The Audition

'I'm sorry, I can't stay,' I said, recoiling from the stench. 'My music teacher—'

'That beanpole of a scholar?' she said. 'He's fine. He tripped over me, too, but we made it up and I sent him on his way.'

I looked past her up the corridor. 'Where is he?'

She scowled and shoved the pail in my face. 'He'sfine. Your assistance, oaf.'

My hands accepted the bucket over the protestations of my nose, which had caught an overpowering whiff of fish. I gazed into the brown ooze. Silver scales winked merrily in the murk; the dark buttons lurking in the depths were surely eyes. I swallowed my revulsion. 'What do I do with it?'

''What do I do with it,Your Highness,'' she corrected, folding her hands in front of her stomach. Beaded birds frolicked among golden clouds on her bodice.

I fell into my deepest curtsy, awkwardly executed thanks to the bucket in my hands.Your Highness plus her age could only equal the Queen's granddaughter, Princess Glisselda, although I did not see how it was possible. To my knowledge, she ought to have been at a music lesson with the troubadour at this very moment.

'Rise,' she said. 'I did not catch your name.'

'Seraphina Dombegh, Your Highness.' I straightened, hold­ing the fishy ferment away from my body. The smell persisted, undiminished by distance.

The princess hopped down, light as a finch. She barely came up to my shoulder. 'Well, Maid Dombegh,' she said, 'we are set­ting a trap for my last prospective music tutor.'

My mouth fell open. This bucket of goo was meant for me!

Clearly, the princess didn't realize who I was. My voice qua­vered a little as I said, 'Is there some particular problem with this tutor, that you feel the need to—'

'Oh no,' she said breezily. 'I've not met any of Viridius's finalists. I despise them all equally, on principle. I sent the first one—that weedy lute master—on a wild-goose chase through the cellars, ending with a special trip down the coal chute.'

Saints in Heaven.

I dreaded to ask but had to know: 'What did you do to the troubadour?'

Her eyes lit up; she hopped on her toes. 'I'll show you!'

She pushed open the double doors and led me through a small study, or perhaps a schoolroom, furnished with two tables and a bookcase. A map spread on one table had been heavily annotated; pens, books, and wooden markers were scattered across it. She picked her way across to the windows, which overlooked a walled garden with a hedge maze at the far end. The princess plopped herself down on the embrasure seat and opened the casement. She patted the embroidered cushion beside her. I balanced on its edge, the bucket on my knees.

'Observe: the plume of his silly hat,' she said, pointing. A bracelet of river pearls dangled from her little wrist.

Indeed, I could tell where my comrade-at-musical-arms stood among the box hedges. His feather bobbed dubiously in the autumn sunshine as if he were trying to decide between two directions.

He chose the left-hand path. 'Not much further now!' cried Princess Glisselda, pounding the casement with her fist.

'Princess,' I said, my mouth almost too dry to speak, 'he sings like an angel. You should have heard his auditions. He'd make a superb assistant to Master Viridius, and an excellent tutor for you, if you would but—'

'Give him a chance?' she said, looking at me sidelong. 'I am. The music master and I are at war; I am giving this fellow fair warning of our vendetta, a chance to learn what a morass he's walking into before he commits to it. In fact, I've had a real morass prepared just for him. I thought a literal approach would make things clearest. There he goes.'

The feather abruptly disappeared. Shouts rose from the center of the maze. I gaped at her, appalled. 'He didn't deserve that,' I said.

'All wars have casualties,' she said, her eyes fixed on the scene below.

I stared into the brown ooze meant for me. 'What do you intend to do with this, uh, substance?' I said, tipping it, watching how it clung to the side of the pail.

'Isn't it gloriously vile?' she squealed, turning away from the window and clapping her hands. 'It's fermented fish heads. It symbolizes how unpalatable I find the idea of music instruction. We shall spill it upon this final villain and be rid of two noxious things at once.

'We must hurry, though,' she fretted, 'or it won't be ready when he walks in.'

He. I stared into the mesmerizing ferment and had an inkling of an idea. Maybe I could still salvage this, giving the princess a lesson by stealth and revealing my identity only when the thing was done.

I rose and smiled at her. 'If you want to set this up so it falls on his head when he opens the doors, you've been going at it from the wrong side.'

She fetched the chair from the hallway; I climbed upon it and showed her how one might balance the pail on top of the double doors, slightly ajar. The princess laughed and capered, delighted with me, and even I could not help taking a sober satisfaction. I felt safer with the bucket where she couldn't reach it.

'Of course, anyone might spot the trap through the crack,' I said, stepping down and studying the setup from another angle. 'You'll want to draw your victim's attention toward something else. What if you sat in his line of sight, playing your instrument?'

She made a rude face. 'I think not.'

'You don't have it with you?' Had I trapped us in here with­out it?

She scorned to answer, but turned toward a hanging tapestry and pulled it aside, revealing a door. She quit the schoolroom; I hesitated, and then followed her into a much larger salon with tall windows and chairs grouped into conversational clusters.

In front of the windows stood a harpsichord, covered against dust.

'Is that your instrument?' I asked.

She snorted, an unexpected sound from such a highborn girl. 'It's Viridius's. He doesn't let me touch it. He has not forgiven me for filling it with frogs.' When I blinked at her uncomprehendingly, she said, 'It has beenwar, Seraphina.'

She turned and flounced off toward the windows. I stared af­ter her.

I was beginning to dread the possibility of getting this job, but it shamed me to think I might be defeated by fear in this final trial, which had nothing to do with my musical abilities. I took a deep breath and whipped the sheet off the harpsichord.

Princess Glisselda turned at the sound and raised an eyebrow at me. I sat at the keyboard and let my fingers say hello, thrilling at the texture of the notes.

'What instrument does Viridius have you playing?' I said. 'Dulcimer?'

'How did you know?' she asked.

'That's the usual first instrument for fashionable young la­dies,' I said, indulging in a few arpeggios. 'But there's a reason it's called the dull-cimer.'

'That's what I said! I made that exact joke!' she cried. 'And the old tyrant barked at me that it was the easiest instrument to learn and I was tone-deaf as a boiled beet.'

Ouch. Clearly, both sides fired volleys in this war.

Glisselda crossed the room, her arms folded and a scowl crumpling her elfin face. 'I know what you're up to, and it isn't going to work,' she said.

I looked up from the keys. 'I'm sorry, I don't—'

'You're just like the rest of them,' she cried. 'Grandmamma, and my mother, and everyone. Music is supposed to teach me dis­cipline, they say! The dullness of the dulcimer will make me mild and discreet and dispassionate!'

I put my hands on my knees, facing her. 'You're not interested in music even a little.'

'Absolutely not,' she said fiercely.

I tried to smile, but my heart was sinking. 'So what are you interested in?'

I had her answer narrowed down to three before she even opened her rosy mouth. She would say gowns or balls or boys. I was already thinking of ways to relate any of these three to mu­sic—gowns was hardest—and so I