" 'I am sorry,' she said, 'but my vent closes up tightly when I am out of water. I cannot relax it even if I would; besides which, I find it painful to be squashed between your weight and the stones. We mer-folk always copulate in the water.'
" Then let us try it in the water,' said the king. Both slipped into the pool. Lelia explained: 'We mer-folk approach each other side by side. We turn to face each other and, when the juncture has been made, the pair roll slowly from side to side, so that first one and then the other has its nostrils out of water. We are not fishes with gills, you know, and must needs breathe even as you do.'
"During this explanation, the cold water had robbed Forbonian of his royal rigidity; but by embracing and cosseting Lelia, he managed to restore it. When he attempted to play the part of a mer-bridegroom, however, he found that he could not time his breathing with the alternate surfacing and submersion, since Lelia expected him to stay under much longer than he could hold his breath. At every attempt, he would take a breath at the wrong time and emerge coughing and gasping, all thoughts of love banished by the urgent need to get the water out of his lungs.
"On his third try, after a long period of recuperation from the last one, Forbonian did succeed in penetrating his love. Lelia was by now in a highly excited state. In a transport of amorous passion, she seized him in her finny arms and dragged him beneath the surface. To her it was naught to submerge for a quarter-hour or more between breaths, but the poor king had no such amphibious talent.
"Soon Lelia realized that, instead of marching on to his climax, Forbonian had gone limp all over. In panic she hauled him to the surface, boosted him out on the flagstones, and heaved herself out, meanwhile shouting for help.
"The guardsmen burst in to find Lena leaning on the prone and naked body of Forbonian, repeatedly pressing his rib cage down and releasing it. A couple of guards seized her arms, while their officer shouted: 'Drown our king, will you? Water witch, you shall beg for death ere the headsman gives the final stroke!'
"Lelia tried to explain about artificial respiration; but in her excitement she lost command of her Novarian and spoke the language of the mer-folk. They were dragging her away when the king groaned and raised himself on his elbows, gasping: 'What do you?'
"When they told him, between coughs he said: 'Release her! I risked my life by my own folly, and she saved it.'
"Forbonian issued another decree, annulling the mer-marriage. He caused Lelia to be put back into the sea, and shortly thereafter he wedded the daughter of a merchant of Kortoli City and begat heirs. But for years, they say, on moonlit nights he would go down to the sea and climb out on an old pier at Storum, and there converse with someone or something in the water below. The lesson, if you wish me to point one out, is that marriage is a chancy enough business without wantonly adding to its problems.
"And now I think the scenery has been shifted, and my old friend Merlois is ready to announce his second act. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."
Jorian's storytelling proved so popular that Merlois kept him as an adjunct to his shows as long as the troupe played in Othomae. He insisted on taking Jorian to a costumer's shop to buy him an outfit more theatrical than his everyday jacket and trews. The costumer, Henvin, ordinarily furnished materials for the costume balls by which the gentry and nobility amused themselves. He clad Jorian in a black jacket with spangled lapels, which glittered when Jorian moved.
"Were these any wider, I could fly with them," said Jorian, looking doubtfully at the lapels.
Merlois said: "It makes you look like a proper hero of romance. How would you like a permanent post, to travel with my troupe and take acting parts as well as tell tales between acts?"
"I am flattered and grateful, but I cannot accept just now. When I get my wife back, if you still feel thus, we shall see. I am a good second-rater at several occupations, including clock-maker, farmer, carpenter, accountant, surveyor, soldier, sailor, fencing master, storyteller, poet, and I daresay actor. Which I shall finally settle into remains to be seen."
Between his storytelling for Merlois and his work at Tremorin's salle d'armes, Jorian managed to save some money. Hearing that the registrar at the Academy had died, he went to Doctor Gwiderius and persuaded him to give Margalit a try at the job.
"I never saw such confused records!" she told Jorian after her first day. "The old registrar must have long since discarded his trump cards. I will try to bring order out of this chaos, but 'twill be a struggle."
"How do you get on with the faculty?" asked Jorian.
"Not so different from other men. Some take me for a kind of monster, being the first woman to hold the post. As for the others—well, I can count on at least one attempted seduction a day."
"That's not surprising. You are a spectacularly attractive person."
"Thank you, Jorian. These solicitations are a compliment of sorts, even though I reject them."
In the month of the Ram, Jorian boarded the diligencia for Vindium, riding through a countryside lashed by spring rains and soon ablaze with spring flowers. At Vindium he took another coach to Kortoli. After the death of his father Evor, his brothers had moved the clock-making business from tiny Ardamai to Kortoli City. His mother remained in Ardamai, living with his sister and her family.
"Country practice is all very well, if you want to take life easily and have little ambition," said his elder brother Sillius when the greetings were over. "It is costlier here, of course, but the wealth of street tradt more than makes up for it."
A couple of Sillius's children were climbing over their uncle, whom they had long heard of but never seen. "Kerin," said Jorian to his younger brother, "do you think you could get the Regency Council of Xylar to let you clean and regulate their clocks again?"
"They are about due," said Kerin, who was not only younger than Jorian but also slenderer and handsomer. "You surely provided a market for the clock-maker's skills when you reigned there, gathering all those clocks."
"It was my hobby. Some day we must try to build a clock like one I saw in the House of Learning in Iraz, powered by descending weights instead of trickling water. The engineers had not gotten it to work, but the idea looked promising."
Sillius sighed. "There you go again, Jorian! Always pushing some goose-brained newfangled idea, even though you were never able to master delicate clockwork."
"My hands may be clumsy, but it does not follow that my brain is lame," retorted Jorian. "I'll work with a large model and, when it succeeds, let you copy it in a small size, with gear wheels no larger than fish scales. Kerin, could you set out soon for Xylar, to solicit another contract to clean and repair the clocks in the palace? When I left there were twenty-six of them."
"Aye. I have bethought me of just such a venture."
"Then here is what I want you to do…"
When Jorian had explained his plans for Thevatas the proxenary clerk, Sillius said: "I wish you would not draw Kerin into your wild schemes. Some day it will come out that he is your brother, and the Xylarians will take his head in lieu of yours."
"Oh, rubbish!" said Kerin. "I have no family, as you have, and I know how to keep my mouth shut. The feast of Selinde comes up soon. Why don't we all make a holiday of it, go to Ardamai, and surprise our people there? You left seven years ago—or is it eight?—and you've never even seen your niece and nephew there. And Mother would never forgive us…"
Chapter Seven THE SOPHI'S TOWER
IN THE MONTH OF THE LION, JORIAN RETURNED BY COACH to Othomae. Since it was a holiday, the Feast of Narzes, Goania invited Jorian and Margalit to her house for dinner.