The gardens were deserted as any wilderness. Inside, everyone was preparing for the evening’s long menu of events. Outside, the statues posed and the fountains played for the moon and stars alone.
Sylvain was taking advantage of this quiet and solitary hour to do one final check of the velvet pipes. He had already felt every inch of the new connection, examined the seams all the way to the point where the fabric sleeve dove off the roof to disappear through a gap above a garret window.
Bull and Bear waited by the main reservoir, watching for his signal. There was no point in delaying any further. He waved his hat in the air. The sleeve at his feet jumped and swelled.
Sylvain ran from the north wing attics down several flights of stairs to Gérard’s apartments. Pauline greeted him at the door herself. She was hugely pregnant and cradled her belly in both hands to support its weight. Breathless, he swept off his hat and bowed.
“Go ahead, monsieur,” Pauline said as she herded him toward her dressing room. “Please don’t pause to be polite. I’ve waited as long as I can.”
Not only were the velvet pipes lighter and easier to install, but they could be pinched off at any point simply by drawing a cord around the sleeve. Sylvain waited for Pauline to follow him, then pulled the red ribbon’s tail and let it drift to the floor. Water gushed into the toilet, gurgling and tinkling against the porcelain.
Pauline seized him by the ears, kissed him hard on both cheeks, and shooed him away. She hiked her skirts up to her hips even before her servant shut the door behind him.
Sylvain arrived fashionably late at the suite of the Mahmud emissary, a Frenchman turned Turk after years at the Sultan’s court. Sylvain saluted le Turque, lifted a glass of wine, and assumed an air of languid nonchalance. Madame and her ladies swept in. Their jewels and silks glowed in the candlelight.
Annette carried Madame’s train – a sure sign she was in favor at that moment. Sylvain saluted her with a respectful nod. She dimpled at him and made her way over as soon as the host claimed Madame’s attention.
“Is that for me, monsieur?” she asked.
Sylvain glanced at the monkey on his shoulder. “Perhaps, if there is a woman in the room who isn’t tired of gifts.”
“Jewels and flowers are all the same. This is something different.” She caressed the monkey under her chin. It reached for Annette like a child for its mother. “What is her name?”
“Whatever you want, of course.”
“I will ask Madame to choose her name. She will love that.” Annette cradled the monkey against her breast and nuzzled its neck. “Oh, she smells lovely – vanilla and cinnamon oil.”
It was the only combination of scents Sylvain had found to kill the stench of cheap cologne. He allowed himself a satisfied smirk.
Across the room a subtle commotion was building. Le Turque had lifted a curtain to reveal a pair of acrobats, but Madame was watching Annette and Sylvain. The acrobats were frozen in a high lift, waiting for permission to begin their performance as the musicians repeated the same few bars of music.
“You had better go back. Madame has noticed the monkey and is jealous for your return.”
Annette awarded him a melting smile and drifted back to Madame’s circle. The ladies greeted the monkey as if it were a firstborn son. Madame let the effusions continue for a few moments and then took sole possession of the creature, holding it close as she turned her attention to the performance.
Sylvain struggled to stay alert, despite the near-naked spectacle on stage. He had barely seen his bed since Leblanc’s death, and the warm wine and rich food were turning his courtier’s air of languid boredom into the prelude to a toddler’s nap. The spinning and leaping acrobats were mesmerizing – especially when viewed in candlelight through a screen of nodding wigs and feathers. The bright silk-and satin-clad backs in front of him dipped as they lifted their glasses to their lips, swayed from side to side as they leaned over to gossip with the friend on the left about the friend on the right, then turned the other way to repeat the performance in reverse. Men and women they might be, but tonight they seemed more like the flamingoes that flocked on the Camargue, all alike in their brainless and feathered idiocy.
At least a flamingo made a good roast.
Sylvain spotted Gérard sneaking into the room, stealthy as a scout. He took his place by Sylvain’s side as if he’d been there all evening.
“Thank God, Gérard,” Sylvain whispered. “Stick your sword into my foot if you see me nodding off.”
Gérard grinned. “It’s the least I could do for the man who has brought such happiness to my wife.”
The acrobats were succeeded by a troupe of burly Turkish dancers bearing magnums of champagne entombed in blocks of ice. Children dressed as cherubs passed crystal saucers to the guests.
“This will keep you awake, my friend. Champagne cold as a cuckold’s bed.”
“I’ve been in such a bed recently. It was quite warm.”
Le Turque himself filled Sylvain and Gérard’s saucers. “Tonight, you are in favor with the ladies, monsieur.”
“Am I?” Sylvain sipped his champagne. The cold, sweet fizz drilled into his sinuses. His eyes watered as he forced back the urge to sneeze.
“So true!” said Gérard. “My own wife is ready to call Sylvain a saint. She has set up an altar to him in her dressing room.”
“But I refused the honor,” said Sylvain. “I would prefer not to have those offerings dedicated to me.”
They laughed. Le Turque gave them a chill grimace.
“My apologies, monsieur,” said Gérard. “It is not a private joke, just too coarse for general consumption. We are soldiers, you know, and are welcomed into civilized homes on charity.”
Le Turque demonstrated his kind forbearance by topping up both their saucers before moving on to the other guests.
Sylvain studied the champagne and their enclosing blocks of ice as the Turkish dancers circled the room, trailing meltwater on the carpet. The bottles couldn’t have been frozen into the ice or the wine would be frozen through. They must be made from dual pieces carved to enclose a bottle like a book. He stopped a dancer and examined the ice. Yes, the two pieces were joined by a seam.
A simple solution, too practical to be called ingenious, but effective. The guests were impressed, even though many of them were fingering their jaws and wincing from cold-induced toothache. Not one guest refused a second glass, or a third, or a fourth. Bottles were being drained at impressive rate.
Annette drew her fan up to her ear and flicked Sylvain a telling glance from across the room. He took Gérard’s arm. “Come along; we are being summoned to an audience with Madame.”
The royal mistress was dressed in white and silver. Her snowy wig was fine as lamb’s wool, her skin frosted with platinum powder. A bouquet of brightly clad ladies surrounded her like flowers around a statue. The monkey slept in her lap. She had tied a silver ribbon around its neck.
The standard palace practice was to praise Madame’s face and figure in public and criticize it in private. Sylvain had seen her often, but always at a distance. Now after months of maneuvering, he was finally close enough to judge for himself.
“A triumph worthy of our Turkish friends, is it not?” Madame offered Sylvain her hand. “I shall never be able to enjoy champagne at cellar temperature again. It is so refreshing. One feels renewed.”
“Our host has distinguished himself,” said Sylvain, brushing her knuckles with his lips. Madame let her fingers linger in his palm for a moment before presenting her hand to Gérard.
“Le Turque is an old man and has resources appropriate to his age and rank,” said Madame. “I wonder how young men can become distinguished in the king’s gaze.”
“Perhaps by murdering the king’s enemies on the battlefield every summer?” said Gérard.
The ladies tittered. Madame slowly drew back her hand and blinked. Pretty, thought Sylvain, at least when surprised.
“Excuse my friend, Madam
e. Cold champagne has frozen his brain.”
Madame eyed Gérard up and down. “Everyone respects our valiant soldiers, and your devotion to manly duty is admirable.” She turned back to Sylvain. “If your brawny friend the Marquis de la Châsse is content with his achievements, who are we to criticize? But you, monsieur, I know you care about the honor of France both on and off the field of war.”
“Every Frenchman does, madame, but especially when he has been drinking champagne,” said Sylvain. Gérard lifted his glass in salute.
Madame flicked her fan at Annette. “You may have heard an idea of mine. At first, it was just an idle thought, but now le Turque has thrown down the gauntlet. Is there a man who will accept the challenge?”
“No man could refuse you anything, madame. The rulers of the world fall at your feet.”
“I would rush to serve you,” said Gérard, “if I had any idea what you meant. Madame is so mysterious.”
Madame dismissed Gérard with a flick of her fan. “Be so good as to fetch me one of those dancers, monsieur.”
“A Turk with a full magnum, Madame?” Gérard saluted her and set off with a jaunty military stride.
Madame shifted on the sofa. She seemed to be considering whether or not to invite Sylvain to sit. Then she lifted the monkey from her lap and set it beside her.
Not nearly so lovely as Annette, Sylvain decided.
“You may not know, monsieur, how highly you are praised. I am told that even when the Bassin d’Apollon was new, fountain-play was a parsimonious affair, the water doled out like pennies from a Polish matron’s purse.”
She paused to collect dutiful titters from her ladies for this jab at the queen. Perhaps not pretty at all, thought Sylvain. Hardly passable.
“You have found a way to keep all of the fountains constantly alive without pause. Some members of the royal household call you a magician, but the word from the highest level is less fanciful and more valuable. There, you are simply called inspiring.”
Sylvain puffed up at the praise. Gérard returned with a beefy Turk. The dancer’s fingers were blue from the cold, and he struggled to fill Madame’s saucer without dribbling.
“Just like a commander on the battlefield, a woman judges a man by his actions.” She lifted the monkey and planted a kiss between its ears. “Any other man would have collared this monkey’s neck with a diamond bracelet before presenting it to a lady of the court. We would call that vulgar.”
Her ladies nodded.
“You have taste and discernment. So give me champagne, free-flowing and cold. That is a triumph worthy of Versailles.” She presented her hand to Sylvain again, then waved him away. The ladies closed around her like a curtain.
“Vulgar, indeed,” said Gérard as they retreated. “I’ve never seen a woman greet a diamond with anything other than screeches of delight. Have you?”
“My experience with diamonds is limited.”
“Madame knows it. She was spreading you with icing.”
“She wants to secure a valuable ally. Compliments are the currency of court.”
Gérard drained his champagne and rubbed his knuckles over his jaw as if it ached. “She just wants to drink champagne at another man’s expense. As with most pleasures, it comes with a little pain. She wants the pain to be yours, not hers.”
“The champagne fountain is a whim. She will ask me for something else next time.”
“Very well. Madame will ask you to do something expensive and original with only a few pretty words as payment. Will you do it?”
Two full glasses of red wine had been abandoned at the foot of a statue. Sylvain fetched them and passed one to his friend. After the sweet champagne, the warm wine tasted flat and murky as swamp water.
“Only a fool would pass up the opportunity.”
10
“PAPA, COME PLAY!”
The nixie swam backward against a vortex of current, dodging spinning hunks of ice that floated like miniature icebergs, splintering and splitting as they smashed together. Overhead, the red-and-blue parrot climbed among the fern fronds, screeching and flapping its wings.
As he had suspected, the little fish loved ice. He had once seen a nixie swimming at the foot of a glacier, playing with ice boulders as they calved from the ice field’s flank. The nixie had pushed them around like kindling, building a dam that spread a wide lake of turquoise meltwater over the moraine.
“Papa, come play!”
“Papa!” The parrot screeched its name.
Sylvain had purchased the bird from an elderly lady who was moldering in a north-wing garret, wearing threadbare finery from the Sun King’s reign and living off charity and crumbs of her neighbors’ leftover meals. The parrot was a good companion for the little fish. It was old and wily, and with its sharp beak and talons, it was well equipped to protect itself if she got too rough. It could fly out of reach and was fast enough to dodge sprays and splashes.
“Papa?” The nixie levered herself up the lip of her nest and stared at Sylvain expectantly. “Papa come play?”
Sylvain felt in his pockets for the last of the walnuts. “Here, little one. See if you can lure Papa down with this.”
“Bird! Food!” she yelled, waving the walnut aloft. The parrot kited down to the nest and plucked the nut from her fist.
“Come play, Papa?” she asked. She wasn’t looking at the bird. Her uncanny gaze was for him alone.
“That’s quite enough of that,” he said. “The bird’s name is Papa, and you’ll do well to remember it, young lady.”
She leaned close and spoke slowly, explaining. “Bird is Bird, Papa is Papa.”
“Papa,” agreed the parrot, its beady gaze fixed on Sylvain.
“You are impossible.” Sylvain waved at the surface of the pond, which was now carpeted with icy slurry circulating in the slowing current. “Clear away your toys or I’ll freeze swimming across.”
“Papa go away?”
“The bird is staying here with you. I am going to see about my important business. When I come back, I’ll bring more walnuts for Papa and nothing for you. Now clean up the ice.”
She laughed and dove. The water bubbled like a soup pot, forcing the slush to congeal into wads the size of lily pads. As the turbulence increased the leaves tilted and stacked, climbing into columns of gleaming ice that stretched and branched overhead.
The parrot flew to the top of a column and nibbled at the ice. It was solid and hard as rock.
“Very impressive,” breathed Sylvain.
He had spent the past few days running up debts with the village icemongers and pushing cartloads of straw-wrapped ice blocks down the tunnels. Though she had never seen ice, she had taken to it instinctively, tossing it around the grotto, building walls and dams, smashing and splitting the blocks into shard and slag, and playing in the slush like a pig in mud. But now she was creating ice. This was extraordinary.
“Come here, little one,” he said.
Obedient for the moment, she slipped over the surface to tread water at the edge of the nest. Above the water, her pale green skin was furred with frost. Steam snaked from her nostrils and gill slits.
“Show me how you did that,” he said.
She blinked. “Show me how, Papa?”
He spoke slowly. “The ice was melted into slush, but you froze it again, building this.” He pointed to an ice branch. The parrot sidestepped along the branch, bobbing its head and gobbling to itself. “Can you do it again?”
She shrugged. “You are impossible.”
He scooped up a fistful of water and held it out in his cupped hand. “Give it a try. Can you freeze this?”
The little fish peered up at him with that familiar imploring, pleading expression. He could hear her request even before she opened her mouth.
“Sing a song?”
Gifts were one thing but blatant bribery was another. If he began exchanging favor for favor, it would be a constant battle. But he had no time for arguments. He could risk a small b
ribe.
“I will sing you one song – a very short song – and only because you have been such a good girl today. But first freeze this water.”
“One song,” she agreed.
Heat radiated up his arm. The water in his fist crackled and jumped, forming quills of ice that spread from his palm like a chestnut conker. He was so astonished that he forgot to breathe for a few moments. Then he drew in a great breath and let himself sing.
The foresters of home played great lilting reels on pipes and fiddles. Their lives were as poor and starved as the shepherds in the meadows above or the farmers in the valley below, but they were proud and honed the sense of their own superiority as sharp as the edges on their axes. Their songs bragged of prowess at dancing, singing, making love, and of course at the daredevil feats required by their trade. The song that came to his lips told of a young man proving his worth by riding a raft of logs down a grassy mountainside in full view of the lowly villagers in the valley below.
He only meant to give her the first verse, but the little fish danced and leaped with such joy that he simply gave himself over to the song – abandoned himself so completely that halfway through the second verse, he found himself punctuating the rhythm with sharp staccato hand claps just as proudly as any forester. He sang all six verses, and when he was done, she leapt into his arms and hugged her thin arms around his neck.
“Papa sing good,” she whispered, her breath chill in his ear.
He patted her between the shoulder blades. Her skin was cold and clammy under a skiff of frost. Sylvain leaned back and loosened her arms a bit so he could examine her closely. Her eyes were keen, her skin bright. She was strong and healthy, and if she was a bit troublesome and a little demanding, it was no more than any child.
11
“ANNETTE TELLS ME you had your men run water to the north wing.”
Madame reclined on a golden sofa, encased and seemingly immobilized by the jagged folds of her silver robe. Her cleavage, shoulders, and neck protruded – a stem to support her rosebud-pale face. Her ladies gathered around her, gaudy in their bright, billowing silks.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Ten Page 17
