Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1, Tanith Lee [pocket ebook reader .TXT] 📗

I lifted my head, and looked at her. She doesn’t like that. But then she hates me anyway, even if she would never admit to hating something as low as a maid.

‘Don’t you stare at me,’ she rasped. But I’d already bowed my head again. ‘I’m so tired of you, Claidi. I can’t even beat any sense into you. I’ve asked mummy, and she says she’ll have you properly whipped, if you won’t pull yourself together.’

Then her little eyes went over me and fixed on Daisy.

In all her green, Jade Leaf went the colour of an exploding raspberry. ‘Why you ghastly little beast—’ she shrieked, ‘that gown – you’ve ruined it—’

Heads turned.

Princess Shimra spoke coolly nearby, in the cluster of ladies, ‘Calmly, Jade Leaf. You’ll give yourself another headache.’

Several princesses murmured soothingly, slinking and swaying like one more bed of lushly tinted plants.

JL lowered her voice and leaned towards us like a snake.

‘Expect something,’ she said. ‘And you too, Pattoo. You’ll have done something, even if I can’t see it.’

I was already frightened. She’d never threatened me with a proper professional whipping from her mother’s steward before. Now I went cold. Daisy was breathing fast, and Pattoo had crumpled. It was so unfair. She’d done nothing at all.

But now the Gardeners were pompously bringing the Two Thousandth Rose, in a gilded basket, and the royal ones were bending over it and exclaiming.

It reached Lady J, and she too peered down.

What a nasty sight. This green and puce monster craning in over the new rose, which was itself extremely hideous.

It was exactly the colour Daisy’s sick had been. And it was a funny squirty shape. And it had a perfume which, even through all the other perfumes, was so sweet it could make you gag.

‘Ah, how lovely,’ swooned LJL, gentle and melting.

She undoubtedly thought it was.

Oh, I could have killed her. I truly would have liked to, right then and there.

We were all for it anyway. And why? I’d merely glanced up. Daisy had spilled the rotten oil because she had to wear a stupid fashion. Pattoo had simply been there.

My eyes burnt. No one was more surprised than me to see a huge burning tear-drop, heavy as a hard-boiled egg, thump, from each of my eyes. They plunged into the lawn.

As I was gawping at this extraordinary thing, everyone else began to shout and howl, and a hot and frantic sensation filled the rose-thick walk.

Like a fool, I thought they were angry at me for spilling tears.

Then I looked up again, and it wasn’t me at all.

You can’t always see the moon. At night, sometimes the clouds are thick as wool. And in the daylight, if the moon is there, it’s transparent as a soap bubble.

Now I could see the moon clearly by day, and it was quite beautiful, and odd. It was a silver globe, shining bright, and slimly striped with soft red.

Something seemed to hang under it, an anchor perhaps, to moor it to the ground when it set?

Which was fanciful and silly, because the moon wasn’t like that at all. And this was decidedly not the moon.

Princess Flara yowled, ‘An invasion! An enemy! Help! Save us all!’

Panic.

I had seen this happen years ago, also in the Garden, when a swarm of bees suddenly erupted from a tree. Princes and princesses, ladies and gentlemen, and all their flounced and spangled kids, wailing and honking and running for their lives.

I’d been a kid myself, about six, and I just sat down on the grass and waited for the bees to go by. Usually if you leave them alone they don’t sting you.

However, this was not a bee. What was it?

Someone supplied the answer, which also made no sense.

‘A hot-air balloon – a balloon—!’

They were off anyway. Galloping up the lawn and on to the paths of the Rose Walk. I noted lots of tube dresses had already been split, some up to the waist! – and lots of sticky oil was being spilled.

I looked at Daisy and Pattoo. A few of the other maids, and a handful of slaves were lingering too, scared but undecided.

The ‘balloon’ passed over the upper air, and was hidden behind a stand of large trees.

Pattoo said, ‘We ought to follow Lady Jade.’

‘Bees to Lady Jade,’ I muttered, nostalgically.

Daisy blinked. ‘But if it’s an invasion—’

Invasion, by the Waste. Where else could it come from?

Another of the maids, dressed in tasteful parchment silk, said uneasily, ‘Once a madman from the Waste flew over in a – balloon – and poured burning coals on the Garden!’

‘When was that?’ Daisy, wide-eyed.

‘Oh … once.’

The slaves were trotting off into the trees. A slave hasn’t ever much time for him-or-herself, so even the moments before we were invaded or had burning coals slung at us, were valuable.

Pattoo though turned resolutely and began to pad heavily up the path after LJL, who had promised us all ‘something’ bad.

Daisy reluctantly said, ‘We’d better.’

The others were also drifting off, upset and dutiful together.

If I stayed here, unless the invasion was total and nothing mattered any more, then I’d be blamed, and I was in trouble already.

Just then we heard the alarm trumpets and bells sounding from the House.

We ran.

Earlier, I think I said I wondered what you might find interesting, but I didn’t tell you much, did I? I apologize.

I didn’t, for instance, tell you about the House Guards.

Didn’t want to, probably.

As we came up on the higher lawns, with our ridiculous tube skirts clutched up to our knees (most unruly) to stop them tearing, the Guards were swarming through the Garden.

Sometimes you don’t see them for days. Unless your lady sends you into a part of the House, on an errand, where they are. LJ seldom did.

When I was little, I was horribly frightened of the Guards. I believe some really nice clever person had told me I’d better behave, or the House Guards would ‘get me’.

They’re there to defend us. Royalty first, naturally. But also the lowest of the