Sithelle scrambled swiftly up the narrow stone steps of the tower, leaving him well behind. She was a slim, leggy girl, enormously quick and agile. Dekkeret, following her, climbed in a more plodding way. His limbs were relatively short in proportion to his solid, massive torso, and he usually found it wisest to move carefully and unhurriedly.
When he joined her, she was holding the rail and peering out at nothing in particular. Dekkeret stood close beside her. The air was clear and cool and sweet, with just a taste of the light rain that would be coming, as it did every day, later in the evening. He let his eyes rove upward, up to where he imagined the Castle lay, clinging to the highest crags of the Mount, miles overhead and invisible from here.
“I hear the new Coronal’s going to pay us a visit soon,” he said, after a bit.
“What? A grand processional already? I thought Coronals didn’t do that until they’d been on the throne at least two or three years.”
“Not a full processional, no. Just a brief visit to some of the Mount cities. My father said so. He hears a lot of news as he travels around.”
Sithelle turned toward him. Her eyes were glowing. “Oh, if only he would! To see an actual Coronal—!”
Her breathless eagerness bothered him. “I saw Lord Confalume once, you know.”
“You did?”
“In Bombifale, when I was nine. I was there with my father, and the Coronal was a guest at Admiral Gonivaul’s estate. I watched them come riding out together in a big floater. You can’t mistake Gonivaul—he’s got a great shaggy beard all over his face and nothing shows through it but his eyes and his nose. And there was Lord Confalume sitting next to him—oh, he was splendid! Radiant. He was in his prime, then. You could practically see light streaming from him. As they went past I waved to him, and he waved back, and smiled, such an easy calm smile, as if to tell me how much he loved being Coronal. Later that day my father brought me to Bombifale Palace, where Lord Confalume was holding court, and he smiled at me again, by way of saying to me that he recognized me from seeing me before. It was an extraordinary sensation just to be in his presence, to feel the strength of him, the goodness. It was one of the great moments of my life.”
“Was Prestimion there?” Sithelle asked.
“Prestimion? With the Coronal, you mean? Oh, no, no, Sithelle. This was nine years ago. Prestimion wasn’t anybody important then, just one of the young princes of Castle Mount, and there are plenty of those. His rise to the top came much later. But Confalume—ah, Confalume! What a wonderful man. Prestimion will have a lot to live up to, now that he’s Coronal.”
“And do you think he will?”
“Who can say? At least everyone agrees that he’s bright and energetic. But time will tell.” The sun was gone now. A few sprinkles of rain were beginning to fall, hours before the customary time. Dekkeret offered her his jacket, but she shook her head. They began to descend from the watch-tower.—"If Prestimion’s really coming to Normork, Sithelle, I’m going to make every effort to meet him. Personally, I mean. I want to speak with him.”
“Well, then, just walk right up to him and tell him who you are. He’ll invite you to sit right down and have a flask of wine with him.”
Her sarcasm bothered him. “I mean it,” he said. The rain already seemed to be giving out, after having pattered for just a moment or two. It had left a pleasant touch of fragrance in the air. They continued on their westward route along the black spine of the wall. “You can’t suppose that I want to spend the rest of my life in Normork, working at my father’s trade.”
“Would that be so awful? I can think of worse things.”
“No doubt you can. But it’s my plan to become a Castle knight and rise to a high government position.”
“Of course. And become Coronal some day, I suppose?”
“Why not?” Dekkeret said. She was being very annoying. “Anyone can be.”
“Anyone?”
“If he’s good enough.”
“And has the right family connections,” said Sithelle. “Commoners don’t usually get chosen for the throne.”
“But they can be,” Dekkeret said. “You know, Sithelle, it’s possible for anybody at all to get to the top. You just have to be chosen by the outgoing Coronal, and nothing says he absolutely has to choose someone from among the Castle nobility if he doesn’t want to. And what’s a nobleman, anyway, if not the descendant of some commoner of long ago? It isn’t as though the aristocracy is a separate species.—Listen, Sithelle, I’m not saying that I expect to be Coronal, or even that I want to be Coronal! The Coronal thing was your idea. I simply want to be something more than a small-scale merchant who’s required to spend his entire life wearily traveling up and down the Mount from one city to the next peddling his wares to indifferent customers, most of whom treat him like dirt. Not that there’s anything disgraceful about being a traveling merchant, I mean, but I can’t help thinking that a life of public service would be ever so much—”
“All right, Dekkeret. I’m sorry I teased you. But please stop making speeches at me.” She touched the tips of her fingers to her temples. “You’re giving me a headache, now.”
His irritability vanished instantly. “Am I?—You complained of a headache yesterday, too. And I wasn’t making speeches then.”
“Actually,” said Sithelle, “I’ve been having headaches a lot of the time, the last couple of weeks. Terrible pounding ones, some of them are. I’ve never had that problem before:”
“Have you seen anyone for it? A doctor? A dream-speaker?”
“Not yet. But it worries me. Some of my friends have been having them, too.—What about you, Dekkeret?”
“Headaches? Not that I’ve noticed.”
“If you haven’t noticed, you aren’t having them.”
They came to the broad stone staircase that led downward from the top of the wall into Melikand Plaza, the gateway to Old Town. The city here was a warren of ancient narrow streets paved with oily-looking gray-green cobblestones. Dekkeret much preferred the broad curving boulevards of the New City, but he had always thought of Old Town as quaint and picturesque. Tonight, though, it seemed oddly sinister to him, even repellent.
He said, “No headaches, no. But I have had some odd moments now and then, of late.” He groped for words. “How can I express this, Sithelle? It’s like I feel that there’s something very important hovering right at the edge of my memory, something that I need to think about and deal with, but I can’t get a handle on what it is. My head starts to spin a little whenever that happens. Sometimes it spins a lot. I wouldn’t call it a headache, though. More like dizziness.”
“Strange,” she said. “I get that same feeling, sometimes. Of something that’s missing, something that I want to find, but I don’t know where to look for it. It gets to be very bothersome. You know what I mean?”
“Yes. I think I do.”
They paused at the parting of their roads. Sithelle gave him a warm smile. She took his hand in hers. “I hope you get to see Lord Prestimion when he comes here, Dekkeret, and that he makes you a knight of the Castle.”
“Do you mean that?”
She blinked. “Why wouldn’t I mean it?”
“In that case, thank you. If I do get to meet him, do you want me to tell him about my beautiful cousin who’s somewhat too tall for him? Or shouldn’t I bother?”
“I was trying to be nice,” Sithelle said ruefully, letting go of his hand. “But you don’t know how to do that, do you?” She stuck her tongue out at him and went sprinting away into the tangle of little streets that lay before them.