Wonders of the Invisible World (22 page)

Lady Damaris Ambre.

Dazed, he put on the boots Inis handed him and followed the messenger.

The minister was in her official chamber, a lofty corner room just beneath the battlement walls. The side casements overlooked the vast gardens behind the castle, the cobbled path leading down the back of the hill to the city below, with its eccentric tangle of streets cautiously edging closer and closer to the river where it curved around the sudden upthrust of land. From the adjacent wall, the view was of the harbor, the sea walls, the immense gates that protected the inner harbor, the brilliant, unending sea. An enormous table filled most of the room, covered with papers with seals and ribbons dangling from them, letters, lists, meticulous drawings of water projects, maps, schedules, sketches of everything from plumbing pipes to gargoyle-headed water taps. A tray holding pitchers of wine and water and cups stood swamped in the clutter like a drowning island.

Damaris had thrown a black work-robe over her gown; its sleeves were shiny with ink stains. The long, white gold coil of braid at her neck was beginning to sag, too heavy, too silken for restraints. Leaning over some paperwork on the table, she looked up as Garner entered. The sudden flash of green, the color of river moss, under her heavy, hooded eyelids and pale brows, took his breath away.

She gazed at him a moment, her ivory, broad-boned face the way he remembered it from childhood, open, curious, just beginning to smile. Then she remembered what he was doing there, and the smile vanished. She straightened to her full height, nearly as tall as he, slender and so supple her bones seemed made of kelp.

“Garner,” she said in her deep, lovely voice that cut easily through any flow of water or words, “your cousin told me you nearly sank the ritual barge.”

“I was told by rumor,” he answered recklessly, “that you were betrothed.”

“And that has what to do with half-a-dozen gilded oars that went sailing out to sea, and which must be replaced before the ceremony of the fountain?”

“Fountain?” he echoed bewilderedly, wondering how she could be thinking of such mundane details. “What fountain? Of course I didn’t mean to overturn the barge.”

“Then why did you?”

“I was provoked—”

She held up a hand before he could go on; helplessly he watched a familiar dimple deepen in her cheek as her lips compressed, then quickly vanish. “Never mind. I don’t need to know. The water-mage wants to see you. You can explain to her.”

Heat surged through him, then, as he remembered the precise moment. His mouth tightened; his eyes went to the sea, where a gull as white as Damaris’s brows angled over the dark blue water.

“I was looking for you,” he said bluntly, and felt her go abruptly still. “You drew my eyes. You always did. Since I first saw you coming so carefully down those same steps when you were a child, and so was I, come downriver to court in my uncle’s company, just docking where you were about to step. You wore green that day, too, and your hair was in the same braid. We met there on that dock. Ever since, I have looked for you there. I was looking today, though I have no right.” He looked at her finally, then, found her face as stiff, her eyes as distant, as he expected. “My cousin was lecturing. I lost my temper, and unbalanced the boat. For that, I’m sorry. Is this what I must tell the mage?”

Color flushed over her, swiftly and evenly, from collarbone to brow. “That it was my fault?” she asked with some asperity. “Because I forgot—No, because I didn’t know how to tell you?”

“No. Of course not. Let’s blame Edord.”

“I don’t understand. What has Edord to do with this?”

“He opened his mouth,” Garner said dourly, “at the wrong time.”

She studied him a moment, a line as fine as gossamer above her brows. “I love Lord Felden.” Her voice had softened; her eyes shifted away from him briefly. “I discovered that he loves me, too. His music has always enchanted me. We have much in common.”

“His horn and your pipes?”

She met his eyes again. “You and I have been friends for many years. Can we keep it that way? Or will you swamp boats every time you pass that dock?” He couldn’t answer. The unfamiliar secrets within the green, the fine, clean bones beginning to surface in her face since he last saw her, rendered him wordless. She made a sudden, exasperated gesture, trying to brush away his gaze. “Stop that.”

“What?”

“Stop looking at me like that. Just stop looking at me. Garner, just go away.”

“Why,” he asked her with simple pain, “could you not love me like that?”

She swallowed, whispered, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe—you were too much my friend. My brother. Maybe nothing more or less than that.”

“Damaris—”

“No,” she told him firmly. “Go. The mage is waiting for you.”

“How much of this do I tell her?”

She shook her head slightly, picking up a piece of chalk, worrying it through her long fingers. She didn’t look at him again.

“I think she must already know. She sent for you through me. Now I understand why. Whatever she wants with you, it won’t be about the mistakes and mysteries and messiness of love, but about the waters of Obelos. Go and find out.”

So he did, feeling as shaken as if he had been bellowed at by the king.

Someone opened the door. Damaris, staring blindly at the chalk in her fingers and contemplating the messiness and mysteries, flashed a wide, incredulous stare at it. But it wasn’t Garner back again with his obstinate, tormented eyes to demand impossible explanations from her. It was a stranger, gestured in by a footman.

“Master Tabbart Ainsley, Minister,” he murmured.

“Yes?”

“The composer from Sucia.”

She blinked. “Why didn’t you take him to Lord Felden?”

“I couldn’t find the musicians, my lady,” the man explained apologetically. “Everything is chaos with the king’s arrival. Master Ainsley said he wrote some water music, so I brought him to you.”

Speechless, Damaris gazed at the composer, who looked miserably back at her. His face, framed by windblown chestnut hair, was colorless as curds; he swayed a little under the weight of her regard.

“You are welcome,” she assured him hastily. “Please. Sit down.”

“Thank you,” he said faintly, and the footman closed the door. Master Ainsley crept into the nearest seat, which was her drafting stool, and dropped his face into his hands. Damaris, alarmed, poured a hefty cup of wine, brought it to him.

“Are you ill, Master Ainsley?”

He lifted one hand, eyed the wine glumly, covered his eye again. “I could be cheerfully dead.”

“Ah,” Damaris said, enlightened.

“In Sucia, I was dragged up a canal in a barge. And then floated down a river along with some goats and chickens and a great many noisy children. When we finally reached the ocean I thought, with all that blue space, it would be peaceful.”

“But no?”

“But yes.” He came out from behind his hands finally, and winced at the sight of the sea in the window. “But how could I enjoy it? The ship tossed me this way, threw me that; my bed fell down; my dinner came up. I was never so happy to see land. Your port looks so calm. It barely breathes.”

“We struggle for that,” Damaris told him a trifle grimly. “That’s why we celebrate our victories so lavishly. And why you’re here.”

The young man reached for the wine, took a cautious sip. The damp fungal sheen on his face brightened to a healthier shade of white. He looked slight but muscular within his untidy traveler’s garb; his eyes, going seaward again, had a blue-green hue much like it.

“Look at it,” he said bitterly, nodding toward the spiky forest of masts rising over waters separated and calmed by sea gates and walls. “Somewhere among those stripped tree trunks is my torment. Now they hardly move. Like ships in a painting.”

“Would you like to rest awhile?” Damaris asked him with sympathy. “Lord Felden is one of the musicians, as well as the director of the court orchestra which is to play your music. I’ll find him; he’ll know where you’ll be lodged.”

He smiled at her, a fleeting but genuine effort that brought even more color into his face. “If I’m not needed, I think I would like a walk first. I’ve been so confined, these past days. Perhaps you could direct me to the object of your celebration? I would like to be sure that my music is suitable. I’ve only seen and heard this wonderful fountain in my imagination. And you know how different they are, all the voices of water.”

She found herself smiling back at him, and trying to remember what Beale had said about his music. She made a sudden decision, removed her work-robe. “I’ll take you there. I want to be sure it will be finished in time, that there are no unexpected problems. I’m afraid you must continue to imagine the sound of it, since the water won’t begin to flow until the day of the celebration. Nor has it been seen except by invitation. It’s been shrouded in mystery for weeks.”

The brisk walk through the royal gardens and out the back gate revived the composer even more. By the time they descended the gentler northern slope behind the castle and reached the streets he grew animated, viewing with energy and curiosity the flower boxes in the windows, the brightly painted doors of houses and shops, the costumes of other visitors. He brought to Damaris’s attention tapestries from his own country in a shop window, and stopped now and then to exclaim over one or another of Luminum’s renowned arts: delicate glass, lacework, water clocks of elegantly painted porcelain.

“You tell time by water?”

“Everything in Luminum is translated into water. It is the first and last sound we hear.”

He made another of his fitful stops at the far end of one unusually straight street, glimpsing another blue horizon, another thicket of water traffic. He turned confusedly, walked backward a pace or two, gazing at the castle on the cliff around which the river curled. “Is Luminum an island?”

“Only on three sides.”

He righted himself, gestured down the street. “And that?”

“The Halcyon River.”

“More water,” he breathed, making Damaris smile again.

“That, we worship. It waters our fields, our animals, our city. We dedicate monuments to it, build shrines, offer gifts to those who dwell in it. Your music will be among those gifts. It is finished, isn’t it?” she asked practically, and was reassured when the composer nodded.

His eyes were on the concealed object in the square ahead of them, where four streets ended at a broad bed of cobbles. Flowering chestnuts shaded the people hurrying under them as intently and single-mindedly as fish pursuing dinner in the deep. It was a motley mix at this end of the city, where ancient cottages shared the waterfront with houseboats and barges flying pennants of laundry, and the market-boats darted and hovered like dragonflies over the water to sell a loaf of bread, a dozen oranges, before they flitted away to answer the next summons along the bank.

As they grew closer to the hidden object, Damaris heard the sound of hammering. The shrouds, great lengths of sailcloth, bulged briefly and oddly here and there, poked by mysteries within. The work must be finished, she realized, pleased. The scaffolding around the fountain was being dismantled.

“Minister,” murmured the guard, rising from the stool on the cobbles where, with the aid of a book, he was defending the shrouds from entry. There was a shout from within; a sudden ridge in the canvas marked the path of a falling plank, which narrowly missed his head. He ducked, breathing a curse. “Are you sure, my lady, that you want to go in there?”

“You’re wearing a helmet,” she answered briskly. “Go in and tell them to stop for a moment.”

The guard slipped between shrouds. Another plank clattered down; they heard laughter among indignant shouting. Then all was silent. The guard reappeared, held apart the shrouds for them.

“Be careful. There are perils everywhere.”

There were indeed, Damaris saw: downed tools, swaying planks hammered half free, clinging to others by a nail, the rubble and dust of the sculptor’s final touches to his masterpiece. He was still there, tinkering with the very top of the fountain, while he knelt in the basin below it. He grinned down at the minister, saluting with a brush, half his face masked with marble dust.

There were four broad basins, all scalloped and festooned with carvings. The largest, at the bottom, was a twenty-foot platter of pale yellow marble veined with cream. Three mermaids rose to their scaled hips out of the water in the center of the basin, their upraised arms holding the second basin, smaller by five feet. The exuberance of their poses, their alabaster breasts and dancers’ arms, was mitigated by taut muscles the sculptor had chiseled to surface beneath the smooth skin. He knew how hard they worked to hold that ton of marble. Their serene smiles made nothing of it. The basin they held was sea green. Three porpoises, slightly smaller than the mermaids, danced upon the surface of the sea, balancing on their noses the third basin, a pale sky blue. A single rosy fish leaped out of its center, a carp by the look of the sinuous fins, standing on its tail and bearing the highest basin on its head. That carried the emblem of Obelos: the white fluted pillar with the water-blue orb upon it. The carp basin also held the sculptor, who was carefully cleaning the ring of holes in the orb, out of which water would rain in a perfect halo to overflow its basin and cascade into those beneath it.