Page 83 of Confounding Oaths
“My dear, wonderful child,” she chided, “how many wishes do you think you get?”
With a defiance I could not help but admire, Miss Caesar looked up. “Three is traditional.”
“From a different kind of spirit. My people will give you one gift, and what you make of it is up to you.”
Miss Caesar stood, and though nothing had changed from the night before, or the night before that, the knowledge that she was falling inexorably into fragments weighed upon her. “I am not ungrateful. I am only learning that there are … limitations.”
“Every gift is tied with a ribbon.”
Looking down, Miss Caesar steeled herself. Or perhaps glassed herself. “Your gift seems slowly to be breaking me.”
“That is the ribbon. And if you have no wish to climb mountains or swim oceans, you will not miss the strength of your limbs. The body I gave you is good enough for dancing.”
As much as she might have wished to, Miss Caesar had not quite the courage to say that she did indeed wish to climb mountains and swim oceans, that she had not quite realised how badly she might wish to until the chance to was taken from her, or that while dancing was wonderful it was not all she wished to do for the rest of her days. But she began to weep again, sharp crystal tears scattering on the carpet where, had I been a real dog, they would doubtless have stuck in my paws.
Gliding closer to Miss Caesar, the Lady placed two fingers beneath her chin and tilted her face upwards. “Suppose,” she said, “I were to bring you to another ball.”
“You have brought me to enough balls, I think.”
The Lady smiled. Worlds have died for that smile. “Only two. And you said yourself that three is the traditional number.”
“Except for wishes.”
“Except for wishes. And the ball I intend to bring you to will be one like none you have seen in your lifetime.”
Miss Caesar tried hard not to sound tempted. “If you mean the ball for the queen’s birthday, that was last month, and Maelys tells me it was dull.”
“Your cousin does not know everything. And royal birthdays are not the only cause for royal balls. Nor areyourrulers the only rulers.”
There were a finite number of things that the Lady could have been implying, and I offered a helpfulruffto nudge Miss Caesar’s thinking in the right direction.
“You are speaking of Titania,” she concluded, “of the Other Court.”
“It has been too long since there was a formal visitation from our rulers to yours. And at such a ball … who can say what manner of gentleman you may meet?”
Miss Caesar blinked. “I am satisfied with Mr. Bygrave, thank you.”
“Your sister then.”
In the intervening days, the Caesars had been brought at least mostly up to speed on the tiny matter of Miss Anne’s new beau being a murderous devotee of a militaristic mystery cult. And while Miss Caesar had initially taken some pleasure in her fortunes outstripping those of her younger, more conventionally pretty sibling, the novelty of the victory had worn off some time ago. “What about my sister?”
“It could be arranged for her to catch the eye of arealprize. Of Prince William, perhaps?”
It was a peculiar suggestion, and not one that appealed to Miss Caesar’s sensibilities, or that she expected to appeal to her sister’s. “He is an old man recently separated from an actress. What could possibly attract Anne to him?”
“He will be king someday.”
At this, Miss Caesar laughed. And touched as she was by my people, her laughter likewise spoke volumes. It was a laugh of victory misplaced. “You know little of our courts, I think. The prince regent will take his father’s throne, and then if he has no son—which seems ever more likely—Charlotte will rule after he is gone.”
The Lady shook her head. “Princess Charlotte will depart this world before her twenty-second year. There will be chaos for a while”—she smiled, as did I—“and then William will be king. And it would take little for Anne to be his queen.”
“She is fourteen.”
“But for a throne? There is no better way to secure the future of the family.”
There were few young women in England—the England of the day, at least—who would not find the offer tempting. “There is no possible way you can promise such a thing.”
It was an empty statement, and Miss Caesar knew it, and the Lady knew that she knew it. “‘Where the bolt of Cupid fell,’” the Lady quoted, and I yapped at her in protest—she knew exactly what she was doing, “‘it fell upon a little western flower. Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound.’”
