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Two weeks later, when it was time for Hubley to attend her first ball, she wore the blue dress, not the green. The red her mother and grandmother had discarded entirely.
The Summer Ball was a new tradition in Malmoret. Anyone who could spent the hot, humid season as far from the city as possible. But King Brannis had chosen to mark the first anniversary of his son’s marriage with a ball at the beginning of fall, and Brizen and Wellin had continued the tradition after the old king’s death. With the exception of the Winter Pageant, the Summer Ball was now the height of the Malmoret season, drawing even the most distant barons in from their summer estates, no matter how hot the weather.
Hubley was looking forward to the event with great excitement, especially since Queen Wellin was the person she loved most in the world outside her parents and grandparents. And the person who spoiled her the most as well. Every time Hubley visited Rimwich or Malmoret, the queen took her on boat trips and carriage rides, and bought her dresses in the fanciest shops. Sometimes they even had tea together in the garden of the New Palace, where white-gloved servants brought the child anything she asked. Had Wellin had a girl of her own, or even a boy, Hubley was sure she and the child would have been best friends.
She had hoped her mother would take her to Malmoret a few days early, but Reiffen had insisted Hubley stay with him in Castle Grangore. “She will be safer here,” he said, his forehead furrowing in a way Hubley knew meant there was no use arguing.
Ferris recognized the look as well. Pushing back her daughter’s cheeks with her fingers, she bent Hubley’s frown into a smile. “You know how your father and I feel about keeping you safe. I’ll be so busy helping Wellin prepare for the ball, I won’t be able to keep an eye on you at all. Maybe we can stay a few extra days afterward.”
Hubley brightened. “I can show Wellin that new spell you taught me for shelling peas.”
“No,” said her father. “You will cast no spells in Malmoret.”
Ferris gave him a troubled look, but didn’t disagree.
“Your father’s right, sweetheart. No magic. It’s too dangerous.”
“Why not?”
“The crowds will be large,” answered her father, “and you’ve had accidents before. Someone might get hurt.”
“That wasn’t my fault!” Hubley tried hard not to rub the spot where she had broken her wrist two springs before. “If Trier hadn’t canceled my feather spell, I’d never have fallen.”
“You weren’t supposed to be casting spells during that lesson in the first place, as I recall,” said her mother. “And you know it.”
“If you disobey this time,” added Reiffen, “your punishment will be more than just no magic for a month. We might even have to reconsider allowing your full apprenticeship to begin after your birthday.”
“You might as well just leave me here!”
“Impossible. Your mother and I will both be in Malmoret. You cannot stay here alone.”
“That wouldn’t be safe at all,” said Ferris.
Hubley folded her arms and slumped deeper into her chair. She had heard it all before. She couldn’t go anywhere by herself, not to Valing to visit Mims and Berrel, or Malmoret to visit Wellin, or even Issinlough to visit the Dwarves. And all because of the stupid Wizard.
“If you gave me a thimble,” she complained, “I’d be able to escape just like you and mother. We wouldn’t have to worry about Fornoch catching me.”
“I’ve told you before,” said her father sternly. “There are ways around thimbles. Now, enough of this. Your mother has to go. If you stop sulking, I’ll show you something new to do with doves this afternoon.”
When Hubley finally arrived in Malmoret three days later, she’d made up her mind that the visit was more than worth giving up a day or two of magic. Spells would be a part of her life forever, but a first ball came only once.
From the window of their apartment in the New Palace, she watched the setting sun gild the river as if on command, while servants hung paper lanterns in the gardens below. Most girls her age were home eating cold porridge in their shifts, but she got to wear her new blue dress with ribbons and real pearls, and have oysters and asparagus and wine. Not that she liked oysters or wine, but there was sure to be plenty of cake and sweets as well. She knew for a fact that her grandfather Berrel had brought several pounds of maple candy with him from Valing. Not even spilling inkberry jam on her dress could ruin her good mood. Or her mother’s.
Ferris removed the stain with a wave of her hand.
“There is no time to clean this mess,
So, jam, get off my daughter’s dress.”
The dark patch dripping down Hubley’s smocking puffed up into the air like the cap off a sliced mushroom. Catching it deftly in her handkerchief, Ferris tucked the stain into her pocket. Reiffen, who didn’t like it when magic was used for ordinary tasks, frowned.
Ferris pinched her daughter’s nose affectionately. Her thimble clicked against her wedding ring. “You be more careful. And remember, whatever else you do, no magic.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Guests had already begun to arrive when they joined Baron Backford and his mother downstairs. Lady Breeanna, out of fashion as always, wore a simple black gown and a conical hat with a thin black veil hanging from the top. Ferris, in her dark red dress with matching gloves that came higher than her elbows, looked dazzling in comparison, at least as far as Hubley was concerned. Especially with the moonstone necklace glittering at her throat.
Pulling free of his mother’s hand, the baron sidled over to Hubley. “I’m bored.”
Hubley rolled her eyes and tried to think of a suitably mature reply. Wilbrim might be two years older than she, but in this sort of thing he was decades behind.
“I was down by the river before,” he continued hopefully. “There are a lot of frogs. Croakers and spotties and greens. I’ll bet we could catch tons.”
“In this dress?” she asked, aghast.
He shrugged and stuffed his big hands into his pockets. “Suit yourself. That’s what I’m going to do as soon as it gets dark. Unless you want to dance.”
Not if I have to dance with you, thought Hubley to herself. Though she was fond of Wilbrim, and of dancing, the thought of the two together was impossible.
Hern and Berrel joined them then, but there was no sign of Redburr, whom no one ever seemed to see any more. He’d even missed Hubley’s last birthday. Her mother said the Shaper spent all his time these days searching for the Wizard, but Hubley was sure he had found himself a cozy cave somewhere and was busy hibernating. How else to explain his absence? If he missed her birthday this year, special as it was, he was really going to be in trouble.
The crowd eddied around them. Thanes and barons nodded, but none stopped to talk to the magicians or their friends, being slightly afraid Reiffen might turn them into toads, or worse. Being the magicians’ daughter had its advantages, but there were disadvantages too.
The other guests’ civility increased once Avender arrived, Durk dangling at his side. Lifting Hubley off the floor, he returned her delighted hug with equal pleasure.
“I was hoping you’d be here,” she said. “You haven’t visited in months!”
“Once I heard you were coming,” he replied, “I wouldn’t have missed this party for the world.”
Unlike everyone else, who wore their most extravagant clothes, Avender was dressed in a plain vest and breeches, his light brown hair pulled back in a simple queue. His shirt bore only the slightest ruffle at collar and cuffs, and his buttons, instead of jewels or inlaid cameos, were rounded bits of shell. In that crowd he stuck out like an acorn in a bowl of strawberries.
“But that’s it exactly,” said the talking stone when Hern carped about Avender’s being underdressed. “This way everyone notices him, the ladies most of all. They say his lack of ostentation is charming, but if you ask me he’s as obvious as a fox in a henhouse.”
“No one asked you, Durk.”
Avender looked older than Reiffen and Ferris, though he wasn’t, of course. He simply hadn’t swallowed a Living Stone the way they had. Hubley thought his maturity made him look handsomer than her father, and more distinguished too, just as Wellin seemed so much more refined than her mother. Someday Hubley would get a Living Stone of her own, but she hadn’t made up her mind whether she would swallow it at twenty-two, the way her mother had, or wait till she was Wellin’s age. The only reason she didn’t have one already was because you never changed once you swallowed a Living Stone, and who wanted to be nine forever?
The crowd grew around her parents after Avender joined them, which gave Hubley and Wilbrim the chance to slip away. Her father might want her near him at all times, but there were limits. Though it wasn’t yet dark, they found a few pages and stable boys already skulking in the reeds by the river. Bullfrogs croaked loudly. Were it not for her dress, and the fact that Hubley didn’t want to miss the entrance of the king and queen, she might have joined them. Even without magic, she was sure she could catch more frogs than Willy, or anyone else for that matter. She did, after all, have the most experience.
With a last warning to the baron to take off his shoes and socks, she wandered back to the ball. Accepting a piece of crusty toast from a passing servant, she wiped off the oldfish roe and gnawed at her snack while waiting for the royal couple to appear.
“Did you see what Baroness Abingale has done with her hair?” said a woman nearby, the top of whose head resembled a frozen wave crusted with starfish and barnacles.
“Oh, yes,” replied her glittering neighbor, whose own curls sported an almandine boar chased by a peridot hunter. “But every one of those jewels is paste. I had it direct from my dressmaker, who’s married to the brother of one of the Abingale cooks, that the baron won’t let his wife near the family jewelry any more since she lost that Dwarven brooch at the High Ball last season.”
A loud voice interrupted this fascinating conversation, booming from the far end of the room. “Barons and baronesses, knights and ladies, good men and women of the lands of Wayland and Banking, guests and neighbors, Their Majesties, King Brizen and Queen Wellin.”
Try as she might, Hubley couldn’t get past the people crowding around the edges of the room; the skirts were thick as hedges. She thought about getting down on hands and knees and crawling through, but knew she’d never hear the end of it if she were caught. Not to mention what it would do to her lovely dress. Standing on a quilted bench at the back of the room she was able to catch a glimpse of the diamonds at Wellin’s throat, but all she saw of the queen’s dress was a flash of dark green silk below her shoulders. When a footman who didn’t know who she was shooed her down, she debated giving him warts or an itch, but doubted it would be worth the trouble she would get into. Sulking, she wandered off in the other direction, throwing over the dancers entirely.
She found Wilbrim and several older children in one of the dining rooms helping themselves to the buffet. Hubley noted approvingly that the baron’s shoes and stockings were still dry despite the damp stains on his knees. Like his mother, Willy was very large, which sometimes got him in trouble when people didn’t realize he wasn’t as old as he looked.
“Hubley!” The young baron waved eagerly when he saw her. “This buttercake’s really good. And the strawberries, too.
“Who’s your friend, Wilbrim?” asked one of the boys. From the way he looked down his nose at her, Hubley wondered if her inkberry stain had reappeared.
Baron Backford’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t know the magicians’ daughter?” Hubley could tell by his tone that Wilbrim was already entranced by his new acquaintances. One of the reasons Willy and she got along so well was because they were both only children with few friends. “Hubley, this is Fen—I mean Fenner—and Denear, and Bonder, and, um—”
A boy whose plate was heaped with slices of cold meat bowed. “Wilstoke. But everyone just calls me Stoke,” he said.
“Is it true you know magic, Hubley?” asked the girl named Denear. Several others clustered behind her while the boys pretended disinterest.
Hubley nodded as she picked through the piles of jellied fish and sculpted melon for something she actually wanted to eat.
“How about a demonstration?” Fenner elbowed his nearest neighbor and winked. “Something simple, like carrying us all off to Dremen, or dumping a leviathan in one of the fountains.” His friends all laughed.
“Stop it.” Denear pushed the older boy away. “Pay no attention to Fenner, Hubley. He thinks that because Queen Wellin is his second cousin twice removed that makes him important. But is there something simple you can show us, like maybe making light, or conjuring an apple?”
Nothing would have made Hubley happier than to impress so many older children, but she knew better than to disobey her parents.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not allowed. Magic is very dangerous.”
Fenner rolled his eyes, but any further challenge was stopped when Denear led them all into the ballroom. The dancing was in full swing now, with only the oldest guests still standing around watching. For the first time Hubley noticed that the three great chandeliers on the ceiling glowed with lights as varied as the men and women twirling below. Instead of the usual wax candles, hundreds of colored gems glowed along the lamps’ long, curving arms like fireflies courting in the horns of an enormous stag.
“Do you think they’ll let us dance?” asked Wilbrim as couples swirled by like fall leaves in a brisk wind.
“You cannot be serious.” Fenner gave the younger boy a withering look.
Wilbrim peered confusedly at the crowd. “Why else are we here?”
“Do you even know how to dance, baron?” asked Denear in mock seriousness. Her friends collapsed in giggles.
Wilbrim straightened to his full height. Without the baby fat in his face he might easily have been mistaken for one of the dashing young lieutenants Hubley saw twirling across the dance floor with her cousins Pattis and Lemmel. “My mother’s been teaching me dancing for a year.”
Fenner took another sip from his glass of wine and leaned forward. “Does she teach you swordplay, too? Or do you only use brooms in Backford?”
Wilbrim’s face crimsoned. Hubley almost whispered a spell under her breath, a good one that would have given Fenner the ass’s ears he deserved, then remembered a second time she wasn’t supposed to do any magic. Lady Breeanna was a heroine, renowned for the way she had beaten back a dozen sissit at the Battle of Backford with only a broom against their swords, but it wasn’t the first time Hubley had heard someone ridicule the baroness because of it.
It wasn’t Willy’s first time, either. His fists clenched. “How would you like it if I made fun of your mother?”
“You don’t even know who my mother is.”
“Oh yeah? You just show me and we’ll see who laughs then.”
Even Hubley knew this was a terrible reply. Denear, who didn’t seem normally inclined to take the older boy’s side, rolled her eyes at Wilbrim’s lack of wit.
“That is the trouble with these country folk,” Fenner explained grandly to his friends. “They come to the city without knowing any of the really important things at all. Imagine that, not being able to pick the Duchess of Illie out of a crowd.”
Hubley knew what was coming next. Trying to stop her friend from losing his temper, she grabbed his arm. “Come on, Willy. They may be older than us, but they’re boring. Let’s go find something else to do.”
One of the other boys leaned forward. “Yes, maybe he should go looking for frogs again. That is the only company he is fit for, it would appear.”
Fenner gave a honking laugh. Once again Hubley regretted not being able to make his face match his voice. “Good one, Bonder. I believe the baron thinks himself a heron, or a duck. I hear Backford is quite proud of its waterfowl.”
No one could have stopped Willy then, not even his mother. He wasn’t as tall as Fenner, but he outweighed him. When he swung, his fist caught the older boy on the cheek, just below the eye. The Duchess of Illie’s son tumbled to the floor, taking several friends with him. The baroness with the almandine boar turned to see what was going on, but Fenner and the others were already scrambling to their feet. Willy confronted them all, fists raised.
“I think he just challenged you, Fen,” said Stoke.
Fenner adjusted his vest and swept a lock of hair from his eyes. His cheek gleamed like a polished apple.
“Come on!” Wilbrim brandished his fists menacingly.
“Oh no.” Gingerly, Fenner felt his cheek. “You challenged me. I get to choose the weapons.”
“Really, Fen,” protested Denear. “How can you possibly take him seriously? He is just a child.”
Fenner waved an angry hand. “Look at him. He’s as big as I am. And heavier, too. What am I going to say for the rest of the evening when everyone asks about my face? That I walked into a door? I’ll be a laughingstock. He needs to be taught a lesson. You can’t just go striking people because you don’t like being teased.”
Fenner had a point. Hubley had tried to stop Willy herself. But she thought the older boy needed his own lesson about the difference between teasing and bullying.
“Bonder, fetch the swords. They’re in the usual place in my mother’s carriage.” Fenner barked orders at his companions with an air of long practice. Willy looked uneasily among them, but showed no sign of backing down.
“You cannot mean to duel here.” For the first time, Denear looked alarmed.
“In the ballroom? No, we’ll go to the roof.”
“The roof? You can’t go there either.”
“We certainly can. The Duchess has been bringing me to the Palace for years. I assure you, I can find my way to the roof. And, with everyone downstairs at the ball, it won’t be difficult. I expect the guards will be paying hardly any attention to the servants’ stair at all. Stoke, will you act as Baron Backford’s second?”
“I can be his second,” protested Hubley.
“Girls can’t be seconds. You know none of the rules. Stoke will be as loyal to your friend as he would to me.”
“More, even.” Stoke bowed gracefully. “I am on your and Backford’s side now, princess.”
People so seldom called Hubley ‘princess’, even in Malmoret, that she didn’t realize Stoke was talking to her until he winked. His face close, he whispered, “Don’t worry. I know all Fen’s weaknesses. If Willy can handle himself at all, he’ll look good before he falls.”
They trooped to the back halls of the palace, the servants far too busy to interfere. Climbing a long, narrow stair, they took a shortcut through a linen closet where they had to shift several large hampers to open the way, and emerged into a hallway with dark green towers on the wallpaper.
Hubley recognized the pattern at once. “Aren’t these the royal apartments?” she whispered.
“They are,” Stoke whispered back. “Fenner and I found this route years ago. Queen Wellin always had our mothers bring us along whenever they were invited to tea, so we figured out how to escape a long time ago. This is the same road, only backwards.”
It was all very exciting, not the least because Hubley so rarely got to spend time with other children. Stealthily they snuck along, though the rooms were deserted. All of them had been there before, but the treat of being in the royal apartments while the king and queen were busy dancing downstairs was something new. Hubley noticed two girls slip off into the queen’s dressing room when they thought no one was looking.
A final flight of stairs, and the party emerged on the roof. Though the New Palace wasn’t nearly as tall as Rimwich Tower, the view from the top was impressive all the same. Edgewater and the Great River drifted along to the south and east, the lights of the villas on the southern shore bright with parties of their own. To the north and west, Malmoret gleamed as brilliantly as Issinlough. Avenues of light stretched across Brizen’s and Wellin’s city. Guildhalls and taverns glowed as weavers and tanners, smiths and coopers, cobblers and glaziers, tinkers and wherrymen gathered with their friends and families to celebrate the anniversary of their king’s marriage. Only the Old Palace, which Brizen and Wellin had never liked, remained dark at the top of the low hill at the center of the city.
“Did we come up here to gawk or duel?”
Bonder emerged from the stair with a pair of long, thin swords. Having already removed his jacket, Fenner selected one and began practicing lunges at one of the trees. Stoke took the other and examined it in the dim light.
“What kind of sword is that?” asked Wilbrim.
“A dueling sword.” Stoke slashed at the air, the supple blade bending like a schoolmaster’s switch.
Willy looked nervous. “That’s not the kind I’m used to.”
“I admit, it is different from the short swords they use in the army. Dueling is not much thought of outside Malmoret. I suppose you see enough action in Backford in the regular way of things that there wouldn’t be much fun in it.”
Passing the blade to the younger boy, Stoke showed Wilbrim how to hold it. “A looser grip,” he said. “And no slashing. The tip is what counts with this weapon.”
He demonstrated a lunge, then encouraged Willy to do the same. Hubley watched anxiously as they practiced for a minute among the potted oranges. When they were done, the older boy gave Willy advice in a low voice. Willy concentrated, staring at his feet, and nodded.
A strip of ground was chosen on the garden side of the roof. Stoke and Hubley stood on Willy’s end, while Bonder and another boy Hubley hadn’t met stood with Fenner at the other. The rest of the group watched from the side. Beyond the short wall, the palace dropped straight to the riverside garden, balconies protruding at every floor.
It was a different sort of fighting from what Hubley was used to seeing the Castle Grangore guards practice in the courtyard. Instead of hacking away steadily like a pair of woodcutters, dueling was mostly short bursts of action. Fenner would feint and lunge, and Willy would parry him desperately, then Fenner would back off and wait, snake-like, for another chance to strike. Hubley could never quite tell what was going on till each brief engagement was finished. They fought to first blood and Hubley was sure the fight would end quickly, only Willy was much faster on his feet than she expected. Several times it looked like Fenner was going to touch him, only Willy would step aside and parry, and they would break apart again. Though Fenner was much smoother with these long blades, Willy had plainly had much more training with swords.
Fenner was soon panting. Their swords clashed; Hubley was amazed no one from the garden heard the noise. Fenner began to press the attack closely when he saw how Willy didn’t pursue him each time they broke apart. Once he lunged suddenly after feinting a disengagement, and almost caught Willy off-guard. But the next time the older boy tried that tactic, Willy was ready. Parrying Fenner’s thrust, he struck for the older boy himself. His lunge missed but, rather than breaking off, he knocked Fenner down with a punch almost as heavy as the one he had thrown in the ballroom. It looked to be all over then, only both Stoke and Bonder leaped forward to pull the duelists apart.
“None of that,” said the seconds.
Fenner rubbed his chin in a rage. “He cheated! The point is mine by default!”
“I didn’t cheat. Everyone knows you’re supposed to fight with both hands!”
“Not in dueling,” cautioned Stoke. “If you do it again, Backford, you will forfeit the match. Really, Bondurain, he did not know the rules.”
“I will accept it this once, Wilstoke. But if he does it again we will claim default.”
Hubley’s initial fear that Willy would be hurt had vanished. Now she just chewed her fingers and hoped he’d win. The two boys fought back and forth, Fenner desperately, knowing he would never live it down if he allowed himself to be beaten by a boy three years his junior, and Willy grimly. Then Wilbrim slipped, his new shoes scuffing on a slick spot in the stone, and Fenner was on him in a moment. The baron parried the older boy with nothing more than the strength of his arm. A more skillful opponent would have had Willy then, but a more skillful opponent would never have let the fight go so long in the first place.
Gritting his teeth, Fenner charged again, more determined than ever to end the duel. Willy made a sweeping motion with his right arm and Fenner’s sword flew up and over the wall.
“I won!” cried the younger boy.
“The sword!” shouted Stoke.
Hubley followed Stoke to the edge of the roof in time to see Fenner’s sword bounce off the balcony below and out into the night.
Denear shrieked. “What if it hits someone!”
Without thinking, Hubley cast a spell.
“Feather swift, feather light,
Catch the sword that falls tonight.”
The sword stopped. The other children gasped as the weapon hung in the air, quivering slightly in the breeze. Just below, an unwitting baroness chatted with her neighbors.
“That was close,” said Stoke.
“How do we get it back?” asked Bonder.
“Someone has to go down to the garden,” Hubley told them. “Then, when no one’s looking, I’ll end the spell and you can catch it—”
A stern voice interrupted. “Enough. Hubley, you were told to cast no spells.”
Wrapped in his long black cloak, Reiffen stood behind them. The other children, three-quarters afraid of the magician already, backed away.
“But Father.” Hubley struggled hard to keep her hold on the hovering weapon as she pleaded. “If I hadn’t stopped the sword, it was going to hit that baroness. She could have been killed!”
The magician’s voice lifted warningly. “I am not concerned with the baroness.”
Ferris, Giserre, and Lady Breeanna popped into view at the top of the stair behind him. No matter how hard she practiced, Ferris was always slower than Reiffen when casting a traveling spell.
Lady Breeanna spoke first. “Wilbrim,” she demanded. “What have you been up to?”
The young baron drew himself up to his full height. “It was all my fault, Mother. I struck Fenner, which meant we had to have a duel. Hubley only kept Fenner’s sword from landing on someone in the garden.”
“A duel?” The anger on Lady Breeanna’s face almost matched Reiffen’s. “With swords? Are you injured?”
“No, Mother. I won.”
“Humph. That may be what you think now.” Shouldering her way through the orange trees, the baroness took hold of her son’s ear and pulled him toward the stairs.
Ferris glared at the other children. “It’s time the rest of you returned to the party. If you wait here much longer, your parents, and the king and queen, are going to find out what you’ve been up to.”
“What about the sword?” asked Bonder. “We can’t just leave it there.”
Ferris stepped to the wall. Raising her hand, she said simply, “To me.” With great relief, Hubley felt her connection to the blade break. The sword, as if on the end of a long rope, soared upward.
Bonder accepted the weapon from Ferris, and hurried off after his friends.
“Do you know why you are being punished?” Reiffen asked Hubley when they were gone.
She pushed her lower lip out as stubbornly as she could. “No. If I hadn’t stopped the sword with magic, that baroness might have been killed.”
“And you would never have cast a spell again if she had. Your friends would have been punished, too. Your sacrifice has saved them. Perhaps they will remember. You did well in making certain no one was hurt. You did not, however, do so well in putting yourself into a position where you had to use magic to prevent someone from being hurt. That is what your punishment is for. Do you understand?”
She did. But that didn’t mean she liked it. “It’s not fair,” she insisted.
“Exactly,” her father answered. “Magic never is.”
Ferris looked troubled by Reiffen’s severe tone, but Giserre had something to say too. “Hubley, it is important you realize how your every act will always be judged by those around you, those who have not had the same benefits in life as you have had. Just as I raised your father to live according to higher standards than the rest of the world, so he and your mother are doing the same with you.”
“It’s the only way to learn magic, sweetheart,” added Ferris in a softer voice, but her message was the same as Reiffen’s and Giserre’s. “You have to have control. Without control over your spells, and yourself, there’s no telling what the magic might do. To you, or to the people you’re trying to help.”
“Maybe I don’t want to learn magic, then, if all it does is get me into trouble,” Hubley said, still sulking.
Her father laughed.
“Oh, yes you do. There is nothing in the world you want more.”