Daughter of Magic

drew my knee back fractionally and she pressed hers forward fractionally. “I would fain persuade thy young King Paul that he would do far better to take his woman vizier as his concubine than to pay his attentions to me.”

“You said this to him?”

“Of course not,” turning her head on its fine neck in a scornful attitude. “Men will do naught, are they not persuaded they have thought on it themselves.”

And what did she hope I would think of myself?

“But he has awakened through my presence to his manhood and his position, and I trust that he will now find the strength to tell the old women that he will ne’er marry the little maid.” It took me a second to realize she meant Princess Margareta, not Antonia. “I think my hints have already made him aware of the vizier’s willingness to share his bed.” I had no reply. She gave me her slow smile again. “Now, all I must do is persuade him that he need not pay quite so much attention to me, that my own feelings may not be as immediate and as warm as his.”

I had never had a chance, I recalled through rising panic, to tell Theodora about the Lady Justinia. First I wished she was here, then I was just as glad she wasn’t.

“So wilt thou join me in my plan, Wizard,” she asked, still smiling and brushing my shoulder with her black hair as she leaned even closer, “to convey to thy king, obliquely of course, that he should pay me no more attention?”

I had to get out of here. She was so close now that I could feel her breath on my cheek. Neither my relations with Theodora nor with my king would be improved in the slightest by giving the eastern princess a passionate embrace, and her automaton had come silently forward again, staring at us voyeuristically with its flat metallic eyes.

“Gracious!” I cried, wrenching my hand out of her grip and leaping to my feet. “I’d last track of how late it is! I have to go say good-night to my daughter.”

Justinia looked up at me in silence, blinking iridescent eyelids, as it dawned on me what I had just said.

I stood silent and stiff, waiting for her to say something. In a moment Justinia rose to her feet in a single smooth motion and took my hand again, much less tightly. “Why didst thou not tell me at once, O Wizard?” she said, to my relief looking amused. “Antonia, is that not her name? I understand, then, that the maid’s mother is someone most precious to thee, and here is the reason thou hast always been so awkward in my presence.” I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I was at the moment incapable of speech. “Is the mother here in Yurt? Does King Paul know of thy love?”

I found my tongue again. “Nobody in Yurt knows Antonia isn’t my niece,” I said, looking at the floor. That is, for the moment no one else but the queen mother knew. It didn’t seem worth asking Justinia not to tell anyone; she either would or would not as she chose. “The girl’s mother does not live here, but yes,” lifting my eyes determinedly, “she is very precious to me.”

“Then I must to choose another if I desire the king to wax jealous,” said Justinia lightly, “or would convince him that I at least will ne’er be his concubine. I feel foolish now, not to have guessed that little Antonia was thy daughter. I ween that the purpose of her visit here is to commence teaching her magic? It is regrettable, O Wizard,” she added with something between a chuckle and a sigh, “because thou art passing handsome. Thy face and form are yet those of a young man, in despite of thy white beard, and thy wisdom and authority are of surpassing attractiveness in themselves.”

“Um, I really do need to kiss Antonia good-night,” I said, backing away.

“Of course, Wizard,” she said agreeably as the automaton, with a suspicious look, opened the door. Had she tried this on Elerius, too, I wondered, or would his much greater powers have put her in awe of him?

“Do not be shy to sit thee again by my side in spite of thy awkwardness this evening,” Justinia added. “Give the girl a kiss from me, and be assured that thy secret is safe.” She gave a slow smile. “I am well schooled in the keeping of secrets.”

I spent that night and much of the next morning composing conversations with King Paul, in which I combined plausible and nonchalant explanations for why I had never told him I had a daughter with assertions- assertions that never, of course, seemed forced or defensive-that my silence on this matter in no way implied embarrassment or shame about my relations with Theodora. None of these conversations seemed to come out right.

And yet, I reminded myself, I had brought Antonia to Yurt in the first place partly because I hoped to find some way to end the secrecy. This just didn’t seem the best way to do it.

If the Lady Justinia said anything to Paul, he gave no indication to me. He went riding by himself in the morning while I took a stroll with Antonia.

Her hair had been curled and ribboned elaborately by the Princess Margareta, who seemed to be treating her as a substitute for her broken china doll. Antonia’s Dolly too had a pink ribbon around her cloth neck. I realized, walking through sunlit meadows with my daughter’s small hand in mine, that her visit to Yurt was nearly over.

“Maybe I should take Celia and Hildegarde home with me,” she told me thoughtfully.

“Take them home?” I asked with a smile. “What will you and your mother do with them?”

“Here in Yurt everybody is always telling them they can’t do what they want to do. Mother wouldn’t tell them that.”

“She doesn’t let you do everything you want,” I said, amused at Antonia’s concern for the twins. Larks sang around us, and I was able to push to the back of my mind the voice which was trying out, “Wizards, of course, traditionally keep their private and their professional lives separate, so I therefore never happened to …”

“But Mother never told me I can’t be a wizard,” said Antonia. “Is that better than being a witch, by the way? And nobody will let Hildegarde be a knight, and now Celia thinks she’ll have to be a nun because she can’t be a priest. Maybe I should find out who keeps telling them all these things and turn him into a frog. What’s a nun, Wizard? Is it fun to be one?”

“No, I don’t think it’s fun to be nun,” I said, deciding to ignore the question about the relative values of wizard and witch-and even more so the issue of frogs. “But I’m afraid the twins were just down in Caelrhon, and they got the same answers there they got in Yurt.”

“Then I’ll have to find a better place for them to go,” said Antonia in determination.

We walked for a moment in silence. “Do you like my hair like this?” she asked then, turning sapphire eyes on me.

“Well, the bows are very nice,” I said cautiously, “but I like you in simple braids too.”

She nodded emphatically. “That’s what I decided. But I don’t want to hurt Margareta’s feelings. She broke her doll by accident, and now she has no one to play with but me. And this makes four different rooms in the castle I’ve slept in! I can’t wait to tell my friend Jen. Margareta’s unhappy because she doesn’t think the king loves her.”

I wondered whether Princess Margareta had told her this, or whether Antonia, with her mother’s quick insight, had worked it out for herself.

“I know what I can do, Wizard!” she said with a sudden skip. “I can take them all to see a dragon!”

“Well, since school-trained wizards are considered wedded to magic, it seemed best …” said the voice in the back of my mind with forced casualness. I pushed the voice away again and smiled at my daughter. Everything, the pain of being separated from Theodora, the deception, the embarrassment now that that deception seemed about to be found out, was worth it because of her. “Where will you find a dragon? I don’t think your mother has any around.”

“I’ll find one someplace,” she said confidently and enthusiastically. “Then Hildegarde can be a knight and kill it, but first the dragon will hurt Margareta so that she’ll be sick in bed and the king will realize he always loved her, and Celia will give the last rites so that she can be a priest.”

“It’s a complicated scenario,” I said, trying to keep from laughing.

“What’s a complicated scenario?”

“Your plan. While you’re at it, why not take Gwennie along too? I must say I’d never really considered, Antonia, that all that these women need is a trip someplace to see a dragon.”

“That’s right,” said Antonia. “Gwennie is sad too. How about Justinia?”

I thought about the lady’s self-possession. “She’s in fear for her life-reasonably well concealed-but I wouldn’t