But part of her was afraid.
What she feared she could not name. Yet as she listened to her father’s voice, she became aware of a tightness on her finger. Her opal ring pinched again, and her finger swelled up around it. She twisted it, trying to loosen the pressure.
Leonard came up behind her. “Princess?”
He was given no chance to continue. The study door opened and Prince Aethelbald emerged, head down and hands clenched at his sides. He saw Una and stopped, his eyes first darting to her hands, then to her face. He opened his mouth, and Una thought he was about to address her.
Then he became aware of the jester behind her. He closed his mouth and, without a word, hastened down the hall and away.
Fidel came to the doorway. “Una!” He spoke sharply and his face was gray. But the next moment he forced a smile onto his face, and his voice was kind when he said, “What in the world have you dragged in this evening, child?”
Una drew her gaze back from following Aethelbald’s retreating form and smiled at her father. “It’s a jester, Father.”
“It is, eh?” Fidel gave Leonard a once-over and raised an eyebrow. “He is indeed.” The jester offered the king a graceful bow.
Fidel nodded and crossed his arms. “Another lost creature lugged in from the Wood, Una? Does this one just need a good meal and a bath as well?”
“Heaven help us, he’d be grateful enough,” the jester muttered.
“Oh, but more than that!” Una stepped over to her father’s side, hugging his arm. “He’s ever so amusing, Father, and we haven’t had a jester in ages. Do you think we could hire him perhaps? He’s out of work and needs a position, and he’s really too funny for words!”
“Peace, girl,” her father said, putting up a hand. Then he turned again to Leonard. “Who are you, and from where have you come?”
Leonard bowed elegantly after a foreign fashion that Una had never before seen. “I am called Leonard the Lightning Tongue, Your Majesty, professional Fool of no mean skill,” he said. “I come from many places: Noorhitam and Aja, Milden and Shippening. Most recently Beauclair’s Amaury Palace, whereat I endeavored to amuse the court of King Grosveneur. But originally, Southlands.”
His gaze locked with Fidel’s. If the king wondered in that moment whether or not certain words he’d spoken behind his closed door had carried out into the hall, if he concerned himself with whether or not the jester had overheard, his face did not reveal as much. Stiff masks in place, each regarded the other, giving nothing, taking nothing.
But Una heard her father’s voice in her memory, harsher than she was used to hearing it: “Southlands can burn to dust for all I care.”
She lowered her gaze, twisting her hands before her. Then, to break the interminable silence, she said, “Ask to see his papers, Father. He says he brings a recommendation from King Grosveneur.”
Leonard produced the desired document for Fidel’s perusal, and the seal and signature were genuine.
Fidel nodded and grunted. “I’ll put you up for the night,” he said. “I do not host spectacles for my court in the same manner as Grosveneur, nor is Oriana Palace a scene of revelry on the scale of Amaury. But you may entertain my family this evening, and you and I shall discuss a long-term engagement once you’ve gone through your paces. Agreed?”
“Willingly, Your Majesty,” Leonard said with a deep bow.
–––––––
Una returned to her room for a light supper and a not-so-light scolding from Nurse, paying neither much heed in her eagerness to be off to her father’s private sitting room for Leonard’s first performance. Nurse told Una that she looked a sight and forced her to sit at the vanity while she pulled twigs and leaves from her hair, and Una did this with as good grace as she could manage, holding her supper in her lap and eating while Nurse worked.
Her meal and toilette completed, Una escaped Nurse’s ministrations and once more hastened down the stairs. The door to the sitting room had been left open for her, and she saw the glow of the firelight and heard Felix talking to someone inside.
But she paused in the hallway.
The strange picture of the dark lake caught her eye.
She frowned and stepped nearer to study the face of the figure sleeping on the golden stone. The scene was from some legend, she knew, but she could not remember hearing it referenced in any of her tutor’s lectures.
The hallway was deeply shadowed. Servants had placed candles in the wall sconces, but there were none near this particular piece. Nevertheless, the gold paint on the stone caught what light there was, making the painting seem brighter, the faces of the two chained men on the shore frightened, the king crazed, and the woman by the stone ready to break in two with sorrow. The sleeper with the white face was like stone.
Southlands can burn to dust.