Dragonfly (4 page)

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crisscrossed the plain before the palace, making the water dazzle liquid gold. Swallows swirled in the sky above the jade-colored roof of the palace.

The Second Princess drew Tashi into an arbor covered in a vine, grapes dangling in ripe clusters. She cupped Tashi's pale face in her hand and looked deep into her green eyes.

"You are unhappy, sister."

Safilen said it as a statement, not a question.

Tashi blinked, feeling tears spring into her eyes. No one had mentioned her emotions since she arrived at the palace. It was as if she had been stripped of the desires, hopes, and fears of youth and slowly become a machine created to rule. Now, just when she needed to be at her most hardened, the Second Princess was talking about feelings.

"You think we voted for you because you are the most junior among us?

That you do not matter?"

Tashi nodded.

Safilen dropped her hand from Tashi's face and instead took Tashi's fingers in hers. Another unparalleled sign of sympathy.

"I cannot answer for my sisters, but I voted for you because I thought you deserved a chance of happiness. You struggle--we all struggle--with the role the Mother has given us. My life has only been bearable because of my husband. I wish that for you too."

Crown Princesses never, ever mentioned their private life. Another custom shattered.

"But if I marry, I want someone from our own

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people--someone who loves me. Not an uncouth prince marrying me

because his father says so!" Tashi blurted out.

The Second Princess's eyes twinkled. "Uncouth sounds . . . amusing. And besides, we could not send the Third Princess, could we?" She nodded over to the grim face of their co-ruler, whose forehead was pinched in a frown.

"What life for a poor eighteen-year-old boy would that be?"

Tashi lifted her sleeve to hide her gaping mouth. A joke from the Second Princess? That was definitely not in the Etiquette Book either.

Tashi spent the slow voyage to the naval port thinking over the Second Princess's words. Her body sat in the Throne of Nature on the open deck so that all her subjects could see her, but her mind was far away, speculating about the motives behind her co-ruler's kindness. The Second Princess was from Lir-Salu, the second smallest island. In many ways, Lir-Salu had the most to gain from Kai's decrease in influence, but Tashi could not shake off the impression that Safilen had been sincere in the wish for her happiness.

Am I going to distrust everyone or believe that, sometimes, I will meet
friends?
Tashi asked herself.
Do I want to end up like Korbin, frowning at all I
see, or like Safilen, content and still human?

She had to take the risk for her own sake, and for Kai.

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Tashi signalled to a scribe.

"Please send the following to my sisters. 1, Fourth Crown Princess, hereby delegate in my absence my voting powers to Second Crown Princess. I trust she will think as I would have of the beloved people of Kai in all matters concerning the rule of our Islands.'"

The message was despatched by carrier pigeon. Tashi watched the bird soar over the canal locks that the barge had already passed through on its journey to the sea. She wondered if she was being a fool. Had Second Princess merely calculated that inexperienced Tashi would react gratefully to her show of concern? As representative of both Kai and Lir-Salu, Safilen would augment her influence at court as rival to both her co-rulers.

Be quiet,
Tashi snapped at her cynical side.
Let me at least think that I have
one friend at court. Don't spoil it for me! Sometimes the heart has to rule over
the head.

Tashi had seen maps of the Known World but never comprehended its

vastness until this voyage across the Northern Ocean. Gerfal lay over a thousand miles away, beyond the Empire of Holt, beyond anything that Tashi found familiar. The Blue Crescent navy could not land at any Holtish port, of course, so had to sail far to the north to the islands of the Ice Archipelago for supplies midway through the journey. Fortunately, the winter had not yet frozen the seas, but Tashi woke to darkness each morning in her state cabin and had to say the Four Blessings well before the sun rose. Ice covered

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the inside of her windows, froze her breath and made icicles on the rigging, which crashed to the ground each day when the sun, feeble and low on the horizon, nudged away the darkness for a few hours. The people of the Archipelago were suspicious but not hostile, providing furs, meat, and fresh water to the twenty ships in Tashi's escort. They encountered no challenge from the Pirate Fleet. Any scout ships soon disappeared back to Holt when they counted the strength of the Crescent navy.

By late November, just as the seas further north were locking the

Archipelago away for the winter and the sun no longer rose, the fleet turned south for Gerfal. They arrived to be greeted by a flotilla of the much inferior Gerfalian navy and were escorted to the port of the capital, Falburg. The Gerfalian sailors could only whistle with amazement at the size and firepower of the Crescent ships with their white square sails and ferocious figureheads of dragons and bul s embel ished with gold paint. The Islands alone knew how to manufacture gunpowder, and the smallest of the

Crescent ships had at least twenty cannon, the largest over a hundred. The marines were armed with long rifles, a technology unknown on the

mainland. There, the crossbow was the main long-distance assault weapon.

The flagship of the fleet moored at the dockside to receive the

representatives of King Lagan. Tashi sat once more on the Throne of Nature, brought out on deck for the purpose. She was dressed in her most elaborate gown, figured with leaves and wild animals

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in honor of the forested land of Gerfal. Her face was painted white, her eyes outlined in kohl, her hair hidden under a veil of green silk. An orange sash clinched her waist and fell to the deck in a swirl of color.

Lord Taris, Prime Minister of Gerfal, knelt before her. Behind him knelt a stocky young man with red hair, introduced as his son, Lord Usk.

"Your Royal Highness, on behalf of the King and al his people, I welcome you to Gerfal," Lord Taris said in Common Tongue, the shared language of the Known World.

"Thank you, Prime Minister," said Tashi, following the script written for her by the Etiquette Mistress. Though she was fluent, she felt awkward speaking Common. "I bring greetings from my sisters, the Crown Princesses of the Blue Crescent Islands, and I bring gifts." She nodded to a line of servants waiting with the appropriate presents--wine, silk, parchment, and salt. She took the topmost sheaf of paper and quickly folded it into the dragonfly, her personal symbol, and handed it to the Prime Minister. "A gift for Prince Ramil ac Burinholt." A person from the Blue Crescent would understand this as a sign of great favor and trust, equivalent to saying that you place your life in their hands, but the Prime Minister had obviously not been briefed correctly on this aspect of her culture for he fingered it nervously. The Crescent sailors stirred, wondering if he meant to show disrespect.

"Er . . . thank you, Your Highness," the Prime Minister said, passing it to his son. "We will make sure

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he receives it." He did not like to add that the Prince should have been here in person to greet her, but had gotten so drunk the night before on hearing that the fleet had been sighted, that he was incapable of standing. "If you would care to alight from your vessel, I have a carriage waiting for you."

Tashi drew in a breath. A carriage? No doubt pulled by one of the famous Gerfalian horses she had read about. She couldn't wait to see it.

"Thank you, Prime Minister." Her excitement entirely hidden from her hosts, she nodded and her attendants hurried forward to pick up her chair.

According to the Etiquette Mistress, a crown princess's feet were not to touch Gerfalian soil until she had had a chance to say the prayers suitable for arriving in a foreign country. Four burly attendants carried her down the gangplank and stopped in front of the carriage. Tashi saw with a shiver of delight that not one but six white horses were waiting to pull it. She then realized there was a hitch: her throne would not fit in the cushioned interior of the carriage; she would have to descend.

But what about the prayers?
she wondered.
I'll have to do them now.

Nodding to her chief priest, she waited for him to strike the bell so she could begin the long prayer of thanks in her native language, uncomfortably aware that she was keeping Lord Taris standing on the dock-side with no

explanation.

"As the Goddess wills," she intoned at last.

Rising, she accepted Lord Taris's hand to step up into

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the carriage. To her surprise he got in beside her, with Lord Usk sitting opposite, so close that their knees were almost touching. The breach in royal protocol was staggering. She wondered if they knew that the Crown

Princesses only ever travelled in their own compartments. Apparently not, for the Prime Minister kept up a constant commentary as they rode through the streets of Falburg, pointing out places of importance, remarking on the commerce and customs of the city. Tashi pressed her lips together. No one spoke to a crown princess unless invited to do so. She could feel her cheeks blushing under her white paint, and she concluded that either the Gerfalians were more barbarous than she had heard or he was deliberately mocking her age and inexperience. Her silence only seemed to make him more talkative. He even tried to include his son in the conversation, claiming the young man was a great friend of her husband-to-be.

Hardly a recommendation for my favor,
thought Tashi to herself.
He is
probably as uncouth as his prince.

Lord Taris pointed out the feasting hall up on the promontory overlooking the city. Its walls shone white in the sunlight; orange and green flags fluttered from the roof. Tashi allowed it to be an impressive sight, but alien to one used to the waterways and curved roofs of the Islands. These battlements and stone pinnacles looked very forbidding, conjuring up images of the claws and teeth of wild beasts crouching for the kill. She had been told that the people of the continent were warlike but she had not expected their buildings to be so too.

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"We have arranged a welcome banquet, Your Highness, for this evening,"

the Prime Minister continued, trying to ignore the cold silence in the carriage.

"Is that to your liking?"

Tashi nodded. "As the Goddess wills."

"We say 'God willing' here; you'll have to get used to that, I'm afraid. I understand you conceive of your Creator as female?"

Tashi's eyes widened. Blasphemy after insults: it was too much!

"We have made arrangements so you can carry out your religious duties undisturbed," the Prime Minister ploughed on. "There was some opposition, as you might imagine, but we have secured a small temple in the palace grounds for your own private use."

And I'm supposed to thank him?
Tashi fumed. She tapped her fingers on her knees, a sign of severe displeasure if he had known how to read her moods.

The Prime Minister sighed with relief as they passed under the palace gateway. The carriage drove up to the steps to the Crown Princess's apartments where her servants, who had gone ahead of her, were waiting.

He helped her descend, then watched her disappear into the building without a word. He turned to his son.

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think we've got a problem," said Lord Usk, stuffing the dragonfly into his pocket.

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Confined to his rooms, Ramil had woken with a terrible hangover and decided to get rid of it by returning to drinking. Hortlan and Yendral were trying to dissuade him, but Ramil was too depressed to care.

"Ah, Lord Usk!" he called in greeting as his friend came back from his trip to the port. "How is my sweet, my darling, my flower of the Blue Crescent?"

Usk tugged at his tunic, pulling out a crumpled paper object. "She asked me to give you this. It's a . . . actually, I'm not sure; it looks like some kind of bird."

"Ah, my dove flew across oceans to give this to me!" Ramil scooped up the fragile paper dragonfly and kissed it dramatically. He cast it into the air. It fell in circles to the floor, blunting its point. "Clever girl--look, it flies! Have a drink, Uskie." He slopped some beer into a tankard for him. "So, speak up, what's she like?"

Usk took the drink, glancing nervously at the other two. They went still, sensing that the news was not good.

"She's . . . well . . . not very talkative."

Ramil hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. "They've sent me a mute--

how kind!"

"No, she can talk. She's just . . ."

"Just what? Beautiful? Intelligent? Witty? Everything a man could desire?"

"Formal."

Ramil refilled his own tankard and took a deep draught. "To formality--that well-known quality in all good wives!"

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"But she's young. She might warm up a bit when you get her . . . you know ...

on her own," continued Lord Usk, trying to make the best of it.

"How young?" asked Lord Hortlan, also looking for a bright side. They all knew their friend was doomed.

"About sixteen, seventeen maybe. It's hard to tell under all that face paint."

Yendral began to laugh.

"What's so funny, my lord?" growled Ramil.

"That is wonderful--just wonderful--they've sent you the new one," Lord Yendral said, shaking his head.

"What's so special about the new one?" asked Ramil grumpily.

"Don't you remember the scandal? She's the farm girl--the one Fergox bribed the priests to choose, if the rumors from Holt are to be believed."

Ramil threw his tankard at the opposite wall. It chipped the plaster and left a brown stain splattered on the whitewash. "A peasant! I expect you could smell the pigsty, couldn't you, Usk?"

Lord Usk shook his head, nudging Yendral to stop winding up Ramil. Usk was shocked by the bitterness in Ramil's tone: the Prince was usually the last person to be cruel to another. "No, she seemed very refined as far as I could tell. Remember, Ram, these Blue Crescent people assume the dignity of their elected position. Her background doesn't matter; she's a Crown Princess."