Three Princes (12 page)

“Princess Ravenwind is a gossip for the London Discriminator,” Signore Borroccio broke in hurriedly, in a tone that suggested warning, perhaps even disapproval.

“Excellent photography in the Discriminator.” Oken bowed to her.

“I will make a point of relaying that to the lad, with your kind permission, Lord Oken. He lives for his work.”

“You employ only the one photographer at the Discriminator?”

“No. You are referring to the photograph of Simone with Marietta and that squirrel Glorianna.”

Oken was amused, not just because the attribution of “squirrel” to the Marques Glorianna was so apt. Princess Ravenwind’s deep blue eyes sparkled so beautifully when she said it. Despite her exotic appearance, she spoke with the familiar accent of his homeland. Her mouth shaped words so exquisitely when she spoke that Oken was in danger of losing track of what she was saying, and he almost ignored the slight surge of alarm that she had connected him with Simone.

He could, however, feel Mabruke watching him. Oken shook himself mentally and smoothly stepped back, putting a slight distance between himself and the princess.

Princess Ravenwind followed, keeping him within her personal space, smiling up at him as she spoke. “I am here for my grandfather, to write a review of the opera’s premiere. He collaborated with Signore Verdi. He wrote the native verses. Perhaps you would tell me what you thought of it? Having your name in the review would thrill my editor, and please the old man.” She grasped his hand firmly. Her hands were warm, almost hot. A cold disk, however, was pressed between their palms. He closed his fingers smoothly around it as she withdrew her hand. Her eyes never left his, and the sparkle flashed more brightly.

He put his hand in his pocket as he bowed to her, dropping the disk into it.

It had felt like a key, in that brief, hot instant between palms and pocket, a metal disk with a patterned edge. The weight of it suggested gold.

The embassy hotel keys were disks of solid gold. Oken smiled, meeting Princess Ravenwind’s bold blue eyes. He nodded. “I’d be delighted,” he said.

STORIES WERE
sung on the desert winds about the legendary wind-walkers who made powerful alliances with wizardsof the upper air. Long Walker agreed to seek thesegreat men, to bring them to help his people and save his beloved from the lust of Thunder. He set out on foot, running the length of the Anasazi roads.

The farewell duet between the lovers proved that Natyra was a better dancer than singer. Long Walker’s vocal, however, was clearly meant to overwhelm the maiden’s grief with his confidence and resolve. Oken noted that, other than in that duet, Natyra sang only as part of the maidens’ chorus, dancing in front of them so magnificently that their voices became her backdrop and rhythm.

The scenes of Long Walker’s journey showed the magic of Egyptian haeka glass and haeka Thothmen and artists. Long Walker ran at the center of the stage, leaping, flinging himself forward in the eagerness of his quest. The stage moved beneath him so that he remained in place while the scenery flashed around him—fabulous vistas of the extreme landscapes of the Cliff Dwellers and Plainsmen of the Confederation of the Turtle: deserts with stone formations as bizarre as dreamworlds; raging rivers that made the Nile seem tame and small. Towering trees in vast groves went on league upon league, more trees in a minute than grew in the entire land of Egypt. Grasslands swelled to the far horizon on every side, grazed by extraordinary bison in untold numbers.

Duat stars in the sky sang the chorus accompanying Long Walker on this journey. Sung in both native and Trade simultaneously, they presented dazzling counterpoint to the lone figure on the stage.

Long Walker ran all the way to the royal court of Mexicalli, and to the Egyptian embassy there. The Egyptian ambassador took up his cause, convincing the ambassador of Tawantinsuyu to send a fleet of Quetzals to bring the Cliff Dwellers to Mexicalli, where they lived in peace until the climate changed again, and they could return to their cliff-side homes.

IT WAS
a magnificent production, a stirring rendition of a moment in history. The final scene was a wild display of lightning, accompanied by thunderous orchestration, while the hero rescued his beloved, holding her closely as he clung to the rope ladder of the last Quetzal lifting off from their village. Wolves and wildmen howled at their heels.

The high emotion of the scene, however, was lost on Oken. His focus was on those long, beautiful legs.

The purple curtainscame downhe houselights flared up into a pinkish tinge of intimate lighting, and the audience rose to their feet as one with wild applause.

Once they had quieted, Mabruke leaned over to Oken and said, “Was she as vibrant in your bed?”

Oken thought about the question. “She is an artist,” he said at last. “I was her audience.”

“Then you do understand,” Mabruke said with professorial approval. “Do not mistrust that understanding.”

The cast came out to take their bows, and Oken thought Natyra seemed to be scanning the audience with more than her usual breathless appreciation of applause. Was she looking for him?

THEY WAITED
in the private viewing box for a time, letting the house empty out, in the hope of slipping away unnoticed. Conversation drifting up sounded satisfied and upbeat. Oken had a moment of pleasure enjoying Natyra’s success. He knew what applause meant to her.

Their escape, however, was intercepted once again by Signore Burrococcio, who swished through the crowd in the lobby and presented himself in front of Oken and Mabruke. “Please, my lords,” he said, “would you royal and most noble gentlemen do me the supreme honor of allowing me to present to you the genius who created tonight’s magnificent work, the composer himself, Signore Giuseppe Verdi? To have such royalty present for the premiere of his great work is quite an honor to him, is it not?”

Oken was curious about the man, and found he had no objection. The opera was a remarkable work, giving him a sense of the unknown world toward which they were bound. Mabruke accepted with his usual grace, although Oken could tell by his tone that the man had other plans. Nonetheless, they followed as Burrococcio eagerly guided them toward the cluster of people gathered around Verdi.

The maestro’s high, broad forehead and deep- set eyes showed the piercing gaze of genius who will not waste time with fools. He was master of this event. He wore an embroidered black tailcoat, with the Order of Hathor in gold and rubies pinned to his cravat. He was not a tall man, yet his presence gave the sense of scope and horizon, so that Mabruke did not loom over him despite his greater height.

Oken was impressed.

Burrococcio insisted on using their full names and titles as introduction to Signore Verdi. Oken thought Verdi looked a trifle impatient by the end, although he put his hand out with graceful ease and thanked them for coming to the premiere.

“I found it most enthralling,” Oken said with genuine enthusiasm.

Mabruke’s Italian was flawless as he spoke of his admiration for the work.

Verdi beamed up at Mabruke and, with an exaggerated expression of pleasure, asked in Italian if the prince had ever performed onstage, with such a voice?

Verdi then turned to Oken, switching smoothly into Trade. “I am telling him how he has such a beautiful voice. Do you agree? He should be on stage, yes? What do you think, my lord Oken?”

“Having been a pupil of Professor-Prince Mabruke for a number of years, I can assure you that his voice is most effectively employed in the service of the Pharaoh.”

Verdi bowed smartly in ac knowledgment of this. His smile was radiant. This was his night, and his new opera was exceptional, a masterpiece from a mature and illuminated composer.

“This is my son, Icilio.” Verdi drew the man standing next to him close, with an arm around his waist. Icilio seemed pleasantly relaxed in the presence of his illustrious father, basking in the reflected glow of his triumph. “Icilio, he travels beside me as my advisor and guide.” Verdi beamed around at them with paternal pride. “He keeps the ministers, and the magistrates and the costume designers from my path, so that I need think only of music, music, music!”

Icilio bowed to them politely, his bemused smile shielded behind a large brindle mustache. His face, though as handsome as his father’s, was marked by scars of a childhood disease. The cut of his elegant silk suit was designed to make graceful a left shoulder with no arm attached. “My father is honored by your presence at this premiere, Your Lordships,” he said to them. “You have our gratitude if you found any of it enjoyable.”

Princess Ravenwind had joined the cluster of people around the master. She caught Verdi’s eye and said, in her clear, pleasant voice, “May I ask, Signore Verdi, for my readers, why did you choose Marrakech for the premiere of this piece?”

Verdi beamed, clearly delighted to be asked this very question. He waved grandly at the ceiling with both hands as though drawing heaven down to him. “This magnificent stage is the closest opera house to the Manco Capac Aerodrome at Casablanca, because, as most certainly you know, my dear princess, in Casablanca, this is where the people from across the Atlantic first landed upon our shores.”

Oken recalled the name Manco Capac from the book. The landing tower at Casablanca was the oldest one on this side of the Atlantic.

Mabruke then confirmed Oken’s sudden guess that this was why he had taken this particular route. “We have also come here because of Casablanca’s historic aerodrome,” he was saying to Verdi. “My flight to Madrid will begin at the beginning!”

PRINCESS RAVENWIND’S
suite was as spacious and luxuriously fitted as theirs, yet the warm scent of a woman’s presence made it grander, a more welcoming place. The canopy drapes around her bed were pulled aside. Flickering candles in wall sconces cast warm shadows and light on her tawny skin as she smiled up at him. Her long braids had been loosed and waves of midnight tresses spilled down over her bare shoulders and arms.

She drew the coverlet back, showing herself to be slender and high-breasted, with a long torso and small feet and hands. Her skin was the color of a wildcat, golden and inviting.

“You shall admire me while I watch you disrobe, Lord Oken.

You are a beautiful man. I wish to remember the look of you.” “Talk to me, my lady,” Oken said as he loosened the belt of his silk robe and slipped it off. “When you speak, your mouth is profoundly erotic.”

She laughed, a soft, easy sound that melted his spine and stiffened his manhood. He lay himself down on the bed beside her, resting on one elbow so that they were face-to-face.

She touched him with cool fingertips in a way that promised lightning. “I have been anticipating this moment since I saw you in the lobby yesterday, Lord Oken. I see you will not disappoint my anticipation.”

He reached out to stroke her hair. “I am called Scott by my intimates.”

Her eyes were as blue as ocean water, with depths as mysterious and as alive. “Scott,” she put her lips close to his ear and whispered, “they call me the Raving Wind.”

FROM A
distance, the Quetzals flying over Casablanca were an astonishing sight: magnificent, giant birds with brilliant plumage, beautiful despite their peculiar shape. Oken knew their design in detail from the book that Sashetah Irene had shown him. The reality there in the sky was deliriously different from lines on the page. He had seen Quetzals in flight over Paris while en route to Novgorod, savage shapes against serene skies. He had paid them little heed, beyond noting the momentary wonder of flying machines that looked alive. He had never traveled by air, preferring the Egyptian sensibility of road-travel along the grand aqueduct lanes that soared over mountains and valleys with equal disdain. That was as far above the landscape as Oken cared to be. Quetzals had been flying various routes over Europe between major city centers for more than a century. Oken felt it meant only that the technology was fairly new.

The Quetzal was a fat, oval ring of laminated bamboo more than five hundred cubits long. This provided the structure for giant tubes of a stretchy material, caoutchouc, inflated with a lighter-than-air gas, Tlalocene, and lashed to the bamboo ring with netting. The engineers of Tawantinsuyu apparently had great faith in nets, in laminated layers, and in a whole plethora of plant resins, glues, and lacquers. Fanfold sails around the oval were controlled by lines of hemp rigging and painted in tropical colors, red and blue and green. These “wing-sails” spread both above and below the bamboo ring.

Suspended in a net in the center of the winged oval was a fish- shaped sky-boat twice as large as a royal barge. Round windows at the front looked out like eyes arrogantly surveying the landscape below. These windows gleamed in the morning sunlight, enhancing the image that the flying-fish thing was alive.

Seen for real in the light of day, they seemed impossible to Oken. Orders were orders, but he would have preferred a long, leisurely voyage across the Atlantic by ship. The idea that he would be suspended high over ocean waters in such an unlikely vessel became increasingly uncomfortable as he watched the Quetzals hovering over Casablanca.

Sashetah Irene’s book had allowed that the safety record of the Quetzal was reassuring. In addition, the sky-boat could float on the water if the flying ring failed, and they carried their own little flocks of messenger pigeons to summon help. Oken wished he felt more comforted by words in a book. The Quetzals looked like giant, fragile butterflies. The vast Atlantic stretching out to the horizon was bigger than the whole world. He said nothing.

Mabruke, meanwhile, was as excited as a child about the opportunity to travel by air. Oken was amused by the enthusiasm that rippled around him as they drove toward the aerodrome.

Mabruke pointed westward, out to the wide, blue sky over the wide, blue Atlantic, and said cheerfully, “That will be us in a few days!”

Oken shaded his eyes with a gloved hand and saw a distant shape in the blazing sky. He could make out the silhouette of a Quetzal far away, poised against the western horizon like some magnificent falcon of the giants. As they watched, it dwindled away to a moving speck, eventually vanishing in the blue.

Oken made himself smile at his friend. Behind the smile he reviewed relevant pages in his memory, reassuring himself in detail of the safety record of the Quetzal flying machines of the New World. As they drove toward the Quetzal station, he paid particular attention to emergency procedures, exits, and loos. On every page in his memory, the corridors seemed very narrow.

THE STATION
was built of the finest marble, gleaming in the afternoon sun. Columns on either side were shaped neither like papyrus nor lotus, but rather an exotic tree- shape much like palms in Memphis. On the lintel were carved foreign hieroglyphics that Oken recognized from the book on Quetzals. He scanned his memory to find the translation: “We walk the sky with you.”

Oken considered that he would rather not; nevertheless, he followed his friend up the many marble steps into the aerodrome’s station interior.

There were few people in the lobby. A dozen or so travelers lounged in comfortable chairs or stood before the world map covering one wall. Oken and Mabruke were greeted by a cinnamon- skinned woman flamboyantly dressed in brilliant feathers and geometrically patterned beadwork. Her bare breasts were painted as flowers. Her perfume was also of flowers—hot, vivid, and exciting. She bowed to them, fingertips together and touching her forehead. Her face was pleasingly broad and flat with high cheekbones and sloe eyes. Black hair hung in long braids on either side of her face. A forehead band of gold was set with letters carved of jade. Oken consulted his recall of Brugsch’s book once more, seeing there that the letters were her name, Jaia. Her title was station hostess.

“Welcome to the Casablanca Aerodrome, gentlemen.” Her voice was lilting and her accent strange.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle Jaia,” Oken said. “I wish I could say I was happy to be here.”

The woman was startled to hear her name spoken by an apparent stranger. She searched their faces with narrowed eyes.

Mabruke stepped in, smiling his dazzling smile. “Pay him no mind, Mademoiselle Jaia,” he said. “He’s never been up in the air before, and I think it makes him nervous.”

Puzzlement flickered across her face. “And you have, sir?”

“Never once, but I think it will be fun.”

She smiled.

“Our luggage is in our vehicle,” Mabruke said. “If that’s not a problem. We also need the vehicle returned to the transport agency.”

These duties Mademoiselle Jaia could manage. She bowed again and led them to a counter across the open space of the lobby.

The woman seated there was as beautiful as Jaia, and even more colorfully dressed. Her petal-painted breasts were in flaming jungle colors. Oken read her name as Jaianne. Looking back and forth between their faces, Oken saw that they were as alike as their names, more than sisters, perhaps twins. Jaia spoke to Jaianne in a language Oken had never heard before; he had a feeling he would hear it again and often in the days and weeks ahead. He hoped the women who spoke it would also be as beautiful as these two.

Mademoiselle Jaianne was delighted see to the transfer their luggage and the return of their vehicle. She smiled with her teeth as she told them that it was easily done. She was even more pleased to report that they had time for dinner before they had to go on board. Mademoiselle Jaia recommended the café on the roof of the station.

The air outside was brisk, even with the Casablanca sunlight warm on their backs as they climbed the staircase on the outside wall to the roof. The café terrace was dotted with umbrellas in peppery hues of yellow, red, and green over round tables. Everything was made of bamboo in one form or another; indeed, bamboo dominated the design— airy and lightweight. Brilliant feathers of tropical birds were arranged on the tables in jade vases, with flowers of the same colors. There were no orchids.

They were served an exotic meal, mostly of bright red and hot yellow, with flavors as fiery as the colors. The view of Casablanca from the café apparently charmed Mabruke. Oken was too aware of the expanded view of the Atlantic that they must cross. The geometric designs of the stucco buildings and the dark green of the palm trees beneath the blue sky did not have their usual calming effect on his soul.

After their first bottle of wine, a magnificent Andalusian rosé, Mabruke finally asked Oken why he seemed so distracted.

“There are monsters in that deep,” Oken said after a moment’s consideration. “Fear is the least among them.”

“I’ve never known you to be afraid of the water. That’s not like you.”

“Well, it’s not the water,” Oken said. “It’s the distance we fall before we reach it.”

Mabruke laughed, but he avoided Oken’s eyes. “I would never let you fall. Anyway, you’re a better swimmer than I am. You’d probably end up saving me.”

“I do not swim better than you— I just don’t care as much about what happens to my suit.” Oken made himself smile.

Mabruke raised his glass in salute.

Oken did as well. “May your suit stay as dry as your humor.”

A flash of hot color caught Oken’s eye. He glanced over and saw one of the lovely cinnamon twins emerging from the stairwell. The highlights in her dark hair were pinpoints of blue diamond framing her face. She folded her hands one atop the other in front of her in the Gesture of the Attendant, her eyes downcast for the privacy of her clients. Her flower-petal breasts looked rounder in the dazzling sunlight, with the blue sky behind her. Her flower petals were clearly paint, not tattoos, a paint that concealed and revealed in the same gesture. Oken found himself wondering how might that paint taste?

“She has a layer of a soporific coating over the color,” Mabruke said, breaking into Oken’s contemplation. “At least, the breast on this side does. The other might be something different. I can’t tell from this angle.”

Oken turned an annoyed look to his friend—at the same time just as amused that Mabruke could read him so easily. “How can you tell that?” He tried to sound stern. Laughter sparkled at the edge of his words.

“That specific formula is from my earliest days of training,” Mabruke said with a dismissive wave of his hand, nonetheless with a tone of casual pride. “I’ve seen it used in a variety of ways. Hers is lovely, if unoriginal.”

Oken turned back to the colorful if soporific view, noting with a pulse of pleasure that she was approaching their table. “Every breast is an original,” he said with arch reverence.

“Indeed?” Mabruke crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head to smile at Oken’s profile. “Her left breast is slightly higher than her right.”

Oken returned to her. “As one looks at it, sir?”

“Her left,” Mabruke repeated.

Oken kept his smile. It was Mademoiselle Jaianne, the twin from behind the marble counter.

“The nipple, however,” Mabruke said very softly, “is poison. At the tip.”

“The left or the right?”

“Both.”

“Ah.” Oken’s smile, as she walked up, was slightly more forced. His eyebrow tilted in a line of regret.

She stopped beside their table and bowed with the same formal touch of hands to forehead. “The gentlemen are enjoying the view up here?”

“We are, ma de moiselle,” Oken said generously. As she straightened up, he tried to determine whether Mabruke was correct about the attitude of her breasts. He was. “What can we do for you, my dear?”

“The gentleman would come with me, at such time as your repast is complete?”

Mabruke touched his napkin to the corners of his mouth, then laid it upon the table and stood. The Mademoiselle Jaianna was gazing suddenly at the buttons of his jacket. Oken admired the view from his seated position, then stood as well. “Lead on, my dear.”

She bowed, turned on her heel, revealing that the gracefully contoured lines of her bare shoulder blades were painted in the tawny gold and black markings of a jungle cat. She led them down the steps, but at the bottom she turned, not to the left toward the lobby entrance but rather to the right, toward the rear of the station. Oken could see the corner of a small, railed balcony that extended around to the back of the building, overlooking the shore of the Atlantic beyond.

He was not too keen on that view. The obvious distraction of the lovely but poisonous Mademoiselle Jaianna got on his nerves. He was reminded of a pair of white breasts glistening with droplets of water, glowing in a pool in faraway Novgorod. An ambush had been waiting for him that night.

Mabruke put a finger on Oken’s wrist, gently, with clear meaning. Oken did not look at him. He nodded in a gesture indicating the woman in front of them.

Mabruke shrugged.

When they turned the corner, the balcony was not empty.

Oken and Mabruke each took a step sideways to increase the distance between them.

There were four men dressed in long white robes, turbans, and boots, and wearing the formed and lacquered silk masks of desert people, each painted with the stylized face and enigmatic smile of Leonardo’s Lady. They gestured simultaneously with drawn scimitars, directing Mabruke and Oken down a narrow set of steps in the middle of the balcony that led to a cobbled path to the nearest wharf.

They walked along the cobbles with an honor guard before, at each side, and after.

“Are these more of your friends, Mik?”

“I have never seen those masks in my life.”

Oken contemplated the specific wording of this while walking along the cobbled path threading through hillocks of beech grass. Mabruke had acknowledged only that the mask was unknown, suggesting that the faces behind the masks might be known, or not.

“I do wish you would just tell me whether we are hostage to friends or to enemies?”

“If I did, how would you learn?”

Oken glared at him.

Mabruke shrugged, evading Oken’s direct gaze. “I won’t always be here to pick out the dangerous ones. You have to find out for yourself what the cues are.”

“So be it, Professor.”

“Like your life depended on it.”

Oken focused on the men walking with them, trying not to look directly into the glare off the surging Atlantic.

The clue finally got his attention: the scimitars were ceremonial. The grip and the angle at which they were carried were formal and stylized—the gesture of an honor blade, not that of a weapon. Oken slipped his hands into hispockets and marched grimly on.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Mabruke trying to suppress a smile.

THE ACCUSTOMED
view from the deck of a ship made Oken more comfortable with the promise the journey ahead. The Atlantic was only as big as the horizon from here, with the water itself touching the hull. He found himself hoping that this was the real journey, that the preparations for traveling by aeroship had been made so openly for the very reason that he and Mabruke would not actually be on board. He did not bother to ask Mabruke. Oken did not fancy having to unravel another riddle just then.

Mabruke was riding in the fore of the ship like an eager dog, sniffing the ocean winds that blew across his face and made his coat flutter around him, mad wings striving to take flight. Oken was amused by Mabruke’s sheer delight in the journey itself, traveling for the sake of traveling. The puzzle was that Mabruke had nevertheless opted for a teaching career that might have kept him in one place for generations of student lives. Oken had yet made only a few journeys out of Memphis in search of the secrets of the Pharaoh’s enemies. He had enjoyed every such affair. He enjoyed returning to Memphis even more. He knew the older man would explain it to him someday, when his professorial muse was ready. Oken wondered if, perhaps, the professor himself did not yet know his own heart in this matter.