A Posse of Princesses

  Wissim? Within. Laughter fluttered inside Rhis, but only for a moment. She remembered what she’d seen the day before, and winced, then smoothed her expression as best she could before opening the door.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Keris appeared at the servant’s door. “Would you care for refreshments, your highness?”

  Rhis looked at Yuzhyu, whose lips moved, then she gave her head a quick shake.

  “No thank you,” Rhis said.

  The door closed soundlessly, leaving Rhis alone with her guest.

  “Want to sit down?” Rhis asked, feeling horribly awkward.

  Yuzhyu ignored the question. Her small hands were pressed together, her fingers twisting, as she enunciated carefully, “I explain. I am alone in Vesarja. Dandiar, he iss kind. Like brosser. Me like sister.”

  She stopped, and smiled, her brows quirked with hope.

  Rhis realized the poor thing had probably worked out her speech and memorized it. Why? “It doesn’t matter,” she said slowly. “It’s none of my concern. And I won’t tell anyone what I saw, if that is your worry.”

  Yuzhyu’s wide gaze went diffuse, and Rhis saw her lips move as she translated to herself.

  But before she could frame a reply the side-door opened, and Shera stood there, looking surprised. Yuzhyu backed up, her expression one of blank dismay.

  “We were just about to go down to breakfast,” Rhis said hastily. “Yuzhyu stopped by here on the way.”

  Lightning caused all three to look at the windows. Thunder smashed overhead, making the windows rattle, and the downpour intensified to an impossible din.

  Shera said loudly, “I guess we can all go together, then?”

  Rhis agreed, still feeling uncomfortable and awkward. Her relief gave way to a kind of chagrin as Shera chattered about the rain, and thunder, all the way down the hall. Her remarks were addressed to poor Yuzhyu, who obviously did not understand the half. Rhis came in only for the occasional bright, false smile, and Rhis wondered if Shera was glad that a third had appeared, preventing any kind of real talk.

  Hurt and annoyance were her first reactions, but as they walked into the breakfast room and Rhis fought to control her almost overpowering urge to look around to see who was there, she looked at Shera instead. Shera, who usually entered a room eager to find her friends, was studying her toes like her future was written on her slippers.

  Shera was acting guilty.

  Yuzhyu touched Rhis on the hand, smiled, and then sped away, her embroidered skirts swinging. Rhis turned her back; she did not want to see who Yuzhyu was joining. Lios or Dandiar, it was none of her concern.

  She spotted Taniva standing with Moret and her cousin, grouped with some of the riders. They were ranged along the window, looking out.

  The rain had turned to hail. Rhis hoped the garden would not be spoiled. The grass outside the terrace looked like a small lake with tiny white hailstones floating in it. Rain dappled the gray surface. Then lightning flared, the light mirroring back into the sky.

  “No picnics today,” Moret commented in a wry voice, with a meaningful glance at her cousin.

  “Well, that was settled last night,” he returned in a low voice.

  “I know what you heard.” Moret made a face. “I just don’t believe it.”

  The rain outside was loud, and the thunder rolled almost continuously. Did the cousins think they were not overheard? Rhis was unsure whether to move or not, for if she did, she’d draw attention to herself.

  “Oh, he was definite. As definite as he can be. At least, she thought so. She looked as sick as a fish out of water . . .”

  Thunder blasted again. The tall cousin bent to hear something Moret said. As both backs were turned, she eased away, wondering who the ‘he’ was. Moret’s sour tone made her think of Iardith. Lios, maybe?

  Rhis sighed. What had happened to everybody? Next time someone invites me to a masquerade, I ought to run and hide in a cave, she thought as she got something to eat.

  Only where to sit? Shera was over there, Glaen at her side. The two of them were conversing in low, fierce voices. Shera’s back was stiff, her arms tense. No one sat near them; it was obvious they wanted to be alone.

  From behind came Lios’ familiar voice, easy, friendly as always—and with it, Dandiar’s quick laugh, followed by the chatter of a growing crowd.

  Rhis’s cheeks burned. She was surprised at how her entire body was poised to turn, to search the crowd until she caught Dandiar’s eye, to exchange the smile she had somehow become accustomed to. Looked forward to.

  No. She would not, not, not turn around.

  With relief she saw Taniva just sitting down in the far corner, and went to join her. Taniva gave her a preoccupied little smile, but said nothing. That was all right with Rhis.

  Taniva’s back was to the wall. Rhis vaguely remembered someone or other saying that that always betrayed the person with military training. They never sat with their backs to a room—they had to see everything. Well, Rhis was just as glad she had no military training. She wanted her back to the room. She didn’t want to see anyone.

  But she couldn’t keep from noticing how Taniva’s narrowed gaze searched the room continuously. There was a grim set to her jaw, as if she were brooding over something. But Rhis didn’t ask, and Taniva did not offer any talk.

  By the time they had finished, Rhis became aware that she’d heard no more thunder.

  The violent part of the storm was over. The light had changed to a kind of silvery gray, and the rain was now a steady, gentle mist.

  Taniva murmured, “I think I check something. I am suspecting something bad, like rock on edge of cliff.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she got up and left.

  Rhis followed more slowly, without looking to either side.

  Almost immediately she found Glaen before her. “Rhis. May I talk to you?”

  Rhis stared at the tight strain across his forehead under the drifting hair, the shadows of tension around his mouth. All the humor that characterized him was gone from his face.

  She opened her hands, not sure what to say. Glaen took that as an invitation, and motioned for her to follow. They walked up a staircase she’d never explored before, and he ducked his head into a room, looked both ways, pulled back and beckoned. “Empty.”

  Rhis followed him into a little parlor, pleasingly furnished with an embroidered couch and two tables, with potted ferns set before the window.

  “Part of being a worthless flirt,” Glaen said as Rhis sat down on the couch, “is always knowing where there are little rooms where one can be alone.” He leaned against one of the tables, arms crossed, his fingers tapping against his arms.

  “You want to talk to me about flirting?” Rhis asked, confused.

  “No. I know about flirting. I want to talk about Shera.” And as Rhis made a gesture, he added, quickly. “Nothing that is confidential. Perhaps I ought to say that I wish to ask your advice.”

  The soft gray light coming in behind Glaen made him into a silhouette. Rhis shifted sideways so she could better see his face.

  “I’ve done something really stupid,” he went on. “Really stupid, and I don’t know how to get out of it.” He looked out the window, then back at Rhis. “You might as well know the worst. I called her a heartless flirt.”

  Rhis sat up as if someone had poked her, instantly annoyed. “Shera?”

  “I know. I know.” He clawed both hands through his hair, his fingers tense. “It wasn’t Shera—she wasn’t flirting, she was just having fun. It was I who was flirting. I’ve been flirting with every girl I’ve ever seen, ever since I discovered how much fun it was. In fact you might say I flirted not just with girls, but with everything.” He cast a look back at Rhis. “Including work. Last year on my twentieth birthday my parents gave me my last warning, which I ignored like the previous ones, and on New Year’s Day I discovered that they meant what they said, and they made my sister their heir. She’s barely fifteen—si
x years younger! But she already knew three times what I did about the barony.”

  Rhis did not know what to say, so she said nothing.

  “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. You can’t say—or think—anything worse than I thought myself. It was salutary, and so I threw myself into learning shipbuilding, which had been meant for my sister, or my younger brother. And I have been. I like it. My sister never did. That’s not the problem. Here’s the problem. No one believes I’m serious. I didn’t believe I was serious until this year, and it takes a lot longer to convince others when you’ve been a fool for years. Meanwhile along comes this party. I am invited here, and my parents send me, saying at least I can meet my peers while I’m wasting time. My sister—the new heir—is too young, and anyway she hasn’t time to waste. No one knows I’m not the heir, by the bye.” His wry tone, usually so full of humor, hinted at unhealed hurt. “I come, thinking I’ll play hard. A lot of these fellows—Laernad, Dris, Breggo, Tam—came to play hard, because they work hard at home. Some of the others are here to play because they’re going to spend their lives playing, and they either have the wealth to do it, or will marry it. Everyone thinks I’m one of the latter. Shera probably does, too, because anyone from the south will have told her that I am worthless, don’t mean anything I say—” He waved a hand in a circle.

  Rhis said tentatively, “But Shera didn’t come looking for a husband. She came to have fun.”

  Glaen turned around. “Right. I know all about Rastian. She never hid anything from me. And right from the start it was just fun. She’s so quick with a joke, so much fun in a mock verbal battle. It was I who found ways to get her alone for more banter, more laughter, nothing serious, not until the other night when I saw her bantering with Lios, and I called her a flirt, and worse, tried to kiss her.”

  “Uh oh,” Rhis said. “It made her mad?”

  “Worse. It hit us both like that storm this morning.” He clapped his hands. “Dazzle! I know better than to think dazzle is eternal, because it usually isn’t, but dazzle on top of laughter, and companionship, and—” He sighed. “Well, after that, she did get mad. And flung that Rastian in my teeth. And I called her a heartless flirt and stomped off.”

  “Oh.” Rhis now understood the crying.

  “And this morning I tried to talk to her—explain—apologize—and she wasn’t having any. Flung that ‘heartless flirt’ lightning-bolt right back at me, and added, it takes one to know one. So she dusted off, and here I am. What do I do now?” He turned away, a quick movement, and faced the window.

  “I don’t know,” Rhis said. “Let me think. Is that all right? I have even less experience than—well, anyone here.”

  Glaen sighed. His thin fingers trembled as he wiped aside his eternally drifting hair. “I guess it’s foolish to imagine you’d set all to rights with a few suggestions, like you did the other day, when Iardith almost hammered Carithe’s and Shera’s play. At least you aren’t telling me I’m worse than mud-slime.”

  “Nobody is mud-slime. Unless they want to be,” Rhis said, getting up. “And I don’t believe you want to be. I never thought it before, and I don’t now.” She sensed he might be regretting what he’d said, and she didn’t want him feeling any worse than he obviously did already. “Let me think. And if you want to talk again, well, I’m here.”

  “Thanks,” he said, his back still turned.

  Rhis let herself out of the room, and started down the hall. But when she reached the turning, just ahead walked a familiar figure—a male of medium height, long brown hair neatly tied back. A familiar figure dressed in the plain clothes of a scribe.

  Bang! Her heart thumped hard. Glad of her soft slippers and the deep carpet, she experienced a sudden, intense urge to be outside, to see how the garden had fared, whirled around and sped downstairs.

  Who cared about getting wet? No one in Nym—not if they ever wished to go outside at all, she thought, as she slipped out one of the arched access ways, and hastened along the flagged path toward the garden.

  Why didn’t she want to face Dandiar? Too many thoughts all yammering for her attention. Shera—Glaen—Lios—Iardith—Yuzhyu—even Taniva, and her odd attitude at breakfast.

  Dandiar. Why did it upset her so, to find him kissing Yuzhyu’s cheek? Whether that ‘brother and sister’ talk was true or not, Rhis could understand why Yuzhyu had come to see her about it—she didn’t want gossip. The thought that Dandiar was prowling this empty hall, maybe looking for her in order to get reassurance about Rhis not blabbing it around, made her tense with disgust. No, more than disgust, with anger.

  Why? She blinked rain from her eyelashes, rambling faster down the pathway as her thoughts galloped along. Dandiar. How much fun he was! And interesting. She liked him better than anyone else. Oh, he wasn’t handsome like Lios or that grim, tough Jarvas, or powerful and wealthy, like half-a-dozen others easily named, but he was so very much . . . himself. She’d never met anyone like him. She’d felt, without even knowing it, that she could talk to him forever, that she would search every corner of her mind for something interesting to say, just to see that sudden smile with the shadowy quirk at the corners of his mouth, and the way his eyebrows rose in a sort of rueful humor, like a silent sharing of a private joke, just between the two of them. She liked the way he’d looked so appreciatively at her the night of the masquerade, admiration making his gaze linger. Nobody else’s admiration made her feel outlined in light.

  For a moment she imagined bringing him home to Nym, to meet her mother and father. Her mother, who was not the least interested in rank, would like him at once. Silly! The kiss with Yuzhyu presented itself insistently to her inner eye, and the fact that if it wasn’t serious, then it had to be flirting. Had he been flirting with Rhis as well?

  Was I flirting, and I didn’t even know it? But it wasn’t at all like the flirting she saw around her, the fans, the sidled looks, the compliments and giggles and going off to be alone. Of course, flirting could take a lot of forms—she’d just learned that with Glaen. Even mock insult fights could be flirting.

  A quick step interrupted her thoughts. She looked up, her mind going absolutely blank when she discovered she was face to face with Dandiar himself.

  “I saw you from the window,” he said, pointing back over his shoulder.

  Rain made him blink, and he wiped a lock of hair from his brow. Had he been running?

  He smiled that funny smile she’d seen so many times, and couldn’t quite interpret. He was so expressive, and yet she couldn’t always tell what he was thinking. “Are you part water-bird?” he asked. “Half the times I’ve seen you have been out here in the rain.”

  “I like gardens,” she said, the words random. “We don’t have any in Nym. Not like this.”

  His smile disappeared, and that searching gaze replaced it. “Look,” he said. “What you saw at the lake. It’s not what you think. I don’t know what’s right, or if I ought to tell you—”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Rhis said, feeling that sick anger again. “I won’t blab to anyone. Never intended to. And I hate being asked not to,” she couldn’t help adding, though she felt hot and scratchy all over.

  His cheeks reddened, but he’d gone pale around the mouth. “That’s not it at all. Well, it is, but I never thought you’d say anything. I couldn’t believe you’d want to hurt poor Yuzhyu, who’s so blasted lonely here. It was a mistake for me to bring her, I know it now,” he went on quickly, his words no longer carefully considered, but tumbling out, almost too quick to comprehend. “Some have a talent for picking up languages, others don’t. I do, and I thought she would as well—”

  Rhis waved her hands. “Wait. Wait. You brought her? I don’t understand.”

  Dandiar grimaced, and looked down at his feet. Then up, straight into her eyes. “That’s what I’m trying so badly to tell you. Yuzhyu is my cousin.”

  Her body had turned to snow, but she ignored that, struggling grimly to understand. “You mean sh
e’s not a princess after all?”

  “Oh, she’s the heir to Ndai, all right.”

  “All right, let me get this straight. She’s your cousin. And a princess.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you brought her here, so . . . you wanted her to meet Lios?”

  “No.”

  “No? Then why—”

  Dandiar looked up at the clouds tumbling across the sky. “This is harder than I expected it would be. I—I thought it would be fun. I certainly liked being a scribe—”

  “Wait. Wait.” Rhis pressed her fingers against her head. “I wish this day hadn’t started so awry. You are cousins with Yuzhyu.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you brought her here.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not to meet Lios. But it’s fun to be a—you mean, you’re not a scribe?”

  “No.”

  “Then—who are you?”

  Dandiar said gently, “Can’t you guess?”

  “How should I—” Rhis began, but then the puzzle pieces began falling into place. Princess as a cousin—not a scribe—

  He was watching very closely indeed, for he said, “Go on.” As if she’d spoken.

  But she only looked up, unable to hide the sick feeling that replaced the confusion. “No.”

  “Yes,” he said, and let out his breath in a short huff. “Here’s the truth. I’m Lios. Lios Menelaes Dandiar Arvanosas if you want the whole name, as set out in treaty before I was even born.”

  Demo version limitation

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Gone?” Rhis repeated. “Jarvas? And Iardith?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes,” Taniva said, jerking her chin up and down each time.

  “Gone.” Rhis drew in a breath. “I’m sorry, but I’m very wet, and cold, and I think I’m dizzy.”

  She plumped down onto a hassock.

  Taniva scowled at the door leading to Shera’s rooms, which had opened. Shera’s maid whisked back and forth inside the room. How much had she heard? Taniva strode over in two long steps and slammed the door, then she stood with her back to it.