In the third week of their private lessons Septach Melayn removed his mask suddenly, after she had carried out an especially well handled series of interchanges, and said, peering down at her from his great height, “That was quite fine, milady. I’ve never seen anyone come along quite as fast as you have. A pity that we’ll have to bring these lessons to a halt very soon.”
He could not have hurt her more if he had slashed her across the throat with the edge of his rapier.
“We will?” she said, horrified.
“The Pontifex will be arriving at the Castle shortly for Lord Dekkeret’s coronation ceremony, and after that the real changes of the new regime will begin. Lord Dekkeret will want his own High Counsellor. I think he plans to appoint Prestimion’s brother Teotas. As for me, I’ve been asked to continue in Prestimion’s service, this time as High Spokesman to the Pontifex. Which means, of course, that I’ll be leaving the Castle and taking up residence at the Labyrinth.”
Keltryn gasped. “The Labyrinth—oh, how terrible, Septach Melayn!”
With a graceful shrug he said, “Ah, not so bad as it’s credited with being, I think. There are decent tailors there, and some estimable restaurants. And Prestimion doesn’t plan to be one of those reclusive Pontifexes who hides himself away at the bottom of the whole thing and doesn’t come out into daylight for the rest of his life. The court will do a good deal of traveling, he tells me. I imagine he’ll be shuttling up and down the Glayge as often as any Pontifex ever has, and going farther afield, too. But if I’m down there with him, and you’re up here, milady—”
“Yes. I see.”
He paused ever so slightly. “It would not occur to you, I suppose, to move to the Labyrinth yourself? We could continue our studies, of course, in that case.”
Keltryn’s eyes widened. What was he saying?
“My parents sent me to the Castle to get a broader education, excellence,” she replied, almost whispering it. “I don’t think they ever imagined—that I would go—that I would go there—”
“No. The Castle is all light and gaiety; and the Labyrinth, well, it is otherwise. This is the place for young lords and ladies. I know that.” Septach Melayn seemed oddly uncomfortable. She had never seen him other than perfectly poised. But now he was fidgeting; he was tugging nervously at his carefully trimmed little beard; his pale blue eyes were having trouble meeting hers.
It could not be that he felt bodily desire for her. She knew that. But all the same he plainly did not want to leave her behind when he followed Prestimion to the underground capital. He wanted the lessons to continue. Was it because she was such a responsive pupil? Or was it their unexpected friendship that he cherished? He is a lonely man, she thought. He’s afraid that he’ll miss me. She was astounded by the idea that the High Counsellor Septach Melayn might feel that way about her.
But she could not go with him to the Labyrinth. Would not, could not, should not. Her life was here at the Castle, for the time being, and then, she supposed, she would return to her family at Sipermit, and marry someone, and then—well, that was as far as she could carry the thought. But the Labyrinth fit nowhere into the expected course of her future.
“Perhaps I could visit you there now and then,” she said. “For refresher courses, you know.”
“Perhaps you could,” said Septach Melayn, and they let the subject drop.
Her sister Fulkari was waiting for her in the recreation-hall of the sector of the Castle’s western wing known as the Setiphon Arcade, where they both had their apartments, and their brother Fulkarno as well. Fulkari used the swimming pool there almost every day. Keltryn usually joined her there after her fencing lesson.
It was a splendid pool, a huge oval tank of pink porphyry with an inlay of bright malachite in starburst patterns running completely around it just beneath the surface of the water. The water itself, which came warm and cinnamon-scented from a spring somewhere far below the surface of the Mount, was of a pale rosy hue and seemed almost like wine. Supposedly this sector of the Castle had been a guesthouse for visiting princes from distant worlds in the reign of some long-forgotten Coronal at a time when commerce between the stars was more common than it had later become, and this was part of their recreational facilities. Now it served the needs of royal guests from closer at hand.
No one was at the pool but Fulkari when Keltryn arrived. She was moving back and forth with swift, steady strokes, tirelessly swimming from one end of the pool to the other, turning, starting on the next lap. Keltryn stood at the pool’s edge, watching her for a time, admiring the suppleness of her sister’s body, the perfection of her strokes. Even now, at seventeen, Keltryn still looked upon Fulkari as a woman and saw herself as a mere gawky girl. The seven years’ difference in their ages seemed an immense gulf. Keltryn coveted the ripeness of Fulkari’s hips, the greater fullness of Fulkari’s breasts, all those tokens of what she regarded as her sister’s superior femininity.
“Aren’t you coming in?” Fulkari called.
Keltryn stripped off her fencing costume, threw it casually aside, and slipped into the water beside Fulkari. The water was silky and soothing. They swam side by side for some minutes, saying little.
When they wearied of swimming laps, they bobbed up together and floated, paddling gently about. “What’s bothering you?” Fulkari asked. “You’re very quiet today. Did badly in your fencing lesson, did you?”
“Quite the contrary.”
“What is it, then?”
Keltryn said in a stricken tone, “Septach Melayn told me that he’s going to be moving to the Labyrinth. They’re going to hold the coronation ceremony soon, and then he’ll become Prestimion’s High Spokesman down there.”
“I suppose that ends your career as a swordsman, then,” said Fulkari, with no particular show of sympathy.
“If I stay here, yes. But he’s asked me to move to the Labyrinth so we can continue our lessons.”
“Really!” Fulkari exclaimed, and chortled. “To move to the Labyrinth! You!—He didn’t ask you to marry him, too, did he?”
“Don’t be silly, Fulkari.”
“He won’t, you know.”
Keltryn felt anger rising in her. There was no reason for Fulkari to be so cruel. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t getting any funny ideas about him.”
“Becoming Septach Melayn’s wife is something that has never entered my mind, I assure you. And I’m quite certain it’s never entered his.—No, Fulkari, I just want him to go on training me. But of course I’m not going to move to the Labyrinth.”
“That’s a relief.” Fulkari clambered from the pool. Keltryn, after a moment, followed her. Putting her hands behind her, Fulkari leaned back and stretched voluptuously, like a big cat. Languidly she said, “I never understood this thing of yours with swords, anyway. What good is being a swordsman? Especially a female one.”
“What good is being a lady of the court?” Keltryn retorted. “At least a swordsman has some skill with something other than her tongue.”
“Perhaps so. But it’s a skill that can’t be put to any purpose. Well, you’ll grow out of it, I suspect. Let some prince catch your fancy and that’s the last we’ll all hear of your rapiers and your singlesticks.”