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She did notice when she danced with Perlith that there was an unwonted depth of malignance in his light remarks, and wondered in passing what was biting him. Does the color of my gown make his skin look sallow? But Perlith too had noticed Thorped’s son’s admiration of the king’s only daughter, and it irritated him almost as much as it irritated Gala
Being Perlith, he had, of course, timed his courtship to coincide with the moment that Gala
He could admit that she looked better than usual tonight; he’d never seen her in the fashionable ribbons before, and she had nice trim ankles, in spite of the feet. This realization did not soften his attitude; he glared at his dancing partner, and Aerin could feel the glare, though she knew that if she looked into his face his expression would be one of lazy pleasure, with only a deep glint in his heavy-lidded eyes to tell her what he was thinking. At a pause in the dance he plucked several golden specks out of the air that were suddenly there for him when he reached for them. He closed his fingers around them, smiled, and opened his hand again, and a posy of yellow and white ringaling flowers—the flowers Aerin had carried at his wedding—sprang up between his thumb and first finger.
“For the loveliest lady here tonight,” he said, with a bow, to Aerin.
Aerin turned white and backed up a step, her hands behind her. She bumped into the next couple as they waited for the music for the next figure to begin, and they turned, mildly irritated, to see what was happening; and suddenly the entire hall was watching. The musicians in the gallery laid down their instruments when they should have played their first notes; it didn’t occur to them to do anything else. Perlith, especially when he was feeling thwarted, was formidably Gifted.
A little space cleared around Perlith and Aerin, and the focal point of the vast hall was a little bouquet of yellow and white flowers. Tor muttered something, and dropped his partner’s hand, much to that lady’s a
Perlith stood, smiling gently at her, his arm gracefully raised and his hand curled around his posy; the glint in his eye was very bright.
And then the flowers leaped from his fingers and grew wings, and became yellow and white birds which sang “Aerin, Aerin” as sweetly as golden harps, and as they disappeared into the darkness of the ceiling the musicians began playing again, and Tor’s arms were around her, and Perlith was left to make his way out of the circle of dancers. Aerin stepped on Tor’s feet several times as he helped her off the dancing-floor, for the magic was strong in her nostrils, and though what Tor had done had been done at a distance, it still clung to him too. He held her up by main force till she said, a little shakily, “Let go, cousin, you’re tearing the waistband right out of my skirt.”
He released her at once, and she put a hand out—to a chair, not to his outstretched arm. He let the arm drop. “My pardon, please. I am clumsy tonight.”
“You are never clumsy,” she said with bitterness, and Tor was silent, for he was wishing that she would lean on him instead of on the chair, and did not notice that most of the bitterness was for Perlith, who had hoped to embarrass her before the entire court, and a little for herself, and none at all for him. She told him he might leave her, that she was quite all right. Two years ago he would have said, “Nonsense, you are still pale, and I will not leave you”; but it wasn’t two years ago, and he said merely, “As you wish,” and left her to find his deserted partner and make his excuses.
Perlith came to Aerin as she sat in the chair she had been leaning on, sipping from a glass of water a woman of the hafor had brought her. “I beg most humbly for forgiveness,” he said, closing his eyes till only the merest glitter showed beneath his long lashes. “I forgot that you—ah—do not care for such—ah—tokens.”
Aerin looked at him levelly. “I know perfectly well what you were about this evening. I accept your apology for precisely what it is worth.”
Perlith blinked at this unexpected intransigence and was, very briefly, at a loss for a reply. “If you accept my apology for what it is worth,” he said smoothly, “then I know I need have no fear that you will bear me a grudge for my hapless indiscretion.”
Aerin laughed, which surprised her as much as it surprised him. “No indeed, cousin; I shall bear you no grudge for this evening’s entertainment. Our many years of familiar relationship render us far beyond grudges.” She curtsied hastily and left the hall, for fear that he would think of something else to say to her; Perlith never lost verbal skirmishes, and she wanted to keep as long as she could the extraordinary sensation of having scored points against him.
Later, in the darkness of her bedroom, she reconsidered the entire evening, and smiled; but it was half a grimace, and she found she could not sleep. It had been too long a day, and she was too tired; her head always spun from an evening spent on display in the great hall, and tonight as soon as she deflected her thoughts from Perlith and Tor and yellow birds they immediately turned to the topic of the dragon fire ointment.
She considered creeping back to her laboratory, but someone would see a light where only axe handles should be. She had never mentioned that she had taken over the old shed, but she doubted anyone would care so long as lights didn’t start showing at peculiar hours—and how would she explain what she was doing?
At last she climbed wearily out of bed and wrapped herself in the dressing gown Tor had given her, and made her way through back hallways and seldom-used stairs to the highest balcony in her father’s castle. It looked out to the rear of the courtyard; beyond were the stables, beyond them the pastures, and beyond them all the sharp rise of the Hills. From where she stood, the wide plateau where the pastures and training grounds were laid out stretched directly in front of her; but to her left the Hills crept close to the castle walls, so that the ground and first-floor rooms on that side got very little sunlight, and the courtyard wall was carved out of the Hills themselves.