“Dreadful! Really dreadful!”
“It would be, we are told, without P’naki.”
“And what does P’naki do for us? It’s horrid tasting!”
“If you know how it tastes, you must have known what it was for!”
Well, I knew it was medicine, without at all comprehending the reality. Delia gave it to me when I was a tiny child and we were visiting Lord Fenrider, Earl of Evermire. What does it do?”
“A dose every ten or twelve days is supposed to make people poisonous to the mites. Before it even nibbles, the mite simply shrivels up and dies.”
She made a face. “I can understand why Prince Thumsort would be worried,” she said. “According to his son, Edoard, his father talks only about batflies and fish.”
He smiled at her. “Life has many pitfalls, my lady, and few of them make pleasant conversation. I would rather discuss something much more amusing than either flies or fish, such as how we are going to dress you to advantage!”
So derailed, she did not return to the subject until late that evening when, prepared for bed, she sat before her mirror while Delia brushed her hair. “What do we have on Haven,” she murmured aloud, “to trade for off-planet goods?”
“Pearls,” said Delia, without missing a stroke.
“Pearls? On Haven? Pearls are an Old Earth thing. You know the ones that Mother gave me. They came from some ancestress, but I assume they were brought from Earth. I’ve never heard of Haven pearls.”
Delia smiled at her in the mirror, rather grimly. “They don’t talk of it in the marketplace, my lady.”
“Well then, why do you say it’s pearls?”
“It stands to reason it has to be something! And we’ve explored all the land on Haven, so it’s nothing on land or we’d know about it. So, it has to be something from the sea, and whatever it is, it goes off Haven in ships.”
“If no one knows what it is, how do they know what goes off Haven?” “Nobody knows, but everybody guesses. And we do know some things. We know sometimes a starship comes to Haven. It sends down a little boat, like a sailing ship sends a dory, and it lands down at a place at the edge of the Plains of Bliggen in Barfezi, where it’s flat and rocky and out of the way. There’s always someone waiting for that ship, someone dressed in the royal livery, all sparkles and gold, and that person marches out to the boat and he hands over a box, not a big box, a small one, the size of a glove box, maybe, and the little boat goes up and away. Then, some later, a bigger ship comes down with people or things for the Lord Paramount, like doctors, or machines. And there’s always men on the hills nearby, watching their sheep, and others in the copses up the valleys, burning charcoal, and they watch the ships and they say it’s pearls in the little box, because they can’t think of anything else it might be. And one of them’s my cousin, and I’ve heard him tell all about it.”
“Something small. Well, it could be pearls, I suppose,” mused Genevieve. “Though one would think one would have heard of it, if that had been the case.” She yawned. “I am tired out.”
“No wonder. All that toing and froing of dressmakers. Did you like that crazy one? Veswees?”
“I did, rather,” she said drowsily, sliding between the cool sheets. “He told me what to wear to the concert, which helps. That is, if Father wants me to go. He hasn’t said, yet.” She mused a moment, eyes closed. “Veswees knows something he’d like to tell me, but he can’t, or won’t, or shouldn’t. And he drew some exciting dresses. He’ll be back in a day or two, with muslin patterns, for a fitting . . .”
But Delia had already gone.
In the night Genevieve dreamed of Aufors. The two of them were sailing away somewhere, having a conversation with fish. She didn’t know where they were going or what they were talking about, but things grew more interesting the longer the dream went on.