A lady of the Blade Kingdoms-a real lady, complete with demure expression, flowing gown, and tall pointy hat-most decidedly did not dabble in magic. And although Miliana's expression was more often irritable than demure, and though her gowns were somewhat more ink-spattered than fashion allowed, she admittedly did have a very pointy hat. The heavens only knew what would happen if her assorted guardians, tutors and watchdogs found out that she had ambitions for a mere craft such as magic; some vague, horrid punishment involving pruning onions or tending the sick. Miliana avoided the awful prospect of ever finding out by keeping her studies safely hidden, deep inside her lair.
Miliana's secret hoard of spellbooks had been found while digging about in a moldy old crypt in the rose gardens; each volume now had beautiful hand-stitched covers proclaiming them to be parts one through five of Lady Faveretti's Cookery Handbook for Erudite Young Girls (with an appendix on Poisoning for Beginners). Only the eerie fishy smell remained-a stench Miliana blamed on the nesting cormorants in the eaves of her tower.
After three solid years of practice, Miliana had still not yet managed to master a single sorcerous skill. The palace was continually beset with odd little accidents that she had thus far managed to explain away-although the recent fire in the west wing had stretched her powers of misdirection to their utter limit.
Three years of study! And now, finally, at the very moment of breakthrough, the very instant of casting her first spell, her idiotic stepmother had chosen to come lumbering up the tower stairs! Miliana searched for the badly scrawled syllables she needed, her freckles rippling as she screwed up her face in furious concentration.
'Miliana? Miliana-I am coming up!'
Damn! Dressed only in a silken shift, a chemise, three petticoats and a pair of fluffy slippers, Miliana scuttled crabwise about her desk, trying to dress herself while keeping her eyes riveted on her books. Sparing a quick glance for the door, Miliana hopped up and down on one foot and tried to draw a stocking up her leg while reading her spellbook upside down. She tied the stocking into place with a silken ribbon, holding one end of the bow between her teeth as she contorted herself like a mad fakir across her cluttered desk.
Although being a princess locked within a tower had a certain romantic charm, the locks in this case were all fastened from the inside, rather than from without. Even with a double drop-bar, the security was not enough; the tower door shuddered to a massive blow as an operatic female voice rose to a pitch of outrage just outside.
'Miliana! Miliana, open this door at once! I have never seen a child so willful, so incorrigible, and so ungrateful! Miliana? Miliana-this is beyond belief!'
Ulia Mannicci-fondly referred to as 'The Hammer of the Gods' by half the Sumbrian court-had finally reached Miliana's lair. Speaking with a stepmother's authority, she shook and pounded imperiously at Miliana's door.
'Miliana? Miliana-I know you're in there! I am giving you until the count of ten, and then I shall fetch a wizard to knock this door down!' Ulia's voice warbled onward with scarcely a pause for breath. 'I shall knock it down-and you shan't be allowed to have another! We shall send you to finishing school where you belong!
'I'm counting! I am counting-I swear!
'One…!'
Miliana spat out a curse and jammed a plain blue gown across her freckled limbs. Adjusting her lenses, she suddenly spied the spell she had been searching for-the perfect thing to grace a palace ball! Frozen to the spot, Miliana laced her bodice about her scrawny ribs and read the spell icons in breathless fascination.
'Eight…! Nine…! Nine and a half!'
With a groan of frustration, Miliana closed her eyes, tried to fix the spell in her mind's eye, and then buried the spellbook beneath sheet music and half finished embroideries. The girl hastily splashed her face with hot water from the kettle, threw yet more water on the tiles and artfully tossed towels across every chair-back in line of sight. As her stepmother's count reached nine and eleven sixteenths-and since further fractions were well beyond Lady Ulia's intellectual capacity-Miliana flung herself to the door, somehow kicking her fluffy slippers out of sight. She ripped aside two iron bolts, a padlock and three security chains, then heaved open the door and assumed a mask of absolute, innocent surprise.
'Why Ulia! Dear Ulia-why ever didn't you knock?'
Lady Ulia Mannicci, wife of Prince Cappa Mannicci, stepmother to Miliana, and First Lady of Sumbria, sailed into the room like a gilded pleasure barge. Dressed in half an acre of silks and proceeded by a shock-front of perfumes, Lady Ulia bore her stepdaughter aside and made a stately royal progress about Miliana's rooms.
'Miliana! Miliana, what in the world are you doing sitting here like a haundar in its lair when there are visitors to be entertained?' Fanning at her face and exhausted by her journey up two whole flights of stairs, Lady Ulia heaved her mountainous bosom and tried to catch her breath. 'I must say-in my youth, such things simply were not done! The daughter of a noble house-a Blade House, a princely house, and an ancient house at that-took her duties seriously! To think what would happen to this palace if the worst ever overcame me! Disaster! Disaster!' A silk fan stirred up a wild, perfume-sodden breeze. 'Have you not a thought for your poor stepmother's peace of mind?'
Braced against a wall to weather the onslaught of Ulia's self-pity, Miliana heaved a tired breath and pushed out into the room. An irritating stepmother seemed to be an integral part of the 'princess' lifestyle; Miliana wearily prepared to keep the peace.
'I am getting ready for the party! I was in the bath.'
'The bath? The bath!' Ulia surged forward in a tidal wave of indignation. 'Bathing will avail you no advantages, my girl! I have it on good authority that water against the skin introduces rude humors into the bloodstream!'
Princess Miliana-perhaps the best example of rude humor in the kingdom-stabbed a surly glance at her stepmother's back and muttered seething curses under her breath. Had Miliana's skill at magic been a thousandth the equal of her temperament, Ulia Mannicci would have immediately ended up as a startling new design splayed across the apartment walls. Instead, the huge woman shifted the ponderous bulk of her case-hardened corsets and wheeled about to face her scowling, scrawny little ward.
'Every gargoyle on the roof-ridge has broken clean in two! Would you believe it? Would you believe it? Thieves on the loose, my emeralds stolen, half the army looking for stable space, and I don't know what all these spurs are doing to my carpets!' Ulia Mannicci zoomed about the room with her skirts stirring like a restless jellyfish; never once did she pause for breath or cease roving her eyes across the room. 'Now do get ready for the palace ball, there's a dear! Your father's fanfare is just about to be rung!'
Miliana's toilette was essentially simple; she ran a comb through her great streams of long brown hair and polished up her spectacles; a sparrow perfectly happy with her simple plumage. The girl tugged her bodice straight, hid the ink stains on the elbow of her gown, and clapped her favorite hat upon her head.
Stepmother Ulia watched the entire process with an exasperated frown.
'Don't you have a pointier hat than that, dear? We do have company.'
Unhappy with her stepdaughter's grooming, Ulia began to tug and wrench at the poor girl's clothing. Miliana suffered it with ill grace, muttering and cursing silently under her breath.
Miliana never ceased to be an embarrassment and a mystery to Lady Ulia. In Ulia's day, young women had taken pride in their appearance; they had rehearsed the social graces, flirtation, wit and repartee with an intensity that put the martial arts schools of the Do Jang monks of Koryo to shame. They had been flowers fit to grace the most discriminating court. Miliana, on the other hand, seemed more of a nettle than a flower-a speckled sprat of a thing with far more spleen than was good for her. For three years, Ulia had tried to teach the child the elements of courtly grace; her stepdaughter's lack of progress was apparently due to a complete vagueness and an utter misunderstanding of the real ways of the world. Nevertheless, Lady Ulia persevered; after all, a peacock was merely a pigeon with the right feathers added to its tail.
'Very well, Miliana my dear, it is time we were on our way.' Miliana's hat seemed at least six inches too short to meet the latest fashion. Despite the girl's protests, Lady Una plucked it from her head and tossed the thing away. A replacement was soon discovered lurking about at the bottom of a cupboard-a golden cone fully three feet high. Ulia advanced upon her stepdaughter holding out the hat; Miliana retreated away with revulsion gleaming in her eyes.
'I don't want it! I'll wear the other one!'
'The other one simply won't do, Miliana! A princess should excel all other ladies in grandeur.'
'I don't want it!' Miliana glared at the ridiculous hat with a scowl. 'It knocks against the chandeliers!'
'Now don't be silly! Just put it on and please your mother.'
Ulia was not Miliana's mother-a fact which Miliana growled, sotto vocce, as she took hold of the ridiculous hat. She found herself swung helplessly around and deposited before a mirror as her new hat was firmly jammed
