Several hours later, Turold stood at attention beside Lord Gramsteed and a phalanx of sorcerers at the king’s toilette. Basically this consisted of the king, still in his nightgown, discussing the business of the day from bed while servants hovered around him tea cups, mirrors, salves, and ointments. The assembly seemed to find this enthralling, though Turold felt he was missing out on a joke (or the joke was on him). Watching someone in bed was bad enough, but the king acted as if he was completely alone in the room, and the people around him were props. Even his servants ignored them, bumping into a sorcerer and spilling hot tea all over his boots.
While the king suffered himself to be cleansed and manicured, a nobleman stood before him and rattled off a stream of petty complaints. Chiefly, these were about his rival’s family crest, which he claimed (holding it up for inspection) had blatantly copied his own. Besides sharing the same general iconography (lions blowing trumpets on mountains), they also shared a similar motto, his being “The great might will prevail” compared to his rivals’ “Only the mighty prevail.”
The king looked bored, though everyone else seemed to titter with laughter.
“Watch this,” Lord Gramsteed whispered into Turold’s ear.
“Family crests are a sacred thing, indeed,” the king said, as a servant clipped his nose hairs. “Ever seen mine?”
“Your majesty, but of course…I have it memorized!” the nobleman said, with a bow.
“If I recall, I also have a lion. And a trumpet. Not sure about flames.”
“No, your majesty, no flames; lightning,” a fan-waving servant prompted.
“That’s it! Lightning! Our house boasts a capital motto, too…I’m paraphrasing, but it’s something like, “The might of the heavens enriches the earth.” Yes?”
“Very close, my lord,” the servant nodded.
“So you see, if I had a mind to, I could accuse your family of stealing from me, could I not?” he said, ducking down to receive a three-pronged wig. “The lion? The trumpet? And fire, well, it’s a small step from fire to lightning. You even cribbed the word “might” from mine to yours. The more I think about it, the more I find myself sincerely offended. Didn’t you think to consult my family? The two of us go back hundreds of years. Plenty of time to offer an apology.”
“Your majesty, I beg of you, we had no intention!” the nobleman whimpered, falling to his knees.
“Intentions are nosegays,” the king said, coining a baffling witticism.
After a beat, the entire room laughed, encouraged by the king’s obscene guffaw. The nobleman tried to laugh as well, but this only enraged the monarch. He ordered the laughter stifled and seized the nearest servant (who was applying a face cream) by his cravat.
“I measure a man by his deeds, not why he did them,” he said, addressing the servant. “And for this base affront, I’ll have you imprisoned in the stocks for six months and fined three thousand fobs. And take this fool with him; he applies cream with a heavy hand.”
Both the servant and the nobleman sobbed piteously and begged for mercy. The king, with a crooked grin, surveyed the audience. Most of them shook their heads, egging him on, enjoying the spectacle. Only Lord Gramsteed gave a quick, solemn nod as if to remind the king of a secret agreement. The king gave an impatient shrug and waved them off.
“Very well, no punishment, just leave the city at once! Both of you! And never return.”
Thunderous applause. The two of them skittered of the room as the king stretched out languorously in bed. Lord Gramsteed turned to Turold with raised eyebrows, as if to say, didn’t I tell you? It’s quite a performance.
“Where’s the new fellow, the Astrologer Royal?” the king announced, rolling over.
Lord Gramsteed piloted Turold to the foot of the bed and formally presented him as “Turold of Larkspur, our newly appointed Astrologer Royal.” The king wrinkled his nose as Turold just stood there silently, not knowing whether to say something (he had nothing to say) or beat a hasty retreat.
“What do you call yourself?” the king asked.
“I beg your pardon, my lord?” he asked.
“You—your kind. What are you?”
“Er…my people are from Larkspur. No family crest, though. Not even minor nobility. My father was a respected teacher in the county, so maybe you’ve heard…that he’s from Larkspur?”
Laughter surrounded him. Even the king seemed amused by this performance.
“An exalted lineage indeed! But never mind all that. What should I call a creature like you? We don’t get too many at court. You have to be called something.”
Two dozen heads turned to stare at him. His mind raced, as he could think of nothing to satisfy the king and guessing the answer he had in mind.
“You may call me a sorcerer, your grace,” he said, with another bow. “Or the last apprentice of Hildigrim Blackbeard.”
The king made a face somewhere between amusement and impatience. Stifled laughs followed.
“Yes, I forgot all about Hildigrim, though I was never much of a fan,” he said, removing his wig, insisting on a new one. “But you’re missing the point. I mean, are you a dwarf or a midget? Or a piglet? Someone once told me your kind preferred piglet, though it might have been a joke. Anyhow, dwarf sounds so much more becoming, don’t you think? Yes, I think I shall call you Dwarf, the Dwarf-Astrologer. What do you think?”
Was it a question? Turold doubted that king gave two fobs for his opinion, so he merely nodded, hoping that His Majesty would lose interest and take up another subject. And so he did, but not before he asking if Turold had trouble using the chamber pot; did he ever, so to speak, fall in? This got a tremendous round of laughter, and was the tipping point in the king’s attention. He immediately dismissed the assembly and asked for his chambermaids to disrobe him at once.
“Don’t take it to heart, it’s all in good fun,” Lord Gramsteed said, as they filed out.
“Not at all, I’m quite used to it.”
“We all have to endure these little entertainments, none of us are immune. For example, he took great exception to my nose, made up a string of nicknames when I first came to court. It’s all I heard for years.”
“That must have been awful,” Turold said, as they broke off from the main camp.
“On the contrary, it singled me out. So the next time he needed something, he called for me. The beginning of my career,” he said, wistfully. “Come, let’s talk in private on the balcony. The others won’t follow; they’re too busy hunting for tea-cakes.”
Once settled on the veranda overlooking the king’s imported orange groves and elaborate hedge maze, Lord Gramsteed slipped him an envelope.
“Read it in private. It says what I can’t tell you here.”
Turold put it away without comment.
“I heard you visited Sonya Vasilyevna. I hope she’s well.”
“She’s the same as she always is,” Turold shrugged.
“She’s had a long career; I hope this isn’t the end of it.”
“When I visited her, she seemed quite free to do as she liked. Hardly in disgrace or in danger.”
Lord Gramsteed seemed to enjoy a private joke in response. Then, turning to him, replied, “Turold, we’re most in danger when we feel the most safe. When everything seems to be going our way. No one knows that better than she does.”
Turold reflected on this, and remembered the strange map of the city with the constantly shifting stones. And her comment that even her own students were spying on her. Strange to think that she, with all her power, could only rely on him.
“Don’t get too close to her. Fires have a way of spreading to the nearest object.”
With a pat on the shoulder, Lord Gramsteed retired inside to find the others. Turold watched him go, tempted to rip open the letter and devour its contents. But no—that’s probably what he wanted him to do (otherwise, why all the secrecy?). Something told him he should wait until he returned home, when he could share the contents with the only person he could trust.
Below him, he watched several women, arms joined, giggle and enter the hedge maze. Immediately they set off in the wrong direction and straight into a dead end. He chuckled to himself, charmed with the sight of the gardens, the gentle May morning, the sounds of the birds in the trees. It seemed so far away from Belladonna, yet only a few miles separated the palace from the seediest neighborhoods in town. While the maidens doubled back and tried a new path, someone else got lost in an alleyway and never returned. It was a fitting metaphor for the city: pleasure turned to pain within a single block.
“I hope you’re watching all this,” he whispered to his shadow.
There was no response, which didn’t immediately surprise him. Only when he looked down at his feet did his pulse quicken. It had accompanied him through the courtyards, into the foyers, and inside the Grand Hall itself. Even in the king’s chambers he could sometimes spy it slinking around his feet, watching and listening.
And now it was gone.
