that Elyssa and her father were always delicately prying at the prince, trying to learn bits of privileged information, and that Jordan just as stubbornly was trying to refrain from saying anything interesting at all. But everyone was so polite that it was hard for me to be certain.
There was only one encounter that seemed both genuine and surprising, and it came late on the second night of the royal party’s visit. Everyone had retired to their rooms, and Trima was brushing out Elyssa’s hair while a new serving woman attended to the echoes. During the past three months, there had been four or five new maids brought in to assist Trima as she looked after Elyssa, but all of them had quit or been dismissed within a couple of weeks. I didn’t think this one would stay much longer; she seemed terrified of Elyssa and not particularly fond of Trima. Tonight Elyssa dismissed her curtly the moment she had finished taking off our fancy dresses and combing out our hair.
As soon as she was gone, Elyssa took up a conversation with Trima. “I’m curious about Dezmen.”
“Who?”
“The Pandrean lord. I’ve met him several times, but I can never remember who his family is. I don’t think he’s related to the governor, but if he is, then I need to be much nicer than I’ve been so far.”
“Maybe you should just be nice to everyone.”
Elyssa laughed. “No, I think I’ll go down to the library and look him up. My father has a book with the lineages of all the high nobles across the seven provinces.”
“What, now? It’s after midnight.”
“I’m not tired.” She came to her feet, slipped on a dressing robe that was almost as ornate as a riding dress, and turned toward the door.
Trima spoke sharply. “Take the echoes.”
Elyssa turned back, pouting in irritation. “I’m just running downstairs for a few minutes.”
“If anyone sees you—the prince or any of his friends, even your father—they’ll notice that the echoes aren’t with you. They’ll wonder.”
Elyssa made a groaning noise. “Can’t I be free of them for even five minutes?”
Trima watched her steadily. “Not if you want to marry the prince.”
Elyssa strangled another groan and then snapped, “Fine. Find them robes so we can go mincing through the hall, where I assure you no one will see us.”
Three minutes later, the echoes and I followed Elyssa out the door, through the halls, and to the lower level of the house. It did seem like everyone else in the whole place was already asleep because the only noises I heard were our soft cloth slippers shushing along the floors. The only wall sconces that were lit were widely spaced and inadequate for illuminating our way, but Elyssa marched through the shadows with the ease of perfect familiarity. When she pushed open the library door, just enough light from the hallway spilled in to show us the high shelves and bulky groupings of high-backed chairs.
Or—no—someone was there before us, and had brought a lamp with him. That was the light that fell on all our faces, showing us bewildered and at a loss.
Elyssa quickly regained her poise. “Prince Jordan! I’m so sorry to have interrupted you!”
The prince lay down the book he had been holding and offered her a small bow. His three echoes repeated the motion gracefully. “Not at all. It is your house, and I am the intruder.”
She smiled at him. “Hardly an intruder. A most honored guest.”
He smiled back, more to cover embarrassment than to show pleasure, I thought. “I couldn’t sleep and thought perhaps if I read for an hour, I would become drowsy.”
“I am here on much the same errand,” she lied. “I find my father’s history books so dull that they have me nodding off in minutes.”
He rewarded that with another perfunctory smile. “Although history can prove instructive, so if you can manage to wade through a few volumes you might find yourself more interested than you expect.”
“Oh, don’t try to shame me into being smarter than I am! I assure you, my father has tried many stratagems designed to interest me in lessons, and none of them was ever successful.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Jordan said. “I have always thought you were quite clever.”
She lifted an eyebrow at that. The echoes and I followed suit. My guess was that she was trying to decide if he had intended a compliment or an insult. “I know what I need to know, I suppose,” she said softly. “We all do—learning what seems most crucial to our survival.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Though I think sometimes we’re surprised to discover which odd pieces of knowledge come in handy.”
She drew her robe closer around her shoulders and leaned against the back of an overstuffed sofa. The echoes and I copied her, and Jordan and his three shadows ranged before us. “Oh, now, you simply must tell me!” she exclaim
ed. “What stray bits of information have proved to be most valuable to you as you carried out your duties as prince of the realm?”
For the first time, his face relaxed into a grin that seemed authentic. “It’s been quite shocking to me,” he said. “I thought sword fighting and battle strategy would be the most important subjects I studied. Maybe even the recent history of international alliances. But no. The skills I draw on most often and most heavily are ballroom dancing and cravat tying. A prince with no social skills or fashion sense is a prince no one approves of. It is very disheartening.”
Elyssa couldn’t contain her laughter. I thought Jordan’s reluctant smile looked immensely appealing on his pleasant face. “It is true—the high nobles are all obsessed with such trivial details as looks and courtesies,” she said. “If you want to govern us, you must be as superficial as we are. But I am sorry it is such a hardship for you.”
“Dancing, for instance,” he said. “I imagine it would have been tricky to learn anyway, for although I am athletic enough, I am not naturally graceful. But to learn to dance with three echoes copying my every move—tripping over their feet when I did, bumping into the wall right next to me—it must have taken me three times as long as it would have if I was just an ordinary man.”
She laughed again. “In that case, I would have thought sword fighting would be equally complex to learn.”
“There was never a problem wielding a weapon,” he said, shaking his head. “Perhaps because I was so interested in doing it! I had heard tales of echoes inadvertently slashing each other with a sharp blade, but I never experienced anything like that.”
Now Elyssa leaned back on her hands and let her gaze wander deliberately from Jordan’s face to that of each of his echoes. I did the same—noting, as I had before, how very alert Jordan’s echoes appeared to be, how very close to human.
“But then, your echoes seem exceptionally well-developed,” she said. “Most echoes seem like pale copies of their originals, but yours are so much more robust. I have noticed the same thing about your brother Cormac—yes, and your father and your stepmother as well.”
His smile was back to being the stiff formal one that covered his real thoughts. “Ah, you’d find the explanation for that in those history books that you find so dull.”
“So tell me,” she invited.
He gave a slight shrug. “The theory goes that if someone ever tried to kill the king, his soul would simply flow into the body of one of his echoes. Supposedly that’s what happened with King Edwin when his original body was killed in battle. So all the king’s echoes have to be very well developed so that they can house the spirit of the king if they have to. Or the queen’s echoes, of course. Same thing.”
“I didn’t know that!” Elyssa exclaimed.
“I don’t know that it’s ever actually happened, though. I mean, they tell stories about Edwin, but who knows if they’re true? He lived hundreds of years ago.”
“Is that why all the high nobles have echoes, too?”
Jordan grinned. “I don’t think so. I believe your echoes came about because you were always warring amongst yourselves and there were so many betrayals and assassination attempts that the goddess created echoes as a form of protection. If a would-be murderer couldn’t tell which of four people was the one he wanted to kill, he would be much less likely to attempt the act. So the high nobles developed echoes as a safety precaution.”
Elyssa tilted her head to one side. “And they were bestowed upon us by the triple goddess?”
“So they say. She is one being in multiple incarnations, so she gave the same gift to the nobles.” He shrugged. “They also say that whenever the kingdom is peaceful, very few nobles are born with echoes. But when there is unrest, the goddess generates more echoes to protect her people from violence.”
Elyssa folded her arms across her chest. I could feel my own face copy her somewhat mutinous expression. “And does the goddess consider this a time of particular unrest?” she asked in a polite voice.
His own was cool in reply. “Apparently so. There are more nobles with echoes now than there have been in nearly a hundred years. More adult echoes with nobles,” he amended.
“All of an age to go to war,” she said.
“Precisely.”
She stirred restlessly and came to her feet, once more drawing the robe tightly around her shoulders. “Well, let us hope the goddess has miscalculated—or misunderstood!” she said. “Let us hope there are no wars or assassination attempts or other assaults against the nobles.”
“Or against the royal house.”
“That goes without saying.” She gave him a nod of clear dismissal. “Thank you for a most interesting conversation, my prince. Much more informative than a history book, I must say.”
He summoned a smile. “But I fear I didn’t put you to sleep.”
“No, indeed, you’ve given me much to think over. I might lie awake all night instead.”
“I apologize.”
“No need. I often find sleep to be a waste of time.”
He executed another shallow bow and held out his arm as if to formally escort her from the library. The small courtesy made her smile again, and she slipped her hand around his elbow. As her echoes linked their arms with his echoes, she paused to once again glance from one face to the next.
“It is remarkable, though,” she murmured. “How very lifelike your echoes are. I do think it is possible that if I encountered one of them on its own, alone in some hallway, I might almost mistake it for you.”
“Would you?” he answered, his voice slightly edged. “I don’t think I would ever mistake anyone for you, Lady Elyssa—not even one of your echoes. You are entirely unique.”
As she laughed, he underscored his point by briefly staring at each of her echoes in turn. I was the last one he looked at, and I gazed back in frank curiosity, scanning for the details that would set him apart from his shadows. Despite what Elyssa had said, to me the differences were obvious. There was a firmness, a certainty, an intelligence to Jordan’s expression that no echo could emulate; it was as if his echoes were portraits painted by the most gifted artist, but Jordan was the living model. Jordan was the undisputable prince.
And the prince was staring at me with outright astonishment. My heart bounded with a primal terror. An echo never made eye contact! An echo never wore anything but a vague and indifferent expression! I quickly let my eyes lose focus, trained my gaze on his right ear, and let all the muscles in my face go lax. For a moment it seemed like no one in the whole room was breathing.
“Well?” Elyssa said impatiently, swinging her head around to frown at him. “What are we waiting for?”
The prince cast me one last troubled look, then shook his head and urged her toward the door. “Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s high past time we bid each other goodnight.”
The last full day of the prince’s visit was slightly alarming for me, and it was my own fault. If only I had not looked at him so openly the night before! But my inquiring expression had caught his attention, and he seemed like a man of some curiosity.
That entire day, anytime he could do so without being too obvious about it, Jordan scanned the faces of Elyssa’s echoes, looking for some sign of sentience. At the breakfast table, when Elyssa sat across from him but was engaged in conversation with someone else. In the early afternoon, as an undisciplined group of young lords and ladies gathered in the garden for a high-spirited stroll. In the evening, as nobles from nearby manors joined us for a fine meal and some informal dancing. Anytime Jordan could reasonably be expected to look in Elyssa’s direction, he looked in mine instead.
But I didn’t repeat that careless mistake. I made sure my features were slack, my eyes fixed on the floor or the wall or some distant horizon. I was fairly certain he couldn’t tell the three of us apart; his gaze didn’t rest on me more often or linger a bit longer than it did on the other two echoes. I hoped he would soon come to think he had just imagined th
at brief exchange of glances.
I must confess, I was even more fascinated by him than he could have been by me; out of the corner of my eye I watched him constantly, even when Elyssa was concentrating on someone else. I saw nothing to make me change my initial impression of an openhearted man with a good soul. All the nobles smiled and flirted and pretended to be nice people; perhaps Jordan was just better at pretense than the rest, but I didn’t think so.
For instance, when the dancing began, he naturally solicited Elyssa as his first partner. She was his hostess—and, perhaps, the woman he was going to marry—so she deserved that courtesy. But the second woman he asked was a shy young noble with only one echo. Although Elyssa and her friends had been polite enough to the girl’s face, I had heard them mocking her when there was a good chance she might be able to overhear. She was clearly as close to being a nobody as anyone with an echo could be. And yet Jordan extended her a signal honor just because he could. I had to think he did it on purpose.
I also noticed that he continued to thank anyone who did him even the slightest service. The footman who brought his dinner plate. The butler who poured his wine. The housemaid who ran after him with a coin that had fallen from his pocket. He’d laughed and handed it back to her. “You keep it,” he said. I hadn’t seen the denomination, but the color was gold. No doubt his father had vaults full of gold in Camarria, but it was still a kind thing for him to do.
I formed an equally high opinion of the Pandrean man, Lord Dezmen, who also extended an effortless courtesy to everyone he came in contact with. I had ample opportunity to observe him because Elyssa had decided he was worth cultivating. She spent much of that day maneuvering to sit next to him in the dining hall or to walk beside him in the garden. Because he had only two echoes, I was left unpaired while we made our way through the garden’s flower beds and follies. I enjoyed the brief moments of comparative solitude so much I had to be careful to keep a smile off my face for fear the prince might notice it. But I wasn’t worried about Lord Dezmen seeing my expression. He seemed like a thoroughly nice man, but I didn’t think he was the sort of person who would pay any attention to an echo.