Chapter One
It was a disaster. A full-blown, monumental screw-up of epic proportions. Countries would go to war, civilizations would collapse, and life as it was known would end.
Sir Nealan of Queenscove looked at his good friend Prince Roald, who was about to embark on the happiest day of his life—his wedding day—and tried to resist the urge to tear out his hair in horror.
Surely it was all a misunderstanding, and the last five minutes were a figment of his overactive imagination. Neal did his best to take a deep breath and reach for calm. He was a trained healer, Black God have mercy! He was experienced in dealing with people in times of terrible stress and trauma, and he could draw on a mask of professional reassurance at will.
"Roald," said Neal soothingly, "Why don't you calm down and tell me again what's wrong from the beginning?"
The Crown Prince of Tortall looked at him with searing blue eyes in a strained face. "I've been telling you over and over, Neal. Please try to listen! I don't think I can go through with this."
There were those awful words again: a brassy fanfare of impending doom, echoing painfully to and fro in Neal's poor head.
"Continue," he gritted out supportively.
Prince Roald resumed his frantic pacing over the soft carpet of his private chamber. He was a serious, reserved young man in his Conté-blue wedding tunic stitched with silver and white. His shirt and hose were silken-grey, and his leather shoes highly polished. His jewels and coronet were still in their flat rosewood boxes on the desk; his heavy silver and black brocaded cape was flung over the wardrobe door. Clear morning sunlight streamed through the open window, letting in the calls of songbirds and the shouts and bangs of Palace servants making last-minute wedding preparations outside.
Roald spoke in a low, tense voice as he paced, eyes fixed on his own restless feet.
"I always thought that there would be time, Neal. More time, at any rate, than this. And here it is,"—Roald paused, pale, and forced himself to say the words, "—my wedding day—"
He stopped, unable to continue. He turned abruptly and stared rigidly out at the beautiful day and the organized chaos of the Palace servants.
"Go on," said Neal apprehensively. The tight collar of Neal's pink silk shirt with green stitching, matching his green tunic and pink hose, was making it hard to breathe. Neal felt the need to join Roald in his pacing, or maybe just fall on his knees and start offering the Gods his firstborn if they would fix this nightmare for him. He stayed where he was, sitting by the desk.
Roald's eyes were shadowed. Had he slept at all?
"That's it. That's all. It's here; I'm not ready to get married. What have I done in my life?" The soft intensity of Roald's voice was getting louder and strained. "I've always tried to be the 'dutiful son' and the 'perfect prince'—an example to others." He spoke the last words with quiet contempt. "It was my duty to serve my family and the people of Tortall. And now I'm to be married and I'll be a dutiful husband and a dutiful father, and one day a responsible king; and I'll never have lived my life at all!"
"But you're always so calm! I had no idea you felt this way," said Neal, dismayed and at a loss. He flung out his arms. "Everyone relies on you because we know we can. You always do what's best."
"Don't you see? That's just it. I do what people expect me to do; never what I want. I say what I should, not what I feel."
It's always the quiet ones, Neal thought, mind racing frantically. Not a bad word or a stupid action from Roald for as long as I've known him, and when he finally does panic, it's like the end of the world for him—no practice. It's much safer to panic regularly, like me.
"What about Princess Shinkokami? I thought the two of you were getting along. Do you love her?"
Roald looked stricken. "Yes. I don't know. I thought I did. She's beautiful and kind and we enjoy each other's company. She's been teaching me Yamani, and she laughs when I get it wrong; says I'd mortally offend someone within a minute of opening my mouth in the Yamani Isles—"
Roald broke off abruptly. "What's wrong with me, Neal? How can I even be considering doing this to Shinko? The last thing I want to do is hurt her. How can I be having these thoughts? What kind of husband and father would I make? What kind of king will I be?" His self-loathing evident, he stared at Neal as though Neal, who people had been calling an idiot for years, was capable of finding him an answer.
Neal's mind reached urgently for a method of escape. A boat! That was it! Neal would go somewhere nice and far away, like Carthak, where he would be attended by beautiful dancing-girls and travel everywhere by elephant. If he left now, he could ship out of Tortall before anyone discovered that he had failed his duties as a groomsman and ruined the kingdom, and asked for his head at Traitor's Gate.
Neal took a deep breath and let it out.
"Now look here, Your Royal Highness," he drawled, "you're lucky that you have an experienced groomsman to set you straight about your wedding jitters. I was groomsman to my cousin Theril last spring, and he was three-sheets-to-the-wind on his wedding day. But the wedding went off just fine, and now they're happily married and expecting a child. So you see," Neal said, his words creating their own momentum, "it's perfectly normal for a man to be terrified on his wedding day! In fact, it's expected; a male rite of passage! I fully plan to be hungover and shaking at my own wedding!"
"Do you really think that it's so?" said Roald. He looked dubious, but some of his normal colour had returned to his face.
"Of course," said Neal confidently. "You love Shinko; she loves you. It may be an arranged marriage, but the two of you are just the right young people to make it work. And," he paused dramatically, "after you make it through the ceremony, you have your wedding night to look forward to, you lucky dog!"
"Hear, hear!" chimed in Prince Liam from where he was lounging on a backless sofa, his feet crossed over the far arm-rest. A different animal than his older brother, Liam had been following the conversation with lazy unconcern, stroking his rakish brown mustache from time to time. He wore his Conté-blue tunic with a white shirt and brown hose, and his stitched embroidery was in white and silver.
Roald was noticeably silent.
"Roald?" Neal said uncertainly. "You are looking forward to your wedding night, aren't you?"
If Roald folded in on himself any further he might choke right out of existence.
"...Yes…in theory," said Roald in a small voice.
Neal could feel his eyebrows rising inescapably towards his hairline.
Roald said with the utmost reluctance, "…It's just that I don't have any experience in this particular area." He looked as though he urgently desired the Black God's embrace.
"Wait," said Liam, suddenly interested. "What about that girl at the—"
"No."
"I thought for sure that time when—"
"No."
"Great Gods, Roald!" said Liam, thunderstruck. "You must be the only virgin at Court!"
Into the resounding silence that followed, Neal dove with the dumb faith of a baby bird taking its first flight: mouth first.
"Don't be ridiculous, Your Highness," Neal snapped at Liam. "It's hardly uncommon, strange though the notion might seem to you with all your 'vast' experience."
Liam smoothed his mustache, looking pleased.
"Isn't it?" Roald said, quietly self-deprecating. "I know it's odd at my age. It's yet another one of those things that I thought I would have time for in the future. It was never a simple thing to court a girl for me," he said haltingly. "It was my responsibility to behave in a way that both Father and Mother would approve of and to marry for the benefit of Tortall. It seemed cruel to lead a girl on when I could have no intention of marriage or a decent relationship. And then Shinko arrived two years ago, and I needed to behave honourably towards her—there was no way I could have been with anyone else. It would have hurt her terribly. So, there—myself, as I am."
"I never thought about any of those things," said Liam, his sleepy brown eyes surprised under long brown bangs.
"You wouldn't," said Roald wryly. "You have considerably more freedom in your behaviour than the Heir."
"Huh," said Liam. He and Roald exchanged a thoughtful glance, each seeing perhaps something new. Liam spoke first.
"Well, Big Brother, never fear. Your problem is easily solved."
"Oh?"
"It is?" said Neal.
"Of course!" Liam laughed heartily. "There's still hours before the wedding. I know this place in the Lower City; the girls there are very talented and very discreet—"
But Roald had turned green and fled. The sound of someone retching into a basin came from behind the curtain that hid the alcove for personal necessities.
"Now look what you've done!" Neal hissed, trying to keep his voice down. He was on his feet, glaring at Liam.
"What?" said Liam. "I didn't do anything."
"Does the word 'Doomed' mean anything to you?" said Neal in a furious whisper. "Because that's what we all are if this wedding doesn't take place! What are we going to do? Think, think!"
"You need to calm down," said Liam mildly.
Neal took a huge breath. "All right. I will go and get help—and you will stay here. Keep Roald calm; don't let anyone in except me, and for the love of the blessed Gods, don't let anyone know that anything is wrong!"
"What kind of help?"
"I don't know yet!" said Neal. "A priest? A happily married man? A bottle of gin? I'll figure it out along the way; and if you don't look after your brother, I will be sure to let Her Majesty know why the day wasn't a success!"
"All right, all right," said Liam hurriedly. He headed for the alcove. Liam was notoriously unhelpful when it came to pleasing his father, but he cared a great deal what Queen Thayet thought.
"And lock the door!" Neal called after him.
He couldn't remember a time when he had been this panicked, his mind tumbling and flipping like a starving Player. Maybe when he had been rejected by Uline of Hannalof for the third time, in front of her friends; or when Lady Alanna, his evil Knight Mistress, had sat and talked about all the things he would undertake in his training if he ever tried to court her daughter, while her scary husband had stood by with crossed arms, looking amused. (Neal had only said how lovely she was looking that day to be polite. It was manners.) Or perhaps the time that he had followed Kel on her suicide mission into enemy territory during the war. How a person as determinedly inoffensive as Kel managed to unfailingly attract (or was it be attracted to?) all the crazy, violent lowlifes in any given country never stopped amazing him.
Neal hurried down the corridor, and, because the Gods hated him today, was promptly attacked by a giant blue powderpuff.
"Oof!" said Neal, clutching his stomach.
Instead of apologizing, the powderpuff tried to detain him; but Neal was on a mission and had no time to listen.
"Listen you monstrous ball of tulle," he told it disdainfully, "go and horrify some poor other right-thinking person of fashion."
That was when it kicked him in the shins.
"Ow!" howled Neal. "What are those shoes made of—cannon shrapnel? Leave me alone!"
Neal found himself being stared at for the second time this morning by a famous pair of blue eyes wanting something from him. The focused malevolence of this glare made him wistfully think of the other, gentler, one.
"Lady Yukimi wants to see you," the powderpuff said emphatically.
"Well why didn't you say so," said Neal in exasperation.
It rolled its eyes.
Neal found himself being marched through the Palace, past throngs of frantically busy servants with sprigs of cherry blossom pinned to their liveried chests. The bride's rooms were on the far side of the Palace from the groom's, and the trip was so far that Neal could have left for Carthak at the same time and gotten there sooner. He was speaking longingly to no one in particular of Carthaki dancing girls and the wonder of the bared midriff, and the bloodthirsty powderpuff was rolling its eyes again, ("They'll stay like that, you know," said Neal.) when they arrived at Yuki's door, several rooms down the hall from the bride's suite.
His fiancée was inside her tiny receiving room, sitting as tall as her straight-backed posture could stretch her short height, waving a delicate paper fan.
"Nea-ran," she greeted him, mispronouncing his name adorably as usual. Her Common was nearly as fluent as his, but, in the way of all Yamani-born speakers, her 'l's' continued to elude her.
Normally Neal was thrilled to spend time with his future wife, and the wedding preparations lately had made it hard for them to find time to be alone together, but Neal was horribly aware of Roald waiting in his room and of time running out before the ceremony.
"Lady Yukimi," he said.
"Thank you for taking time from your duty to see me."
Something wasn't right here. Her face was the polite, impersonal mask she reserved for strangers and enemies. Had he done something wrong? Neal racked his brains.
"You look particularly lovely today, my shiny Yamani dragonfly," he ventured. He liked how she looked in the Yamani kimonos that were so beautiful on Princess Shinkokami's ladies, but seldom looked as well on Tortallan women. This one was marvelously patterned with white and silver on blue. Its heavy silken drapes set off Yuki's small, rounded form, and the colour suited her long, gold-flecked brown eyes and creamy skin. He squinted. "Is that the one you wore at Baroness Strichline's garden party last week?" Hah! He'd remembered.
The fan shut with a snap.
"It is the finest Yamani silk sent from the Emperor's own weavers and made especially for the wedding."
Neal cringed. "And as beautiful as it is, it still is nothing without you to show it at its best, my fragrant cherry blossom," he said hastily.
Yuki merely flicked her eyes to his side. "Arigatou gozaimasu Vania-chan," she said. "I need to speak to Nealan alone now."
The two girls exchanged a glance, and then Roald's youngest sister nodded and left, closing the door behind her.
"Was there something you wanted?" Neal said when she didn't say anything.
"How is Prince Roald?" Yuki said, still horribly polite.
Thinking of calling the whole thing off, Neal didn't say.
"Fine, great. Doing well."
"Ah."
Neal shifted uneasily as she fluttered her fan.
"Looking forward to the wedding. He's so eager I thought I was going to have to restrain him from leaving for the pavilion hours too soon," Neal said, babbling.
"Did he have any message for Shinko-sama?"
"What? No, not a specific message, to be exact, although if he'd known I was going to be speaking to you, no doubt he would have had me pass something along."
Yuki's expectant gaze seemed to become disapproving.
"And how is Princess Shinkokami?" Neal forged ahead.
"Most well."
"Ah. Excellent."
The silence was very awkward.
"What's wrong?" Neal said suddenly. "You only play with your fan like that when you're worried about something."
Yuki's eyes narrowed. She closed the fan with a snap.
"Everything is perfectly well," she said implacably.
"No, I don't think it is," said Neal. Then he had a sudden leap in thought. "Ye Gods," he said aghast. "Princess Shinkokami's having second thoughts too!"
One look at Yuki's shocked face told him he was right.
"Too?" she snapped dangerously. "What does this mean, 'too'?"
"Argh!" yelled Neal. And then, because it seemed to need repeating, "Argh!" He fisted his hands in his hair and pulled, but instead of coming out, it only made his eyes water. He waved his arms instead. "We're all doomed. Doomed! I would have loved to marry you, my intoxicating drink of sake, and have many children with your looks and my brains, but now it will never happen. I'll go to prison for failing my kingdom; you will die of a broken heart, and the country will be overrun with tiny, angry Yamani warriors terrorizing everyone, like four hundred years ago—"
"—I would not die of a broken heart," said Yuki, eyes blazing.
"Our heads! They'll cut off our heads. OW!" yelled Neal.
Yuki had whacked him on the head with her steel-spined fan.
She stood; a small firecracker of a girl with temper flying off of her in sparks. "Shinko-sama will not be disappointed on her wedding day!"
"While I agree with you wholeheartedly," Neal drawled, feeling hysterical, "events seem to indicate otherwise."
Yuki looked down her small nose at him. "Must I do everything? Quiet, and I will think of a plan."
After some intense thought, she started to speak, interrupted frequently by Neal saying things like, "What? No. You're insane! I'm engaged to a mad-woman!" and "There's no plane of existence in which that would work," and "maybe… all right… that's not entirely a terrible idea if we just—"
They gazed at each other in the ensuing silence.
"Well?" Yuki said. She looked worried.
Neal swung her up into his arms. He kissed her full on the mouth and then looked into her bright, willful face. Her slippers dangled a good foot off the ground.
"You're brilliant," he said in a heartfelt voice. "Completely insane, but brilliant, and if we manage to get through today alive, it will be entirely because of you. I've changed my mind—our children can have your brains and my looks."
"I must have been hit on the head the day I agreed to marry you," she said, pretending to be annoyed, but her eyes were warm. He could count the sprinkling of gold freckles that dotted her round cheeks. She hated them; Neal secretly wanted to kiss every one.
"Put me down, Ni-kun" she said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"I like you where you are, my tasty piece of sushi. Besides," Neal drawled, "it's your chance to find out what it's like to breathe the air up here."
She considered him from the corners of her eyes. "Put me down, or when you visit my home in Yaman, I will tell my mother that you are a terrible husband who beats me."
"Are you telling me I should be afraid of a pint-sized Yamani woman?" Neal scoffed.
Yuki blinked long lashes. "She could make you very afraid," she said sweetly, "but she would not bother. She will tell my brothers and father, and then you will be sorry."
"You are an evil woman," Neal said with admiration. He gave her a long kiss on the forehead and a quick squeeze, and set her gently down. "I promise that if we make it through today, I will marry you with no fuss whatsoever—I won't even shed a tear for the passing of my wild, carefree bachelor days."
"What is there to miss?" Yuki sniffed. "You begged to marry me. Boys—such fools!" Her eyes sparkled.
"How in the world do you put up with us?" agreed Neal cheerfully. "I'll see you at the ceremony then, my inscrutably succinct haiku."
"At the ceremony. Yes," said Yuki firmly.
They looked at each other for a moment, and then Neal hurried out the door.
Ni-kun ("little burden")
arigatou gozaimasu (thank you very much)
A/N: Thanks to Amelia for helping with Yamani nicknames, Sally for her advice, and Reena for fixing, among other things, the many run-ons.