As soon as the woman identified herself, Bronwyn’s hand tightened on her sword and she began to stride forward purposefully to confront the ogress who had so callously ruined her life, but Mistress Raspberry pulled her back and muttered, “Wait. My mother can be a dangerous sort, Your Highness. She must be dealt with properly. If you want your curse lifted, stay back, be patient, and leave her to me.”
In a louder voice she said, “I didn’t leave you, Mother, if you’ll recall,” and embraced the woman even more gingerly than she had walked across the back of the moat monster.
“No,” the woman said, giving her daughter’s companions looks that made the Tape seem an amiable fellow. “As I can see, you were spirited away by evil companions.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Mistress Raspberry said, amusement edging the exasperation in her voice. “I’d like to present Her Royal Highness Bronwyn Amberwine Magdalena Rowan, Crown Princess of Argonia, Prince Jacopo Worthyman, scion of a nomadic subculture and in indirect line for the throne of Ablemarle, and the Honorable Lady Carole Maud Songsmith Brown, daughter of Magdalene, Honorary Princess of Argonia, and the Earl of Wormroost.” She cast an apologetic look at Anastasia, “And that only includes some of the noble members of my party.”
The swan looked away, pretending disinterest, as they entered a room the size of a ballroom, which was planted with flowers and had an ornamental fountain. Anastasia flew into the fountain and proceeded to glide serenely around in it as if she were part of the original decor.
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Mistress Raspberry’s mother said in a gratingly nasal voice as flat as the Great Tape.
“So are we all,” Bronwyn said sourly, only her curse allowing her to respond with unfelt courtesy. She glared fiercely at the rude woman’s back, which she had continued to show them throughout the introduction. Even if Belburga hadn’t been responsible for her curse, Bronwyn would have disliked the woman. She was brassy, common, loud, rude, and furthermore had the nerve to produce the impression that she considered none of the rest of them quite up to her standards. She no doubt found wicked, curse-throwing wizards more to her taste.
“Lily-Pearl and the Emperor will just be delighted to see you, darling,” the woman babbled on in her grinding monotone. “There’s a feast tonight. I’ll see to it that you and your friends are provided with proper attire.”
“Fine, Mother. I have business I must discuss with the Emperor, and I’m afraid you and Princess Bronwyn and I need to have a little talk, too. Something about some assistance you once rendered to a certain sorcerer.”
“You know me, Ruby-Rose, darling, always ready and willing to help anyone in need. I’ve always said. . .”
And she went on at length to repeat what she’d always said, until she and Mistress Raspberry retired to a sitting room off the hall and Daisy-Esmeralda had a servant conduct the rest of the party to guest rooms.
* * *
The banquet hall was outlandishly sumptuous. Not even King Roari’s great hall at Queenston Castle surpassed it—but then, Bronwyn recalled with no small degree of self-righteousness, her father expended his strength in the defense and administration of his own people, not in the oppression and exaction of tribute from others.
Thousands of torches flared between opulent, jewel-toned tapestries, the table blazed with tapers, which blazed again in the gems encrusting the gowns, headgear and ornaments of the revelers. The floor was inlaid with mosaics, not covered with rushes in the usual fashion, and brilliant cut flowers of hues rivaling those in the attire of the assembled nobles filled every spare corner. Elsewhere on the walls and around the room shields and armor were burnished to a high luster and proudly displayed.
“You won’t recognize Lily-Pearl,” Daisy said to her sister.
“I barely recognize anyone, myself included,” Rusty replied, surveying her traveling companions with a bemused look. They stood at the entrance to the banquet hall, waiting for the herald to announce them.
She herself wore bronze-trimmed gossamer green, a fairly conservative choice considering it had arrived at her room through her mother’s instigation. Daisy, whose new round shape lent a certain solidity that had not been present in the flitting half-dryad maiden she had been when last Rusty saw her, looked very like her namesake, clothed as she was all in bright yellow, with brown velvet lining and trim. Even the overlay of melancholy in her expression, no doubt caused by the lack of any animals in this kingdom save monsters like the Tape, became her.
Jack was resplendent in red satin britches and an orange tunic. “I picked them myself,” he admitted with a lowering of his curling lashes that was supposed to denote modesty. Carole’s pink gown with garnet-colored trim became her well, but the whole party paled before the splendor of Bronwyn.
Belburga’s snobbery had apparently gotten the best of her ogress instincts, and she had clothed her most illustrious guest in raiment she deemed appropriate to the station of a Crown Princess. Bronwyn’s gown was deep purple, embroidered with gold and silver peacocks with amethysts and aquamarines in their tails. A little cap which looked like another peacock tail and which was also set with aquamarines and amethysts was pinned firmly to the Princess’s wild red hair. One hardly noticed the hasty addition of aqua silk at the hem, starting at Bronwyn’s knees, and at the sleeve, midway up her forearm, to lengthen the dress sufficiently to fit her. The total effect was stunning, and marred only by Bronwyn’s insistence on carrying her shield along to the feast. Fortunately, the shield was only a small round buckler, easily concealed by the voluminous sleeves.
“Nice of you to have a feast in our honor,” she said chattily to Daisy-Esmeralda.
“I only wish it were in your honor,” Daisy said, sounding worried. “I’m not at all sure Loefwin is doing the right thing by making a fuss over Gilles Kilgilles.”
“Would that be Lord Gilles?” Carole asked. “Which one is he? We met a friend of his on our way here.”
Daisy looked surprised but answered, “He’s that chap over there with the pale hair and the face half in his wine cup. Oh, dear, I do wish Loefwin hadn’t made my husband sit next to the man! The poor darling is simply green about all this already.”
The herald announced them then and they filed in, and took their places at the table. Frostingdungian custom seated the men on one side of the table, the women on the other.
The Empress, a white-haired wight in a white gown evidently inspired by a winding sheet, sat opposite her husband. Daisy-Esmeralda, next to her, sat opposite her own spouse, Prince Loefrig, who was more widely constructed than Loefwin and balder, with a broad nose and slitty eyes and a mouth that seemed to run from ear to ear. Yet there was considerable family resemblance, and Bronwyn remembered she had heard that Loefwin was one of a set of triplets. Mistress Raspberry was seated on Daisy’s other side, opposite Lord Gilles, which gave her something much nicer to look at than either of her sisters. Gilles Kilgilles might be mad, and he was most certainly already quite far into his cups, but he was strikingly handsome, especially among the Frostingdungians. Not as handsome as Bronwyn’s father, of course, but his sleek cap of spun silver hair was striking, his eyes were the blue of a glacial lake, and his movements, drunken or not, were fluid and graceful. Mistress Raspberry seemed to be carefully avoiding looking at him, but Carole, opposite Jack, gaped frankly, so that Bronwyn wondered how her cousin intended to eat with her mouth seemingly permanently open.
Bronwyn faced a swarthy man with pitted dark skin, an athlete’s figure, piercing dark eyes and rather greasy-looking dark hair. His dress was a conservative, natural-colored linen, tastefully embellished with gold ornaments. “Duke Docho Droughtsea, Your Highness,” Daisy offered helpfully. “One of Loefwin’s chief advisers and the architect of this castle and city.”
Bronwyn didn’t fancy the man herself, but then, she didn’t need any chief advisers, having already received more unsolicited advice in the last two weeks than she had ever had in her life.
“I understand yo
u’re a swordswoman, Milady,” the man said conversationally, while chewing on the entree, which was undercooked and cold by the time it got to the table. Loefwin apparently tried to make up in dining accouterments what he lacked in menu. Gold plates were all very well, but she would have preferred hot mutton.
“Who, me?” she asked. “Who could have told you a thing like that?”
“Your young friend,” he said and nodded to Jack, “mentioned it when I—er—made his acquaintance near the treasure room earlier this evening, and Dame Belburga was kind enough to tell me something of your family history.”
“Imagine that,” she said noncommittally, so she didn’t have to lie and deny what a splendid fighting woman she was.
“I thought perhaps tomorrow, if you have the time, I might be able to interest you in a contest.”
“Oh, I’m sure I won’t have the time to indulge in that sort of thing,” she said eagerly.
“Pity. I didn’t mean sword against sword, you know. I wanted to demonstrate to you the native weapon of my coun—region.”
“Oh?”
He pulled from his pocket two pitted copper cones on a braided leather thong, which was looped midway between the weights and knotted. Bronwyn wondered fleetingly why the weights weren’t iron, like everything else in Frostingdung.
“Behold the Bintnarangian senyaty.”
“I can see it must make an excellent hacking and gouging weapon,” she said politely.
He laughed. “Milady has a charming sense of humor!”
“Milady would prefer to have the pepper. Would you pass it please?” She hoped he’d pass the salt as well, since that was what she really wanted.
The pepper, as well as the salt, were in the custody of the Emperor, who obligingly passed them along, interrupting himself in the middle of a heated discussion about his proposed reforms. When he noticed to whom he was passing condiments, he decided to try to enlist reinforcements for his argument.
“What do you think, Princess Bronwyn? Your father’s King of quite a large country and it’s known to contain monsters as well as other—”
“Watch it, brother,” Loefrig said. “I want to remind you there are ladies present.”
“Just so happens all the ladies within earshot are from a country where they have lots of you-know-what. Shouldn’t think they’d mind,” the Emperor said, but turned a little red in the face anyway.
“I wish someone would say what we’re supposed to be too delicate to hear,” Mistress Raspberry commented.
“Now, Ruby-Rose,” her mother began.
“Magic, milady,” Lord Gilles obliged, rising and falling in one swoop of a bow. “Magic, wizardry, sorcery, charlatanism, hocus-pocus, spooky stuff.”
Prince Loefrig turned on his dinner companion so quickly he nearly knocked his chair over. “Sir! I’ll thank you to mind your tongue! My wife is present and I’ll not have her insulted by such langu-urgit!” he finished with a croak. As he’d been ranting, his skin had taken on a wet, bumpy appearance, and instead of reddening, as angry people are usually wont to do, he greened. Bronwyn was reminded of Lorelei but Daisy-Esmeralda was reminded of something else altogether.
“Urgit!” he said again and his wife scrambled across the table to kiss him full on the lips.
“There, there, darling, you mustn’t take on so. I’m not the least offended. I know the mention of you-know-what upsets you, but that’s no reason to turn now, is it, in front of all our guests? After all, if it hadn’t been for you-know-what, you and I would never have learned to love one another, now would we?”
She repeated her kiss several times, and gradually his skin drained back to white. “Urg—sorry, darling. Sorry, Your Imperial Majesty, old man. You know I’ve just got a bit of a thing about that. But you, Kilgilles, should still learn to watch your mouth!”
“Now, now, old Froggy, let’s not be so hasty,” the Emperor said soothingly, “I want to hear Gilles’ opinions on a few things. His district’s one of the worst off. What do you think, eh, Gilles?”
“Think, my liege?”
“About my little idea. Don’t you think that if we screened them well enough, we could let a few of the natives doff the bracelet, at least part of the time, buy their way free in exchange for growing crops, breeding cattle. I swear we’ve tried with our own folk, but we Frostingdungians are miners and warriors. We can’t seem to make a thing grow except porridge vine and more of these damned hidebehind things! How’s a person supposed to run a country when no one has access to anyone else as soon as it gets a bit dark?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, my liege. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.” Gilles smiled a charming and almost genuinely sympathetic smile.
“Well, I need your help, my boy. As you can probably taste.” Loefwin glared at his food and stabbed the table with his knife. “While we’re at it, let’s free some chefs too. A person should be able to get used to this sort of thing, but my gut doesn’t seem to know that.”
“Release some of those savages?” Loefrig protested. “Brother, you don’t know them like I do. As soon as you take their bracelets off they’ll be up to their old tricks—”
“I think you underestimate the thoroughness of Frostingdung’s victory,” Gilles argued. “The leadership of the six client kingdoms was utterly destroyed on the Day. The Emperor represents the only alternative any of us have to chaos and another war, which no one is prepared for. If one chose properly from among the slaves—”
“And I say a slave is a slave for a very good reason and ought to remain a slave. They’re savage inferior people. Why, the merest contact with one of them has maimed me for life—would have been much worse if not for Daisy. Not to mention our sainted brother Loefric, who never has had the heart to return to the bosom of his family since he made the ultimate sacrifice on the Day. You were born afterwards, boy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No doubt you’re—” he hiccoughed delicately, cupping long elegant fingers to his mouth, “right.”
“Well, if this isn’t the gloomiest party!” the washed-out Empress exclaimed in a tone as genuine as the high red color on her mother’s cheeks. “Loefwin, you do know how to spoil a feast with your talk of slaves and other nasty topics.”
“Sorry, dearest. Someone has to run the country sometime, you know.”
“Yes, but not during festivities. Where are the musicians? Let’s have some dancing. Aren’t you just dying for Ruby-Rose to show us the latest steps from Queenston?”
“Just dying,” he agreed.
“Milord Gilles, since my husband is feeling so gloomy this evening, perhaps you’ll—?” She rose and extended her hand across the table. He looked at the hand as if wondering whether he was supposed to leap across or crawl under the table to claim it, and decided to bow low and kiss the hand and walk around the table before leading the Empress to the floor.
“Well, Princess Bronwyn.” Loefwin turned to her, smiling. “A couple of warriors like us ought to be able to fake hand-to-hand combat if we can’t actually dance, now, oughtn’t we? And I’d like to ask you a thing or two about the extent of your father’s holdings. You stand to inherit don’t you? Meet you at the end of this damned table.”
Belburga’s eyebrow shot up to her hairline as her son-in-law and Bronwyn joined the other dancers. As Droughtsea approached to claim her, Mistress Raspberry gave her mother an innocent smile. “Did you mention Lily-Pearl and Loefwin had been spatting lately? Love’s like that, I suppose. If one brings no dowry but beauty and lineage to a marriage, one can only expect…” But she didn’t finish, swept away on the fine linen arm of the Duke.
“The nerve of that girl!” Belburga said. Carole listened with great interest. “Why, that hulking giantess is nothing but a child.”
“A titled, landed child, I’m afraid,” Daisy-Esmeralda answered.
“Your sister always was a wretched little trouble-maker,” Belburga snapped, and flounced from the table.
“I
believe I’ll retire, my love,” Prince Loefrig said hastily. “Brother has more affairs of state to discuss with me tomorrow, and I’ll need my sleep if I’m going to be up to Milord Kilgilles. Are you coming?”
“Can you forgive me, darling? Rusty and I have so much catching up to do and we’ve scarcely had a moment to ourselves.”
“Of course.”
With professional curiosity, Carole leaned over and asked Daisy, “Excuse me, was I mistaken or did your husband almost turn into a frog there for a moment?”
“Yes, I’m afraid he did,” Daisy admitted. “So kind of you not to say anything in front of him. He’s terribly sensitive about it. Shortly after Loefwin left on the trip to Argonia where we all met, my husband was leading an expeditionary force in Negelia to make sure all the minor magicians had been rounded up—they, I don’t know how to explain this to you, Carole dear, but they seemed to feel at the time that that was the proper way to handle their affairs and I’m afraid—”
“We heard,” Carole said. “Go on.”
“The long and the short of it is that he found a magician—a witch, actually, and before they could round her up she managed to change him into a frog. Animals being as scarce as they are, one of his men put Loefrig in his pocket and returned with him here, thinking to fry him up for the Emperor—the men in the expeditionary force had no idea what had become of their Prince, of course. They thought he’d been taken by hidebehinds, I’m sure. But Loefrig divined the intentions of his former servant and hopped out of the pocket at the crucial moment, and lived in the fountain in the entrance hall where your darling swan is now. I suppose Rusty must have told you that I have always loved animals, and I missed all my little friends from our tower in Little Darlingham ever so much, and one day after we arrived, when I was sitting by the fountain crying…”
The Unicorn Creed Page 13
