Hell's Gate

"I'll leave you to enjoy the air and sunshine, Your Highness," he said with another bow.

"Thank you, Captain. I know our voyage will be a great pleasure. You have a lovely ship."

A flush of pleasure touched his cheeks as he recognized the sincerity of her compliment. Then he touched the brim of his hat and left her to enjoy the morning.

Andrin pulled her coat collar up around her neck, leaned against the boat deck rail, and smiled to herself. The view was even more spectacular from up here, and she abandoned herself to sheer, sensual pleasure while Finena finished eating, then launched herself once more to drift effortlessly on the wind above the ship, staying well clear of the smoke trailing from the liner's tall fu

It was too good to last indefinitely, of course. She'd been there for perhaps a half-hour?certainly not much longer?when a movement on chan Zindico's part drew her attention. It wasn't much of a movement; most people probably wouldn't even have noticed it. But Andrin knew her guardsman well, and she recognized the signs. Someone was about to enter potential threat range of her.

She turned to see who it was, and her eyes widened in astonishment so great that she had to forcibly order her jaw not to drop.

"Marnilay preserve us," chan Zindico murmured, just loud enough for her to hear through the sound of wind and wave. "It's Earl Ilforth coming to pay his respects."

Andrin had never had the pleasure of meeting the Earl of Ilforth, Speaker of the House of Lords, in person. Her mother tended to avoid his company, which meant Andrin and her sisters had also avoided it, simply because they'd always accompanied the Empress in her headlong flight from whatever wing of the palace his presence happened to threaten at the moment. Everyone had heard of him, though, and she knew he was considered the epitome of the term "court dandy."

Now she watched him coming towards her, and her mind busily sorted out first impressions even as she continued to dredge up everything she'd ever been told about him.

He might have possessed a certain wiry grace if he hadn't moved with such studied languor, she decided, and he was also short for a Ternathian. A good head shorter than Andrin herself, and built on narrow-shouldered, slender lines. And he was said to be quite sensitive about his relatively diminutive stature, among other things, she remembered. Rumor suggested that he compensated for it with a viperish tongue, and his biting setdowns of social inferiors (which, in his opinion, included virtually every other Ternathian ever born) and anyone who roused his ire were proverbial.

He was also wealthy enough to indulge his every wardrobe whim, and reputed to be inordinately fond of such indulgences. That much, at least, Andrin now knew was entirely accurate, for Mancy Fornath, fifty-first Baron Fornath and forty-fifth Earl of Ilforth, was resplendent in morning attire.

Or he would have been, if this had been Hawkwing Palace, rather than the deck of a passenger liner under full power.

His coif had been as elaborate as Andrin's own when he started out, and it was in just as many shreds as hers before he'd come halfway across the deck. The ornate quetzal feather in his hat would never be worth its weight in silver again, either, she judged, and his coat had so many layers and flutters and silken tassels that it looked alive in the stiff wind. In fact, it looked as if it were trying to devour him.

"Dear Marnilay, does he dress that way all the time?" she demanded under her breath, and chan Zindico snorted.

"That, Your Highness, is conservative for Earl Ilforth."

Whatever she might have replied to that went unspoken, for the distinctive?she couldn't possibly call such a spectacle distinguished?personage had reached his quarry and bowed sweepingly.

"My dear Grand Princess! How you've grown!"

Andrin could never decide later whether it was his patronizing tone or the ironic, languidly malicious look he swept up her tall, admittedly sturdy figure as he straightened his spine which did the most to leave her white-faced with fury. Not that it really matter, she eventually concluded. Either one would have been more than enough, and if they hadn't done it, the lazy, mocking glitter in his light-colored eyes?the self-congratulating amusement of an adult making clever remarks which would sail right over a mere child's head?would have accomplished the same thing anyway.

Unlike Uromathia, Ternathia had outlawed the custom of dueling generations ago?which, she found herself reflecting, was a pity. Or perhaps not. chan Zindico, who hewed to the mille

Which might not be precisely the best way to stay on the House of Lords' good side, however satisfying it might be, she admitted regretfully. On the other hand …

"My dear Earl," she said, in tones fit to freeze lava, looking down her nose at him from her towering inches, "how nice to see someone of your … imposing stature this morning."

He blinked, and his face went blank. She wondered whether his confusion stemmed more from the evidence that she hadn't missed his mockery after all, or from the sheer disbelief that any snip of a schoolgirl would dare to cut him off at the knees.

"Ah, ahem, well?"

She turned her back on him in mid-stammer and whistled sharply. Finena wheeled high above her, then came hurtling down with the speed of a striking snake. Peregrines could attain velocities of over two hundred miles per hour in a stoop, and the smack of talon against leather as the hawk flared her wings at the last moment sounded shockingly loud above the wind. The white falcon turned a baleful eye on Earl Ilforth and hissed. Andrin had never heard such a sound from any hawk, let alone Finena, and Ilforth actually stumbled backward a step as she turned back to survey him through icy eyes.

"You were saying, My Lord?"

"Er … I …" He stared, apparently mesmerized, at the hawk for several seconds before he managed to tear his eyes away with a supreme effort. "A thousand pardons, Your Grand Highness. I hadn't realized how large your bird is."

"Really?" Andrin narrowed her eyes. "As a matter of fact, Finena's not particularly large for an imperial falcon, My Lord. Was there some urgent business you wished to discuss?"

He cleared his throat.

"I just wanted to say what an honor it is, to share a voyage of such importance with His Imperial Majesty and Your Grand Highness."

"I see. I was rather looking forward to the voyage myself."

She didn't actually emphasize the verb all that strongly, but it was enough to bring an angry scarlet stain to his cheeks. Clearly, he was more accustomed to setting down others then to receiving the same treatment himself, and his eyes flashed. He started to open his mouth, but then something else happened behind those angry eyes, and the red of his cheeks faded abruptly into something far paler.

"Your Grand Highness, I humbly beg your pardon." His voice was suddenly different as well. Lower, more hurried, without the polished confidence which had sneered through his tone before. "I … seem to have made hash of this conversation, and it was never my intention to be offensive. If I have caused you grief in some fashion, I sincerely beg your forgiveness."

Andrin managed to keep her own eyes from widening, but it was hard, as she saw sweat start along his upper lip. She'd never actually seen anyone do that before. She'd certainly never had that effect on anyone, and she found herself wondering a little frantically what a mere seventeen-year-old girl could have done to so thoroughly u