Daughter of Magic

floor and blushed when a servant slipped over from the other table to give her a clean one.

Paul too gave most of his attention to the Lady Justinia. Elerius was entertaining the knights and ladies with tales of his travels, including a trip right up into the far northern land of dragons, where I had never gone. He seemed so comfortable at an aristocratic table that I wondered vaguely, as I had several times before, if the family background he had always kept secret might include birth in a noble household, or if he, like me, had learned to imitate refined social graces upon taking up a post as a royal wizard. Antonia followed his stories with such rapt attention that she almost forgot to eat, but the king scarcely appeared to hear him.

When dessert came, Elerius graciously refused requests to entertain the court with illusions, referring the company instead to me. My dragons doing the tango got a much more appreciative response here than they had received last night from the renegade magic-worker who might-or might not-have been watching me covertly.

As the servants began clearing away the plates and everyone else started back toward their chambers or else talked in small groups by the hearth, the Lady Justinia put her hand on the king’s arm. “I have a question for thee, perhaps even a suggestion,” she said with a slow smile, under the sounds of general conversation.

Princess Margareta, picking up her doll, glanced toward them. Justinia, her back toward the table, did not notice either the girl or me. “I have been at thy court long enough, O King, to learn that thou art truly a man and not a boy,” Justinia continued quietly, her lips curved into a half smile and her dark eyes holding his. “A man and a king can make his own choices in love: he is not one to let the old women decide for him. Thou and I both know, do we not, that thy own choice would never be a little girl, scarce more than a child, who still plays with dolls?”

The tips of Paul’s ears went pink as he started to smile in response. But the effect on Margareta was immediate. She blanched white and stood stark still for a moment, clutching her doll to her. Queen Margarithia wide blue eyes stared unseeing at the room, and her painted china lips continued to sketch their cupid’s-bow smile.

Then Margareta whirled around, the doll swinging from one hand, and stormed from the room. Queen Margarithia’s porcelain head struck the table leg and shattered explosively. A number of people turned at the sound, but Margareta, almost running, did not seem to notice.

Neither did Paul, although Justinia glanced briefly over her shoulder. “Who do you think then my choice should be, my lady?” he asked. My liege lord’s expression was so intense and so vulnerable that I felt almost ashamed to be eavesdropping.

“The choice is thine to make, O King,” she said, looking at him from under long lashes. “But I believe there is a heart in the castle that loves truly, has loved thee a very long time, with a care thou hast ignored for far too long.”

I turned away. The queen, frowning, was looking toward Paul and Justinia, but this was something the king would have to take care of by himself. The Lady Justinia might think she was pleading Gwennie’s cause, but to me it looked only as though she were advancing her own.

Gwennie had reasserted her authority as arranger of accommodations in the castle and had told me that a little girl could not possibly stay in my chambers with two wizards, and instead would sleep with her in her own room until the twins returned. That was fine with me-it kept her away from Elerius. Antonia had been quite smug earlier about this opportunity to sleep in three different rooms in a castle and said she could hardly wait to tell her friend Jen.

This evening, however, she kept referring to the smashing of Queen Margarithia. Antonia thought Margareta must be especially upset because she had destroyed her beloved doll herself, and when I explained that my magic would not put broken porcelain back together, she suggested earnestly that we send at once for the Dog-Man. I took her to Gwennie’s room and sat holding her hand until she fell asleep.

The room was reached from the courtyard by an outside staircase. Gwennie was waiting when I came out. “Could I talk to you for a moment, Wizard?”

We sat side by side on the stone steps, still warm from the day’s sun although it was now twilight. The castle around us was growing quiet, but from the stables came faint sounds of restless horses who had yet to reconcile themselves to the company of an elephant. The last swallows darted high overhead.

I looked at Gwennie from the corner of my eye while waiting for her to begin. She had a finely-shaped nose and brow-line, if a rather firm chin marked by a slight cleft, and straight dark blonde hair that was always escaping its pins. I myself thought she was as lovely as the Lady Justinia.

“All the years my father was constable,” she said with strained cheer after a few minutes, “I never realized how difficult his duties must be! Keeping the castle accounts, hiring new servants, assigning them their duties and ascertaining that they carry them out, making decisions ranging from when to whitewash the walls to when to buy new table linens to whether we should plant barley or rye this spring-”

“I’m sure everyone appreciates how smoothly the castle runs under your direction,” I said and waited again, knowing this was not what she wanted to talk about. For that matter, I had never really thought myself about the merits of barley versus rye. Gwennie was again silent as shadow filled the castle courtyard.

“This morning,” she said at last in a low voice, not looking at me. “Did you hear what that eastern princess tried to tell me?”

It didn’t seem worth denying. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help overhearing.”

“The worst of it is,” she said, so quietly I had to strain to follow, “I almost found myself agreeing with her.”

“Ahh,” I said as noncommittally as possible. This sounded more like something for which a castle employed a Royal Chaplain than an issue for the Royal Wizard. But then I wouldn’t have taken a moral dilemma to our chaplain either.

“I know him so well,” Gwennie said bitterly. “He likes me, he trusts my work as his constable, he remembers fondly the times we used to play together as children. If he found me in his bed in the middle of the night, he would be a little surprised, but I know I would quickly be able to find ways to arouse his interest-even having no experience of my own with men. I could even make him believe he was in love with me.”

Although I was quite sure this was not the sort of topic on which royal wizards were supposed to give advice, and although I didn’t like to think that my king could be so easily manipulated by a woman, I said nothing. At the moment Paul seemed ready to leap to do whatever Justinia might suggest to him, and my own situation was hardly an example of male independence and mastery.

“But what good would that do?” Gwennie continued. “If he did not come to love me by himself, with no help from me, it would not be real love. And,” she paused, gulped once, and continued, “and that he could never do, and I as constable of this castle would never allow. He would be the laughing-stock of all the neighboring kingdoms if he took a cook’s daughter as his wife, and what purpose would there be in becoming his concubine?”

It might temporarily take her misery away, I thought to myself, but even I recognized that would only be temporary.

“If he got me with child,” she continued, speaking fast now, her voice trembling on the edge of tears, “I know him well enough to be certain that he would not cast me out.”

She seemed to have thought it all through remarkably well for someone who had summarily rejected this option.

“He would find a place for me to continue to live in Yurt, and our son, if we had a son, would be brought up as a pet of the castle, well-trained and well-educated to serve as a constable or even a knight in some other kingdom, but he could never inherit the throne.”

Like Elerius? I wondered.

“Our daughter, if we had a daughter, would be well provided with a dowry to marry some wealthy merchant-even a petty castellan. But any children would be marked all their lives with the stigma of illegitimacy, and he would never truly consider them his.”

I was glad it was growing too dark for her to see my face. I thought of my “niece” asleep in Gwennie’s room. As she grew up, what stigma would she feel marked her, and would she come to believe I did not think of her as truly mine?

Gwennie had stopped speaking and seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “At least the Lady Justinia seems to have no plans to become queen of Yurt,” I suggested tentatively.

“And why not?” Gwennie burst out. “Does she think an eastern governor’s granddaughter too fine for the king of a small western kingdom? Where does she think she will find a better man, one braver or more true, more open and generous, or capable of greater love? If she’s as shallow as she seems, doesn’t she even realize she won’t find