Seraphina(26)

Even Glisselda wasn’t there yet; that was how stupidly early I’d come. Servants lit chandeliers and smoothed tablecloths onto sideboards, stealing surreptitious glances at me. I wandered toward the back of the salon, past the upholstered chairs of the formal sitting area, past the gilded columns, into a wide space with a parquet floor intended for dancing. Music stands and stools were piled haphazardly in the corner; I set them up for a quartet, hoping I was doing something useful and not merely eccentric.

Five musicians arrived—Guntard, two viols, uillean pipes, and drum—and I set a fifth place. They seemed pleased to see me, and not altogether surprised that the assistant music mistress should be here, setting up. Maybe I could stand in their corner all evening, turning pages and bringing them ale.

Wine, that is. This was the palace, not the Sunny Monkey.

Courtiers trickled in, resplendent in silks and brocade. I’d worn my best gown, a deep blue calamanco with understated embroidery at all the hemlines, but what passed for finery in town felt shabby here. I pressed myself against a wall and hoped no one would speak to me. I knew some of these courtiers: the palace employed professional musicians such as Guntard and the band, but many young gentlemen liked to dabble in music on the side. They usually joined the choir, but that fair-haired Samsamese across from me played a mean viola da gamba.

His name was Josef, Earl of Apsig. He noticed my eyes upon him and ran a hand through his wheaten hair as if to underscore how handsome he was. I looked away.

The Samsamese were known for austerity, but even they outshone me here. Their merchants dressed in browns in town; their courtiers wore expensive blacks, contriving to be simultaneously sumptuous and severe. In case we Goreddis failed to recognize expensive cloth on sight, the Samsamese also spouted great tufts of lace from their cuffs, and stiff white ruffs at their throats.

The Ninysh courtiers, by contrast, tried to incorporate every possible color in their outfits: embroidery, ribbons, parti-colored hose, bright silk peeking through the slashes in their sleeves. Their country lay deep in the gloomy south; there were few colors to be seen there, beyond what they carried with them.

I glimpsed a Ninysh gabled cap in a vibrant green, worn by an elderly woman. She had thick spectacles, which gave her eyes a peevish, bulgy aspect; the heavy creases beside her wide mouth created the impression of an enormous, disapproving toad.

She looked like Miss Fusspots, poor old darling.

No, that was unquestionably Miss Fusspots. That glare could belong to no one else. My heart caught in my throat. I wouldn’t need to travel to Porphyry after all; one of my grotesques was standing right across the room!

Miss Fusspots, who was diminutive, disappeared behind a grove of ladies-in-waiting but reemerged moments later beside a redheaded Ninysh courtier. I began to work my way across the room toward her.

I didn’t get far, however, because at that very moment Princess Glisselda and Prince Lucian arrived, arm in arm. The crowd opened a wide corridor to let them pass, and I dared not cross it. The princess gleamed in gold and white, brocade encrusted with seed pearls; she beamed beatifically at the entire room and let a Ninysh courtier lead her to a seat. Prince Lucian, in the scarlet doublet of the Queen’s Guard, did not relax until the crowd’s adoring gaze had followed his cousin to the other end of the room.

Princess Glisselda took the midnight blue couch, where no one else had dared to sit, and began chatting away to all and sundry. Lucian Kiggs did not sit, but stood a little to the side, his eye upon the room; he never seemed to go off duty. In the adjoining chamber, the musicians finally began with a pleasant sarabande. I looked for Miss Fusspots, but she had disappeared.

“Others may doubt it was a dragon. I do not,” said someone behind me in a light Samsamese monotone.

“Ooh, how awful!” said a young woman.

I turned to see Josef, Earl of Apsig, regaling three Goreddi ladies-in-waiting with a tale: “I was part of his final hunting party, grausleine. We had just entered the Queenswood when the hounds scattered in all directions, as if there were twenty stags, not just one. We split up, some following north, some west, each group thinking Prince Rufus was with the other, but when we rejoined, he was nowhere to be found.

“We searched for him until evening, then called out the Queen’s Guard and searched all through the night. It was his own dog—a lovely brindle snaphound called Una—who found him, lying faceless and facedown in the nearby fens.”

The three ladies gasped. I had turned all the way around and was studying the earl’s face. He had pale blue eyes; his complexion was without a single blemish or wrinkle by which to gauge his age. He was trying to impress the ladies, certainly, but seemed to be speaking the truth. I disliked jumping in where I hadn’t been invited, but I had to know: “Are you so sure a dragon killed him? Were there clear signs in the fen?”

Josef turned the full force of his handsomeness on me. He lifted his chin and smiled like a Saint in a country church, all piety and graciousness; around him the choir of cherubic ladies-in-waiting stared at me and fluttered, silk gowns rustling. “Who else do you imagine could have killed him, Music Mistress?”

I folded my arms, proof against charm. “Brigands, stealing his head for ransom?”

“There’s been no ransom request.” He smirked; his cherubs smirked with him.

“The Sons of St. Ogdo, stirring up dracophobia before the Ardmagar arrives?”