“You will have business with Pannoval today,” she said.
“I have to consort with a set of pompous asses, and all the while my history is not getting written.” Then he caught himself and laughed sharply. “My pardon, ma’am, I meant to say merely that I do not reckon Prince Taynth Indredd of Pannoval a great friend of Borlien…”
She sometimes had a slow way of smiling as if she was reluctant to be amused, which started at her eyes, included her nose, and then worked about the curves of her lips.
“We’d agree on that. Borlien lacks great friends at present.”
“Admit it, Rushven, your history will never be finished,” said YeferalOboral, the queen’s brother, using an old nickname. “It simply gives you an excuse to sleep all afternoon.”
The chancellor sighed; the queen’s brother had not his sister’s brains. He said severely, “If you stopped kicking your heels about the court, you could set up an expedition and sail around the world. How that would add to our knowledge!”
“I wish that Robayday had done some such thing,” said MyrdemInggala. “Who knows where the lad is now?”
SartoriIrvrash was not going to waste sympathy on the queen’s son. “I made one new discovery yesterday,” he said. “Do you wish to hear of it or not? Will I bore you? Will the mere sound of such botherations of knowledge cause you to jump from the ramparts?”
The queen laughed her silvery laugh and held his hand. “Come, Yef and I are no dolts. What’s the discovery? Is the world getting colder?”
Ignoring this facetiousness, SartoriIrvrash asked, frowning, “What colour is a hoxney?”
“I know that,” cried the young princess. They’re brown. Everyone knows hoxneys are brown.”
Grunting, SartoriIrvrash lifted her up into his arms. “And what colour were hoxneys yesterday?”
“Brown, of course.”
“And the day before that?”
“Brown, you silly Rushven.”
“Correct, you wise little princess. But if that is the case, then why are hoxneys depicted as being striped in two brilliant colours in the illuminations in ancient chronicles?”
He had to answer his own question. “That is what I asked my friend Bardol CaraBansity down in Ottassol. He flayed a hoxney and examined its skin. And what has he discovered? Why, that a hoxney is not a brown animal as we all believe. It is a brown-striped animal, with brown stripes on a brown background.”
Tatro laughed. “You’re teasing us. If it’s brown and brown, then it’s brown, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no. The lie of the coat shows that a hoxney is not a plain brown animal. It consists of brown stripes. What possible point could there be to that?
“Well, I have hit upon the answer, and you will see how clever I am. Hoxneys were once striped in brilliant stripes, just as the chronicles show. When was that? Why, in the spring of the Great Year, when suitable grazing was available again. Then the hoxneys needed to multiply as rapidly as possible. So they put on their most brilliant sexual display. Nowadays, centuries later, hoxneys are well established everywhere. They don’t need to breed exponentially, so mating display is out. The stripes are dulled down to neutral brown—until the spring of the next Great Year calls them out again.”
The queen made a moue. “If there is another Great Year spring, and we don’t all tumble into Freyr.”
SartoriIrvrash clapped his hands pettishly together. “But don’t you see, this—this adaptive geometry of the hoxneian species is a guarantee that we don’t tumble into Freyr—that it comes near every great summer, and then again recedes?”
“We’re not hoxneys,” said YeferalOboral, gesturing dismissively.
“Your Majesty,” said the chancellor, addressing himself earnestly to the queen, “my discovery also shows that old manuscripts can often be trusted more than we think. You know the king your husband and I are at odds. Intercede for me, I pray. Let a ship be commissioned. Let me be allowed two years away from my duties to sail about the world, collecting manuscripts. Let me make Borlien a centre of learning, as it once was in the days of YarapRombry of Keevasien. Now my wife is dead, there’s little to keep me here, except your fair presence.”
A shadow passed over her face.
“There is a crisis in the king, I feel it. His wound has healed in his flesh but not in his mind. Leave your thought with me, Rushven, and let it wait until this anxious meeting with the Pannovalans is over. I fear what is in store.”
The queen smiled at the old man with considerable warmth. She easily endured his irritability, for she understood its source. He was not entirely good—indeed, she considered some of his experiments pure wickedness, especially the experiment in which his wife was killed. But who was entirely good? SartoriIrvrash’s relationship with the king was a difficult one, and she often tried, as now, to protect him from JandolAnganol’s anger.
Endeavouring to deliver him from his own blindness, she added gently, “Since the incident in the Cosgatt, I have to be careful with his majesty.”
Tatro tugged SartoriIrvrash’s whiskers. “You mustn’t go sailing at your age, Rushven.”
He set her down on the ground and saluted her. “We may all have to make unexpected journeys before we are finished, my dear little Tatro.”
As on most mornings, MyrdemInggala and her brother walked along the western ramparts of the palace and gazed out over the city. This morning, the mists that little winter usually brought were absent. The city lay clear below them.
The ancient stronghold stood on a cliff looming over the town, in a deep curve of the Takissa. Slightly towards the north, the Valvoral gleamed where it joined the greater river. Tatro never tired of looking down at the people in the streets or on the river craft.
The infant princess extended a finger towards the wharfs and cried, “Look, ice coming, Moth!”
A fore- and aft-rigged sloop was moored by the quayside. Its hatches had recently been opened, for steam poured forth into the air. Carts were drawn up alongside the ship, and blocks of finest Lordryardry ice gleamed for a moment in the sun as they were swung from the hold into the waiting vehicles. As ever, the delivery was on time, and the palace with its guests would be awaiting it.
The ice carts would come rumbling up the castle road, winding as the road wound, with four oxen straining at the shafts, to gain the fortress which stood out like a ship of stone from its cliffs.
Tatro wanted to stand and watch the ice carts come all the way up the hill, but the queen was short of patience this morning. She stood slightly apart from her child, looking about her with an abstracted air.
JandolAnganol had come at dawn and embraced her. She sensed that he was uneasy. Pannoval loomed. To make matters worse, bad news was coming from the Second Army in Randonan. It was always bad news from Randonan.
“You can listen to the day’s discussion from the private gallery,” he said, “if it won’t bore you. Pray for me, Cune.”
“I always pray for you. The All-Powerful will be with you.”
He shook his head patiently. “Why isn’t life simple? Why doesn’t the faith make it simple?” His hand went to the long scar on his leg.
“We’re safe while we’re here together, Jan.”
He kissed her. “I should be with my army. Then we’d see some victories. TolramKetinet is useless as a general.”
There’s nothing between the general and me, she thought—yet he knows there is…
He had left her. As soon as he was gone, she felt gloomy. A chill had fallen over him of late. Her own position was threatened. Without thinking, she linked her arm through her brother’s as they stood on the ramparts.