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contrived to be an enchanting dancing partner, and I confess that I caught little of what passed between
the Doctor and the King, noting only that the Doctor looked very tall and graceful and correct while the
King seemed most animated and merry, even if his steps were not as fluent as they would normally have
been (the Doctor had strapped his ankle up especially tightly that afternoon, knowing that he would be
certain to take part in the dancing). Both wore smiles beneath their half-masks.
The music swelled and rolled over us, the grand people and beautiful masks and costumes surged and
eddied about us, and we, resplendent in our finery, were the bright focus of it all. The Doctor moved and
swayed at my side and occasionally I caught a hint of her perfume, which was one that I was never able
to identify and cannot ever recall seeing her apply. It was an astonishing scent. It reminded me at once of
burned leaves and sea spray, of newly turned earth and of seasonal flowers in bloom. There was, too,
something tenebrous and intense and sensual about the scent, something sweet and sharp at the same
tune, at once lithe and full-bodied and utterly enigmatic.
In later years, when the Doctor was long gone from us and even her most manifest features were
becoming difficult to recall with perfect clarity, I would, in diverse moments of private intimacy, catch a
hint of that same odour, but the encounter would always prove fleeting.
I freely confess that on such occasions the recollection of that long-ago night, the magnificent ballroom,
the splendid profusion of the dancers and the breath-arresting presence of the Doctor seemed like a
capstan of ache and longing attached by the ropes of memory to my heart, squeezing and tightening and
compressing it until it seemed inevitable that it must be burst asunder.
Engulfed in that riotous storm of the senses, by eye and ear and nose beset, I was at once terrified and
exhilarated, and experienced that strange, half-elatory, half-fatalistic alloy of emotions that leads one to
feel that if one died at that precise moment, suddenly and painlessly (indeedceased to be rather than went
through the process of dying at all), then it would somehow be a blessed and culminatory thing.
`The King seems happy, mistress,' I observed as we stood side by side again.
`Yes. But he is starting to limp,' the Doctor said, and sent the briefest of frowns in Duke Quettil's
direction. `This was an unwise choice of dance for a man with an ankle which is still recovering.' I
watched the King, but of course he was not dancing at that point. However, I could not help but notice
that rather than make the fill-in steps, he was standing still, weight on his good leg, clapping his hands in
time instead. `How is your Princess?' the Doctor asked me with a smile.
`Her name is Skoon, I think,' I said, frowning. `Or that may be the name of her homeland. Or her father.
I'm not sure.'
`She was introduced as Princess of Wadderan, I believe,' the Doctor told me. `I doubt that Skuin is her
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name. That is the name of the type of dress she is wearing, a skuin-trel. I imagine she thought you were
pointing at that when asking for a name. However, given that she is a female of the Wadderani royal
family, her name is probably Gul- something or other.'
`Oh. You know of her people?' This confused me, for the Sequestered or Half-Hidden Kingdoms are
some of the most remote and thoroughly land-locked places in the known world.
`I have read about them,' the Doctor said urbanely, before being pulled into the centre to dance with the
tall Trosilian Prince. I was paired with his sister. A lanky, generally ungainly and rather plain woman, she
nevertheless danced well enough and seemed quite as merry as the King. She was happy to engage me in
conversation, though she did seem under the impression that I was a nobleman of some distinction, an
illusion which I was probably rather too slow to dispel.
`Vosill, you look wonderful,' I heard the King tell the Doctor. I saw her head dip a little and she
murmured something back to him which I could not hear. I experienced a pang of jealousy that turned for
an instant to wild fear when I realised who it was I was feeling jealous of. Providence, our own dear
King!
The dance went on. We met with the Duke and Duchess of Keitz, then formed a circle once more - the
Doctor's hand was as firm and warm and dry as before - and then took up again with our earlier
eightsome. I was breathing hard by this time and did not wonder that people the age of Duke Walen
usually sat out this sort of dance. Especially when one was masked, it was a long, hot and tiring business.
Duke Quettil danced with the Doctor in frosty silence. Young Ulresile fairly ran into the middle of our
group to meet the Doctor and continued in his attempt to press some portion of his family's equity upon
her, while she parried each suggestion as neatly as it was made awkwardly.
Finally (and thankfully, for my feet were becoming quite sore in my new dress shoes and I was in some
need of relieving myself) we shared a set with Lady Ulier and Guard Commander Adlain.
`Tell me, Doctor,' Adlain said as they danced together. `What is a . . . gahan?'
`I'm not sure. Do you mean a gaan ?'
`Of course, you pronounce it so much better than I. Yes. A gaan.'
`It is the title of an officer in the Drezeni civil command. In Haspidus, or in Imperial terms, it would
roughly correspond to a town master or burghead, though without the military authority and with an
additional expectation that the man or woman would be capable of representing Drezen at junior consular
level when abroad.'
`Most illuminating.'
`Why do you ask, sir?'
`Oh, I read a report recently from one of our ambassadors . . . from Cuskery, I think, which mentioned
the word as though it was some sort of rank but without including any explanation. I intended to ask one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]