Griff tucked himself into Eluned’s side. Recognising this reaction, she looked about, and spotted the cause in the arms of a tall boy leading three girls from one of the residences.
Although Eluned had only ever seen a few grainy and distant photographs of them in the newspapers, it was impossible not to recognise these newcomers: Princess Leodhild’s three children, and Queen Tanwen’s younger daughter, Princess Celestine.
“Sorry, mother,” the boy said. “I don’t think this can wait.”
Prince Luc was a rarity: a son of one of the Suleviae, born before Princess Leodhild had ascended. He was thin, had skin, hair and eyes in similar tones of light brown, and was said to be a very quiet person. The animal he carried was far more distinctive: a puppy, white all over except for long, silky red ears.
“Has Arawn been visiting?” Princess Leodhild asked, but she frowned as she joked, for the King of the Dead came to the living world only in times of great need, or to hunt the spirits of the lingering dead. And it would be a remarkable thing, a doom-tiding, to leave one of his hounds, the Cŵn Annwn, behind.
“It was one of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, Mother,” said the tallest of the girls. This would be Princess Iona, who had her mother’s generous tumble of curls. “Walked in on us from nowhere, and said this was a birthday present for Cele.”
“And I would like him back, if you please,” said the next-tallest girl, whose hair was very long and straight and dark. “Luc, you had no right to take him.”
Eluned had to work very hard not to stare impolitely, for Princess Celestine was reputedly the daughter of a dragon, and thus naturally the most interesting person who could possibly interrupt afternoon tea. The history behind her birth was one of Prytennia’s greatest love stories—or grandest hoaxes.
“Named him Falinis, too,” Princess Iona said. “Have we done something to upset the Tuatha Dé?”
Princess Leodhild held out her arms, and Prince Luc handed the puppy over. The animal, obviously still very young, tolerated the transfer placidly, and briefly raised his slender head to consider his new custodian.
“A fortnight ago an Alban-bound airship was caught by the windstorms and blown right over Danuin’s mist wall,” Princess Leodhild said. “This may well be a pointed comment.”
“Showing that they can easily reach us, if we repeat the error?” Princess Iona stretched out her hand to allow the puppy to scent the back of her fingers, which he did with a grave dignity. “May I have permission to carry a weapon to lessons?”
“Not in this century,” Princess Leodhild said, then added: “Dimity!”
I‑i‑EE!
A whirling pinwheel of blue and white popped into existence, and Eluned cast a brief, delighted glance at Eleri, then drank in this up-close encounter with the most famed of the Suleviae’s creatures. The triskelion were completely Otherworldly, lacking mouths, or eyes, or anything but their wings. Their name meant ‘three legged’, for during pitched battle they had been known to roll along the ground. This one was tiny, its ‘voice’—a sound generated by its spinning—high and bright.
“Ask Mi Jiang if he would please come here,” Princess Leodhild said.
I‑i‑EE! the triskelion hummed, and vanished.
“Sorry for crashing in, incidentally, and towering all over the place,” Princess Iona said, snagging a marzipan-iced cake as she turned to examine her mother’s guests. “Everyone, let’s sit down. I’m Iona, but you probably guessed that.”
Princess Leodhild tsked. “Execrable child. But this is someone I should introduce you to anyway: Dama Arianne Seaforth, the new Keeper of the Deep Grove.”
Princess Iona had bitten off half of her cake, and swallowed it in an unwieldy gulp. “You’re Comfrey’s accident?”
“Our connection certainly wasn’t deliberate,” Aunt Arianne said. “These are my nieces, Eluned and Eleri. I’d introduce my nephew, Griff, as well, but he seems to have escaped with most impressive speed.”
Horrified, Eluned looked about, but it was true. Griff was gone.
FOURTEEN
“Shy around strangers?” Princess Iona asked.
“I suspect it’s the puppy.” Aunt Arianne was matter-of-fact.
Straightening indignantly, Princess Celestine said: “How could anyone be afraid of something as tiny as Falinis?”
“Tiny?” Princess Iona selected another sweet treat and gestured with it toward her mother and the docile puppy. “Look at the size of those paws. He’s going to be enormous. And that’s not even counting his death-hound colouring, and being named for…what was it Luc? High King Lugh’s invincible hunting hound? The nephew’s got good sense, keeping clear.”
“He doesn’t like animals,” Eluned said, uncomfortably. “He never has, ever since he was a baby.”
“Bitten by something?” Princess Iona slowed her cake consumption in order to make a long study of Eluned’s right arm.
Princess Leodhild gave her eldest daughter a quelling look, then said: “Toroco!”
A second triskelion, this one red and gold and perhaps a handbreadth larger, popped into being. O‑o‑O!
“Round up a stray boy-child,” Princess Leodhild said. “Match this hair colour.”
She nodded at Aunt Arianne, who sat very still as the triskelion—its movements very like a hummingbird—darted toward her, bringing with it a wave of warmth. The triskelion were true creatures of the sun, and the mere presence of the largest could inflict terrible burns. Even the small ones were not something you wanted near your hair.
Then it was gone, trailing its song as it whirled across the gardens, and passing on its way its blue and white fellow leading a tall, thin man who could be none other than the Queen’s Consort, Mi Jiang.
His was a famous story. In the earliest days of airship travel, before she became Sulevia Seolfor and Queen, Tanwen Gwyn Lynn had led the crew of the Palthas on a grand flight all the way around the world, to prove that it was possible. The Palthas had flown close to the Dragon Empire of Yue—a realm like Danuin surrounded by walls to prevent trespass, although Yue used light instead of mist. A flight of young Yue dragons had met and briefly escorted the airship, and one of them had seen then-Princess Tanwen and loved her from that moment.
Eluned had enjoyed several rather fanciful books about Prince Jiang’s quest to find out who his love was, the many years it had taken to win his father’s permission to follow her, and the astonishment felt by all Prytennia when it had received an embassy from such a fabled and magnificent land, presenting the now-Queen with one of the sons of the Emperor of Yue, as a gift.
Had the Tuatha Dé been deliberately echoing this story, giving Princess Celestine a pup with a famous name and exceedingly unlucky colouring? For, while Queen Tanwen had accepted Mi Jiang as a guest, and eventually taken him as a lover, he had never shown any sign of being a dragon. Some said that his father had forbidden him his true shape as the price for pursuing his heart, but there had long been talk that the ‘gift’ was instead an elaborate insult, vengeance for an airship flying too close to well-guarded borders. That the Emperor of Yue had sent not his son, but his gardener.
Eluned couldn’t guess what the truth was, or even if Queen Tanwen cared either way, for Prince Jiang was an extraordinarily beautiful man: elegant, dark eyed, with a fall of silken blue-black hair that he had passed on to his daughter. And such ineffable presence, as he stepped into the pavilion and inclined his head to Princess Leodhild, that Eluned wished desperately to have never heard such phrases as ‘Hoozie Fake’, and the other even less nice things said about the Queen’s consort.