Black Unicorn, Tanith Lee [famous ebook reader txt] 📗

“My father’s palace,” said the Princess, faintly bored.

As the chariot slowed, Tanaquil tried and succeeded in count ing the lines of windows, balconies. There were fifteen stories.

“You can use that room, if you like it,” said the Princess. Her name was Lizra, she had revealed. “Have a bath and choose one of those dresses in the cedarwood closet. Then we’ll go downto dinner. It goes on for hours. Won’t matter if we’re late.”

She had thrown off her cloak, and sat about in a red gownwith gold buttons.

On their entering her bedchamber, Tanaquil had been halfaffronted, half delighted. It was a colossal room, and every wall was painted like a beautiful garden of fruit trees and flowers, witha flamingo lake whose water was inlaid lapis lazuli that seemed toreflect and ripple. On the blue ceiling were a gold sun and a silvermoon and some copper and platinum planets that moved about inappropriate positions. When Lizra pulled a golden handle by thebed, three white clockwork doves flew over. The bed itself was in the shape of a conch shell, plated in mother-of-pearl. There wereno fireplaces. Pipes of hot water, it seemed, ran under the floorand behind the walls from furnaces in the basement.

The peeve, too, was overwhelmed. It immediately laid somedung on a woven-gold rug, then folded the rug over the misde meanor like a nasty pancake.

Tanaquil expected death at once, but Lizra only took the rugand dropped it out of the window ten stories down to the gardensbelow. “Someone will find it, put the dung on the flowers, cleanthe rug, then bring it back.”

Nevertheless, she showed Tanaquil and the peeve a marble

bathroom, to which a large tray of earth had already been brought.

The other room led from the bedchamber. It was colored like a rose, and in it were a fireplace and a bed, both withcolumns of cinnabar. “It’s where my visitors stay,” said Lizra airily, “friends.”

Tanaquil raised her eyebrows. “You’re too kind. Surely youdon’t honor me by thinking of me as a friend?” “Are you an enemy then?” asked Lizra, with a knife-like glance.

Tanaquil said, “I only meant—”

“Don’t mind me,” said Lizra. She watched the peeve in thebathroom, in a delayed reaction, scraping dirt out of the tray all over the floor. “Make it say something,” said Lizra. “I think it wants to.”

“Buried it,” said the peeve. “Clever me.”

“Yes,” said Lizra. “I thought so.”

Tanaquil bathed in a bath where she could have swum, hadshe known how. There were jade ducks that floated full of soap, and a fish, when you tilted it, sluiced you with warm water.

From her closet Lizra chose for Tanaquil a gown of lion-yellow silk. It was ornate and boned, like the red gown. “We’rethe same size. Just as well. You have to be formal here, particu larly for dinner. So many rules, like the procession.”

Lizra had been driving through the city to “inspire the people.” “Father says it does,” said Lizra, “but half of them don’t take any notice. Why should they? I have to go round oncea month. He only bothers with the festivals. It makes you sick.”

“What does your mother say?”

“My mother’s dead,” said Lizra briskly. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry or how awful, because you never knew her, and neither did I, properly. It happened when I was only five.”

But Tanaquil had actually paused to visualize a life from theage of five without a mother—or without the only mother shecould imagine, Jaive.

“We’ll go down then, Tanaquil,” said Lizra.

“Will your father want to know who I am?”

“He’ll assume, if he notices either of us, that you’re someroyal person from another city he’s agreed to allow on a visit. Ithappens a lot. I usually find those girls stuck-up or stupid. Onthe other hand, I was once friends with a road-sweeper’s daugh ter, Yilli, and she came here often. I really liked her. Then she

tried to cut my throat one morning. She wanted to steal some ofmy jewelry, which I hate anyway. She could have had it. I’ve avoided friends since then.”

Tanaquil was shocked into weird sympathy. She could see itall, the sweeper’s daughter’s painful jealousy, Lizra’s bold, blindtrust, her own shock, the emotional wound she thought sheshould be casual about.

“I still sometimes catch sight of her,” said Lizra bleakly. “She bakes pies in the Lion Market.”Tanaquil realized she might have eaten one of these pies. Shesaid, “You mean you let her go?”

“I held her upside down out of the window first.”

Tanaquil said, “ Are you in fact warning me to be careful? Since you don’t know anything about me—”

“So what?” said Lizra. “I just think I might like to know you, not about you. Yes, poor Yilli was my mistake. But you have to take risks.”

“Yes,” said Tanaquil

“Bring your peeve. It’ll like dinner.”

They went down to the dining hall in the Flying Chair. Thepeeve did not enjoy this, as it had not enjoyed coming up in it.

Several flights of marble stairs, with vast landings, ran upand down through the fifteen stories of the palace. For each flightthere was also a Flying Chair. It was like a birdcage with bars of gilded iron, and inside was a bench with cushions. You entered,sat, and rang a golden bell in the floor of the cage. This commu nicated to gangs of servants at the bottom and top of the palace,and they began to haul on the gilded ropes. The cage workedagainst a counterweight, which was gently released to bring thecarriage down and gently lowered to lift it. Should you wish to alight at the twelfth story, the bell was rung twelve times, and soon. Sometimes, the bell was misheard, but never by very much.

Tanaquil herself did not completely like the flying up anddown through the air of the staircase wells, with carved pillars,balustrades, and windows sliding by in the other direction. Thegang of Chair servants could sometimes be seen far below or above, leaning over banisters and grinning. All of them lookedquite insane.

“Have the Chairs ever had an accident?” she had inquired,on having the