Falona grasped her heavy skirts in a hand heedless of the servants’ long work to press the fabric and darted up the stairs with unseemly haste. Already the air was clearer as she neared the balcony, though the memory of overwhelming perfumes nearly drowned out the delicate scent wafting from the rose trellis.
As always, Eddwyrd had beaten her there. She slowed her steps to a more decorous pace, though she suspected he didn’t inform her father nearly half of what she put him through. Her head bodyguard took each briefing from red-faced, sputtering guard with remarkable aplomb. The worst she’d ever seen him do was keep a white-knuckled hand on his sword as her antics were recounted anew…although the few times he’d given her disappointed looks were so memorable, she flushed with historic guilt.
He was gripping that sword with the same unnatural tension now, though his disappointed gaze was focused on the rose trellis that wafted inward as clearly as the sound of racing boots behind her.
“Sir! Commander Eddwyrd,” gasped the voice behind her. “The princess -“
“Has escaped the ballroom,” Eddwyrd gently cut the man off. “It is a ritual, I’m afraid, reenacted upon each new guard. You did well in coming here to find me rather than creating a panic.”
His pointed gaze prompted her into a curtsy, eyes down to hide the dancing laughter threatening to spoil the ritual. Protocol always made her want to giggle. “I apologize, Sir Willhylm. I felt the need for fresh air and forgot to alert you first.”
Eddwyrd gestured to the other man. “Alert the gardeners, please. The nightroses are beautiful, but the trellis is a security hazard. They will need to replant.”
The man nodded and left, his boots echoing on the white and black marble.
Commander Eddwyrd pulled his bushy eyebrows together. “Aren’t you getting a touch old for this, my lady?”
She tugged her shawl around her shoulders until it was uncomfortably tight. “It felt…desperate. Too loud, too bright, too much. I didn’t like it.”
Eddwyrd was quite still. “I understand.”
She tossed the shawl over the rail. “Besides, balls are boring.”
His dark eyes twinkled. “May it ever be so.”
Falona let her giggle out. She looked up at him with eager impatience. “Did you bring it, Uncle Eddwyrd?”
“I promised you the stars, my lady, and where better than from our typical balcony?” He pulled a tube from his jacket pocket and handed it to her with both hands.
She peered through the end and studied the palace’s reflection in the harbor. “It doesn’t look any closer.”
“It requires lenses to function.”
Falona turned in a swirl of green silk and let out a gasp of delight at the round discs he held in an unfolded scarf several shades darker than her dress. “These will let me see the stars?”
“Ship captains use them, Princess. The same captains you will someday send on trade expeditions and explorations.”
She scuffed a dancing slipper’s toe against the floor, but her foot skated over the polished surface. “And to war.”
“Yes, my lady. If you must.” He fitted the lenses into the tube quickly and bent to hand it back to her.
Her small fingers closed upon the tube, but he didn’t let go. His narrow face was grave. “I shall do my best to advise you upon matters of defense and war, should it come to that. Years from now, of course.”
Falona reached up to touch her adopted uncle’s face. It was sharp with stubble and stiff with the hidden tension she’d seen before. “You will be first among my advisors.”
He laughed, and rose, his face disappearing into shadow. “None of that, now. Come. Let me show you the moons. It is a special night for them, after all.”
Velyum’s third moon was just rising, in all her blue and white striped glory to dominate the night sky. Soon the palace would put out the lanterns, as reflected light would shine near as bright as the sun. “Great hippo, Uncle Eddwyrd! Riskli looks like liquid. Like when Maman puts cream into her caf’fe every morning, before it mixes together.”
“The artificers debate whether it is liquid or gas,” Eddwyrd told her. “But don’t neglect Warso or Shadd.” The smaller moons shown perpetually, and could be glimpsed in the sky even during the brightest of sunlight days. “You see? These two are made of dirt and rock.”
“Who dug the holes on them?” she demanded without removing her eye from the scope.
He laughed gently. “Those craters have been there for generations, my lady, and artificers with enormous lenses, far more powerful than this, say they are only -“
She turned then, as his voice stopped, in time to see a fourth moon, bobbing along with a hiss and a flare of released gas. Faintly, Falona could see white sparkling dust drifting downward from the balloon as it floated across the docks and toward the palace.
“What in hippopotamus?” Eddwyrd spun her around and snatched her shawl from the balcony rail, wrapping it around her face until only her eyes were unconcealed. “No. Leave your mouth covered. No matter how hard it is to breathe.”
He snatched the scope out of her suddenly nerveless hands and tucked the scope back in his pocket without bothering to disassemble it. The dark green scarf he tied over his own face. “Damn the traitorous gardeners. We didn’t factor in those raging balloons. All our estimates were wrong.”
His eyes were focused on the lawn, where shadowy figures with enormous heads – no, heavy masks covering mouths, eyes, and nose – crept closer.
“Take my hand. Do not let go. We run for the tunnels. Do you understand?”
She didn’t, but nodded anyway. And tried to shut her ears as the screaming started, her hand clenched in his until she could no longer feel her fingers.
****
