The Sword (35 page)

“Where young ladies of wealthy or important background are sent to learn manners, etiquette, and how to sit with perfect, regal posture. To ‘finish' their training in manners and deportment. Naturally, I never went,” she added wryly, stretching her arms and back. A quick lean forward and peek through the milling, murmuring courtiers that were really small glass marbles, and she dug her fingers into her scalp, freeing the crown and scratching with great relief at her head, mussing her hair. “Boy, am I glad I only decided to do this when visitors drop by!”

“And on weekends, and ‘holidays,' whatever those are,” Saber added, teasing her.

“When this is over, we'll
need
a holiday. I hope Dominor can handle this part,” she sighed. “That Lord Aragol doesn't look like he cares for biting his tongue in the presence of a woman with more rank than him.” Kelly frowned thoughtfully. “I wonder what caused this cultural attitude of his, to have such arrogant antipathy toward women.”

“
I
wonder when this Disaster will be over with, so I can carry you back up to our room,” Saber muttered. “Curse or no Curse, no man should have to be so constantly interrupted on his honeymoon.”

His wife flashed him a smile as she stood and stretched. “Poor baby.”

Only the more sophisticated illusions appeared to notice the consort hauling the queen onto his lap and giving her a heated kiss. The rest continued chatting superficially with each other, as they were enspelled to do.

I
s it true that the woman who claims to lead you has no magic?” Sir Eduor asked Dominor.

Dominor slanted his blue eyes toward the younger man, nineteen at most and too young to sport any serious facial hair; his brother looked to be about twenty-two, five years younger than Dominor, with a mustache and the beginnings of sideburns and beard, and the father was clearly in his mid-forties, currently the last to use the refreshing room. Dominor wasn't very impressed with them. “She leads us in truth; she does not
claim
to lead us. Be careful how you phrase things, young one. Her Majesty might take offense, and you would not like the consequences of her displeasure.”

His brother, Sir Kennal, snorted. “If she has no magic, then there is nothing to fear from her.”

Smiling to himself, Dominor wished he could convince his sister-in-law to teach him that “dirt-eating” move of hers; here was an arrogant young cuss in need of a little soil-tasting. “Then you are a fool. Magic and gender have nothing to do with power. But tell me,” he continued smoothly, “in the interest of getting to know each other more, why did you assume our queen has magical power?”

“Because magic flows through the veins of women,” the elder son pointed out, as if it were an obvious fact.

Dominor arched a brow. “Only through the veins of women?”

“Of course!” Eduor asserted. “Except for the rare, blessed man born with a drop of it in his blood, but that is less than one in a hundred thousand men.”

Kennal eyed Dominor, as the door to the refreshing room opened and his father came out. “You seem surprised by this fact, Lord Chancellor.”

“Of course I do. All of the inhabitants of Nightfall use magic, regardless of gender; even those who do not possess the gift use the magics of others in their everyday lives,” Dominor stated truthfully. Since Kelly could use a scrying mirror that was activated for her, and had been given a dagger that was enspelled to come when she called it, it was the absolute truth. “It is the same in the empire of Katan.

“I myself am the third most powerful mage on the whole of Nightfall Island, and rank well among the highest on the mainland of Katan, which has tens of thousands of mages among its one-million-plus inhabitants. But then both my mother
and
my father had magery in their veins.”

“You are a mage?” Lord Aragol asked, hazel eyes sharpening with interest as he studied the Lord Chancellor standing before him. “A very powerful one, compared to the rest of your people? How strong is your magic, exactly?”

“Why do you ask?” Dominor inquired, arching his brow again.

The earl lifted his goatee-covered chin. “The Independence of Mandare could always use strongly gifted men in its fight against the tyranny of Natallian women and their immoral witchery. If you or any of the other magically gifted men of Nightfall come back with us, we can not only finish securing our borders through our war machines, but expand them greatly with the aid of your magical powers, and claim what is rightfully ours: dominion over Natallia. Any magically gifted man who came with us and aided us would automatically become a great lord and gain equally great land and wealth for his service.”

“I serve Nightfall Isle,” Dominor reminded the man, carefully hiding his offense at the suggestion; he was arrogant, not misogynistic. Still, leaving an opening for gaining more knowledge about these people later on, he amended diplomatically, “But I will keep your words in mind. Come, let me show you the southwestern gardens; they contain a number of rare plants that are quite interesting to behold.”

 

S
trolling with Saber and nodding cordially to their “subjects”—a handful of illusory courtiers and a pair of gardeners—Kelly spotted the quartet of real bodies standing near one of the more elaborate fountains in the southwest gardens, close to the outer wall. When she had first arrived here, the water had been stagnant with scum and weeds, moss and vines clinging to the carved figures. Faucet corks had bottled up most of the pipe openings, reducing the water flow to an algae-slimed trickle here and there.

Now everything was pristine, sparkling, polished, and gleaming. She could see the marble and granite tiles laid in pastel patterns lining the pools, where pipes splashed and poured free. From granite carvings of sea horses spouting water in intricate, overlapping, liquid arches, to oversized marble flower petals arranged in bouquet-tiers, from urn-carrying statues of women and men, to friezes artfully depicting scenes of courtly love among the splashing, gleaming pools, the view of these particular gardens formed a sensual delight. Now that they were clean, that was.

Lord Aragol spied them as they came near and pasted on a gracious smile. “Your Highness…Your Majesty. These gardens are indeed quite intricate, and worth the time to see them. Were these fountains carved by magic, or carved by hand?”

Kelly raised her brows. “I think I would have to look in the castle records, Lord Aragol,” she apologized lightly. “But I would think by both; magic often speeds the labor in our lives, and the skills of hand and eye ensures the artistry that inspired the work is still retained.”

He smiled a smug smile between his mustache and goatee. “But labor that can be done by the hand alone is more impressive…especially when it is done with the aid of machinery designed by the mind, and not by mere magic alone. How would you raise that stone bench over there, Your Majesty? To lift it completely off the ground?”

She eyed the bench in question, a long, curved, solid granite one that could probably seat six or seven people; it probably weighed four hundred pounds, easily. “I could ask the Lord Chancellor, or my husband, to move it by magic,” she pointed out, playing along with his game. “Or many others who are so gifted here on Nightfall; that would be the swiftest way to ensure its movement.”

“But what if you could not use magic?” the earl asked slyly. “What if you had to do it without any magic at all?”

“There are plenty of strong backs and hands who would be willing to help me lift it in concert,” she returned mildly, “and they would help me to do so even if I were not queen. We of Nightfall tend to help one another; it is the civilized thing to do.”

“But what if you were alone?
I
could lift this stone bench using the intelligence of my mind, Your Majesty,” he claimed. “Using machinery that I could design and create with just a few simple tools, I could lift it clear off the ground,
without
any magic.”

“We are not unfamiliar with the applications of nonmagical machinery, Lord Earl. If
I
were alone,” Kelly added dryly, “and for some reason needed to lift that bench, I would simply construct a tripod-mounted block-and-pulley system, probably with a ratio of ten-to-one, so that I only have to lift, what, forty pounds instead of four hundred at each pull? Albeit at ten times the length of rope pulled for the distance required to be lifted, but then that is the mechanics of simple machinery.”

The technical terms rattling out of Kelly's mouth made the nobleman's smug look fade a little.

“Or I could lift it with a wedge-style, gear-assisted jack-lift, simply by turning the gears with a handle to achieve sufficient torque through the sprocket shaft to lift that much granite with a minimum of physical effort,” Kelly continued, quelling the urge to give him a superior smirk.
You're not going to win this one, Lord Arrogant
, she thought, giving him an eloquent shrug.
My homeworld is vastly superior in its technology to yours.
“And by using two jacks, one at each end, I could lift the entire bench off the ground, as your hypothetical task requires.”

The earl and his two sons blinked. Saber and Dominor got that slightly glazed look in their eyes that told her she was talking like a computer-geek to them.

Suppressing the urge to smile, she continued. “Or I could use an air-compression-based wedge of some kind to use the pounds-per-square-inch natural law of air pressure, by simply pumping the handle of the appropriate device to force the bench up into the air on an inflatable bladder of some kind, much as placing an airtight sack under a book and inflating the bag with a strongly blown breath will subsequently lift the book. There are
many
ways to complete the task proposed without using magic, Lord Earl,” she added with a shrug. “We are not unfamiliar with them. Technology has many merits. And many drawbacks, just as magic has. Magic in many ways is just simpler to use, here on Nightfall.”

“But magic requires a magician able to wield it,” Lord Aragol pointed out. “We have very few male magicians in Mandare. We have therefore explored many nonmagical means to do all that we need to do.” He looked at his sons, then smiled and stroked his goatee. “Your Majesty…could I trouble one of your servants to bring out a melon, or some other large-sized fruit, and have them set it on that pedestal over there, by the outer wall?”

“For what purpose?” Saber asked him.

“I would prove that Mandarite machinery is superior to magic.”

And here it comes; I'll bet this is a demonstration of their flintlock guns to frighten us into acknowledging their superiority…
She and Morganen had already prepared for this moment, however. “Lord Chancellor, would you see to it?” Kelly asked Dominor. “Bring back several melons, please. They would be pleasant to eat on such a warm summer's day, if nothing else.”

“Certainly, Your Majesty.” With a bow to her, he headed for the nearest wing of the castle. The Nightfallers and the Mandarites eyed each other and spoke of how pleasant the weather was, the delights of the garden, the hope that the weather would continue good for a few more days, until the well of small talk dried up between the two groups.

Saber switched from Mandarite to Katani and murmured in Kelly's ear, tucking her against his side as they waited. “Do you know what the man is up to? I do not like this Earl's smugness…though I loved your quick replies. What little I could understand of them.”

“I think he's going to demonstrate the power of the flintlock guns each one of them is wearing,” she murmured back with a little smile. Switching between the languages sounded to her ear simply like switching between accents. From the puzzled look of their guests, it was a successful, obfuscating switch. “I figured he might, at some point. Guns are very impressive—and
very
loud, just to warn you—when wielded in front of those unfamiliar with their effects.”

“Is that your native tongue?” Edour spoke up with a touch of curiosity. “I thought you said you would speak solely in ours while we were here.”

“We speak in endearments meant to be exchanged by husband and wife alone,” Saber returned smoothly. “We value our privacy, if you have not figured it out by now.”

Kelly smiled up at him through the half foot difference in their height as he said it, then returned her gaze to the trio of men before them. “With respect comes admiration, gentlemen; it is a natural progression. My husband knows well that I respond well to sweet words, and poorly to sour. As he prefers me to be a gentlewoman more often than a termagant whenever I am around him, he speaks sweetly to me. And I prefer him to be a gentleman, rather than a bully, so I speak sweetly to him in return.

“We of Nightfall understand this give-and-take,” she continued smoothly. “It takes great strength of character to respond to an uncivility with politeness. But then, if one person is polite, it is easier for the other person to be polite as well. Just as, when one person acts in violence, the other is often more inclined out of hurt or spite to act the same. It is simply a matter of overcoming one's base immaturity and responding with wisdom.

“Ah, Lord Chancellor, you have returned.”

Dominor, carrying a basket of melons, nodded and moved to place the first one on the stone shelf indicated, one in a set of eight decorative pillars that normally had urns of flowers growing on top; two had lost their urns to weather damage, so the brothers had just cleared away the remains and shifted the other pots so that the bare ones flanked the other six. Now they looked intentionally left bare. He set the basket of fruit at the base, adjusted the melon on top so that it would not roll, then returned to the others.

“Why do you do this work yourself?” Sir Kennal asked him, frowning at the Lord Chancellor in confusion. “You are a lord of your realm; that is a servant's task, something fit for a woman to do.”

“I find myself intrigued to know what your father intends to do, young lord,” Dominor stated smoothly, as Kelly's brows drew down at the blatant insult to her gender. “And too impatient to have a servant summoned away from some other, more important task when I could do this all the more quickly myself. We are not lazy, here on Nightfall, Sir Kennal. Each citizen of the isle is more than capable of doing many things for themselves—our queen, for example, is a warrior in her own right.”

I just knew he'd work that in, somehow
, Kelly thought, doing her best to not smile as she shook her head ruefully. “You flatter me, Lord Chancellor, but I have my husband to champion and protect me these days; I need nothing more.”