"Oh no," she said breezily. "I've not met any of Viridius's finalists. I despise them all equally, on principle. I sent the first one—that weedy lute master—on a wild-goose chase through the cellars, ending with a special trip down the coal chute."
Saints in Heaven.
I dreaded to ask but had to know: "What did you do to the troubadour?"
Her eyes lit up; she hopped on her toes. "I'll show you!"
She pushed open the double doors and led me through a small study, or perhaps a schoolroom, furnished with two tables and a bookcase. A map spread on one table had been heavily annotated; pens, books, and wooden markers were scattered across it. She picked her way across to the windows, which overlooked a walled garden with a hedge maze at the far end. The princess plopped herself down on the embrasure seat and opened the casement. She patted the embroidered cushion beside her. I balanced on its edge, the bucket on my knees.
"Observe: the plume of his silly hat," she said, pointing. A bracelet of river pearls dangled from her little wrist.
Indeed, I could tell where my comrade-at-musical-arms stood among the box hedges. His feather bobbed dubiously in the autumn sunshine as if he were trying to decide between two directions.
He chose the left-hand path. "Not much further now!" cried Princess Glisselda, pounding the casement with her fist.
"Princess," I said, my mouth almost too dry to speak, "he sings like an angel. You should have heard his auditions. He'd make a superb assistant to Master Viridius, and an excellent tutor for you, if you would but—"
"Give him a chance?" she said, looking at me sidelong. "I am. The music master and I are at war; I am giving this fellow fair warning of our vendetta, a chance to learn what a morass he's walking into before he commits to it. In fact, I've had a real morass prepared just for him. I thought a literal approach would make things clearest. There he goes."
The feather abruptly disappeared. Shouts rose from the center of the maze. I gaped at her, appalled. "He didn't deserve that," I said.
"All wars have casualties," she said, her eyes fixed on the scene below.
I stared into the brown ooze meant for me. "What do you intend to do with this, uh, substance?" I said, tipping it, watching how it clung to the side of the pail.
"Isn't it gloriously vile?" she squealed, turning away from the window and clapping her hands. "It's fermented fish heads. It symbolizes how unpalatable I find the idea of music instruction. We shall spill it upon this final villain and be rid of two noxious things at once.
"We must hurry, though," she fretted, "or it won't be ready when he walks in."
He. I stared into the mesmerizing ferment and had an inkling of an idea. Maybe I could still salvage this, giving the princess a lesson by stealth and revealing my identity only when the thing was done.
I rose and smiled at her. "If you want to set this up so it falls on his head when he opens the doors, you've been going at it from the wrong side."
She fetched the chair from the hallway; I climbed upon it and showed her how one might balance the pail on top of the double doors, slightly ajar. The princess laughed and capered, delighted with me, and even I could not help taking a sober satisfaction. I felt safer with the bucket where she couldn't reach it.
"Of course, anyone might spot the trap through the crack," I said, stepping down and studying the setup from another angle. "You'll want to draw your victim's attention toward something else. What if you sat in his line of sight, playing your instrument?"
She made a rude face. "I think not."
"You don't have it with you?" Had I trapped us in here without it?
She scorned to answer, but turned toward a hanging tapestry and pulled it aside, revealing a door. She quit the schoolroom; I hesitated, and then followed her into a much larger salon with tall windows and chairs grouped into conversational clusters.
In front of the windows stood a harpsichord, covered against dust.
"Is that your instrument?" I asked.
She snorted, an unexpected sound from such a highborn girl. "It's Viridius's. He doesn't let me touch it. He has not forgiven me for filling it with frogs." When I blinked at her uncomprehendingly, she said, "It has beenwar, Seraphina."
She turned and flounced off toward the windows. I stared after her.
I was beginning to dread the possibility of getting this job, but it shamed me to think I might be defeated by fear in this final trial, which had nothing to do with my musical abilities. I took a deep breath and whipped the sheet off the harpsichord.
Princess Glisselda turned at the sound and raised an eyebrow at me. I sat at the keyboard and let my fingers say hello, thrilling at the texture of the notes.
"What instrument does Viridius have you playing?" I said. "Dulcimer?"
"How did you know?" she asked.
"That's the usual first instrument for fashionable young ladies," I said, indulging in a few arpeggios. "But there's a reason it's called the dull-cimer."
"That's what I said! I made that exact joke!" she cried. "And the old tyrant barked at me that it was the easiest instrument to learn and I was tone-deaf as a boiled beet."
Ouch. Clearly, both sides fired volleys in this war.
Glisselda crossed the room, her arms folded and a scowl crumpling her elfin face. "I know what you're up to, and it isn't going to work," she said.
I looked up from the keys. "I'm sorry, I don't—"
"You're just like the rest of them," she cried. "Grandmamma, and my mother, and everyone. Music is supposed to teach me discipline, they say! The dullness of the dulcimer will make me mild and discreet and dispassionate!"
I put my hands on my knees, facing her. "You're not interested in music even a little."
"Absolutely not," she said fiercely.
I tried to smile, but my heart was sinking. "So what are you interested in?"
I had her answer narrowed down to three before she even opened her rosy mouth. She would say gowns or balls or boys. I was already thinking of ways to relate any of these three to music—gowns was hardest—and so I didn't hear her answer at all. "I'm sorry, what?" I said stupidly.
She glared poison at me but repeated her answer: "Statecraft."
We stared at each other a long moment, Princess Glisselda's mouth a tense line, her fingers worrying a bead on her bodice. I sensed I had been handed a bright pebble of truth and that she was waiting to see what I would do with it.
Statecraft.Statecraft.
"You know," I said, speaking slowly so my thoughts could get a sufficient head start on my speech, "music is not as irrelevant to statecraft as you might suppose."
She rolled her eyes theatrically.
I pushed on. "No, really. Music teaches you about harmony, about resolving tension and finding balance—and that's just the notes. The kind of negotiation one must undertake with one's instrument, well. A diplomat could only hope to listen so closely and respond with such sensitivity."
I turned from her and played a few experimental chords. "If you're too timid with your instrument, it takes advantage. The notes will sound incompetent even if you play them right. If you are too harsh"—this seemed a likelier problem for our princess; I slammed out a few samples—"it exacts a subtle revenge in timbre. Sometimes an unsubtle revenge, depending on the instrument."
I looked at her sidelong; she was staring at the harpsichord lid, her gaze unfocused.
"Any instrument would wish to be spoken to respectfully," she said quietly.