“Fiorinda?” she called.
The warm contralto reply from the next room was immediate: “Coming, my lady!”
Varaile rose, stretched, saluted herself in the mirror on the far wall. She still slept naked, as though she were a girl; and, though she was past forty now and had borne the Coronal three sons and a daughter, she allowed herself the one petty vanity of taking pleasure in her ability to fend off the inroads of aging. No sorcerer’s spells did she employ for that: Prestimion had once expressed his loathing for such subterfuges, and in any case Varaile felt they were unnecessary, at least so far. She was a tall woman, long-thighed and lithe, and though she was strongly built, with full breasts and some considerable breadth at the waist, she had not grown at all fleshy with age. Her skin was smooth and taut; her hair remained jet-black and lustrous.
“Did milady rest well?” Fiorinda asked, entering.
“As well as could be expected, considering that I was sleeping alone.”
Fiorinda grinned. She was the wife of Teotas, Prestimion’s youngest brother, and each morning at dawn left her own marital bed so that she could be at the service of the Lady Varaile when Varaile awoke. But she seemed not to begrudge that, and Varaile was grateful for it. Fiorinda was like a sister to her, not a mere sister-in-law; and Varaile, who had had no sisters of her own nor brothers either, cherished their friendship.
They bathed together, as they did every morning in the great marble tub, big enough for six or eight people, that some past Coronal’s wife had found desirable to install in the royal chamber. Afterward Fiorinda, a small, trim woman with radiant auburn hair and an irreverent smile, threw a simple robe about herself so that she could help Varaile with her own costuming for the morning. “The pink sieronal, I think,” said Varaile, “and the golden difina from Alaisor.” Fiorinda fetched the trousers for her and the delicately embroidered blouse, and, without needing to be asked, brought also the vivid yellow sfifa that Varaile liked to drape down her bosom with that ensemble, and the wide red-and-tan belt of fine Makroposopos weave that was its companion. When Varaile was dressed Fiorinda resumed her own garments of the day, a turquoise vest and soft orange pantaloons.
“Is there news?” Varaile asked.
“Of the Coronal, milady?”
“Of anyone, anything!”
“Very little,” said Fiorinda. “The pack of sea-dragons that were seen last week off the Stoien coast are moving northward, toward Treymone.”
“Very odd, sea-dragons in those waters at that time of year. An omen, do you think?”
“I must tell you I am no believer in omens, milady.”
“Nor I, really. Nor is Prestimion. But what are the things doing there, Fiorinda?”
“Ah, how can we ever understand the minds of the sea-dragons, lady?—To continue: a delegation from Sisivondal arrived at the Castle late last night, to present some gifts for the Coronal’s museum.”
Varaile shuddered. “I was in Sisivondal once, long ago. A ghastly place, and I have ghastly memories of it. It was where the first Prince Ak-balik died of the poisoned swamp-crab bite he had had in the Stoienzar jungle. I’ll let someone else deal with the Sisivondal folk and their gifts.—Do you remember Prince Akbalik, Fiorinda? What a splendid man he was, calm, wise, very dear to Prestimion. I think he would have been Coronal someday, if he had lived. It was in the time of the campaign against the Procurator that he died.”
“I was only a child then, milady.”
“Yes. Of course. How foolish of me.” She shook her head. Time was flowing fiercely past them all. Here was Fiorinda, a grown woman, nearly thirty years old; and how little she knew of the troublesome commencement of Lord Prestimion’s reign, the rebellion of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail, and the plague of madness that had swept the world at the same time, and all the rest. Nor, of course, did she have any inkling of the tremendous civil war that had preceded those things, the struggle between Prestimion and the usurper Korsibar. No one knew of that tumultuous event except a chosen few members of the Coronal’s inner circle. All memory of it had been eradicated from everyone else by Prestimion’s master sorcerers, and just as well that it had. To Fiorinda, though, even the infamous Dantirya Sambail was simply someone out of the storybooks. He was a thing of fable to her, only.
As we all will be one day, thought Varaile with sudden gloom: mere things of fable.
“And other news?” she asked.
Fiorinda hesitated. It was only for an instant, but that was enough. Varaile saw through that little hesitation as if she were able to read Fiorinda’s mind.
There was other news, important news, and Fiorinda was concealing it.
“Yes?” Varaile urged. “Tell me.”
“Well—”
“Stop this, Fiorinda. Whatever it is, I want you to tell me right now.”
“Well—” Fiorinda moistened her lips. “A report has come from the Labyrinth—”
“Yes?”
“It signifies nothing in the slightest, I think.”
“Tell me!” Already the news was taking shape in Varaile’s own mind, and it was chilling. “The Pontifex?”
Fiorinda nodded forlornly. She could not meet Varaile’s steely gaze.
“Dead?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that, milady.”
“Then tell me!” cried Varaile, exasperated.
“A mild weakness of the leg and arm. The left leg, the left arm. He has summoned some mages.”
“A stroke, you mean? The Pontifex Confalume has had a stroke?”
Fiorinda closed her eyes a moment and drew several deep breaths. “It is not yet confirmed, milady. It is only a supposition.”
Varaile felt a burning sensation at her own temples, and a spasm of dizziness swept over her. She controlled herself with difficulty, forcing herself back to calmness.
It is not yet confirmed, she told herself.
It is only a supposition.
Coolly she said, “You tell me about sea-dragons off the far coast, and an insignificant delegation from an unimportant city in the middle of nowhere, and you suppress the news of Confalume’s stroke so that I need to pull it out of you? Do you think I’m a child, Fiorinda, who has to have bad news kept from her like that?”
Fiorinda seemed close to tears. “Milady, as I said a moment ago, it is not yet known as a certainty that it was a stroke.”
“The Pontifex is well past eighty. More likely past ninety, for all I know. Anything that has him summoning his mages is bad news. What if he dies? You know what will happen then.—Where did you hear this, anyway?”
More and more flustered, Fiorinda said, “My lord Teotas had it from the Pontifical delegate to the Castle late last night, and told me of it this morning as I was setting out to come to you. He will discuss it with you himself after you’ve breakfasted, just before your meeting with the royal ministers.—My lord Teotas urged me not to thrust all this on you too quickly, because he emphasizes that it is truly not as serious a matter as it sounds, that the Pontifex is generally in good health and is not deemed to be in any danger, that he—”
“And sea-dragons off the Stoien coast are more important, anyway,” Varaile said acidly. “Has a messenger been sent to the Coronal?”
“I don’t know, milady,” said Fiorinda in a helpless voice.