For Princess Miliana Mannicci, gaining access to the palace library was a process involving fiendish cunning, sly patience, and infinite subtlety.
Long days of practice were bearing fruit. Thus far, the girl had mastered (well, almost mastered) four whole spells. One of these seemed to allow her to store sounds inside a box; not a very useful skill, perhaps, but Miliana refused to be discouraged. For two whole hours late at night, she sat in her room and read aloud passages from Lady Zuggi's Primer of Basic Heraldry, including appendices on Charges, Countercharges, and Trends of Modern Times; a book so dull that the moths whirring about Miliana's candle seemed willing to hurtle themselves into the flame as their only means of escape. Finally reaching appendix three- just moments before she felt she'd suffer a lingering death from terminal boredom-the girl slammed shut her enchanted box and tied it shut with string. Locked inside was a monologue more powerful than a sleep spell, the perfect weapon for the following day's campaign.
The next step required the nicest, most intricate manipulation. Miliana unpicked an old embroidery and restitched one heraldic banner in reverse-a change so subtle, so minor, and so utterly insignificant, that only a mindless pompous pedant would give the slightest care.
Miliana left the embroidery on the loom, deliberately hiding it behind a curtain. Sure enough, not half an hour later, Lady Ulia came trumpeting into the palace solarium with the force and verve of a nomad battle horde.
"Miliaaaa-naaaaaa!"
Ulia's battle cry struck home like a heavy lance. Loitering noblewomen, maids and staff instantly scattered and fled like mice. Miliana simply sat in place beneath a beam of sun and closed her eyes in joy.
Lady Ulia swept into the room like a granite juggernaut. She wore her most impressive hat-a horrid thing with not one but two tall points, which made her look like a sort of hydrocephalic water buffalo. Sumbria's greatest lady spied Miliana's hiding place and then strode forward to confront her errant stepdaughter.
"Miliana! Miliana, I am dismayed-nay, appalled! Appalled and dismayed, that is the only way to describe it." Ulia's maid, Sophia-a scraggly little thing looking a bit like a rodent who had just been rescued from a milk jug-furiously worked a fan to sooth her mistress's brow. Ulia heaved her bosom up and down in gratitude at this simple act of kindness.
"Miliana, I have tried and tried and tried to establish you with all the skills a maiden should possess. What have you to say for yourself, my girl? What have you to say?"
Miliana polished her lenses and perched them back on her nose, nearly awestruck by her stepmother's command of theatrics. Predictably, Ulia never gave her an opportunity to speak; instead, she swept herself about Miliana in a grand circle, like a mighty war-galley sailing on parade.
"You shall have me faint clean away! You shall bury me from shocked disgrace, my girl. What have you to say-what have you to say about this-this…" Here words temporarily failed her. Lady Ulia held aloft the botched piece of needlepoint and pointed a great sausagelike finger at the reversed coat of arms.
Thick glass discs caught in window light made the most marvelous blank mask. Miliana managed to adjust her spectacles and lean toward her embroidery in beautifully feigned puzzlement.
"Oh! Is it so very important? I mean-it can't be so drastically wrong…"
Ulia flapped her lower lip like a landed fish and flung up a great wailing cry of dismay.
"Important? Sune bear me witness-Oh, alack the day!" A pause for breath strained her bodice lacing, which already groaned like naval hawser cables in a storm. "Heraldry is the very quintessence of the social code! Heraldry is our tool for planning every feminine campaign. What if-oh, what if one were to give a favor to the wrong champion? Can one imagine, even for an instant, what damage might be done?"
Miliana wrinkled up her nose as she polished her spectacles on her gown.
"Ulia, I can't see that it matters, since they're all going to fall off their horses anyway."
"Yes-but the wounds, girl! The wounds!" Lady Ulia clapped hands beneath her great horned headpiece in amazement. "The whole point of a tournament is for the championed lady to rush forth and kiss her hero's wounds!"
"Goodness! Well, if they land on what I think they'll land on, I certainly won't want to kiss anything of the sort!"
Ulia swelled with indignation and pointed toward the corridor with one trembling, pale hand.
"Wretch! I see sterner measures must be taken. I have been soft, but I shall be soft no longer!"
Ulia sank down onto a stool, exhausted by the wicked ways of the world.
"Whatever can you young folk be thinking of today? I ask you. I beg you! Our Lomatran suitor is invited here, into my own home, to our very victory ball-and does he appear? Does he make himself known to his sweetheart or his future mother-in-law? No, he does not! He disappears, like a thief in the night."
Lady Ulia stood, turned her back upon her stepdaughter and went into a magnificent huff. "I shall discharge my own responsibilities, even though the rest of Toril sees fit to let civilized manners die! To the library with you, my girl! To the library to study heraldry until your eyes can bear no more. You shall be locked inside, nor shall you stir forth until the supper has been laid.
"Now get thee gone!"
Miliana slapped her hands together in satisfaction, picked up her hems and marched gleefully off down the corridors. She ducked out of Ulia's sight, dove into the empty library, and briskly slammed shut the door.
Her tall pointy hat made the perfect speaking trumpet; removing the very tip, she placed it near her magical box of words, directing the tedious monologue toward the corridor. Lady Ulia's suspicions would thus, hopefully, be soothed, leaving Miliana free to clamber like a spider monkey along the upper shelves for many profitable hours.
In pursuing her private studies, Miliana's primary problem seemed to be basic comprehension. Not only did she hardly understand the terms used in her only source books, but she could scarcely comprehend the language in which the books were written. It seemed to be a most unusual, antiquated tongue, and although the symbols used to frame the spells needed no translation, she really did need to get a better grip on the whole wretched thing. A translation of the spellbook's index would be her best next move. Trying to cast newly discovered spells at random was proving more hazardous every day. Miliana's last attempt at sorcery had summoned a great clap of licorice-scented steam, and had created a sort of big green-furry-thing which had promptly leapt out of the window, burrowed a hole into the palace pantry, and eaten all the pickled eels.
While her own voice droned ceaselessly on and on a dozen feet below, Miliana wobbled precariously at the top of a ladder, piling her arms with books. Half an hour of devoted search uncovered treasures of the finest kind: guides to ancient languages, cabalism and folklore brimmed between her arms, along with some dust-covered scrolley things that must have been interesting, otherwise they would not have been so well hidden behind the shelves. Utterly engrossed, smeared with dust and teetering beneath a vast mountain of literature, the girl never anticipated disaster until it struck at her from below.
Rising over the brain-dead drone of Miliana's speaking box, there came a subtle scratching at the door. From time to time a skewer poked in through the lock, followed by curses and more frenzied activity from outside. Finally, the lock sprang open with a decisive click; the door yielded, and a tall young man strode hastily inside.
His progress was blocked by Miliana's ladder. The youth looked up in puzzlement, caught an eyeful of Miliana's frilly pantalettes, and instantly gave a leap of fright.
Inevitably, this crashed his skull against the ladder, which skittered off across the floor. Abandoned twelve feet above the ground, Miliana blinked, hung poised in midair as ancient principles of gravity took hold, and with an almighty squawk tumbled down to the rug. She was saved the worst indignities of a bruised derriere by having the idiot-youth's head break her fall.
Shocked, dazed and stinging, Miliana found herself collapsed upon the ground under an avalanche of fallen books and paperwork. A wild commotion began somewhere under her skirts as a struggling victim desperately called for air.
Rescuing her spectacles, which were dangling ignominiously from one ear, Miliana managed to focus her bewildered senses and draw up her skirts. Struggling up between a shapely pair of legs clad in stockings, bows, and knee-length underwear came a young man in shabby court attire-a man clutching the crushed ruins of charcoal drawing sticks. The youth pulled dark hair back from his eyes, blinked dazedly up at Miliana, and suddenly blushed, bright as a summer's dawn.
"Oh-it's you!"
Rearing up like a scruffy cobra, the young man took Miliana by the hand and vigorously introduced himself.
"Lorenzo! Lorenzo Utrelli Da Lomatra. I'm a scholar-well, an inventor, really. And an artist. You've probably seen my work here and there. I did the portrait piece the embassy brought for Prince Mannicci-'The Sea Goddess Rising From the Waves.' Not that you can have seen it yet; it's still at the embassy. But it's ever so good!"
Crawling painfully out of the rubble of unbound books, Miliana slapped down her skirts and sourly tried to snatch back some of her dignity.
"So, you're Lorenzo." The name almost seemed to ring a bell. "Very pleased to meet you, I'm sure."
"Oh-my pleasure! No really-I mean, I've seen you about the palace. You must work here." The boy tried to clamber his way up from the floor. "What do you call yourself?"
"Angry."
"Angry?" The young man screwed up his face in puzzlement, then suddenly paled as two and two made four. "Oh-oh angry. Oh, I am so sorry! So-so very…"
The boy made an attempt at dusting off Miliana's posterior, slapping her backside in a manner which made the girl peer down in alarm.
A big, black charcoal handprint now marred her dress-a handprint placed in a manner that would make Lady Ulia scream for the nearest headsman.
The corridor floor trembled; Ulia herself could be heard approaching the library door. Miliana leapt to her feet, slammed shut her "noise box" and jammed the portal back in place. As she surveyed the mess of fallen books, young man and drawings all about the carpet, a hunted look possessed her face.
Alone in a room with a man-and with his handprints all over her rump! Miliana planted her back against the door and let her breast heave in utter panic.
"Miliaaaa-naaaaaa! Miliana, whatever was that noise?"
Lady Ulia's voice struck fear straight into Lorenzo's soul. The boy dove beneath a table and scuttled about the floor on all fours like a demented rat looking for its hole. Miliana heard footsteps approaching from the corridor and nearly expired from fright.
"The chimney! Take the books and hide inside the chimney!"
"Eeerk!" Lorenzo peered up into the chimney in dismay. "There's a half-eaten pickled eel in here!"
"Just do it! Quickly!"
Lorenzo burrowed out of sight; Miliana took a calming breath, tried to still her pulse, and briskly opened up the library door. She managed to intercept Lady Ulia with a false, befuddled smile.
"Um… hello…"
"Miliana, I require nothing more of you than diligent-nay, unceasing effort!" Lady Ulia bowled Miliana aside and peered suspiciously about the room. "What, pray tell, is that lumpen object moving about in the fireplace?"
Young Lorenzo's backside could be seen jammed like an unseemly cork into the bottom of the chimney. With a squawk, the youth suddenly lost purchase and fell down in the cinders, almost immediately drowning beneath a cascade of books and scrolls.
"Oh… oh he's just…" Miliana blinked behind the blank shield of her spectacles, searching for a suitable set of words. "The cleaner! He's th-the library cleaner. He cleans the books… you know, keeps the pages all clear and sparkling."
"Sparkling!" Ulia's voice roared, rattling the plaster-work. "The boy's nothing but a mass of soot!"
Miliana crammed her backside against a wall, hiding the telltale handprint on her rear.
"Charcoal absorbs foul smells, Ulia. 'Tis a well-known fact."
"Is it? Is it indeed?" Ulia squared her shoulders and narrowed down her eyes. "Cleaner or no cleaner, his presence serves as a distraction. And I must say that I find it most unsuitable for you to be sharing a room alone with a male commoner." Ulia pulled a quizzing glass from her cleavage and used it to examine the young man as though he were a particularly noisome species of bug. "Goodness-why does he smell of eels?"
"I have no idea, milady."
"Hmmmmph." Ulia sank her lens back into its cavernous hiding place. "Well, as long as he's here, have him search the wainscoting; a large green furry thing has just made off with a dried hogfish from the kitchen shelf. The vermin in this palace are becoming quite unforgivable!"
Ulia hitched up her skirts, tried to walk through the door and managed to get her hat jammed in the doorframe. She ponderously maneuvered herself about and began to sidle past the obstacle, meanwhile fixing the hapless Lorenzo beneath her baleful eye.
"Young man, you have my permission to continue with your duties-but pray, do not be long. The young lady has research of the utmost importance to attend to. The security of Sumbria itself may one day rest upon her work."
The door closed with a titanic slam, leaving Miliana and Lorenzo to slump against the bookshelves in relief. The girl finally managed to peel herself away from the marble and wearily opened her speaking box; the sound of her own voice dragging its way through chapter seventy one, paragraph six: "Charges dovetail and counter dovetail and their acute relevance to social graces…" masked their conversation from eavesdroppers in the corridor.
Lorenzo half crouched, searching the wainscoting for signs of errant green furry things.
"What's a hogfish?"
"It doesn't matter." Miliana collapsed into a chair, remembered the charcoal mark on her backside, and decided that she didn't care. The girl wearily rubbed beneath her spectacles and massaged her eyes. "Now look-Lothario-"
"Lorenzo! Lorenzo Utrelli…"
"… Da tiddly-pom and tiddly-dee. Yes…" Miliana suddenly sat bolt upright in her chair. "You picked that lock! You're not supposed to be in here."
The young man-a handsome creature in an ink-stained sort of way-skittered aside like a nervous stick bug.
"Yes I am! I'm a guest! I just… just… just didn't have a key…"
"So you're a guest, are you?" Miliana vaguely remembered seeing the man before, but for the life of her she couldn't remember just quite where. "Well what do you want the library for?"
"Study!" Lorenzo left a trail of soot behind him as he crossed the polished marble floor. "Sumbria has some of the best books there are. It must be terribly interesting living here."
"That all depends on what you're allowed to do with your time." Miliana scowled, fixed her gaze on the intruder, and crinkled up her speckled nose. "Now, look-I'm not so sure you should be allowed in here."
The young man never even heard her. He crouched forward to inspect Miliana's magical speaking box, his face glowing with rapturous fascination.
"Oh-oh, this is wonderful! Superb!" Lorenzo turned to stare at Miliana with awe and excitement shining in his eyes. "Are you a sorceress?"
Miliana almost said "no"-and then the tone of respect in the young man's voice brought her up short. She drew erect, preened like a heron, and attempted to act terribly, terribly wise.
"Yes. Yes, I am, actually."
"And so they actually make you study!" Lorenzo sat himself down in a cloud of cinders and dust. "Back at home, they've banned me from every library in town. They say I'm disruptive." The Lomatran avidly examined Miliana's arrangement of the box and speaking trumpet. "This is fascinating. Now, you see, this has bearing on some of my own studies. I am exploring the possibility that sound can be translated into peaks and waves."
Miliana raised one eyebrow and peered at her companion through her pretty freckles.
"How would that be useful?"
"Ah-but perhaps it might be!" Lorenzo spread the drawing of a machine out across the table. "Here, you see? This machine uses a membrane to pick up sound, vibrating as noise contacts the membrane. The vibrations make this needle jump and change the score written on this parchment scroll, which is dragged slowly past the needle by these little springs! Now all I need to do is somehow reverse the process, find a way of reading the jump marks on the parchment, and we can make a re-playable mechanical recording of any sound we desire." The young man puffed out his chest in pride. "You see? The job's half done!"
Miliana leaned back in her chair and fixed her companion with a droll, sarcastic stare.
"You must be from the country."
Lorenzo instantly turned upon her a pair of eyes utterly alive with passion-a face so filled with fire that it welded the girl hard into her seat.
"Not from the country… of the country!" The boy slapped his hands onto the table and leaned toward Miliana, who leaned backward in her chair in blank surprise. "It's time to liberate the people from the tyranny of magic! Don't you see that a system of mechanics is the only means of ever freeing the world from mere autocracy?"
"You're right. I don't." Miliana speared forward, sharp light glinting from her lenses. "Magic is the one thing that anyone can have. The one thing that can free us from-from being ordinary!"
"Aha! Aha!" Lorenzo stuck a finger up into the air, dislodging a shower of grime into his cuff. "And how is this achieved? Through hard study. Through long, arduous learning and dedication! It's repression through and through!"
Moving from scorn to absolute irritation, Miliana folded up her arms.
"Look, I fail to see how my sitting on my noble backside reading books on magic represses a bunch of people that I've never even met."
"Well, that's my point, you see." Lorenzo threw open his arms, frightening the green furry thing sleeping on the mantelpiece. "Sorcery is only learned through long years of very intensive, very expensive study. Only the nobility can afford it-placing magic squarely in the hands of the autocratic classes. If there's ever going to be any real equality, we have to place a means of power into the hands of the masses!"
The girl stared at him in absolute bewilderment.
"What do you want to go around giving power to the masses for?"
"So that they can take part in the process of their own political rule!"
"Political rule?" Miliana blinked in amazement. "Have you sat back and watched what these palace dwellers do to each other all day? It's daggers in the back and internecine warfare twenty-four hours a day! If you go around getting everyone to carry on like that, we'll all be dead within a week!"
"Well, I don't mean that everyone should kill each other." Lorenzo ran fingers through his hair, disturbing a sooty spider which absailed quickly down to the floor. "I mean that we can break people away from the current tyranny of study!"
Miliana bridled.
"What have you got against study?"
"It is class prejudicial!"
"But you study!" Miliana pointed a finger straight at Lorenzo's nose. "You already admitted that you study things!"
"Um…" Lorenzo blinked, then hit upon an explanation. "Ah, yes, but only to serve a noble end!"
"So you're saying you're against knowledge?" Miliana angrily shoved a book across the table to crash against Lorenzo's arms. "That's what you're saying, isn't it? We should all drag ourselves down into the mire!"
"No! Look… you've made me forget everything I wanted to say." Lorenzo floundered about in a bog of frustration. "Study is what I want to spread! Everyone should be able to do it. It should be a basic right for every man, woman and child."
"All right then-so they can all study magic, and then everyone will be happy." Miliana gave a sarcastic, joyous wave. "What's your problem now?"
"Yes, but… but not everyone can do magic! I mean-the talent might not be there." Lorenzo paced back and forth like a caged animal, albeit a rather scrawny one. "What we need is an equalizer, something that can be a bit like magic for people who can't actually do magic, either because of poverty or inability."
Miliana heaved a sharp, irritated sigh.
"A unique power."
"Yes!"
"For everybody."
"Absolutely!"
The girl felt it best to let the conversation drop and lie like a dead thing on the ground.
"You're a loony."
"I'm only thinking of the masses."
"Yes." Miliana reached for a textbook and primly opened the cover. "Obviously you haven't tried smelling the masses lately."
She tried to dismiss him with her pose, but it seemed Lorenzo Utrelli Da thingamajig was made of sterner, dumber stuff; the man regarded her with a look of unfeigned amazement and tried to catch her eye.
"Um… Miss? Milady?"
"It's Miliana."
"Oh-Miliana!" Lorenzo let the name brand itself in great steaming letters on the inside of his skull, entirely failing to connect it with royal blood and wedding bells. "I just wanted to tell you how much I've appreciated talking with you. Intellectually, mind-to-mind, I mean. It's-it's utterly amazing!"
"What?" Miliana speared her companion with one stab of her eye. "Because I'm a mage, or because I'm a girl?"
"Well it's not as if you're actually a girl!" Lorenzo dug his own grave with cheerful, brainless enthusiasm. "I mean-you're a scholar."
Miliana shot the man a baleful glance. Lorenzo took it as a sign of approval and heaved a great sigh of satisfaction.
"Well this has been fascinating. Utterly fascinating! Do you live somewhere nearby?"
"I live in the palace. In the west tower. The one with all the plaster falling off the walls." Miliana adjusted her spectacles so that she might gaze down her nose at Lorenzo. "Lady Ulia is my mother-do you understand?" Lorenzo had rarely understood anything less; even so, he nodded his head and attempted to look learned, cosmopolitan, and wise.
"Well, then, I can see you again! I mean-would you mind if, from time to time, I use you as an aid for my studies?"
"Yes, yes, whatever you like!" Miliana opened the door to usher out her unwanted guest. "Now, please do run along and leave me to my reading. There's only another hour of heraldry left in my speaking box."
The girl slammed the door, then suddenly frowned, tugged it open once again, and relieved the startled Lorenzo of his lockpicks. Sealing herself safely back inside once more, Miliana leaned against the shelves and gave a great, frustrated sigh.
A Lomatran loose inside the palace? For a moment, the concept rang vague alarm bells, and Miliana searched for a reason.
Ah! Last night, Ulia had mentioned a Lomatran suitor. But suitors came in carriages with bouquets and minstrels singing serenades, not in scruffy hats, picking locks on library doors.
Miliana's magic noise box had now reached up to chapter eighty-eight: The Improper Use of Propers. Trying to regain her previous peace of mind, Miliana Mannicci perched herself on the table and began to read her sooty scrolls.
"Luccio!"
Lorenzo catapulted into the apartments he shared with his boyhood friend. He looked like a pixie which had spent too long buzzing around a candle flame; scorched, dumb, and dazed. The boy collided with a wall, looked wildly about the room with its easels, paintings, and half-built perpetual-motion machines, and then fought his way through a connecting door. He discovered Luccio sitting on the balcony, hard at work marking the backs of a deck of playing cards.
"Luccio-the most amazing thing's just happened!"
"Amazing?" Luccio, still suffering from the effects of a rather dodgy neutralize poison spell that didn't quite seem to quite recognize wine as a poison, peered at his friend through startling purple eyes. "Whatever do you mean, my cherub?"
"I've just met the most amazing person. Well-girl." Lorenzo blinked. "Woman. I mean-she's sort of a woman, but a person too!"
"Do tell?"
"Well, I mean, she's a girl but she's…" The scholar groped his hands blindly through the air searching for adequate words. "She's not like a girl at all! I mean-she only talked about real things-magic and mechanics and sociopolitical infrastructures-you know what I mean."
"Real things." Luccio shuffled cards briskly between his palms, keeping an amused eye on his sooty friend. "Do say on! You admire her for her mind. Was this paragon of politics also, perhaps, just a touch pretty?"
"No!" Lorenzo seemed utterly offended at the inference-then immediately leapt to the defense of his newfound colleague. "Well, yes, she was. But not… not so you'd notice. Sort of… sort of profoundly pretty. Not just beautiful."
"But she has the appropriate dimensions, accessories-all that sort of thing?"
"Um… I think so." Lorenzo screwed up his brow in an attempt to recall more than Miliana's striking, intelligent eyes. "I forgot to look."
"Ah, dear." Luccio tossed aside his cards and sorrowfully folded his fingers across his breast. "That, my little chuck, is not the best of signs. It is indicative-if you will forgive me-of love."
Lorenzo Utrelli Da Lomatra drew himself up as primly as a nesting hen.
"I beg your pardon, but it is nothing of the sort! This is an intellectual challenge; a meeting of opposed philosophies and complementary minds." Lorenzo sniffed, affecting a superior air. "She has offered to assist me in my research."
"Oh, yes, of course." Luccio made a motherly expression of pouting solicitude. "I had forgotten that the pure torch of reason leaves no space for other lights within your soul."
Tall and gangly as a starving troll, Luccio reclined atop the dangerous balcony rails.
"The arrow shot, sweet triumph strikes she home
"Into the breast of heroes, who no more shall roam.
"To the winds fly wits-ambition o'er leaps the stars!
"Our court we pay to Lliira-not to Shar."
Luccio held aloft a single finger to the sky. "Who is she, what's her name, and what color were her eyes?"
"Um-well… well, no color! Not that I could see."
"Alas-you have the affliction. Never matter-let us pursue it like a wild young hart and revel in the chase!" Luccio sprang along railings, balanced carelessly beside a drop at least three stories high. Swooping up the deck of cards, he casually flipped two upon the table: "the lovers" and "the fool." Accepting the omens, he fished beneath the couch for a half-full bottle of wine. "But did you not forget, heart, that your father has his mind set upon you wedding a princess?"
"I'll tell him she refused me. A marriage would interfere with my intellectual life-particularly marriage to some stuck-up princess." Lorenzo dusted off his fingers, ridding himself of his father's plans. "I shall pursue spiritual and scholarly growth."
"Aaah… spiritual growth!" Luccio walked a silver coin across the back of his hand. "With your friend with the sparkling eyes?"
"Look, Luccio-we only talked about systems of political economy."
"Aaaah! Then here's to political economy!" Luccio flung himself into a corner and delighted himself with romantic plans. "So, what shall we do? We must construct ourselves a grand campaign. How shall we bring this flower to your lips-this treasure to your heart?"
"I thought maybe I might send her a letter… something nice…?"
"A letter?" Luccio rose slowly, as though facing down a horror in the night. "A letter? Are you mad, my boy? Are you addled? Are you drunken? Are you sick?" Luccio shot up and clamped a struggling Lorenzo under his arm. "Never! I shall show you how the deed is done. I shall lead you to the fields of Elysium, and toss away the plaque which reads, 'tread not upon the grass'!"
"You're a very strange man, Luccio."
"Silence! There are but a few dozen gods of love, and Luccio is their prophet!" Luccio produced another card, "the sun," and placed it in Lorenzo's pocket. "My credentials."
Lorenzo removed a large orange feather from a chair and wearily sat down; his eyes were only half focused upon the mortal world. In one corner of the room, there loomed a giant canvas-an ornate thing showing a sea goddess rising from the waves. It was to be presented to the Mannicci household at the Festival of Blades in one week's time. Lorenzo stirred himself, picked up a brush and corrected a tiny error in the painted foam.
Irritated and frustrated, he suddenly thrust paints and brush away. The boy threw himself at the balcony rails and stared in exasperation at the sky.
"I've been so tired of it! Trying to be creative, but without…"
"Brains?" Luccio tried to be helpful by sitting on the balcony paring his nails.
"Not brains-inspiration." Lorenzo took up his paintbrush and pallet; with fast swipes of a brush he sketched Miliana's face across a wooden board. "There's been no impetus. No ideas to rebound myself from. But now, now at last, I feel…"
"Distended? Bilious?"
"No! I feel…" Lorenzo flapped about like a fish looking for an appropriate hook. "I feel alive!"
Four more brush strokes constructed Miliana's spectacles and her eyes.
"This has been the most perfect day of my entire life! It's been… It's been…" Words obviously failed to describe it. "Sumbria! Aaaaah, Sumbria. I feel like I'm finally born into a brilliant new world."
Luccio suavely dodged beneath a waving brush that might have given him a blue mustache.
"So there'll be no serenades, then?"
"What? Oh, heavens, no." Lorenzo made a tut-tutting motion with his most disreputable pallet knife. "This is a meeting of minds."
"Still…" Luccio leaned forward to inspect the gaudy painting of the sea goddess at play. "You must examine all the possibilities. A romantic attachment is not impossible and, theretofore, you must be cautious. For instance-does she please your mind's eye?"
"Oh, absolutely!"
"Ah." Lorenzo's friend leaned himself waggishly against one wall. "In which case, my best advice is for you to think upon the mother. After all, that shows you how your own girl shall look in years to come." Luccio tapped thoughtfully at his pointed chin. "How does her mother look?"
A vision of Lady Ulia boiled unbidden into Lorenzo's mind; the boy instantly turned pale.
Luccio's lips made a silent O of understanding, and he went back to the balcony rails. Lorenzo paced back and forth for a while, and then tapped his chin in thought.
"I believe I must dispute your theory. The bone structures of mother and daughter would seem to be somewhat different."
"Ah, but perhaps the daughter might transmute in time?"
"It's a question of anatomy then." Lorenzo sat himself down and tucked his heels in hard against his rear. His face took on an air of intellectual puzzlement. "I don't believe there are any books covering the subject."
"Well, I should make study of it, if I were you, old chap." Luccio perched himself back on his accustomed railings, peeling a piece of fruit. "Top priority!"
"Yes. Yes-absolutely!" Lorenzo shot upright, his face rapt in absolute enthusiasm. "Well, she said she didn't mind. This is perfect. Perfect!" Lorenzo avidly shook Luccio's hand. "I'll get onto the task right away!"
Luccio gave a sigh and tried to recapture the golden peace of the afternoon. Behind him, Lorenzo busied himself with mirrors, old lenses, and bits of copper tube; just below, a rat crossing the courtyard halted, hiccuped, assumed a puzzled expression, and exploded with an almighty bang.
Young Luccio let slip another sigh and concentrated on fruit knife and orange peel; clearly the airs of Sumbria did strange things to the soul.
"Svarezi!"
The youthful voice stabbed out from alley shadows; Ugo Svarezi never even deigned to take notice. Leading his lean black hippogriff mare toward the garrison stables, Svarezi plodded on with his savage, troll-like gait, crushing alley refuse under his heels.
"Svarezi! Turn!"
He turned. A short, thick "cat gutter" sword glittered in Svarezi's hand as he swiveled himself around. Black velvet armor breathed in slow, sinister movements as he stood gazing back along the straight Colletran alleyway.
Behind him, his hippogriff gave a low and hungry growl.
A golden youth stood in the light: Blade Captain Veltro-young, angry, and backed up by a lounging band of perfumed swords. His young rabble draped themselves like a painted canvas across the alleyway, anticipating blood as they played with their naked blades.
Feet rustled the dust behind Svarezi, heralding the arrival of yet more of Veltro's men. The Blade Captain never turned. He began a slow, deliberate advance toward his first enemies, bringing his scarred, brutal sword into the light.
Farther down the lane, Veltro struck a heroic pose. The slim youth stood before his comrades, tossing aside the scabbard of his silver rapier.
"No bride for you, Svarezi! No general's baton-no more scorning Colletran honor. Tonight, your soul will be shrieking in Baator!"
With a feral growl, Svarezi came within sword reach and hammered the thin rapier aside. Veltro leapt back and bellowed orders to his comrades, who instantly surged into the attack.
From behind Svarezi, more war cries rang; he dropped the reins of his hippogriff and released her to the kill.
"Shaatra…feed."
With a shuddering hiss of pure release, Svarezi's hippogriff turned to stalk back down the alleyway. The four bravos charging at Svarezi's back skidded to a halt and carefully readied their blades.
Long and lean, with an eagle's beak and claws honed razor sharp, the hippogriff mare pranced slowly sideways toward her prey.
Facing five armed men, Svarezi never slowed the pace of his advance. He stalked coldly forward toward the flushed, screaming young Blade Captain at their rear, swatting rapier lunges aside one by one. Like a black fiend, he homed in upon his chosen sacrifice, as sparks showered from clashing blades and sword points scored across his armored skull.
"Kill him! Kill him, you fools!"
Veltro's voice cracked in panic and excitement. He waved his toy sword and began screaming orders back down the empty alleyway. Svarezi advanced into the center of a hooting quartet of enemies, and finally brought his blade into play.
A courtier lunged; Svarezi cracked the man's rapier point away, trapped his forearm against his chest and wrenched the limb aside. The courtier screamed and reeled backward, his arm broken and his sword dangling from its lanyard at his wrist.
Stabbing from behind, a rapier pierced Svarezi's brigantine and ripped a fiery line across his ribs. The warlord whirled, wrenching the sword from its owner's grip, then slammed the man against a wall and stabbed him in the groin. The broad blade twisted, spilling the stink of blood into the alleyway, and Svarezi tossed the shrieking carrion aside.
Behind him, Shaatra screamed in lust for blood. A beak snapped, a wingbeat drove back a narrow sword, and suddenly the hippogriff spun to kick out with her rear hooves. A body screamed as it crashed hard against a mud brick wall. Another man gurgled horribly as the eagle beak fastened on his jaw. Shaatra shook her victim like a bloody doll, her triumphant hunting cries bubbling through the blood of living prey.
"Archers! Archers!"
Behind Veltro, a fresh flood of men appeared: a dozen crossbowmen in the particolored livery of Veltro's own brigades. The youth laughed as Svarezi stepped away from the embattled courtiers. Pointing with his silver sword, Veltro screamed his bloodlust to the skies.
"Fire!"
Troops knelt, jerked bow stocks to their shoulders and instantly took aim. Crossbow bolts whipped through the dust, stabbing into naked flesh and spraying blood across the alley walls.
Svarezi stooped down, wiped the blood from his blade upon a courtier's cap, and silently sheathed his sword. Behind him and beside him, dead and dying bravos clawed bloody trails though the dust-shot down to a man. Cheated of her kills, Shaatra raised a defiant scream, hurtling a corpse, shot through with crossbow bolts, aside. The black monster stared in anger at the crossbowmen, then spread her wings and rippled forward like a stream of liquid doom.
"Shaatra!"
Svarezi's command brought the creature slinking to a halt. Cowed, it ripped claws through a courtier's corpse while the black-clad general walked confidently toward the crossbowmen.
The soldiers spread out among the fallen courtiers, finishing the wounded and stripping rings from bloodstained fingers that curled like dying spiders. Their sergeant slung his weapon, faced Ugo Svarezi, and bowed.
"Forgive our hastiness, my lord. We might have hit your mount."
Svarezi waved an armored hand in answer.
"Small matter. Another one can be found."
Collapsed against a wall with blood spilling through his hands, young Blade Captain Veltro still managed a precarious hold on life. Shot through and through by his own men, the boy still tried to somehow crawl away.
Svarezi motioned the soldiery aside and walked deliberately toward the fallen man.
Veltro stared at his soldiers as if still unable to comprehend their treachery.
"They were my men… mine!"
"It takes a soldier to command soldiers, boy." Svarezi once again drew his savage blade.
Veltro raised his voice and screamed, cramming himself into the dust in fear.
"You're finished, Svarezi! Colletro's court is finished with you! No Mannicci bride-no council seats! No Blade Council will suffer you again!"
The blade reversed to hover like an ice pick in Svarezi's hand.
"If the council is finished with me… then let us finish with the council!"
Svarezi stabbed the cowering young Blade Captain through the roof of his mouth, twisting the blade down into the sand like a slaughterer. The body beneath him arched, then jerked into deathly stillness. Svarezi freed his sword and flicked the filth from the blade onto the alley walls.
Behind him, the crossbow sergeant scarcely spared a glance at his master's corpse.
"Did he speak the truth, sire? Will there be no Sumbrian bride?"
"What matter? Where a maid's door shuts, a master's opens." Svarezi wrenched at the feathered mane of his hippogriff, dragging her beak up from a feast of carrion. One armored fist drew a torn letter from the creature's saddlebags and crushed it like a fragile treasure in his grasp.
"Enough of petty court intrigue. It is time to raise our sights to a higher prize!"
Svarezi swung himself into his saddle and slowly rode away. Beneath him, hippogriff claws left bloody footprints in an alleyway already thick with flies.