“No, no, you misunderstand, my dear! You must choose a dynastic name. You can be anything you like—a Queen, a Sultana, a Caesar, a Marquess, an Empress, a Baroness—any sort of Ess you can think of.” Jack opened the drawers and pulled out a length of ribbon for each title. “You could even be a King, if you liked—Fairyland is wonderfully modern on that point. If you don’t care for old-fashioned courtly ranks, you could be the Sheriff or the Cannoneer or the Dark Horse, the Alewife or the Tobacconist or the Hydronaut—oh, we haven’t had a Hydronaut in centuries! And it needn’t be so plain as one word. You might be the Princess of Pluto or Lady Ironbones or Count Fortune or the Wintry Warlord. The choice is yours—your first choice. Your name goes before you—it tells everyone what you’re about. Names are awfully old magic, older than the monarchy, older than me. Your name is the armor you wear in the Battle of Everyday. Hardly anyone gets to pick their own. It is one of the privileges of your position. When your parents choose your name, they make a little wish for your future and fold it up inside your heart forever. When you choose your own, you make your own wish.”
“What others call you, you become,” said September softly, remembering the words a Yeti had once spoken to her.
“Oh yes. If you were to choose Lady Brightbat, for instance, I daresay you’d find your vampire teeth half grown in by bedtime. If you wrap Warlord round your shoulders, soldiers a thousand miles away will wake up with a start.”
September considered. She had been a Knight and a Bishop and a Criminal and a Spinster—so many titles for a girl from Nebraska with the smell of chicken feed and dish soap still on her! But she never stayed in any of them long, always running out of one name and into another. Would she really transform into whatever she called herself? Perhaps it should be something big and powerful, then. The Gryphon or the Valkyrie or the Giantess. But if she became a Giantess, she would have a devil of a time explaining to her parents why she suddenly needed a horse-acre bed instead of her sweet old pillow. And now that she was free, she would go home when her hourglass ran out, wouldn’t she? Those were the rules. Even being Queen did not change them. The Marquess knew that and so did she. Would her parents know her at home, if she came back a Giantess? Something not so grand as a Gryphon, then. And thinking of home, September’s heart ran ahead in front of her mind, and before she knew it, she had decided.
“Could I … could I be the Engineer? My mother’s one, you see. And for a long while I didn’t think much about anything except Fairyland—getting here and being here and staying here. But I haven’t seen my mother since before I went up to the Moon and I miss her. I miss her so much. And she fixes things. Mends things. Makes them good and sound and flyable again. Even if I’m only Queen for a little while, that’s the sort of Queen I’d like to be.”
“Done,” said Jacquard, and drew a great length of sturdy grass-green suede from the drawer. “Next, you must select your Royal Scepter. You will use it to make Decrees, which is a jumped-up way of saying Get Your Own Way at Once.” Jacquard pointed at the crowded umbrella stands. Ivory-handled canes glimmered, as well as golden staves topped with opals and tiger’s eyes, shoehorns and fireplace pokers and rapiers and bullwhips and parasols. “A Royal Scepter is not quite so blunt as a sword, nor quite so fancified as a magic wand—though of course you could choose a sword or a magic wand if you wanted to bore me half to tears. You might have seen Royal Scepters and never known what you were looking at. Your predecessor used a crab hammer.”
“What did the Marquess use?” September said quietly. If she had to be Queen, the most important thing was to be nothing like the Marquess, she felt.
“She lost hers. She replaced it with a Spoon, I believe. I should mention, in the event of loss of any regalia, you must provide your own replacement. The Royal Closet is not responsible for articles lost or damaged in the process of monarchy or other shenanigans.”
A thought occurred to September. “Could I … could I have my old wrench? The one I pulled out of the casket in the Autumn Provinces.”
The wrought-iron lady rummaged through the umbrella stands, pushing aside raccoon caps and woolly scarves and sealskin kirtles. Finally, she produced, from a blown-glass stand half squashed beneath a pirate’s chest full of spare buttons, the long, sturdy wrench September had won from the Worsted Wood so long ago.
“Everything ends up here, sooner or later. At least, it ends up here if it’s any good. Many of the gowns and suits and winter coats and waistcoats and shoes you see in the Royal Closet belonged to some King or Queen once upon a time, was worn and loved and twirled about in.”