‘Why did you lock us in?’ Mella demanded. She had this thing of blushing when she was really upset, which was deeply annoying when you wanted to appear cool and grown-up and sophisticated. Which she definitely wanted to appear now, especially since Aunt Aisling had been treating her like an absolute child, making stupid comments that were meant to be reassuring, but were just stupid and not even anywhere near what was really going on. Probably.
Companion Ysabeau had changed out of her hooded robe into rather an attractive formal gown. She looked at Mella in mild surprise. ‘Security,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you locked in at the Palace?’
‘I most certainly am not,’ Mella told her sternly.
‘I’m afraid it’s routine here. Automatic, actually.’
‘I’ll bet you’re not locked in when you go to your room,’ Mella said sourly.
‘But of course I am, dear.’ Ysabeau gave her a beaming smile. ‘All of us are in the Table of Seven. It’s a standard precaution.’
Precaution against what? Against who? How could the Haleklinders live like this? Always under lock and key, always on their magical guard against intruders. It was like being in prison. Although perhaps it wasn’t all the Haleklinders, perhaps it was just their rulers. Mella wasn’t certain, but she thought the Table of Seven were fairly new to Haleklind. Hadn’t they only come to power last year some time? Or maybe the year before? Perhaps that was it. Perhaps they hadn’t got used to ruling yet. That was bound to make them nervous. It must be horrible to start running a country without any training. In the Realm, the Royal Family had held power for centuries. You were brought up to recognise your duty and your destiny. Which made such a difference.
Aunt Aisling was smirking in that totally unbearable fashion of hers. She’d been insisting there was a perfectly innocent explanation and now her whole expression said I told you so. As if you could actually trust the wizards. Everybody knew they were slippery. Mella made one more try.
‘What happens if you want out? What happens if you have to go -’ She was about to say, to the bathroom, but realised at the last moment there was a magnificent bathroom in their suite and changed it to a feeble, ‘- somewhere?’
‘You simply knock on the door,’ Ysabeau told her, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘All security spells are tailored to the protected individual. You are completely in charge at all times.’
‘Oh,’ Mella said.
‘You see?’ Aisling chipped in brightly. ‘Didn’t I tell you there would be a perfectly reasonable explanation?’ She turned to Ysabeau with a positively unbearable simper. ‘I’m afraid my niece is a little young to understand the finer points of etiquette. So please allow me to express our thanks – on behalf of both of us – for your extraordinary hospitality. Our rooms are an absolute delight and the clothes and services you have provided… well, I simply can’t imagine how I shall cope without them when we leave.’
Ysabeau made a depreciating gesture with her hand. ‘The shoes and clothing are a small gift,’ she said. ‘You must take anything you please when you leave. We shall provide you with filament cases, of course. Now,’ she added briskly, ‘we have a small State reception and banquet arranged in your honour.’ She glanced disapprovingly at Mella. ‘Formal dress won’t be absolutely necessary, Your Serene Highness, and my colleagues are waiting, so there’s no time for you to change in any case. And you must be hungry at this time of day, so perhaps you would like to accompany me…’ She took Aisling’s arm, not Princess Mella’s, Mella noticed, probably sensing a kinded spirit. Aisling continued to simper and chat and smarm and behave like a perfect crawlcroop, bought off with a few dresses and some shoes that would disappear the moment she got them home: everybody knew that trick. Mella hoped Aunt Aisling would be wearing them when they vanished, including the underwear. In public. It would serve her right.
The dining chamber was small and heavily lacquered. Mella found it more gloomy than intimate and all the shiny surfaces made her nauseous. But at least the rest of the Table of Seven had also changed out of their creepy red robes and were managing to look almost normal, or as normal as wizards ever looked. Ysabeau made the formal introductions and at least these were done the way they should be.
‘Princess Culmella,’ Ysabeau said, ‘may I present Companion Oudine
…’ A small, bird-like woman with greying hair surveyed Mella with nasty, glittery eyes.
‘… Companion Amela…’ Amela was tall and slender and for some reason chose to dress like a man. She had one of those long, lugubrious faces that reminded Mella of a bloodhound. Her magical headwear seemed to be short-circuiting, since it occasionally crackled and sparked, but this might just have been a current fashion in Haleklind.
‘… Companion Marshal Houndstooth…’ Mella knew he was military even before Ysabeau said his name, would have known he was military even if he hadn’t been wearing uniform. She could tell by the short hair and the straight back and the heavy moustache (almost certainly dyed, if Mella was any judge). He’d probably been fit in his younger days, but now he was carrying a paunch that sailed in front of him like a battleship.
‘… Companion Aubertin…’ The tall, thin man, who might have been Amela’s brother – who might actually have been Amela’s brother: there was a decided family resemblance now Mella came to notice it – stared at Mella with dead-fish eyes. Mella decided she really didn’t like Companion Aubertin.
‘… Companion Naudin…’ He reminded Mella of one of the gnomish accountants in the Purple Palace: small, fat, balding and very precise. Of all the Companions in the Table of Seven, he was the most oddly dressed. He wore a suit that was a fraction too small for him, but somehow contrived to look extraordinarily neat. The whole impression was of a small boy who’d been dressed by his mother and sent off to school.
‘… and Companion Senestre.’ At last, Mella thought, a wizard who actually looked like a wizard, with his deep-set eyes and goatee beard. She could easily imagine him in flowing robes throwing fireballs in the heat of battle. If he’d been twenty years younger, she might even have fancied him.
‘How do you do?’ Princess Culmella enquired politely as she shook hands with each Companion. ‘How do you do?’ they asked her in return. It was all very civilised and hypocritical, but Aunt Aisling seemed to be enjoying the experience when it came to her turn.
With the formalities over, Companion Ysabeau seated herself at the head of the table with Mella on her right and Aisling on her left. She waited until the remaining Companions took their seats, then rang a tiny silver bell. The chimes floated visibly upwards and circled the heads of the diners before rushing explosively from the chamber in all directions. At once, a pair of white gloves floated into the room carrying what proved to be an inexhaustible bottle of wine. Beginning with Mella, they floated round the table filling glasses, then moved back discreetly to hover in a corner. Mella, who wasn’t allowed wine at home, took a quick sip and found she still didn’t like it very much, although that wasn’t going to stop her drinking now she had the chance. Aisling half emptied her glass, closed her eyes and murmured ‘ Divine! ’ The white gloves floated over to refill her.
In the Purple Palace, dinners tended to follow a simple Analogue World pattern – starter, main course, pud, then perhaps tea or coffee substitutes – but that was just to make her father feel at home. Elsewhere in the Faerie Realm, meals were more elaborate: three starters, a small cup of ambrosia, salad leaves with fish, roast game, a boiled vegetable course, then a pause for digestion and a hearty song of thanks, finishing with bread and honey. In Haleklind, it transpired, the wizards followed a different pattern still. Two thimble-sized cups were placed before each diner by uniformed flunkies. In one, Mella discovered drops of silver liquid, in the other, golden, both clearly alchemical distillates. She watched from the corner of her eye to see what Companion Ysabeau would do and discovered the correct procedure was to drink the silver followed by the gold. The silver made her feel instantly replete, while the gold reversed the effect to make her feel ravenous. The few drops of liquid in each cup renewed themselves, she noticed, each time she drank them.
What followed was course after course, alternating sweet with savoury, in portions that were neither particularly generous nor particularly mean. By watching her hostess, Mella soon realised how the meal was to be eaten and the alchemical potions used. If a particular course was too small and left you wanting more, you sipped the silver and felt satisfied. If it proved too big, you sipped the gold and were at once hungry enough to finish it. Taking both potions at once changed your palate in such a way that food you disliked became instantly delicious. There were alchemical subtleties as well – silver followed by gold within three heartbeats made you thirsty, for example – but Mella had discovered only a few of them before Companion Ysabeau distracted her attention.
‘Perhaps, Serene Highness,’ Ysabeau said casually, ‘you might like to tell us how we come to be honoured by this visit from yourself and your illustrious aunt?’ She paused for a single heartbeat, then added, ‘And how you managed to get here…?’
Mella carefully set aside a forkful of seaweed. It was an obvious question and one she’d been anticipating: indeed she was surprised it had taken so long. She’d thought hard about it in the interim and could see no reason why she should not tell the truth. Suitably embroidered, of course, to suit the diplomatic niceties. She gave Companion Ysabeau an inscruitable smile.
‘It has long been our wish,’ she said, deftly employing the royal ‘we’ that sounded so effective when her mother used it, ‘to visit your delightful country and see for ourselves the fruits of your glorious revolution.’
‘Indeed?’ Ysabeau murmured, equally inscrutably.
‘We had not had the opportunity,’ Mella went on, ‘of arranging an official visit, however.’ She took an inadvertent sip of the golden potion and had to fight hard to stop herself savaging the seaweed again. ‘So we are delighted to be here now,’ she added hurriedly. It was a less satisfying explanation than the one she’d rehearsed, but it would just have to do. She speared the seaweed and forked it liberally into her mouth.
Companion Ysabeau said, ‘And your means of entry into our country …?’
Mella sensed she wouldn’t get away with fuzzing the answer to this question: the Haleklinders were far too concerned about their security. At the same time, the seaweed was truly delicious. Then she remembered the silver potion, took a sip and the ravenous hunger disappeared at once. She pushed the seaweed to one side, swallowed the remainder of her mouthful and said, ‘That was an accident. We portalled here by mistake.’ She realised suddenly that the conversation between Ysabeau and herself was now the focus of attention of the entire table.
Ysabeau glanced quickly at her fellow Companions, then back at Mella. ‘By mistake?’ she asked.
Mella took a deep breath. ‘We were using an old transporter that had been set all wrong, but we didn’t know that and we didn’t know the setting, of course, and my Aunt Aisling was a bit impatient -’ She gave her aunt a brief, sideways look that made up for all the told you so’s Aisling had been inflicting on her, ‘- and so instead of getting where we wanted to go -’ Where had Aisling wanted to go? Anywhere in the Faerie Realm, Mella supposed. Anywhere she could get hold of her missing brother, who was now King Consort. ‘- We ended up here.’ She treated Ysabeau to a beaming smile. ‘We didn’t even know where we were when we arrived. But it was so nice to find ourselves in Haleklind.’
Ysabeau’s face remained impassive. ‘You transported from the Purple Palace?’
Mella could feel the sudden tension in the room, but wasn’t quite sure why it was there. Had she said something wrong? If she had, she didn’t know what, or what to do about it. No matter how hard she thought, she still couldn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t tell the truth. She shook her head. ‘Oh, no – from the Analogue World. My father is human, you know. I was visiting…’ She hesitated, ‘… visiting my aunt in the Analogue World.’ No reason to tell the whole truth. Besides, her plans to visit her grandmother were none of their business.
The atmosphere in the room lightened at once in a murmured general burst of conversation. Some of her dinner companions even allowed themselves tight smiles. ‘Ah, the Analogue World!’ Ysabeau exclaimed, as if the words explained everything. She turned to Companion Marshal Houndstooth and said sharply, ‘Do we have protections against Analogue portals?’
‘We do not,’ said Houndstooth, not in the least intimidated by her tone. ‘Since there are no portals in the Analogue World.’
‘Or at least so we believed,’ put in Companion Naudin. His gaze flitted from Houndstooth to Ysabeau.
‘And apparently we were mistaken,’ Ysabeau said softly. She turned back to Mella. ‘Are there any other transporters in the Analogue World?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so,’ Mella told her. ‘This was a very old one of Daddy’s that Aunt Aisling found.’
‘And where is it now?’
‘In my bedroom,’ Mella said. ‘But it’s broken.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw Companion Aubertin slip quietly from the chamber.
Ysabeau turned to Houndstooth. ‘Companion Marshal, we need to install securities against any further intrusion from the Analogue World. And we need to install them at once.’
‘Yes, Companion Leader.’ Houndstooth nodded.
‘Level ten,’ Ysabeau said.
‘Of course.’ Houndstooth nodded again.
‘I want you to see to it personally.’
‘Indeed, Companion Leader. They shall be in place within the hour.’ He began to talk quietly into one of his medals.
Surprisingly, Ysabeau turned back to Mella with a beaming smile. ‘I must thank you, Serene Highness, on behalf of the Table of Seven.’
Mella blinked. ‘Must you?’
‘But of course!’ said Ysabeau expansively. ‘Your visit – which we so much welcome – has alerted us to a potential flaw in our national security defences.’ She leaned forward to tap Mella lightly on the arm. ‘Obviously we would never consider you or your charming aunt a threat to our country, but the fact that you found yourselves here, in the very heart of our administration – albeit accidentally, we appreciate – certainly shows that an enemy might have arrived by the same route. An assassin, perhaps, or even, quite frankly, an entire invading army. I know that might seem unlikely to one as young and innocent as yourself, but believe me…’ She allowed the sentence to trail, then added, ‘However, that particular loophole will soon be closed forever and -’
Houndstooth glanced up from his medal. ‘Done, Companion Leader.’
‘Ah, there, you see: closed already! And all thanks to you, Princess Mella.’ Ysabeau’s smile vanished abruptly. ‘Now,’ she said sternly. ‘I want you to tell me what you overheard of our discussion in the Council Chamber.’
Mella froze. The question, coming when it did, took her completely by surprise. She had gone a long way to convincing herself the talk of attacking an empire couldn’t possibly have meant the Empire and had almost managed to put it out of her mind. At least until she got back home where somebody else could worry about it. But now, suddenly, there was something in Ysabeau’s tone that told her what she’d overheard was even more important to the Table of Seven than the security breach; and given how paranoid they were about security, that meant very important indeed. This, Mella thought, was no time to keep telling the truth. She needed to lie and lie convincingly, otherwise – her whole instinct told her – she was in a deep well of trouble. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Aunt Aisling said loudly, ‘Well, I, of course, heard nothing.’
Ysabeau turned slowly towards her. ‘Indeed?’
‘I was back in the other room upstairs, quite out of earshot. Well, we could hear voices, but not what they were saying. I tried to tell the girl it might be a private meeting, but she’s her father’s daughter and quite headstrong, so… I want to assure you, I personally heard nothing, nor did she tell me anything she may have heard. Not anything. ’
Thank you, Aunt Aisling! Mella thought. To Ysabeau she said, ‘Actually, I heard very little either. Something about pumpkins, wasn’t it? I’m not sure. Honestly, we were so confused about where we were and how we might get back -’
‘Pumpkins?’ Ysabeau echoed. A twitch of her lips broke into a smile, then a laugh. ‘Pumpkins!’ she exclaimed again. Her companions joined in so that on the instant the room was filled with laughter.
‘No, honestly -’ Mella protested. Then, unmistakably, the smell of lethe was in her nostrils – heaven knows she’d used it often enough herself to recognise it – and Mella’s chair toppled over with a crash as she tried to run from the chamber. But before she reached the door she forgot why she was running, forgot where she was, forgot who she was and certainly forgot everything she had seen or heard since she arrived in Haleklind.