And, whatever the truth of it was, she was glad to be spared the closest proximity of the crowd. Then the woman ahead of her stepped forward, and Lissar stood next in line, and the prince saw Ash.
He straightened up in his chair then, and she saw that he was tall; she also saw that he was capable of enthusiasm, and not so sluggish as she would first have guessed. His eyes brightened, and he shoved his hair back from his forehead. He was paying no attention whatsoever to the woman now telling her story.
With his motion, two long narrow heads rose from behind his chair; or rather, the one she had already noticed rose as the dog sat up, and a second head appeared around the shoulder of the first. One was fawn-colored, a little more golden than the silvery Ash; the other was brindle, with a white streak over its muzzle, continuing down its chin, throat and chest. The two looked first in response to their master's interest, and then they, too, saw Ash. Ash went rigid under Lissar's hand.
The king and queen said something to the woman before them, and she bowed, slowly and deeply, and made her way to the door all the supplicants left by, different from the one they had entered, a smaller and simpler door, as if exiting was a much easier, less complex and less dangerous matter than was the feat of going in in the first place. It was Lissar's turn, and she had heard nothing of what had just occurred between the woman next to her in line and the king and queen, for she had been distracted by the prince and his dogs. Now she had to go forward without the reassurance of seeing someone else do it first. She walked forward.
The prince's eyes were on her dog, the king's on her dress, and the queen's on her feet. She did not notice where the handsome young man's eyes rested, or the princess's, or if perhaps they might have found her too dismaying an object to look at straight at all. Her bare feet were silent on the glossy floors, against which even the softest shoes were liable to tap or click; Ash's nails were well worn down from the many leagues she had travelled with her person, and so she too made no sound.
Lissar felt that the whole court had fallen silent though she knew this was not true; but a little bubble of silence did enclose the dais. The two dogs rose fully to their feet and came to stand by the prince's chair; an almost negligent wave of his big square hand, however, and they stopped where they were, although their tails and ears were up. Ash was Lissar's shadow, and she stopped when Lissar stopped, but Lissar kept her hand on her shoulder, just to reinforce her position. She bowed, still touching her dog.
"Welcome to the yellow city," said the king in a friendly voice. "I say welcome, for I have not seen you before, and I like to think that I see most of my subjects more than once in their lifetimes. New you are at least to this our city, I think."
"Yes, your greatness, and to your country as well; and so I thank you for your greeting." Lissar hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. "I-I was told that you would hear anyone who presented herself to you. I-have little to present. But I-think I would like to stay here, if I could, and so I need work."
"What can you do?" said the prince, not unkindly. The handsome young man laughed, just a little, gently, and at that moment Lissar decided she disliked him. Her eyes moved in his direction and she noticed the princess sitting straitly on her bench, and thought that for the moment she did not look poised, but stiff, as if her backbone had turned to iron. She thought, The princess does not like the handsome young Cum of Dorl either: but what does she think of her brother?
She looked at the prince as she answered honestly: "I do not know what I can do." She did not know what inspired her to add: "But I like dogs."
"Where is yours from?" said the prince. "If it were not for her long coat, I would say she is a line of my breeding."
"Ossin," said the king.
The prince smiled, unabashed, and shrugged, as if to say that a dog was a dog and he could not help himself. The Cum of Dorl made a little, catlike wriggle in his chair, and for a moment his beautiful profile presented itself to Lissar, and out of the corner of her eye she caught the curl of his lip; but she remained facing the prince.
The humor faded from Ossin's face and now she realized that he looked tired and sad, and that the droop of his shoulders as he slumped forward again was of a weary burden. He said softly, "One of my best bitches died this morning. She left a litter of puppies a few hours old. The pups haven't a hope unless they are nursed most carefully; they probably haven't a hope even with nursing, but I dislike giving up without a struggle-and their mother was a very special dog. There are eight of them. If any survive it will have been worth almost any price to me. Would you care to play wet-nurse? It will be disgusting work, you know; they'll be sick at both ends right up through weaning time, most likely, if any should live so long, and you won't get much sleep at first."
"I will do it," said Lissar, "but you will have to teach me how."
TWENTY
THAT WAS THE END OF HER AUDIENCE; SHE BOWED, AND IF SHE did not include the Cum in her courtesy, she doubted that anyone noticed but herself.
The prince spoke a few words to a servant, who came to Lissar, bowed himself, and said, "If the lady will follow me." Lissar thought to bow again to the dais because the servant did; somewhere she recalled that one always bows last thing before leaving the royal presence, even if one has already bowed several times previously.
Somehow she remembered this from the wrong angle, as if she were sitting on the dais.... She followed the servant, leaning a little on Ash as a brief wash of dizziness assailed her.
The servant led her to a small antechamber off a vast hall similar to the one she had entered by. She sat down when the man bowed her to a chair, but she was not comfortable, and as soon as he left the room she stood up again, and paced back and forth. Ash remained sitting next to the chair with her chin propped on its seat but she kept an eye and an ear toward Lissar. Lissar was thinking, I have been in the wilds too long, this great building oppresses me. Why do I remember sitting while someone bows to me? I am an herbalist's apprentice-an herbalist's apprentice who has lost most of her memory to a fever she was not clever enough to cure herself of.
And yet her own thought rang strangely in her head, for a voice very like the one that had spoken to her on the mountain, the voice that had left her without guidance since she and Ash had come down from the wild lands, said, It is not that you have been in the wilderness too long. But this brought her no comfort; instead she felt angry, that she was permitted to understand so little; that even her own mind and memory spoke warily, behind barricades, to each other, without trust; that her guiding voice was not to be relied on, but spoke like an oracle, in riddles that she must spend her time and thought to unravel, to little effect.
She began to feel caged, began to feel that there was something searching for her; perhaps the creature whose gullet led to the royal receiving-room would tear itself free of its bondage and come looking for her. She heard a distant rumble like roaring, she heard a swift panting breath.