This last word was clearly addressed to Alusair, who bit her lips ro quell the curse that sprang to mind, and forced herself to ask quietly, "Royal Mother, have I leave to speak?"
Queen Filfaeril nodded. "Please do. Better to spew than explode."
The king smiled slightly.
Alusair sighed, threw back her head, and announced, "I have just learned that Royal Magician Vangerdahast sent my personal champion off to the northeasternmost corner of the realm on a mission that bids fair to get him killed and forbade him to inform me that he was going! I want-"
"Luse," her farher broke in calmly, "hold hard a moment. I didn't know you had a personal champion. Who is this paragon, and how came you to have him?"
Alusair sighed, closed her eyes, opened them again, and said, "Earlier this day, I named Ornrion Taltar Dahaunrul of the Purple Dragons my personal champion. To Vangey's face I proclaimed him thus and told our good Royal Magician that as I now had a champion to protect me, the war wizards he was assigning to spy upon my every last nose-picking and chamber pot-filling moment-"
"Ohh!" Tanalasta exclaimed in disgust. "Must you mention such things? Really!"
"I can well believe that you no longer use chamber pots," Alusair snapped at her sister. "In fact, that explains some things."
She turned her glare back to her parents before anyone could admonish her and added crisply, "Yet I digress. As I was saying, I informed him that his spies were no longer needed to be nannies and sneaks and jailers upon me-all three at once and every moment of my life, waking and otherwise. The Royal Magician openly sneered at me and said he took no orders from me, so I set him straight on that-and departed his company. Only to learn that the moment he'd seen my back, he summoned the ornrion and sent him off to be killed, doing this wholly to flout my will and hurl his disobedience into my very teeth!"
"And so?" the king asked gently.
"And so I want him disciplined-for once! — and Dauntless brought back to me."
"Disciplined?" the queen asked. "Disciplined how, exactly?"
Tanalasta rolled her eyes. "She's going to say 'horsewhipped,' Mother!"
Alusair gave her sister a look that had drawn daggers in it, and then turned back to the Queen of Cormyr and snapped defiantly, "Publicly horsewhipped. For a start."
Her father made a sound that might have been a suppressed snort of amusement-but when all three Obarskyr females looked sharply at him, they found his face stern and wearing the beginnings of a real frown.
"Alusair Nacacia Obarskyr," Queen Filfaeril began, almost sweetly, and both of her daughters stiffened. The use of a full formal name meant trouble.
"I should leave," Tanalasta announced quickly, ducking her head and starting for the nearest door. Only to discover a slender arm had somehow become hooked around hers and had become as unmoving as an iron window bar. The Queen of Cormyr was stronger than she looked.
"Stay and attend, Crown Princess," her mother said softly in an order as absolute as if she'd thundered it. "You are to heed and remember our words now, just as surely as your sister must."
Azoun cleared his throat. Again all three of his kin shot looks his way, but he merely held out his hand toward his wife, indicating that she was to proceed.
The Queen of Cormyr lifted her jaw just as Alusair had done earlier, drew in an unhurried breath, and said, "A time will come when you two princesses may freely give royal commands to the wizard Vangerdahast and will see good need to do so. That time may well, however, be years hence. For now, you are to obey him utterly, unless his orders contradict those of myself or your father-and even then, hear and consider his will."
The king nodded.
Filfaeril raised one finger to indicate him and slowed her speech to give each of her words weight, to impress their gravity on the two listening princesses.
"Your sire sits upon the Dragon Throne, but Vangerdahast is the Dragon Throne. We cannot rule the nearest chamber pot, full or empty, without him, and if he should fall dead in our moment of need, so too will Cormyr fall. Whereas if I fall, or your father does, Vangerdahast will see to it that the realm survives. If he demands you appear before him naked, thrice a day and before all the Court, you will do it. Or that horsewhip shall see use-and not upon him."
Both of her daughters stared at her, suddenly needing to swallow and barely remembering how to do it.
Their mother leaned forward a little. "As one who has gone before you, and as a woman, I quite understand the irritation and embarrassment-nay, shame is not too strong a word-that the ever-present spying of our Wizards of War visits upon you. As one who has been the age you are now, daughter Alusair, I know how much this must chafe and set you afire, when you see your every whim prevented, your wanderings curtailed, the adventures we all must have alone ended abruptly or soured, time and again. Believe me, I know how you feel." She raised an admonishing finger. "Yet you are not any young backcountry farm lass. You are the future of the realm, an Obarskyr. You cannot have a carefree youth, and Vangerdahast's high-handed meddlings have ensured-thus far-that you have lived to enjoy a youth at all. He has personally prevented at least thirty-four attempts on your life that he has told me about-"
"Sixty-three," Azoun interrupted. "As of yestereve."
Filfaeril turned to give her husband a long look, then returned her attention to Alusair. "And as you see, the Royal Magician chooses to keep secrets from me, just as he does from you. I hate it, make no mistake-and yet, exasperaring as he can be, I trust him."
She spread her hands in a gesture of helpless resignation. "I must trust him. We all must. For he could betray and destroy us all with the snap of a finger, but he does not. Time and again he has proven deeply worthy of our trust. No, he is not the most polite man in Faerun, nor yet Cormyr, but never forget he is a wizard." She sat back again and sighed. "Strange folk, wizards. All that magic does things to their minds and tempers. The temptation must gnaw at them their every waking moment; they have such power and could just lash out at anything that angers them. Yet if they had-just a few of them, a time or two too often in the past-wizards would now be hidden, hunted things, with all the rest of us so fearful of magic that we'd bury our blades in anyone we merely suspected of being able to murmur a spell. And is that the way of the world? No. Wherefore, look you, even mages who are evil tyrants tend to hurl spells only when they deem it needful. And our Vangerdahast is not an evil tyrant. He's a tyrant, I'll grant, but Cormyr needs its tyrant. I dtead the day when he is no longer with us. Who will keep us safe- if irritated-then?"
She stopped speaking and let silence fall. It was a long time before Alusair dared to stir and look to her father.
"Sire," she whispered, "is this also your view?"
Her father nodded. "Every word of it. Daughter Alusair, Vangerdahast is too useful-too vital-to the realm for you to defy or annoy. So you will cease doing both of those things, right now. And show him how polite and respectful and genuinely thankful a true Obarskyr princess can be. Or I may go looking for a horsewhip myself. Or tell Vangey to wield it for me."
Tanalasta's mouth dropped open, but her father merely turned to her and reminded her gravely, "Control."
Both princesses nodded soberly. The need for them to control their faces, words, and voices at all times had been seared into them so often in their lives thus far that they had long since lost track of how many times they had been lectured on the matter. They had even lost count of all the folk who had delivered those stern teachings.
"Sire, Royal Mother," Alusair whispered then, head bowed, "I heat and heed. Have I your leave to withdraw?" "You do," King Azoun said gravely.
The princess bowed as deeply as any courtier who wasn't going to his knees, turned, and said to Tanalasta in an almost inaudible voice, "Pray forgiveness, Royal Sister, for my interruption."