And her slimy mood was not helped by the charmingness of her dress, either. She was wearing her precious golden dragon silk and she hated it. Somehow she blamed it for starting all this. Now it had been made up into a gown, and she thought it looked ludicrous, not charming. She could not believe that ladies in the Impire wore anything so outlandish. The minstrel must have been fantasizing when he sketched such absurdities as lace dangling over her hands and shoulders like small pillows. Trumpets indeed!
And if the dress was bad, the hat was unthinkable—a smaller trumpet, a high golden cone all frilly with more lace. She felt like a freak in it, a clown. Every small boy in Krasnegar was going to laugh himself hysterical at the sight of her as she rode down to the dock. The sailors would fall off the ship laughing. Probably the ladies in the Impire would kill themselves. Inos was sure they would all be wearing bonnets like any sane woman wore.
The only consolation was that Aunt Kade looked worse. Her conical hat stuck up like a chimney pot and her dumpy form could never be made to resemble a trumpet. A drum, maybe, or even a lute, but no trumpet. She had appropriated the apple-blossom silk, which was all wrong for her shape, although Inos had to admit that the colors matched her white hair and pink cheeks. Aunt Kade, moreover, was excited, bubbling with happiness, chattering like a flock of birds in joyful anticipation.
“Charming!” Aunt Kade repeated. “Of course we shall have to acquire many more gowns when we are established at Kinvale, but at least we shall not seem too rustic when we arrive. And the good citizens of Krasnegar shall see how ladies should dress these days. I do hope the coachman remembers to go slowly. Hold your head up, dear. You look like a unicorn when you bend forward. Oh, Inos, you will love Kinvale!” She clasped her pudgy hands.
“I so look forward to showing it all to you—the dancing and the balls, the banquets and the elegant conversation! I was not much older than you when I first arrived, and I danced every night for months. The music! Fine cooking! Gentle countryside . . . you have no idea how green and prosperous the landscape is, compared to these harsh hills. And the handsome young men!” She simpered and then sighed.
Inos had heard all that about a million times in the last week. Now was the time of spring tides, she thought bitterly. There would have been good clam digging this morning.
“And Duke Angilki!” Aunt Kade was in full gush now. “He was a very striking young man in his . . . well, I mean, he is a most civilized person. His artistic taste is quite impeccable.” He is also thirty-six years old and has two daughters. He has buried two wives already. Although Inos had never met her distant cousin, she was quite certain that he was utterly detestable. She was determined to hate him.
“He will be so happy to see us!” Kade peered into the mirror and patted her blue-tinted hair where it emerged under the silver trumpet on her head.
“I always thought that one should not go visiting without an invitation,” Inos said bleakly; but she had tried that argument before and it had not worked. It would hardly work now, not with a ship waiting.
“Don’t be absurd!” Kade said, but without heat. “We shall be very welcome. We have a standing invitation, and there simply has not been time to write and wait for a reply. Winter is coming. You will love the sea voyage in summer, my dear, but it would not be possible later. Ah! The sea! I do so enjoy sailing!”
“Is Master Jalon ready?” Jalon was an infuriatingly vague person, but he would at least make the voyage bearable. Kade turned to her niece in surprise. “Oh, did he not tell you? He has decided to go overland.”
“Jalon has?”
“Yes, dear.”
“He’s crazy!” Inos tried to imagine Jalon wandering through all those weeks of dangerous forest, and her mind went limp. There were goblins in the forest. Jalon?
“Oh, quite possibly.” Kade shrugged. “But your father seems to think he can manage; he gave him a horse. He left this morning. I know he went looking for you to say good-bye.”
“I expect he was distracted by a seagull, or something. “
“Yes, dear . . .” Kade peered around at the trunks and baggage. ”Which ones shall we be using on the voyage?” she inquired of Ula, her maid. Inos had not been allowed a maid. One would suffice for both of them, Aunt Kade said, because there would not be room for more on the ship; and they could hire girls with better training when they arrived at Kinvale.
Ula was short and dark, dull and almost sulky. She was showing no excitement at all, but then she probably did not understand where she was headed, or what a month or longer on a boat must be like. Nor, probably, did Inos herself, she realized. On the charts it seemed simple—west to the Claw Capes, south into Westerwater, and then east again to Pamdo Gulf—but that also seemed an unnecessarily prolonged and roundabout torture when the land route was so much shorter, and so much more interesting! Aunt Kade had sailed back and forth between Krasnegar and Kinvale several times before, during, and after, her marriage. Her enthusiasm about the prospect of doing it again was ominous. Anything Aunt Kade enjoyed would have to be a ghastly bore.
Why could they not have gone by land? If a nitwit like Jalon could manage it, then anyone could. That argument did not work, either. Aunt Kade did not like horses, nor coaches.
Boxes and bales and trunks . . . How could they possibly have amassed so much luggage? It smelled of soap and lavender. Ula indicated two large trunks and Aunt Kade began to cross-examine her closely on their contents. Inos did not bother to listen. She gave herself a last angry inspection in the mirror and stuck out her tongue at her ludicrous reflection, then stalked to the door. She would take a final walk through the castle and say a private good-bye to some of her friends.
The past frantic week had been so dominated by dressmakers and seamstresses that she had hardly spoken to anyone else. Since that shattering day when the God had appeared, she had been lost in a blizzard of silks and satins, of lace and lingerie. She had not ridden Lightning once, not once! Rap had vanished the next morning. The sinister Doctor Sagorn had growled a brief farewell a few days after that and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. And now Jalon had gone riding off into the hills. By Winterfest he would probably still be going round in circles somewhere, she thought-if he had not been tortured to death by a band of ferocious goblins.
Before Inos reached the door, however, it opened to admit Mother Unonini, stark in her black chaplain’s robe, smiling with responsibilities and clutching a roll of papers. She stopped and regarded Inos with surprise, and then made a curtsy. On her absurdly short legs it was a clumsy move, but she had never done that before. Suddenly Inos did not feel quite so hostile to Mother Unonini. She was another familiar face not to be seen again for a whole interminable year.
Inos returned the curtsy.
“You look very charming, my dear,” the chaplain said. “Turn around! “
Inos decided she must look like a weathervane, the way everyone kept wanting her to turn around. She turned around.
“It does look nice,” Mother Unonini said warmly. Inos felt temptation and succumbed. “It’s only an old tablecloth. “
Unonini frowned, then suddenly laughed and put her arms around Inos and hugged her . . . garlic today, not fish. “We shall miss you, my dear!” She turned hurriedly toward Aunt Kade and curtsied again.
“I brought the text of the prayer you will be reading, your Highness. I thought perhaps you would like to look it over beforehand; practice a little.”
“Oh, dear!” At once Kade was flustered. “I do hate having to read prayers! I hope you wrote it big? The light is so poor in the chapel. ”
“I think so.” The chaplain fussed with her papers. “Here’s yours. You will be invoking the God of Travelers. Corporal Oopari will address the God of Storms. The ship’s captain will be doing the God of Sailors, of course, and he will have his own text. His Majesty will invoke the God of Peace . . . his own choice,” she added disapprovingly. “It does seem curious.”
“Diplomacy, Mother,” Aunt Kade said. “He is concerned with relationships between Krasnegar and the Impire and so on.” She held her script at arm’s length and blinked at it.