“Well!” he said. “You haven’t had a good cry like that in a long time, young lady. What provoked all that?”
Where to begin? “I thought he was a sorcerer!”
“Sagorn?” Her father smiled. “No! He’s a very learned man, but he’s not a sorcerer. I don’t think it would be possible to eavesdrop on a sorcerer, my princess.” Then the smile faded. “He’s also a very private man, Inos. He does not like to be spied on. How much did you hear?”
“You said you would not marry me off to Kalkor. Or Angilki.” She paused and thought carefully. “I didn’t understand the rest, Father. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” He laughed ruefully. “You realize that you almost burned down the castle?”
“No! How could I… Oh, no! The urn?”
“The urn,” he agreed. “That disgusting, smelly, hideous old thing that your aunt is so absurdly attached to. The oil went everywhere. Luckily young Kel was quick-witted enough to throw a rug over the flames… Well, don’t do it again! And that’s all? All that weeping because you thought you’d met a sorcerer?”
She wiped her eyes again and fought down an insane desire to laugh. “No. Then I met a God.”
“What? You’re serious?”
She nodded, and told him. He believed her, listening solemnly. Then he stared at the floor and tugged his beard for a while, looking worried.
“Well, I’m not surprised you were upset,” he said at last. “Meeting Gods must be a very scary experience. I fear it means trouble. We must discuss it with Sagorn. But I’m not sorry to hear about Mother Unonini, I must say.” He glanced sideways at her, his eyes twinkling. “I can’t stand the woman, either! But don’t tell anyone I said that!”
“You can’t?” She was astonished at both his words and his conspiratorial grin—not regal at all!
He shook his head. “It’s very hard to find a suitable, well-educated chaplain willing to live in a place like Krasnegar, Inos.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Krasnegar,” she protested.
He sighed. “Well, I agree with you. But many wouldn’t. Now, what was all this about silk?”
She jumped up and fetched the silk from where it lay beside the mirror. She shook it loose and draped it over her shoulder for him to see and, before he could speak, she hurriedly explained how the gold matched her hair and the bronze was just right for her skin and the green for her eyes. “I was hoping you would buy it for my birthday?” she finished hopefully.
He shook his head and motioned for her to sit again. She dropped the silk, feeling her spirits drop with it. As she sat, he lifted a small leather box from the bed beside him.
“I am giving you these for your birthday.” He opened the lid and she gasped.
“Mother’s jewels!”
“Yours, now.”
Pearls and rubies and emeralds! Gold and silver!
“They’re not a great fortune,” he said, “but they are all good pieces. Beauty, not riches. Some of them are very old. This belonged to Olliola, Inisso’s wife…”
She was overwhelmed, listening with open mouth as he told her the history of some of the jewels. Then she hugged him and wanted to start trying them on, but he closed the box.
“As for the silk . .”
Trouble! “Yes, Father?”
“Where did you ever find something like that?”
“Mistress Meolorne’s.”
“I might have guessed!” He smiled. “How much?”
“Well, more than I meant to pay, but—”
“You sound just like your mother,” he said. “How much?”
Inos bit her lip and whispered the terrible truth.
“What?” He stared at her. Then he quickly turned away, and after a moment she realized that he was laughing.
“Father!”
He looked around at her, and his laughter exploded aloud. He bellowed with laughter. “Oh, Inos, my pet! Oh, princess!” He laughed some more.
She felt hurt, and almost angry.
“Come!” he said at last, still fighting down amusement that she did not understand. “Come and meet Doctor Sagorn.”
Once it had been called the Queen’s Room, but now it was His Majesty’s Study. Inos had not been in it very much recently, although it was almost the only place in the castle that could ever be classed as cozy in the winter. She preferred now to seek warmth and friendship in the kitchens, mostly. The familiar chairs and sofa had not changed since her mother’s time, but they suddenly registered on her as the furniture in her father’s bedroom had done—old and shabby, and not regal. She was annoyed to see the long and bony form of Doctor Sagorn stretched out in her mother’s favorite chair.
He rose awkwardly and bowed to her, and she curtsied. She had insisted on changing and felt much better in her cypress-green wool. It was too warm for this weather, but it did have a hint of padding and it did make her look older.
Keeping her gaze firmly on the threadbare rug, she apologized.
He bowed again. “And my apologies to you, Highness, for frightening you.” She thought he could have put a little more conviction into the words. “Your father and I were perhaps a little too trusting in not locking the bedroom door.” The old blue eyes gleamed nastily. “We put too much faith in the aversion spell. It must be wearing thin, I suppose, after so many centuries.”
“Spell?” Inos echoed. “Sorcery?”
“Did you not feel it?”
“She thought you were a sorcerer,” her father remarked, smiling as if that were a big joke.
“Alas, no! I should hardly go around looking like this if I were a sorcerer, now would I?” Doctor Sagorn attempted to match her father’s smile, but his angular face looked even more predatory when he did that.
Inos could not think of a ladylike answer to that question, so she countered with one of her own. “How did you know about the silk and the dragons?”
“I saw you in the road! You were clutching it as if you thought all the Imperial armies would be trying to snatch it from you. You went by me at a tremendous rate.”
Her father chuckled and gestured for her to sit. “Like the time you befuddled the customs men in Jal Pusso, Sagorn?”
Sagorn guffawed and folded himself back into the chair. “More like you and the meat pies!”
Her father laughed in turn. Evidently these were old adventures that Inos would not be invited to share. Now he had produced a decanter of dwarfish-cut crystal that she had only seen once or twice before, and three of the precious matching goblets—three! To her astonishment she found herself sitting on the edge of the sofa and holding one of those goblets. Sagorn must have noticed her surprise, and her father had noticed that he had noticed.
“I think Inos has earned this,” he said. “Sip, my dear. It’s powerful.”
Sagorn sipped and sighed. “Superb! I would not have expected this in Krasnegar. Elvish, of course.”
The king smiled. “Valdoquiff itself. Kade brought a cask of it from Kinvale. I hoard it like a dwarf.”
He was answering a question that had not been asked. Obviously Sagorn and he knew each other well. Inos felt a little reassured, and sipped at her drink. She did not care for the taste—like drinking nettles, and the fumes burned the inside of her nose—but certainly it was an honor—and a sign of forgiveness? She felt very grown-up!
“Now, Inos,” her father said, settling back in his chair. “Tell Doctor Sagorn about the God.”
“God?” The eagle’s eyes flashed to her again.
Inos related her experience once more. When she was done, she thought she had managed to maintain a very matter-of-fact decorum. There was a long silence. Sagorn scratched at his cheek in deep thought. He emptied his goblet. Her father rose and refilled it.
“Had the God not come, Holindarn, what would you have done?”