With the queen clinging to me, I followed Prince Ijori and the count.
Ivi wailed, “Don’t leave me alone, Oscaro. Who will love me now?”
I heard someone gasp. I was shocked. She wasn’t crying because she loved the king, but because he loved her.
The physician’s chambers opened onto the same cul-de-sac where I’d been trapped. Those who couldn’t fit into the examining room stood on the grass outside.
Since I was with the queen, I was allowed in. The duchess gained entry too. I saw her astonishment when she noticed me.
Sir Enole, the physician, came out of his study. He rushed to help Prince Ijori and the count. They laid King Oscaro on the couch. Prince Ijori straightened up and saw me supporting the queen. For a moment he looked surprised. Then I saw him forget me as Sir Enole felt for a pulse in the king’s neck.
Ivi surged away from me. She grasped the physician’s robe. “Make him well. Make him talk to me.”
“Your Majesty—” Sir Enole drew his robe out of her hands and bowed. “I will do my best.”
Ivi came back to lean against me. I put my arm around her waist.
Sir Enole examined King Oscaro’s wound. The bleeding had stopped, but the area was puffy. “First we must bring that swollen flesh down.” He turned away.
Ivi shrilled, “Where are you going?”
“To my stor—”
“Will he live?”
“His pulse is weak but steady. He will not soon die.”
I found myself smiling and crying at once. The physician’s words spread through the room and to those waiting outside. People laughed and hugged one another and repeated, “He will not soon die.”
Ivi said, “When will he speak to me?”
“I do not know.” The physician’s voice was choked with tears. “He may speak in a week or never again.” He headed toward a storage cabinet, then stopped. He knelt and swore his loyalty to Ivi.
She was our ruler now! Everyone in the room and those outside knelt and swore their loyalty. I knelt, too, and she swayed against my shoulder.
How could she rule? She didn’t know Ayortha. How frightened and grief stricken I’d be in her place.
Sir Enole spread an unguent across the king’s wound. Ivi told me she wanted to go to her chambers. She leaned on me as we started for the door. Prince Ijori placed himself on her other side, and she took his arm.
The duchess looked put out.
I bobbed a curtsy to her. As we went by, I whispered, “I’ll come to you as soon as I may.” I couldn’t suppress a feeling of triumph. The queen wanted her lady-in-waiting.
I hoped I could comfort her.
The songbirds above us trilled as merrily as ever. Oochoo stayed at my side through the corridors. We made slow progress. Ivi moved as haltingly as an invalid.
She moaned, “Ijori, cancel tonight’s Sing. No one will want it now.”
No! She mustn’t cancel the Sing!
He said, “Your Majesty, we want it more than ever.”
She sank to her knees on the corridor tiles and looked up at us, her eyes enormous.
Oochoo stood nearby, wagging her tail.
“You can sing when my Oscaro’s so ill?”
Prince Ijori said, “It will be a Healing Sing. Our songs will help him recover.”
I forced myself to speak. “At Sings we write our own songs. Your song will contrib—”
“I have to write a song?”
“You don’t have to,” Prince Ijori said, “but everyone will want to hear your words.”
To encourage her to participate, I said, “My songs are simple and not very good.”
Prince Ijori said, “Canceling the Sing will make the king sicker.”
I nodded. It was what we believed.
She wet her lips. “I must rest. I need my rest. And I must grieve. Now help me up. I’ll decide about the Sing while I rest.”
At the door to her chambers, she said, “Ijori … Prince … I will count on you in the coming days.” She reached out and touched his cheek.
He drew back. I doubted my eyes. It had been such an intimate gesture.
“Aza, bring me a cup of ostumo in an hour.” She smiled bravely. “Your good Ayorthaian ostumo will fortify me for what lies ahead.”
When I left the queen, I hurried to the duchess. In her room I apologized for seeming to desert her, and I explained that the queen was making me her lady-in-waiting.
“How can she make you a lady-in-waiting when you’re not a lady to begin with?”
I blushed. “She is making me a lady as well, Your Grace.”
“Why not make you a countess and have done with it?” She strode to her wardrobe and selected a gown. She held it out to me. No, at me. It was a challenge. She wanted to see if I’d dress her, now that I was on the threshold of nobility.
I did, and I was docile as could be.
The queen called out that I might enter.
I opened her door and stopped on the threshold, dazzled. The floor of her chamber was spread with rugs, so many that they overlapped. The walls were hung with tapestries of hunting scenes, garden scenes, mountain landscapes. The brocade curtains were patterned with an autumnal forest. The ceiling was adorned with a pastoral fresco. The curtains were drawn. The room was dim, lit by oil lamps in golden sconces.
Ivi sat in an easy chair at the fireplace, her feet on a tufted ottoman. A few yards away was another door, which, I later learned, led to the king’s bedchamber.
She stretched and rolled her shoulders, reminding me of Imilli. “I would do anything to save my lord.” She took the ostumo. “You may have your Healing Sing, provided …” She drank.
Provided what?
“… provided that you illuse for me.”
Gladly! I made the silver pitcher on her washstand sing in a metallic voice. “I will illuse for you day and night.” I made the pottery Three Tree on the mantel sing,
“Inyi umbru, uscuru iqui ascha—
Ayortha!”
She smiled. “No. I want you to illuse for me tonight.”
My hands felt icy. I wondered if I was understanding her.
“Illuse a voice that seems to come from my lips. Give me the kind of voice people here love, a beautiful Ayorthaian voice.”
I couldn’t! She didn’t know what she was asking.
“I’ve wished for such a voice. I’ve longed for it ever since Oscaro asked me to be his bride. I’ve tried spells, but—”
“I can’t! I’d be deceiving everyone.”
She rose and carried the ostumo to her dressing table. In addition to the usual mirror above the table, a hand mirror lay on its surface, amid a myriad of creams and powders and rouges and, of all things, a golden flute. She put the mirror in the table drawer. “I want the choirmaster to know I have a beautiful voice. I want everyone to hear my voice.”
But it would be my voice. “I can’t. I mustn’t.” I should have lied and said I wasn’t capable of it, my illusing wasn’t good enough.
But the lie never occurred to me, and I was certainly capable of doing what she wanted.
“Everyone else has a beautiful voice.” She sat at the dressing table. A stool had been placed close by. “Sit by me. Lady Aza, I want my subjects to love my voice. Oh, please, illuse for me.”
I sat. “If I illuse for you, your song won’t help the king, and the deception may harm him.” It might be better not to have the Sing at all.
“There will be many more songs than mine and many other singers.” She wet her lips. “My Oscaro will surely be healed by all of them. If my voice wasn’t pretty—for an Ayorthaian—mightn’t it harm him?”
Did she really believe in the power of singing? I wondered if she wet her lips before a lie.
“You’re his wife,” I said. “Your song will be the most important one. It won’t help him unless you sing it.”
She shrugged. “We have no Healing Sings in Kyrria, yet people recover from their injuries. Aza, sing for me. It won’t harm my
lord. It will harm no one. It will only help your queen, your benefactress.”
“I can’t, Your Majesty. I’m sorry. I mustn’t.”
“You must!” She leaned closer to me until her face was only an inch away. I smelled the ostumo on her breath. “Aza, Aza, Aza. Don’t you see? If you won’t illuse for me, then you’re not my friend.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “Your friendship isn’t worth a pin. And if you’re not my friend, then I don’t want you to be my lady-in-waiting.”
I’d return home, where they cared about me.
But there would be no generous wage.
And no prince.
“If you’re not my friend, you’re my enemy and an enemy of the kingdom. The proper place for an enemy of the kingdom is a prison cell.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“I don’t think your inn should flourish, either. I think its license should be revoked.”
I gripped the sides of my stool—I was sure I’d fall if I didn’t.
She took my face in her hands. Her Kyrrian accent was heavier now. “But I want you for a friend. I don’t want to do those dire things.”
She didn’t let go. I belonged to her. She could throw me in prison. She could harm everyone I loved.
I didn’t want to be imprisoned. I couldn’t let her hurt my family and the Featherbed.
“I’ll illuse for you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHE STILL HELD my face. “Not only tonight. For as long as I need.”
I was terrified. “I know.” She’d need me often.
“Oh, thank you!” She released my face and spun around in raptures. “You’ll sing for me! You won’t regret it. My lord will get well. You and I will be friends forever. Secrets make friends of people.”
I wondered if she was mad.
“Aza, you must tell no one. No one. Anyone you tell will be my enemy too and will suffer as much as you.”
“I won’t speak of it.” I wished I could run from her presence and never stop running.
She flew to her desk across the room. “Here is my song.” She gave it to me and returned to her ostumo.
She’d known before I came in that she could make me do what she wanted.
“It’s a letter,” she said. “A letter is all right, isn’t it? Oscaro told me songs don’t have to rhyme.”
“A letter is acceptable. We frequently sing epistolary songs.”
Her song was short. The beginning was bad and the ending was worse. The beginning sounded just like her. The ending might have been written by someone else. The song would sit well with no one.
“What do you think?”
I didn’t care if she made a fool of herself.
“I must be a powerful queen. Don’t you agree?” She watched me closely.
Let everyone hear the song. Let them hate her almost as much as I did.
But the terrible words might also hurt the king.
I said, “Perhaps you can revise it a bit. Songs in a Healing Sing are supposed to be about the sick person, but the last part isn’t about King Oscaro.”
“I tell him not to worry! That’s about him, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Go on. We’re friends.” She hugged me. “You can tell me anything.”
“Your song,” I said, concealing my revulsion, “shouldn’t mention Kyrria or what you’re wearing.” That was only the beginning of what was wrong.
“Oscaro loves my gowns! He’d want to know what I chose for his Sing.” Her face saddened. “I miss my lord. I wonder if he misses me.” She closed her eyes and sighed.
My heart went out to the king. It would be a miracle if the Sing helped him.
She dismissed me with instructions to tell Prince Ijori the Sing could go on. “Send him to me. He can tell me how to make you my lady-in-waiting.”
First he’d have to be told I wasn’t a lady. He’d think ill of me. I should never have pretended.
That had been my first deception. Illusing would be incomparably worse.
I found him at the entrance to the Great Hall, stroking Oochoo’s head and looking out at the Three Tree. When he turned, I saw he’d been weeping again. I said that the Sing was to take place.
“Lady Aza!” His voice was so pleased that my blush threatened to melt my face away.
“But her song is all wrong.”
“How?”
I told him.
He shook his head. “She doesn’t know our ways. Perhaps I can help her change the words.”
I hoped he could!
“How did you persuade her to hold the Sing at all?”
I’d never been a convincing liar, but I had to be one now. The fabrication came easily, evoked by need. “I thought she might be worried about rhyming, so I assured her that her song didn’t have to rhyme. Then I suggested she write an epistolary song, and she thought she could.”
“You have as much magic as a fairy. You cast a spell over the queen. And before, you contrived for me to win at the composing game.”
Me? Magical? “We won?”
“We won. Lady Aza, I’d never come close before.”
I took a deep breath. “Er … I’m not a lady.” I told him who I really was.
His face reddened. “You lied?”
A lump rose in my throat. “Everyone thought—I was embarrassed. I should have said.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was unfriendly.
He hated me!
I saw him shrug off his anger. “My uncle—” He stopped speaking. “My uncle”—he sounded really miserable—“just married a commoner.” He smiled wanly at me. “I don’t mind that you’re one too.”
I forced myself to tell the rest—the rest that I could tell. I didn’t want him to hear it first from Ivi. “Queen Ivi wants you to make me a lady. That’s why she’s summoned you. She wants me to be her lady-in-waiting.”
His steps slowed. “How did you accomplish that? In such a short time, too. You do have magic!”
This time it was not a compliment.
After I left Prince Ijori, I went to the duchess and helped her with her toilette for the Sing. When she was dressed and combed and bejeweled, I left her.
In my room I chose my gown. This one’s bodice was striped brownish red and purplish brown. The overskirt was covered with huge squares of the same colors. The headdress was a purplish-brown band atop which stood a wooden bird.
I illused a mournful chirp coming from the top of my head.
Now I had to write my song, although my brain was reeling and my feelings were a muddle of fear and fury and sadness. I concentrated on the king.
Surprisingly, the first three lines came quickly.
In Amonta, at the Featherbed Inn,
Where I once lived, my mother
Rakes up the fire.
Mother and Father and my brothers and Areida would be distraught when they learned of the king’s accident. They revered King Oscaro. The first course of every meal in the tavern was served in his honor.
But their distress would almost be overcome by delight over my elevation to lady-in-waiting. If they knew how the queen was treating me—
That way lay tears.
I wondered if the king’s condition might have improved—or worsened. I wondered if he was comfortable, if he was chilled, if he could hear the people around him, if he could think.
I hoped the tainted Sing wouldn’t harm him.
A line came, and then another. Here is my song:
In Amonta, at the Featherbed Inn,
Where I once lived, my mother
Rakes up the fire.
My father wakes the cook,
Who cannot cook today.
Cream curdles; milk sours;
Eggs break; onions rot.
My father and mother
Put down their forks.
In his castle, the king
Swallows nought but air.
His life has narrowed,
But his thread winds on.
Eyes wide, legs hale,
Mouth full of words …
Cakes would bake themselves,
Mares shoe themselves, roads
Pave themselves. My mother
Would don her damask gown.
And I would sing
Until the sun cheered
And the inn dissolved
In music.
The queen answered my knock in a sleepy voice. When I stepped inside, her eyes were closed, her face unguarded, and she appeared hardly more than ten years old. She sat up and watched me draw her bath, as if she really was a child. Her expression showed no consciousness of what she’d done to me.
While she soaked, I sat at the dressing table to memorize her song and put a melody to it. It was the same song I’d seen before. Apparently Prince Ijori had had no more success than I in persuading her to change it.
I picked the golden flute up from the table and turned it over idly in my hand. As I considered the tune and reviewed the words, I blew into the flute. No sound came out. I set it down. It was merely a decoration.
When I thought I knew the song, I looked away from the page to test myself. The hand mirror was back on the table. In turning aside, I happened to look into it.
My reflection began to change. My chalky skin darkened a tone to alabaster. My cheeks turned a pearly pink. My rage-red lips softened to the hue of a ripe strawberry. My pulpy cheeks gained definition. My sooty hair became lustrous. Even my absurd bird headdress looked charming.
Only my eyes were unchanged. I was stunningly beautiful, beautiful beyond any hope I’d ever had.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I LOOKED AT LEAST as beautiful as Ivi, though in a different way, grander, not so delicate. Strangest of all, despite being greatly altered, I was somehow still myself.
I touched my face, but I couldn’t feel any difference. Could I really have become beautiful? I raised my head to the mirror above the dressing table, and there was my ugly face. I looked into the hand mirror. Beautiful again. I turned the hand mirror over, seeking a clue to the mystery. Carved into the wood was the word Skulni.
Fairest Page 6