said quietly.
'Certainly!' Sald was not that ignorant.
King of Arms motioned his monumental head toward the end of the line of nobles and was about to vanish into the crowd.
'A question, my lord,' Sald said brashly, this man being a relatively safe target for his bitterness. 'There has not, perhaps, been an error?'
The faded old eyes flamed. 'Did you say
'Yes!' Sald snapped. 'I always understood that presentation at court was reserved to persons of higher lineage than mine.'
'So did I,' King of Arms said icily, and walked away.
The valet had started to tidy his equipment. Sald reached for his money pouch, but of course it was in his flying suit, behind the mirror. 'You have been most kind,' he stuttered.
'It was an honor, Ensign,' the old man said, beaming down at him.
The line had started to move. 'No, it was a kindness,' Sald insisted. 'Hardly an honor, after a duke.'
The valet's smile became cryptic. 'An honor to help those who serve our beloved sovereign and his family.'
With his mouth still open, Sald dashed to take his place at the end of the fast-vanishing line. What had that meant? His mother, he recalled, always said that the servants knew more than anyone else in the court.
He stepped out into sunlight--and the vastness of the Great Courtyard. Trumpets blared barbarically. Finely groomed ladies and elegant gentlemen, the high nobility of the realm, the elite of Rantorra glittering in splendor, rose with a hiss of silk and brocade as the noble appointees came into their midst. A matching line of ladies emerged to join the men, and together they paraded down a center aisle toward the distant and empty thrones.
All around the high walls, on tiered balconies, the lesser nobility and some of the commonality stood in silence to study their betters. Even men with less than two quarterings, perhaps.
There were more men than women in the procession, so only the men near the front had partners. At the end of the line came Ensign Harl: youngest, shortest, loneliest.
When the fat duke reached the open space before the thrones, he stopped. The next man moved to his right, and the next to his. When Sald arrived, he paraded along the whole line of highborn hindquarters and found barely space to squeeze between the last man and the wall, turning to face the dais and the thrones. The fabrics whispered again as the audience sat down.
The thrones faced the assembly and also faced sunward. High above, on top of the wall, a fixed mirror jutted out at an angle so that the rays of the unchanging sun were reflected downward and the thrones glowed, brilliant in the shady courtyard.
There were a few minutes of expectant silence.
Unnoted in his edge position, Sald gaped around like the hick country boy he was. The Great Courtyard was the largest enclosed space he had ever seen. High above, slowly circling in the azure sky, were four--no, six-- guards. What happened, he wondered, to a trooper whose bird crapped on the court? A posting to the hot pole to make ice cream, perhaps?
Far beyond the courtyard wall he could see the distant craggy top of Ramo Peak, but it could not compare with the view he had had from the desert, a view few men had ever seen: the Range in all its splendor. Even his home peak of Rakarr he had never seen so well, set off by the hazy backdrop of the Rand itself, a crumbled rampart rising miles above the plain, glowing bright against the midnight blue of the sky over Darkside, itself glittering with the distant reflection of ice. But Rakarr was a tiny peak, barely high enough to catch rain, and hence poor for cultivation. Ramo Peak, as he had seen it from the desert, had been breathtaking--its immense vertical extent from airless, waterless rocky uplands, faint and remote, down through pastures and then all the crop levels, barley and wheat and the others, to the lowest habitable, rice; and below that the useless jungle, and then the barren foothills clothed in the dense and poisonous 'red air' of the desert and the crucible plains.
The congregation rose again.
The royal fanfare was played.
The entourage entered: guards and priests and court functionaries.
The king and queen followed.
It had been a long time since Sald had been close to the king, but he could see little change. The famous flaxen hair might be turning to silver in parts, but when the king stepped into the carpet of sunlight around the thrones, his hair blazed as brightly as the gold circlet it bore. The fair-skinned face was the same, the darting, penetrating eyes. Diamond decorations sparkled on his royal-blue court dress. No quarterings there; the front of his coat bore the eagle symbol only. Aurolron XX, King of Rantorra, tiny and immensely regal.
But Queen Mayala! Sald was stunned. Where now was the legendary beauty which had once been the toast of the kingdom? Like a woodland sprite, Mayala had floated on the edges of his childhood, a fairy-tale queen with trailing honey hair and a smile for which men would cheerfully have died. She floated no more; eyes downcast, hunched, shrunken inside her royal-blue gown, no taller than the king himself, servile even, she shuffled along beside him. Her hair looked dyed, her face waxen. If this was the best they could do with her for an Investiture, how did she look in private? He had heard no rumors.
Side by side, the royal couple advanced toward the thrones. Immediately behind the king walked King Shadow, wearing identical clothes--minus decorations, plus a black baldric--a portly yet a somber man.
Then came Crown Prince Vindax.
He had not changed--the jet hair, the beak nose, the easy athlete's walk were just as Sald remembered. His eyebrows had grown perhaps even bushier. No quarterings for him, either--he wore sky-blue and the talon symbol of the heir apparent. Prince Shadow was dead, so Vindax's brother, Jarkadon, walked directly behind him, filling the post until Count Moarien's appointment became official. The king and queen settled on the thrones, and Vindax took his place at his father's side, Jarkadon still at his back. The senior officials moved smoothly to their appointed places.
Vindax's eyes scanned along the waiting fine of hopefuls and found Sald. There was no change of expression, but the royal eyes noted the shabby boots, the baggy hose, the despicable coat. Then the study ended, and Vindax looked away.
But his interest had been observed, and necks craned to see who had been so honored.
There, thought Sald, was his problem. His mother had been a lady-in-waiting. As a child he had attended the palace school, and he was the same age as Vindax--few ensigns in the Guard had ever been on first-name terms with the crown prince. Later they had met again, when Vindax was learning flying from the Guard trainers. So when some young courtier had mentioned that he wanted an equerry who was a good skyman, the prince himself would have graciously mentioned the name of Harl. Amusing type, knows his manners, clean about the house...
The anthem was played, then the archbishop prayed, inaudibly to mortal ears.
Vindax looked no more at Sald, but Sald studied him. The prince was amazingly unlike the rest of his family. Could flax and honey produce jet? Certainly that thought must have been mulled over a million times by thousands of people since the prince's birth, but to speak even a hint of it would be treason. Jarkadon, by contrast, looked more like the king than the king did.
The lord chancellor read the proclamation, finally bidding all those etcetera draw nigh. Nobody moved.
A herald removed the scroll from the chancellor's hand and substituted another.
'...know therefore that it is our pleasure...'
There must be forty dubbings to come. Three or four minutes had to be allowed for each to be called, to advance, to receive a few gracious words from the monarch...it was going to be a long time until they got to Sald Harl.
And the chancellor reached the end of the first citation:
'...our right trusty Sald Harl, Esquire, ensign in our Royal Guard.'
It was like hitting a sudden downdraft. He hardly registered the shocked bubbling of the court around him.
First? He had been planning to watch the others.
