Chapter Eight
It was a day of considerable frustrations, odd as a Mazarin-cut diamond and just as unyielding: the sort of day where yellow sunlight is an insult, green grass a complaint, and gossamer white clouds a magnificent, endless irritation… or so it felt, at least, to the two people at the center of everyone’s concealed ploys and machinations (including, admittedly, their own). It was rather as though their lives were being written by dueling playwrights—and not terribly good ones, either, scribblers who ought to have known better than to ply their trade outside the provinces.
Consider the Princess Cerise—her pink tongue-tip poking out of the right-hand corner of her mouth, as it often did when she was concentrating on her writing—utterly alone on so beautiful a morning, sitting in the shelter of her private forest nook and unsure, for the first time in her life, if she was cut out for the royalty business.
Nothing was working.
Oh, things had gone well enough for the first breathless week or so, that much she had to admit. Prince Reginald was positively celestial, a moon, a comet, a star, and she had floated in his company as if carried aloft, gazing dreamily down at all Bellemontagne, so far below her.
Except for that one jarring moment with the exterminator, the breeze of their passage above the everyday world had been as sweet as the secret language of a lily… but oh that moment, and oh how it now tormented her. The Prince had been a perfect gentleman, of course: perfection was the essence of his nature. Yet looking back on the incident, she felt certain she had revealed something false within herself, a foolish childhood moment in which noblesse fell rather short of oblige. Though he had never said so—that would have been imperfect, and therefore impossible—she was certain this knowledge marred her in his sight.
How else to explain his careful distance? For two wonderful years, princes of every stripe and variety had come begging for so much as a nod from Cerise, let alone the gift of a perfumed favor, or the dizzying pleasure of her direct glance; and she had turned them all away. Now she stared deeply into the cobalt wonder of Reginald’s eyes, ready to pack her trunks and move in, just left of the twinkle, but found no entry there. She casually stroked his splendid forearms—not too often—by way of emphasis within certain turns of conversation, yet his voice never caught or quavered even the tiniest bit. She leaned her head against his shoulder as they stood together on the castle’s parapet, caught up in a particularly rapturous sunset, hoping the beauty of the moment might convey what she could not, only to have him smile and announce, “Pretty colors, those, don’t you think?”
To her fiercely straining senses, he might have been made of Venetian glass. She had withdrawn then, her cool “good evening” accepted with the same bland pleasantness as her morning-blossom “hello.”
That night she caught herself considering a modification to the necklines of all her best dresses, something midway between petite annonce and lowering a drawbridge. The enormity of her self-abandonment made her gasp; pink-cheeked and shaken, she promptly sent orders instructing her seamstress to stay home for three days, a ward against further temptation.
But in fact that precaution had proven unnecessary. From the very next morning, which was foul and rainy as her mood, straight through to dawn on this horribly perfect one, she had seen Prince Reginald hardly at all. Day after day, no matter how early she rose, the Prince and his valet were abroad earlier—off on some mysterious business that no one could politely ask after, and that they silently yet graciously refused to acknowledge on their ever-later returns. This was the subject of much gossip and speculation around the castle, a great deal of which Cerise knew included her. The only thing anyone understood for certain was that whatever the Crown Prince was up to, he always came back from it with dirt and tufts of grass marring his clothes, which Mortmain then stayed up half the night washing.
Cerise felt abandoned, adrift, ignored… and angry. This last was only a spark, as yet, and not yoked to any purpose. But still: anger. It was not an emotion she had ever needed to grow used to.
Fat lot of good being royal,she thought bitterly, if you can’t get your dream prince’s attention even when he’s standing right next to you.
Cerise considered the block of parchment in her lap with every bit of her usual concentration, but with a good deal more resentment than joy. The first half dozen or so sheets, written days earlier, were filled with carefully scribed names. She had begun with Princess Cerise of Corvinia, but that was too easy, and quickly became boring. After that she had alternated between Mrs. Crown Prince Reginald (which somehow didn’t look right) and Cerise, Princess of Bellemontagne, Countess of Corvinia (which looked better, but was too long and cramped her fingers). Then came two entire pages of plain Countess of Corvinia, notable for ever more elaborate capital Cs; a single doubtful, rather tremulous Queen Cerise; and finally—this morning’s production—an avalanche of increasingly ragged cursive that began What’s wrong with me?, veered briefly into What’s wrong with him!, and after a variety of fruitless explorations concluded I shall become a holy sister and devote my life to caring for lepers. Do we have any?
The last sheet in the block held only two words, the last still incomplete.
Father?
No.
And there it was, thuddingly unavoidable. She knew only one person who might possibly help her.
Cerise sighed, looking up through sycamore tangles at the infuriatingly tranquil sky. A day can lie in so many ways, she realized; for though the sun was shining, she now saw mother-shaped thunderclouds in every direction.
At that moment Prince Reginald was looking at the sky as well, but from a supine position. A supine position in the mud, to be absolutely exact, and still attempting to find the wind that had been driven out of him when empty air had so suddenly replaced his horse. He lay still and wheezed, and watched the little white clouds going around and around.
Mortmain smiled and called out, “Very good, my lord! That swing came much closer.”
“A… bit… overbalanced, though…” Reginald gasped. “Wouldn’t… you say?”
“By inches. Next time move your hands back on the hilt, and don’t lean forward.”
“Bloody hard… not to.” Reginald was finally moving to sit up. “Bloody blade carries you with it.” He shook his head, wiped the sweat-tangled hair from his eyes, then wiped again with his other hand to remove the mud he’d just streaked there. “I wish I could use my sidesword. I like my sidesword. Get in, get under, make the thrust, get out—that’s what we should do.”
Mortmain frowned. “According to Master Thrax, who has good reason to know, a Doppelh?nder is the only blade sufficient to the task. Anything smaller and you risk becoming your rakai’s high tea”—he had taken to using that phrase these last several days, your rakai, as if the beast were already penned and waiting—“an outcome I confess I do not favor explaining to your father.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “Or you could use a spear. He said a spear was safer.”
The Prince was now standing on both feet, though not at full height, as he leaned to one side and rubbed his lower back ruefully. “Never. Not with witnesses. Spears are for Sunday afternoon boar hunts. I’ll just have to get the hang of this, no matter how long it takes.” He looked down the open green of the clearing, to where his horse patiently waited at today’s charging point, then back at the dozen ragged straw bales that hung from tree limbs, as targets, at differing heights. One in particular had proven today’s devilment; he’d unseated himself three times attempting it.
“Did I really come close?”
“Yes. But even with an addled dragon, close is worse than missing altogether. Come. Let’s try again.”
Reginald picked up the huge sword—it took both hands and a sharp huff to lift it—and the two men walked back toward the Prince’s horse, who looked on as if privately amused.
“Tell me again that this plan will work, Mortmain. Tell me I’m not falling off my horse a dozen times a day for no reason.”
“My lord, I have thought for years that a deity of some sort watches devotedly over your fortunes.” He did not add that he suspected it of being the same deity assigned to protecting drunkards and stray dogs. “You could not have wished for a more fortuitous turn of events.”
“I certainly could have! I could have wished for a life where I had never heard the word ‘dragon’ and didn’t have princesses trailing after me every waking moment—”
“Astonishingly beautiful princesses,” Mortmain could not help interjecting.
“—and where I didn’t have my father bellowing at me night and day about growing up, facing my responsibilities, learning to be a man! Sending me off with you in hopes that that I’ll fight things and kill people, just the way he does—to sleep and eat and scratch fleabites with the people he wants me to rule.” The prince’s face twisted as harshly as it could, which wasn’t much; fine bones will out. “I don’t want the blasted crown—I don’t want anything he wants! Is that so very much to ask?”
“It is for the Prince of Corvinia,” Mortmain said gently. “Permission to speak freely, lord?”
Prince Reginald grunted and kept walking.
“Good fortune has brought you the exterminator, and all his knowledge and skills. With his help we will find and prepare a proper dragon. Kill it, and you will go home as much a hero as your father could demand. Marry the Princess in the bargain and you will also bring him, without bloodshed, a country he would be delighted to take under—ah—his well-known firmly benevolent supervision. A single dragon, a single princess—that is all you must endure, and I guarantee that you will never have to sleep in discomfort again, or fight with anybody, or put up with anything it does not please you to put up with.”
Reginald was silent the rest of the way, and while he reclaimed his horse and mounted. But as he fumbled for a moment with the reins and the Doppelh?nder and his saddle, trying to find the right combination of grip and balance, he finally muttered, “Did you see him, the exterminator, Mortmain, that first day? He handled this monster like a twig. I was certain it would be easy.” He took a deep, resigned breath, already apprehensive about the outcome of this new charge. “The fellow is stronger than he looks.”
“I think Master Thrax is a good many more things than he appears to be, my lord. Now. Again.”