Diana had taught herself to close up the instant she began to think of-anything but what was safe to think of. "Poor Karolla," Diana repeated. "What do you think of Jeds, Dr. Kinzer?"
"I really did just arrive. The palace is nice-what I've seen of it."
Again they lapsed into silence, and into their silence a voice called out from the darkness. "Cara? Are you out here?" It was Tess Soerensen. "Marco and Javier just got in, can you believe it? And here I thought they'd get here first!" Then, fainter, her voice floated out as she evidently turned her head and spoke in a different direction. "Yes, Marco, the Company is still here. They can't leave until Veselov is able to travel." The voice grew louder, and Diana heard footsteps as well, more than one set. "He almost died twice on the voyage here, and then there's the baby, too, now."
"You still haven't told me," said Marco Burckhardt, his voice clear and carrying on the night air, "how Baron Santer reacted when you arrived with your escort of savages."
Diana felt her blood run cold. "I don't want to see him!" she whispered, suddenly frantic.
Dr. Hierakis's hand settled fleetingly on Diana's arm and then the doctor moved away from her. "Here I am!" Dr. Hierakis called out cheerfully enough. "And Melissa Kinzer has arrived as well. But let's do go inside. I'm sure Missy has had enough sea air for the day, and if you've been on a ship, Marco, I can't imagine you want to stare at whitecaps any longer either. Was Javier horribly seasick?"
"Horribly," said Marco, and laughed. "Who's that out there?"
"Oh, one of the serving girls, frightened that she's going to lose her employment here because her father wants her to marry some old goat. She's better off in the prince's service, and she knows it. Tess, let's take some tea up to Svetlana. She's still awake with the baby."
Their voices receded. Diana stood alone again on the battlements. The sea beat on the rocks below. She buried her face in her hands and managed by sheer force of will not to cry.
The days passed, and Diana stayed busy. She did not see Marco again.
The night they premiered "The Daughter of the Sun," all the actors were aware of an additional buzz in the audience. It was annoying, as if the audience had their attention half on the stage and half somewhere else. At the Royal Court Theater, it had become the tradition that the lead actress visit the prince's box at the intermission if the prince was in attendance.
"When the first Charles commissioned and built the theater," explained Baron Santer as he escorted Diana in all her makeup and costume up the steep flight of private back stairs that led to the royal box, "he insisted on the tradition." The baron was an elderly gentleman who looked mild and had the eyes of a shark. "Some say the better to view every beautiful actress who played here. He was quite a ladies man."
"You knew him?" Diana asked politely, and then recalled with a jolt that the first Charles had been Marco.
"I was a young man, and I had the honor of counting myself his friend." He surveyed Diana in the dim light, and for an instant such a light came into his eyes that Diana hoped she wouldn't have to do anything drastic, like shove him down the stairs. "He would have approved of you," he finished, as if he thought she cared about his approval.
"I'm sure he would have," she replied glacially.
The baron bowed. Then he led her on by a private door into the prince's box, where Tess Soerensen sat with the Baroness Santer, a woman considerably younger than her husband, and Niko and Juli. Aleksi and a young captain of the Jedan militia stood on guard.
"Diana," said Tess, but did not rise to greet her. She merely extended her hand, and Diana knew the part expected of her here. She curtsied deeply and kissed Tess's hand, on the signet ring.
"Your highness," she murmured and glanced up in time to catch a spark of humor in Tess's face.
There came a knock on the public door. "Ah," said the Prince of Jeds. Diana noted for the first time that Tess held in her other hand a folded square of paper. Perfume wafted from it, a sweet, rich scent. "Show her in."
The captain went to the door and opened it. Baron Santer raised his eyebrows, and the Baroness hid her mouth behind her fan.
A woman swept in. At once, Diana realized that she, Diana, had not done justice to her own entrance into the box. A moment later, she realized that the audience had turned its attention here, and that it must have been this woman all along with whom the actors were competing.
"Your highness," said the woman, curtsying even more deeply than Diana had and thus displaying a generous amount of white bosom from her low cut gown. She kissed the signet ring, and then promptly destroyed the illusion by lifting her head and smiling straight at Tess Soerensen, meeting her eyes.
"So you're Mayana," said Tess.
"So you're Tess," said the famous courtesan, for it was indeed she. Even Diana and the other actors had heard of her. She was a legend in Jeds, and now, this close, Diana could see that she was gorgeous, but more by self-assurance and ready laughter than from physical beauty.
"How do you know who I am?" Tess asked.
"Ilyakoria writes me letters, of course. Didn't he tell you?"
Tess laughed. "I had hoped to meet you sooner," she said, "but the affairs of state… Still, I'm not surprised to find you here, at the performance of this particular tale."
Mayana bowed her head in acknowledgment, as if the comment was somehow a tribute to her. She had hair more bronze than gold in color, perfectly curled, and whereas the box itself was decorated in a spare Florentine style, the courtesan's gown was simply cut but floridly ornamented in a manner reminiscent of jaran embroidery, and yet the contrast was not unflattering to Mayana.
"Come to see me at the palace," said the prince.
"Is that a command, your highness?"
Tess smiled. "No, I ask it as any woman might ask another, whom she hopes will become her friend."
Baron Santer coughed into his hand. Through the sheer, painted fan, Diana saw the Baroness smirking. Or maybe not, because at that instant Mayana cast a sidewise glance at the Baroness and the two women's eyes met in some kind of communication: Diana could not be sure what.
The private door opened. "I beg your pardon," said Yomi, sticking her head through. "But I've got to call places for the second act. Diana?"
Diana curtsied again and made her exit.
Eighteen days later they made their farewells at court. Tess Soerensen sat on her throne and received them formally. She spoke with each of them, most briefly, Owen and Ginny longest, and when Diana knelt before her, she bent to take Diana's hands in her own.
"I hope, Diana, that you will keep well. I'm sorry about Anatoly."
Diana kept her gaze fixed on the pillow on which she knelt, on the sleek ship painted on the fabric and the eagle rising, wings elevated and displayed, emblazoned on the ship's sail, the heraldic device of the Jedan princely line. She could not bear to look at Tess, who had made a choice so different from her own. Who had been able to.
Tess sighed and released her hands. "Good luck, Diana." And let her go.
They boarded a sloop at the harbor and set sail out into the bay on a calm winter morning. The actors crowded the rail, waving and calling out to their admirers, to their friends and lovers from the jaran who had come this far with them, to Tess and Dr. Hierakis and Jo Singh, who were staying behind. David and Maggie and Rajiv, who had his arm around Quinn, lined the rail as well. Diana held the baby for Karolla while she helped her husband drink some water. Vasil looked strangely frail, but he had movement in his legs again. Dr. Kinzer had gone with the others to the rail to watch the city recede from their sight. Even the children had gone to look, everyone except the man too weak to move from his pallet, the baby too young to understand, and the two women who refused to look back at what they were leaving behind.