Deerskin - Robin McKinley

Ossin looked at her. "You have attended few balls if you can describe it as ònly one evening.' " He brightened. "I have a splendid idea-you come. You can come and see what you think of ònly one evening.' "

Lissar's heart skipped a beat or two, and there was a feeling in the pit of her stomach, a knot at the back of her skull; she was an herbalist's apprentice, what did she know of balls? Where were these sight-fragments coming from, of chandeliers, spinning around her, no, she was spinning, through the figures of a dance, blue velvet, she remembered blue velvet, and the pressure of a man's hand against her back, his hot grasp of her hand, her jewel-studded skirts sweeping the floor-jewel-studded?

"Are you all right?" Ossin's hands were under her elbows; she started back.

"Yes-yes, of course I am. It's only-the fever hurt my memory, you see, and sometimes when memories come back they make me dizzy. I saw a princess once; she was wearing a dress with jewels sewn all over it, and she was dancing with a man she did not like."

Ossin was looking at her; she could see him hesitating over what he thought of saying, and hoped he would decide to remain silent. She concentrated on the fine fawn hairs of Ash's back. She put out a hand, fumbled with the comb, picked up the brushing mitt instead. Ossin moved away from her.

But that was not the end of the matter. The next day she was soaping and waxing leashes with the puppies spilled at her feet when Ossin appeared and said he had something he wished her opinion on. She assumed it had something to do with dogs, and went with him without question or much thought; Ash at her heels, the puppies shut up protestingly in their pen. Nob and Tolly, who had come with Ossin, were left with Hela.

Lissar was puzzled when he led her back into the main portion of the Gold House, the big central building from which nearly a city's worth of smaller buildings grew, like mushrooms growing at the feet of a vast stony tree. It was still easy for Lissar to get lost in the maze of courtyards and alleys and dead-ends into wings and corners and abutments. She knew her way from the kennels to the open fields and back, and to the stables, where she visited Lilac-but that was nearly all. It was going to be embarrassing when Ossin dismissed her and she didn't know where to go. But the house servants were almost without exception kind, she could ask one of them; perhaps she would even see one that she knew, Tappa or Smallfoot or Longsword the doorkeeper.

The hallways they passed through grew progressively grander. "The oldest part of the house was built by old King Raskel, who thought he was founding a dynasty that would rule the world. His idea of support for his plans was to build everything with ceilings high enough to contain weather beneath them. I used to fancy stormclouds gathering up there and then with a clap of thunder the rain falls and drowns an especially deadly state banquet." He flung open a set of doors. "Or a ball. Not a bad idea, if I knew how one made a thunderstorm. Raskel is the one who first called himself Goldhouse, seventeen generations ago."

They were in the ballroom. Lissar didn't need to be told. There were servants in livery hanging long ribbons and banners of crimson and gold and blue and green around the walls; the banners bore heraldic animals, dogs and horses, eagles and griffins. Goldhouse's own badge, which hung above the rest, held a rayed sun with a stubby yellow castle, a horse, a deep-chested and narrow-bellied dog, and some queer mythological beast, set around it. Ossin saw her looking at it. "Fleethounds are in the blood, you might say. Or if there wasn't already one there, I'd've put one in, although it would ruin the design. No, I would have taken the elrig out: ugly thing anyway. It's supposed to be an emblem for virtue, virtue commonly being ugly, you know."

Other servants were taking down plain drab curtains and hanging up other curtains to match the banners. "What do you think?" Ossin said, but it was a rhetorical question, and she only shook her head. He set out across the vast lake of floor, and she followed uneasily, dodging around servants with mops and buckets and polishing cloths; the smell of the floor polish made her eyes water. "They lay the stuff down now so the smell will be gone by the night," he offered over his shoulder.

"And the doors will be barred when they're finished, so that people like me, who lack the proper attitude, can't tramp through and ruin the gloss." His footsteps echoed; the servants all wore soft shoes, and if they spoke, they spoke in whispers.

Lissar's bare feet made no noise, but she had the uncomfortable feeling of the floor polish adhering to her feet, so that she would slide, whenever she set her foot down, for some time after, leaving a sparkling trail like a snail's.

They left by another, smaller door, went up two flights of stairs and down a hall of a more modest size, with a ceiling whose embossed flower pattern was near enough to see in detail. Then Ossin opened another door.

TWENTY-SEVEN

THIS ROOM WAS SMALL AND, WHILE IT WAS OBVIOUSLY

DUTIFULLY aired at regular intervals, smelled unused. It was dim, the windows closed and curtains drawn over them; light came in only from the hall windows behind them. There were a few paintings hanging on the wall to their left as they walked in; they hung crowded together and uneven, as if they had been put up where there were already nails to hold them, without regard to how they looked.

The paintings were all portraits; the one which caught Lissar's eye first was evidently very old. It was of a man, stiff in uniform, standing with his hand on the back of a chair that might have been a throne, staring irritably at the portrait painter who was wasting so much of his time. "That's Raskel's son-first in a long line of underachievers, of whom I am the latest." As he spoke, Ossin was sorting through more portraits, Lissar saw, which were smaller and less handsomely framed, lying on a table in the center of the room.

She looked up at the wall again; several of the other portraits were of young women, and looked newer, the paint uncracked, the finish still bright. "Ah," said Ossin, and held something up. He went over to the window and threw back the curtains; afternoon sunshine flooded in. He turned to Lissar and offered her what he held. She walked over to him and stood facing the windows.

It was a portrait, indifferently executed, of a plump young woman in an unflattering dress of a peculiarly dismaying shade of puce. Perhaps the color was the painter's fault, and not the young woman's; but Lissar doubted that the flounces and ribbons were products of the painter's imagination. "That's Trivelda," said Ossin with something that sounded like satisfaction. "Only one evening, you remember, eh?

Looks just like her. What do you think?"

Lissar hesitated and then said, "She looks like someone who thinks hunting hounds are dirty and smell bad."

"Exactly." The prince sat down on the edge of the table, swinging one leg. She turned a little toward him. "What are all these-portraits?"

The prince grimaced. "Seven or eight or nine generations of courtly spouse-searches. Mostly it's just us royals-or at least nobles-very occasionally a commoner either strikingly wealthy or strikingly beautiful creeps in. There are a few of the little handsized ones of the impoverished but hopeful."

"I don't think I understand."

"Oh. Well. When you're a king or a queen and you have a son or a daughter you start wanting to marry off, you hire a tame portrait painter to produce some copies of your kid's likeness, preferably flattering, the number of copies depending on how eager or desperate you are, how much money you have to go with the package, and whether you can find a half-good painter with a lot of time to kill, and perhaps twelve or so children to support of his or her own. Then you fire off the copies to the likeliest courts with suitable-you hope suitable-unmarried offspring of the right gender.