Flecks of Gold (23 page)

The path widened, and Rafan and I came upon people. My fists clenched as I saw Avana sitting on a rock bench, purple skirts fanned perfectly about her, with one panted leg artistically peeping out. Next to her sat Doln Baro. She was laughing daintily at something Baro said. When she noticed Rafan and me, her lips tightened, all traces of laughter gone. Baro’s eyes narrowed, and his brown face turned reddish brown.

“Zefa Avana, how lovely to see you. You look like the sun itself,” Rafan said smoothly. He smiled broadly as if at a secret joke.

“Doln Rafan, I am always pleased to see you.” She stood and took his hand. Her head stayed fixed on him as she spoke, her eyes never wavering to include me in the welcome. “You know Doln Baro, of course.” She waved her hand at Baro who was staring fixedly at me.

“Of course. We used to spar together to keep fit for the jova courts,” Rafan said.

Baro’s eyes swiveled toward Rafan, his face turning a deeper shade of puce.

“Well, it was so nice seeing you both again,” I said pointedly. “Doln Rafan was showing me this fascinating garden, and I would really love to see more of it, so if you two don’t mind we will let you continue the conversation we so rudely interrupted.” I put my hand on Rafan’s and walked us quickly away. The corners of Rafan’s mouth curved skyward. I removed my hand again and reached out to pluck a leaf off the closest dorkee plant, shredding it into tiny pieces so that I wouldn’t say something I would regret.

“Be careful. The dorkee plant stains,” Rafan said, and sure enough purple sap was dyeing my fingertips. I dropped the leaf and tried to resume my former act of interest in the plants rather than looking agitated. After an eternity we reached the path’s end. It was a relief to see the entrance to the palace.

“Thank you for taking me on the lovely tour of the garden. But I’m feeling a bit tired. I think I’d like to go to my room to rest now, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, I shall escort you back to your room. Shame to me for not realizing you were so fatigued.” He flashed a solicitous look and then took my stained hand in the courtly gesture that seemed so possessive to me.

I really was tired. Despite all the toughening up I’d gone through on my journey here, the workout with Sogran had been arduous. I felt the need to take a catnap. Sentai wasn’t in my room as Rafan led me through my door, but I didn’t doubt she was off doing something else to help me seem more like a real princess rather than the imposter that I was. Thanking Rafan rather shortly, I closed the door on him before he could utter a sappy good-bye. I flopped on the bed and tried to get my brain to stop going a hundred miles an hour. Despite my fatigue, I couldn’t stop thinking, so I finally gave up and got out my anatomy book to study the lacings of the human body.

Soon there was another knock on the door. I unraveled myself from the bed sheets and book images to answer it. This time it was a servant in the royal colors. I tried to look unconcerned rather than nervous by straightening my shoulders.

“Yes?”

“The king asks if you would join him if you are not already engaged.” The servant looked all the time at the ground rather than at me.

“Of course. I’ll come with you now.” He nodded to the floor, turned, and then waited until I’d passed so that he could follow me through the corridors. I was glad there were so many people to help me figure out which way to go, but I so wished they would just lead the way. Instead, I led him through another merry chase full of polite coughs to redirect my course.

Finally we reached a spacious room with only one or two chairs against the wall. Nothing obstructed the beautiful marble floor, laid out in circles and diamonds in coral and off-white. I looked up from the floor to see the king in one of the chairs. He put down a stack of papers he was reviewing and stood, motioning the servant to close the door. The man bowed out, leaving only the king and me in the vast and empty room.

“Princess. It’s nice to see you.” His voice and facial expression made his words sound surprisingly and comfortingly sincere.

“Please, Sire, there is no one here but us. I would prefer you call me Mary when no one is around. I’m starting to dread the word ‘princess.’ ”

“Mary, then.” He paused as if mulling the sound of my name over, then shook his head. “Since we are having a ball, and a princess is expected to dance, I thought I would teach you as quickly as possible. I could have forced Sogran, but he would make me suffer for it. It is one thing to have him teach you weaponry—he likes that, and he likes you—but it is like digging for water in the sand dunes with bloodied hands to get him to dance at all, much less teach it.”

I was glad to hear that Sogran liked me. I hadn’t been sure by the end of our training session. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Your Majesty,” I said.

“No trouble at all. Not much, anyway. I like to dance, though you will find many a better dancer. Besides, teaching you will give me a break from some of the more tedious tasks of the day. It also helps Breeohan learn to handle the repetitive drudgery of being a king.” He smiled mischievously, which made him look very unkingly. I much preferred it.

“So how does one dance at an Iberloahan ball?” I bowed dramatically.

“It is similar to ballroom dance, but more stylized.”

It felt so wonderful to hear him refer to ballroom dance that I couldn’t help giving him an enormous grin. I could feel it stretch through my body, the kind of smile Mom usually inspired in me. He smiled back, eyes crinkling, sensing I think, what had made me so happy.

He held out his hand and led me to the center of the floor. “We can’t risk asking for musicians while I teach you, so I hope you have a good imagination and at least a passable sense of rhythm.”

“I played the piano as a kid.”

“We don’t have those here, though I hear they have something like it across the ocean in Krio. Now, let’s get started. Right hand to right, and left to left. Left is high, and right is low in opposite arches like so. Next you step right, then forward with your left, right again forward, forward to the side.” I was now at a right angle from the king. We repeated the steps so that my back was to him as he held my hands over my head, then to the side again. Finally, we faced each other once more.

“Now that is the simplest dance. It has a few variations.” He showed me the more complicated steps one could do. I found them much easier to learn than I’d feared. Much of the ease, however, had to do with the king’s ability to make it seem natural and fluid. He explained things very well. He was also patient when I stumbled, showing me the sequences I messed up on until I got it right.

“Do you know anything about Kirosan?” I asked as we moved around in the dance patterns.

“I know that Princess Kasala is twenty-five years old. You didn’t appear to me to be twenty-five.”

“I could tell you knew I was lying.”

“Is that the only reason you and Breeohan decided to tell me the truth?” He sounded stern, and his smile vanished.

“No. Breeohan was going to tell you no matter what, and I didn’t want to pretend to be a princess in the first place. I don’t know why Breeohan thought it would be a better plan than just being me.”

“Your eyes do create a problem.”

“But why would it be so bad for an ordinary person to have gold eyes?”

“Our world is not quite like yours, Mary, as you have begun to discover. Equality is slow to emerge and there is only so much I can do to encourage that trend. You may think that kings are all powerful, but even a tyrant cannot have complete control, and I hope that I am not a tyrant. I walk a dune that constantly shifts under me so that I must hurriedly and repeatedly pull up my feet from the falling edges. I have tried to promote the notion that those who are not courtiers are worthy of the same respect, but it is like telling a sandstorm to turn its course.

“Even should you behave strangely, most would rather believe you an eccentric or heretic princess than a commoner. Gold flecks in courtier’s eyes have stood for generations to mean that one has a superior heritage. If you had come to the palace with your royal golden eyes and claimed to be merely a commoner, you would be saying that the color doesn’t mean anything. There are those who would have killed you on sight to stop that idea from spreading.”

“I can’t believe a whole culture would be so obsessed with eye color.”

He smiled indulgently. “It is no stranger than the white men of your history who thought people with darker skin a subspecies.”

I flushed, thinking of my grandfather and the discomfort my own darker complexion had brought me within Mom’s family.

“They were stupid, too,” I said bitterly.

“Yes, but such beliefs take years to undo, as you also know from your history.”

“You certainly know a lot about my world.”

His eyes became instantly distant. He turned me in the dance so that I could no longer read his expression, his silence a sudden weight.

I’d been feeling more comfortable with King Verone, but his reaction reminded me that he was still the king of an entire country, and I was simply a girl. He’d said he hoped he wasn’t a tyrant, but did that mean he wasn’t? Was there something to fear from him? I stumbled in my worry and almost stepped on his foot.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” I nervously looked to see if he was angry.

He must have read something of what I was feeling. “You must excuse me, Mary. I’m not angry, and I know you want very much to speak of Earth. You are far from home, and Sogran and I are the only ones you can talk to about it. But I am not sure what to say to you, and Sogran is sometimes difficult to decipher.” He smiled ruefully. “Perhaps we have learned enough for today. I shall send for you tomorrow.” He bowed the bow a king gives a princess, and I dipped into the bow reserved for a ruler. He went to the door, opened it for me, which surprised me once again, and asked his servant to show me the way back to my rooms. I turned back before going around a corner to see the king slumped against the side of the door frame, looking at nothing. I decided that Sogran was not the only person who was hard to understand.

I
wasn’t required to
go to dinner in the ballroom, so I stayed in my room. It had been a long day and after eating I went straight to bed. The next day I rose just in time to get dressed and meet the training general. He scowled at me as I entered the private sparring room. “You’re late.”

“I thought I just made it.”

“To just make it is to be late. You should be waiting here for me to be free. I should not be waiting for you.”

“I’ll try to get here before you do next time,” I said, exasperated.

“See that you do or I will work you so hard you
will
vomit, and then I will start all over again.”

I shivered. What a stickler! I wasn’t even late.

“Let’s begin,” he said.

We started out with the sword that he had used yesterday, but after awhile we switched to knife-work. I did worse with this because I had never worked with knives in karate. He had to show me how to hold the knife as well as explain the differences in body movement to compensate for using a shorter weapon.

Sogran finally got frustrated enough that he stopped me mid-stroke. “I think I will teach you only a few blocks and strikes with the knife. You are too used to working with weapons with longer reach. I will cure you of that later. For now, you need to learn at least two different weapons. I think I can work with you on the sword. You seem to have some background knowledge. Is there any other weapon we have that you would know how to use?”

“I practiced with staffs, sais, and nunchucks.”

“I know what a staff is, but the words ‘sais’ and ‘nunchuck’ mean nothing to me. Could you show me if we have anything like them on the rack?” He swept his arm over the rack of weapons against the wall.

I looked but didn’t see anything similar. “I guess I will have to work with a staff.”

“It would seem so. Grab those two staves, and we will begin.”

The strikes were slightly different, but they were related enough that I was soon able to spar. I had to watch my hands. We had to stop a few times to fix bruises, and once my finger broke. Despite the quick healing, the pain taught me better than words. I swiftly learned how to protect myself.

By the time Sogran called a halt, I was gasping, my face so hot I could fry an egg on it.

“You are making too many mistakes. I don’t want you to unlearn all that I have been trying to teach you. Come again tomorrow.” He walked out of the room without a backward glance and without me ever getting the chance to ask him anything about his visit to Earth.

The sun outside struck me with a singular spike of heat as I walked slowly back to the palace’s inner coolness. I was too exhausted to even feel satisfied when I reached my room without any wrong turns. A bath was waiting, for which I was grateful. I didn’t have the energy to magically clean myself.

The king’s servant came a half hour later to herd me toward another dancing lesson. All this cattle wrestling was forcing me to learn the palace layout more quickly than I otherwise would have. This time I only had to suppress my desire once to grab the servant’s shirt front, shake him in frustration, and wrench him in front of me.

When we reached the dance room, the king was again going through papers. He certainly liked to utilize his time to the fullest. His brows furrowed in concentration over the paper he was examining, so he didn’t notice me approach until I was standing right next to him. He looked up with the air of one whose mind is still mid-thought, but then his gaze focused on me. A smile blossomed.

“Mary, you are here. I’m starting to get a headache from squinting.”

“What are you reading?”

“Oh, just some diplomatic dribble from the country next to us. Since we are mostly a desert country, we must watch our relations carefully with the surrounding countries so that we can import and export freely.”

I leaned a little to get a look at the writing. It was all scribbles to me, and I realized that Breeohan had never taught me the lacing for writing. I hadn’t needed to look at my map once Breeohan joined me in my journey.