Spoiler
A few days ago, the imperial crown prince returned home from an extended vacation that ended less than ideally. At a welcome-home party, his younger sister, the princess, lost one of her shoes, and she's now come to her favorite shoemaker's to get a replacement. Discussion of the shoe and the replacement just ended. Nyoska is the shoemaker's youngest daughter.
2, continued
The princess shook her head. “I lost a frightful number of things at a party supposed to be for gaining things back.”
“Ah, yes, His Majesty’s return?”
Nyoska’s mother came through the door then with their silver holiday serving tray. On it, steaming through the spout, was their best teapot, the one Nyoska was especially not allowed to touch. Their best cups, equally forbidden, were beside it.
“I am so sorry for the wait, Your Majesty.” Her mother set the tray down by the armchair. She began to pour a cup.
“Hardly a wait.” The princess smiled, looking at the tea being poured, back up at her mother, and then quickly back at the teapot again. “Is that Nalmaen porcelain?”
Even Nyoska knew the answer to that question, but her mother paused before saying, quietly, “…yes, Your Majesty.”
“It’s lovely!” The princess turned in her chair and leaned over. She extended a finger toward it, and this time the bracelets shimmered with the copper. “Oh, may I touch it?”
“Why, yes, of course. Your Majesty.” Her mother blushed, looking back and forth between her father and the princess and the princess’s driver. “But it is very hot!”
The princess tapped the lid and then lifted one of the empty cups. She turned it over in her hands, looking inside and out of it. “The colors are exquisite, and the detail on the leaves!” From this height, it was impossible to see the purple roses and vines on the base and up the sides of the pot and cups, but Nyoska knew they were there. “Just wonderful.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” Her father bowed again.
Her mother, still red in the face, curtsied. “Please excuse me, Your Majesty.”
“Of course.” The princess was still turning the teacup over and over in her hands.
Her mother left the same way she had come in. Silence fell again until the princess abruptly stopped looking at the cup and put it back on the tray. She looked back at Nyoska’s father, smiling widely and brightly once again. “Yes, my brother finally came home, at last!” She laughed. “And I believe your eldest daughter as well?”
“With His Majesty’s caravan, I think it was.”
“Such a long trip from the eastern border. She was at Aspenharbor as well, yes?”
“She was.”
“My brother and his friend—the Marquis of Eastmarch—tell me it is gorgeous there, in a way entirely different from here in the city. For my part, I can’t imagine looking out a window and only seeing water.”
“Your Majesty.”
Nyoska frowned even deeper this time. Why did he keep saying that?
The princess smiled yet again. She picked up the full teacup from the tray and swirled the contents before taking what looked like too much to be a sip. “Sometimes I forget, Master Glarvok, that you are not a man to be fiddled. I ought to have been straightforward! I’ve no wish to waste your time.”
“Your Majesty, I have always been, and always will be, at your service.”
“Thank you, Master.” She inclined her head gracefully and took another drink of tea before setting down her cup on a saucer. “If I may, then… I’d like to borrow your daughter.”
“…borrow, Your Majesty?”
The princess laughed. “Only for the afternoon! I would very much like to speak with her about what happened at Aspenharbor.”
“Oh, my. Well, with respect, it would be up to Seosnya, but she is not at home.”
“She’s not?”
“No, Your Majesty.” Her father paused a moment. “And she had no desire to speak of what happened. She hasn’t said a thing to me or my wife about it.”
“The newspapers haven’t held a word on it, either, which was why I wanted to talk to someone who was there.”
“They wouldn’t, Your Majesty. Not yet, at least. No one knows much of anything.”
The princess refolded her hands on her lap. “You once told me of how much you hear in your work.”
Nyoska stared at the back of her father’s head. He did say that, every now and then, and he was always surprised about it. Sometimes he told them some of the funnier stories his clients had told him.
“I don’t know rumor and speculation from the truth yet,” said her father this time, slowly. He took a breath loud enough for Nyoska to hear up on the gallery. “But, sixteen days ago, at dusk, a few ships—some say three, others five or eight—came into the harbor. Some say black flags, some say no colors at all, some say the colors of various countries.”
The princess leaned forward. “Which?”
“All the ones with dark flags. Meukan purple, Nalmaen crimson, Lorgish green, so forth. Unimportant, really. Descriptions of the ships have been inconclusive.”
“Pardon—descriptions of the ships?”
Her father nodded. “Colors are easy to change, Your Majesty. Other empires would find nothing dishonorable in raising another’s flag.”
“Truly?”
He nodded again.
“Fascinating. Did you know that, Avtos?” The princess looked up over her shoulder at the driver standing nearby.
“No, my lady, but it’s hardly surprising.”
She turned back to her father and nodded.
“The style of ship, however, is much different than the colors. Much harder to change, and while ships are often captured, many sailors would refuse an unfamiliar style of craft as inferior.”
“Oh, that’s silly.”
“Pardon for my directness, Your Majesty, but would you wear the shoes from Nalmae? I showed you them once, I believe.”
The princess said nothing for what seemed to Nyoska like a long time. Then she nodded again. “Pretty as the porcelain, but as hard as it too. Please, go on, Master.”
Her father shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know much more than that, certainly not who did it, let alone why.”
“That’s really all you know?”
“All worth repeating. But… if perhaps, Your Majesty, you undertook to pick up your shoe yourself?”
The princess laughed again. “Ingenious as always, Master Glarvok. And with that” –she looked at her driver—“I imagine it’s time to leave. But before we go, where will we find your daughter? I’m quite eager to have her accompany me to the spar, even if she doesn’t say a peep about the east.”
“Oh, by Trees.” Nyoska’s father clasped his hands behind his back. His voice this time took on the hushed tone of whenever Grandfather, too old now to do stitching himself, inspected the shop. “Your Majesty, I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know where my daughter Seosnya is.”
The princess said nothing for another while. In the meantime, Nyoska stared at the back of her father’s head. When her mother had asked about Seosnya’s whereabouts earlier that morning, both the steward and her father had insisted she was as their cousin’s home.
“What about your other daughter?”
Nyoska’s attention snapped back to the princess. Sitting there, in copper-covered green, she was smiling her widest, biggest, brightest smile yet.
Evkta?
Her father stood very, very still a few feet away. “I…I’m sure she would love to, Your Majesty, but she’s…I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Again, the princess laughed. “You see, Master Glarvok, I told everyone I’d be accompanied by your daughter! That’s much of the reason I was so determined to have her, that and I know she likes spars. Now everyone’s expecting me and the daughter of the best shoemaker in the empire. But I never did say which daughter.”
“Oh, well, Your Majesty, if you’ll excuse me, I can go find her and ask her, but….”
“Find her? She’s right there on the stairs.” The princess looked right up at Nyoska then and smiled.
Nyoska pushed herself away from the railing, scuttling back toward the wall. She pulled herself to her feet and went to run, but when she glanced downward again, her father was wearing the “Oh, Nyoska” face.
She froze where she stood, unable even to cry.
“Nyoska, come here, please.”
Chewing her bottom lip, Nyoska went down the stairs. Her heart thudded like a gong in her ears with every step. Getting to the floor took an age but still happened too soon. The princess and her driver were watching her the entire way down. When her feet hit the tiling, she broke into a run and hid behind her father's leg, burying her face in the fabric of his pants.
"Oh, Nyoska," he whispered. "That's not how we act in front of guests." He pried her fingers loose and stepped aside, away from her. Suddenly there was nothing to hide behind, and when she went to run anywhere that was away, her father's hand came down on her shoulder, stopping her. His other hand titled her chin up. Just like that, Nyoska was looking straight at the imperial princess from no more than a few steps away.
The stiff part of the princess's shirt was trimmed with copper and copper buttons. The green fabric was silk, the gossamer over it also silk, the black square hat on her head satin--just as well, because if it had been silk, Nyoska wouldn't have been able to see it against the princess's hair. And even sitting, the princess was far taller than her, younger than Seosnya, who was seventeen, but older than Evkta, who was thirteen. Her eyes were a pale, crisp blue. She was smiling, even now, and Nyoska wondered if her face was hurting from it. Abruptly, she stuck out her hand and the bracelets—the silver and gold and copper bracelets—clinked together like chimes.
A trembling Nyoska, staring at the princess's partially veiled face, didn't know what she was supposed to do. She glanced up at her father, trying not to cry because he hated it when she did.
"Bow and take her hand," he whispered.
Nyoska looked back at the princess and dropped her gaze even if she couldn’t drop her entire face. She cautiously stuck out her fingers and wrapped them around the princess's. She bowed and then dropped the princess’s smooth hand as quickly as she could.
"Nyoska, isn't it?" said the princess.
Nyoska, still biting her lip, nodded once and edged closer to her father's leg.
"Well, Miss Nyoska. Would you like to accompany me to the palace? There's going to be a spar and I need a friend."
She stared, not knowing what a spar was or why you needed a friend to go to one.
Her father squeezed her shoulder lightly. "Nyoska, would you like to go with the princess?"
"In the carriage?" the driver added.
Nyoska looked up at the man. He was even taller than her father. Dressed in the white suit with the gold embroidery and trim, he glistened in the sunlight from the windows even more than the copper gossamer. His eyes were gray, his brown beard and hair trimmed short but neat. Like the princess, he was smiling, but he was smiling more like Master Dnevok the Toymaker smiled when anyone wound one of his joke boxes.
"The carriage?" Until then, it had left her thoughts entirely, but now in her mind she saw it turning down the street, pulled by those six horses.
The driver nodded and winked. "How else?" said the princess. She stood in a sparkle of green and copper. The driver moved to the coat stand and took off a bright green, copper-covered shawl.
Nyoska held onto her father’s leg even tighter as the two moved about even closer toward her. The driver draped the shawl over the princess’s shoulder and then the princess, tiny compared to the man but a giant still, turned toward her.
“We’ll have a splendid time,” she said, putting her hands on her knees and bending down until they were at eye level. “I know it.”
Nyoska, clenching her teeth against the tears and the urge to run, said nothing. She drew her arms into her sides and gripped her fingers together, anything to make herself smaller
“Oh, don’t be frightened! It’ll be fun.” She straightened up and turned to look up at her father. “Don’t worry, Master Glarvok. Avtos here will bring her back afterward, not a scratch on her.”
“I don’t doubt that, Your Majesty.”
“Father,” Nyoska tried to say, but she could barely hear her own voice. She tugged on his pant leg, but he ignored her.
“Shall we, Miss Nyoska?” The princess extended a hand outward as the driver opened the door.
Past her, out into the morning, the carriage waited.
“Be brave,” her father whispered in her ear. He pushed her forward.
With his words in her head, she took the princess’s outstretched hand.
“There,” said the princess. “And we’re off. Thank you, Master Glarvok.”
Nibbling her lip, Nyoska walked through the front door of her house and down the steps to the street. She looked over her shoulder the entire while, trying to catch her father’s gaze, but he was talking to the driver.
“Watch your step,” said the princess holding her hand. “It’s too high for you.”
Nyoska looked back in front of her. The carriage loomed over her now, a shining mass of polished white and gold. The steps hung right in front of her a good foot and a half off the ground.
She looked back over her shoulder but the door to her house was already shut, the driver now walking toward them. In that moment, all Nyoska wanted to do was run back inside, and when the princess dropped her hand, she turned a foot to do so.
Before she could move a muscle more, a pair of hands picked her up at the waist and set her inside the carriage.
As promised, here I am!
