All morning she had been organizing, ordering, rearranging. Mostly the servants had ignored her and gone about their business with practiced efficiency. Now Inos had come to inspect the table.
Rotund Master Ylinyli loomed discreetly in the background, smiling quietly through a coal-black mustache that would have impressed a walrus. The major-domo would be recalling a similar fourteenth birthday dinner held here some twenty years ago—recalling how thrilled the guests had been to be treated like gentry, served by footmen, and how he had eaten too much and so made a terrible fool of himself.
“Very nice,” Inos said, “but what are those for?”
“They’re wineglasses, Mama.”
“I think I knew that, actually. You plan to drink lime punch out of my best crystal?”
“But, Mama!”
“No wine, Kadie.”
Kadie’s face was stricken with intimations of disaster. “But I promised them!”
“That was not wise.”
Two sets of green eyes locked, in rebellion and tyranny respectively. Tyranny won.
“Beer?” Kadie asked disconsolately. “No beer, either.”
“Not even to drink my . . . our . . . health? A toast . . .”
“Fruit punch.” If her daughter only knew it, Inos thought, a punch made from the carefully preserved supply of fruit that kept Krasnegarians healthy during the winter would cost considerably more than wine.
Kadie flounced around to hide her annoyance, swirling the train on her gown and almost overbalancing. The gown was the day’s gift from her parents, but the royal jewel box had been looted without permission. Again. Ylinyli caught the queen’s eyes and smirked knowingly into his mustache—the wineglasses would be removed.
“That is your present to Gath?” Inos said, pointing to a baggy parcel. “Shouldn’t you hide it until later?”
Kadie squirmed slightly. “It’s no use hiding it from him! No use even wrapping it, even. He probably knows already. I thought I’d give it to him before the guests arrive.”
“As you please, dear.” Of course Gath would know what a parcel contained an hour or two before he unwrapped it, but that was not what was bothering Kadie.
“Well, it was expensive,” she explained, “and I wouldn’t want any of them to feel that their offerings were, er, inferior by comparison. ”
“Very tactful of you,” Inos said.
The gift in question was a tattered copy of The Kidnapped Princess of Kerith, a torrid romance of great age, illustrated with faded hand-tinted woodcuts. Kadie had discovered it in a shabby little junk shop near the harbor, and coveted it greatly. Only by proclaiming it her birthday gift to Gath had she managed to wheedle enough money out of her mother to buy it.
She had undoubtedly read it from cover to cover several times already, and Gath would be fortunate if he managed to hang on to it for the rest of the week. He had very little interest in books anyway. This one was obviously a present from Kadie to Kadie. Her friends would know that, which was why she wanted it safely out of sight before they arrived.
And at some private time, later, their mother might—or might not—explain how enormously valuable that antique volume would be back in the Impire, and how Gath could trade it to some impish ship’s captain for many times what it had cost his sister. Kadie would be aghast. Sometimes Inos let her sense of humor overrule her better judgment, and that was the only reason she had agreed to the charade in the first place.
She wished Rap was around to share the joke. She wished Rap was around for many, many reasons. She wished she was not so worried about him.
“Do you know what Gath’s giving me?” her daughter asked offhandedly.
“No, dear.”
“He’s very secretive!” Kadie complained, failing to hide her disappointment. If her mother did not know, then Gath must have financed the gift out of his allowance. Gath was invariably broke, proverbially hopeless with money. “Well, this is very nice,” she remarked cheerfully, admiring the table. “Real flowers would be even better, of course. If only Papa were here! . . .”
“Whatever do you mean?” Inos said icily. Gath’s premonition was common knowledge, but official doctrine in Krasnegar was that the king was not a sorcerer, and Ylinyli had notoriously sharp ears.
“Oh . . . nothing. I must go and redo my fingernails. Do you think the ruby earrings would be better?”
“Those are lovely, dear, and here’s your chance to give Gath his present.”
Winter pale, gangly as a tent pole, Gath was advancing along the hall, keeping his hands behind him. Inos looked him over approvingly. He had inherited, or copied, his father’s dislike of formal dress, but today he had donned his best blue doublet and beige hose without even arguing—her babies were growing up! He had also inherited his father’s unruly hair, although it was jotunnish fair instead of faunish brown. His efforts to tame it had produced something that resembled a lodged barley field. He was wearing his usual contented smile.
Kadie registered that he was holding something behind his back. She stiffened like a bird dog.
“I have a present for you, Gath,” she said brightly, and hastened to fetch the misshapen bundle.
“That’s very kind of you! Thank you!” He sniggered. “Funny old pictures, aren’t they?”
Kadie shot her mother a what-did-I-tell-you look and waited expectantly, holding out the parcel.
“You really didn’t need to wrap it up.” Gath was making no move to take it.
“It is customary!” his sister snapped.
“Aren’t you going to accept it, dear?” Inos prompted.
He beamed, obviously very pleased with himself and much more interested in whatever he was planning than in the book. “Don’t want to drop it. I’d need—both hands. But it’s very nice. Kadie, I decided that since you were giving me my present now, I’d give you yours.”
His sister hastily laid the parcel back on the table, unable to conceal her impatience. “Well, I’m not a seer, so you’ll have to let me look at it before I can thank you.”
“I just wanted to explain,” Gath said slowly, “how I couldn’t wrap it, because I couldn’t think of a way to hide its shape. You’d guess what it was right away.” His grin was pure torture now.
Kadie glared. “At least that would make two of us!”
He nodded. Unable to think up any more delays, he dramatically produced a slim, shiny sword, laying the blade across his forearm, proffering the hilt to her. “Happy birthday!”
Kadie somehow managed to squeal and gasp at the same time. “Oh, Gath! It’s gorgeous!”
A flourish of steel flashed in the candlelight, and it was Inos’ turn to squeal. “Careful!”
“It’s all right, Mother!” Kadie said scornfully. “A real rapier! Oh, Gath! Where did you get it?” She threw her spare arm around him and kissed him—to everyone’s astonishment.
“Yes, indeed!” Inos said. “Where did you get that dangerous-looking thing, young man?” Not only dangerous but valuable—there was shinier metal than steel there.
“It’s beautifully balanced!” Kadie said and struck a fencing pose, blissfully absurd in her voluminous gown. “And light!” Gath was smirking. “Tush found it for me. I told him what I wanted, and the next night he brought it to my room. It’s almost as long as he is!”
“Tush?” said Inos. “The gnome?”
“Course. It was down in the cellars somewhere. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t spend any money on her present, does it? I didn’t have any. I did spend a lot of time cleaning it up. I mean, it was black!”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Inos said, wondering how many times a parent had to repeat that catechism per child reared. “Obviously you have made her very happy, which is what matters.”
“I don’t care what it didn’t cost!” Kadie said ecstatically. ”It’s splendoupolous!” She paused in her phantom fencing to examine the hilt. Inos and even Ylinyli moved in cautiously to see.
Gath was chuckling, pleased with himself. “Know something, Mom? She came bouncing into my room a couple of nights ago to tell me that—”
“I do not bounce!” Kadie’s glare was as pointed as the sword. ”Whatever it was, then. But I’d been working on it, and it was lying right there on my dresser—” He chortled. “And she didn’t even notice!”
His sister was not interested in her own shortcomings. “Mother! Are these rubies?”
“Garnets, I think,” Inos said. Dwarvish steel, certainly. The guard bore three leaping narwhals in silver filigree. Originally each had possessed a gannet eye, but now one was blind, the stone missing. Leaping narwhals? She had seen that insignia before somewhere. “I hope it was one of our cellars this came out of, not someone else’s?” Gnome thinking tended to be misty on the subjects of property and territorial boundaries.
“I think so,” Gath said. “Tush told me it was in among a lot of junk, so no one knew it was there—but I think it was in the castle. It was very dirty!” he added defensively. “No one knew about it, wherever it was.”