Eluned watched with interest as their aunt swiftly let down and recoiled her butter-brown hair, settling it back into the heavy knot she liked to wear at the nape of her neck. Eluned’s own hair, kept short for convenience’s sake, was easily smoothed.
“In charge of digging automata?” Eleri asked, pursuing her own interests.
“Possibly,” Aunt Arianne said, as they returned outside to find Griff plumped down on the corridor floor sketching the view into the Gallery. “I’ll ask, if I do see him again.”
After Griff was persuaded to stand, the brightly interested page led them back into the Crossing Gallery, past the attentive guards, and onto a covered bridge, a short arch of pale stone.
“The Glass Channel,” the girl said, as they gazed down the lightly curving corridor formed by two rows of windows, the buildings of both islands deliberately constructed to mirror each other. “During winter the water freezes, and on some days at sunset the whole thing turns pink and red.”
A short, well-built man stepped onto the bridge from Aliden Island. “Danel, Her Highness will be waiting for her guests.”
Starting, the page fished a watch from inside the waistband of her shendy, and bit her lip. Although they’d arrived well ahead of their afternoon appointment purely so they could linger over their trip through the palace, they had somehow taken a long time seeing very little.
“This way, damini,” the man went on, and they followed him obediently down an arched corridor.
The royal residences were technically three separate buildings arranged in a triangle, but the residences of Sulevia Leoth and Sulevia Seolfor were joined together by the rooms that sat along the bank of the Glass Channel. The braided tower belonging to Sulevia Sceadu was more distinctly separate, its square base joined to the others only by covered walkways. Beyond the tower were trees, and ivy-covered walls, and in between the three residences were shrubs and massed flower beds, and a central pavilion that reminded Eluned distinctly of the roofless ruin at Hurlstone. It was in the pavilion that Princess Leodhild waited.
There were no covered walkways to this central point, so the page, Danel, handed Aunt Arianne her hat back. While her Aunt rearranged it, Eluned took several calming breaths. Although she had knelt before Cernunnos himself only a few days ago, that did not make it any less amazing to meet one of the three living avatars of Prytennia’s sun goddess. A week ago the idea of an informal chat with the Sulevia of the Song, commander of the triskelion, would have been outright unbelievable, but this had somehow become their life. Gods, vampires, royalty.
And yet, the princess didn’t seem like she was waiting for them at all. There was a table set in the middle of the pavilion, and the princess was intently studying wide sheets of paper spread all over it. When the sound of their approach caught her attention she looked up at them quite blankly. But then she smiled.
“I’ve forgotten my schedule,” she said. “Sit down, do, and let me look at you. Benric, send someone to clear away this mess and bring us something nice.”
Princess Leodhild’s grandfather had been Nubian, and she certainly lived up to the fabled vigour of that people. Eluned had rarely seen anyone more vibrantly alive, even though she was older than Aunt Arianne, with three children of her own. But, of course, she was a living avatar of Sulis herself, one of Three Who Are One.
Dismissing their attempts to bow to her, Princess Leodhild apologised instead for forgetting that Aunt Arianne might have difficulties with the location, and then Griff and Eleri got a look at what was on the table, and any hope of maintaining proper decorum was entirely lost.
“The vampire tunnels!” Griff crowed, and thrust head and shoulders over the table to study the diagram the princess had before her. “They are digging south of the river already!”
“Just survey digging,” the princess said, thankfully not affronted. “You think vampires are digging tunnels?”
“To get about during the day.”
“Not very cost-effective. A well-curtained carriage and a quick dash for the door have been working well enough for millennia. Tunnels would be an extravagance.”
Eleri, in the meantime, had drawn out one curling sheet that had been pushed toward the back of the table, and was studying it minutely. It was a flying machine, one quite unlike the lumbering dirigibles that ruled the skies. Eleri, being Eleri, found a pencil on the table and began making alterations.
“Your pardon, highness,” Aunt Arianne said. “I fear I overestimated this pair’s base level of courtesy.”
Her voice was as light as ever, but Griff straightened apologetically and Eleri at least glanced up.
Princess Leodhild waved an indifferent hand. “No matter: I rarely stand on ceremony. And I suspect them to merely be complimenting my character. You feel you have found a flaw in the design, youngling?”
“Only a suggestion.” Eleri put the pencil down, and then offered the sheet to the princess, as if being marked on a test.
Glancing down, Princess Leodhild said: “I’ll pass it on to Minister Trevelyan. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the feedback.”
There was no note of sarcasm to the words, and the princess saw them settled on cushioned seats before plying Eleri with questions about the process of adapting their grandfather’s old mannequin into an automaton. Griff immediately began to sketch the surrounding buildings, but Eluned hated to even look at the garden. Created by the Queen’s Consort, it was said to be an exquisite jewel, but currently shared with much of Prytennia a sadly wind-burned condition.
Peering instead at a small pile of new-looking books on the table, she found fearfully dull titles like The Principles of Ma’at and Prytennia’s Concept of Justice, and The Role of Auguries in Roman Decision-Making. There was one, Allegiance: Born, Territorial, Bestowed, Taken, that made her hand itch again, reminding her that Cernunnos now had a claim to her soul, but then a whole line of people arrived, and took the entire table away, replacing it with a fresh one that was rapidly filled with glasses of watermelon juice, and tiny sandwiches, cakes and ices, vivid and sweet and wonderfully cold on a hot summer afternoon.
Princess Leodhild kept them talking, asking questions about their parents, and their studies, and Forest House. She even knew about the visit from the dryw of the Order of the Oak, and what he’d said, though she shrugged off attempts to interpret the Speaking.
“Such a ridiculously vague collection of words. He might as well have recited his grocery list to you. There’s sure to be a great deal of fuss, but other than, perhaps, avoiding things with four eyes—or whatever you interpret a quartered glance as—I’d recommend just getting on with life. Put your energy to the task at hand rather than second-guessing the significance of anything so imprecise.”
“I fear it’s not our attitude that’s going to be the problem,” Aunt Arianne said.
“Yes. That storm will break today, which makes the timing of this meeting fortuitous, though it’s a pity Tanwen is away walking Nimelleth’s spine. But Our attitude will be positive, and it will give people something to talk of other than wind. And Egyptians.” Princess Leodhild shrugged, setting her curls bouncing. “The scrutiny may be uncomfortable, especially since you have such a romantic background. Do you paint or sculpt yourself?”
Aunt Arianne shook her head. “My parents gave me a great deal of training, but I had neither the talent nor the passion.”
During that first busy afternoon at Forest House, Eluned had heard her aunt answer almost the exact same way at least twice, and wondered how she managed to sound so unconcerned. Eluned could readily imagine the crawly little feeling of failure that would come each and every time she had to make the admission. At least Princess Leodhild didn’t respond with the flat ‘oh’ of those earlier questioners.