summoned by the Great Ones after a long morning Council meeting; the first we knew about it was when the Great Ladies sent us to be bathed and dressed by their servants. By the time we got our wits about us, we were already in a procession, and the next thing we knew, a new royal clan had been made, and we were being betrothed to a pair of Magi we’d never seen before.”
“And if they’re twins,” added Nofret, with a lift of her eyebrow, and a toss of her head, “I am a dragon.”
“What did you do?” asked Gan, looking utterly stunned.
“We went along with it, of course,” Nofret replied. “The vows aren’t valid. These men aren’t in a royal clan, no matter what the Great Ones decree; the laws of the gods say that you can’t create a new royal clan unless an old one dies out. And even if both our betrotheds were dead, which they aren’t, we can’t be wedded to anyone who is not of royal blood without our consent, which we did not give and were not asked for during the ceremony. No matter what words were spoken over us, we are not betrothed in the eyes of the gods, and that is all Marit and I care about.”
Marit nodded. “When Toreth died, we knew it was always possible we would be asked to marry others in the royal clans—well, Nofret anyway. When Kaleth went away, we did think it was possible we both might have to, so we started making plans of what to do.”
Now Nofret smiled fondly on her sister. “I didn’t care—I liked Toreth well enough, he was a good boy, but—” she shrugged. “Marriage to him would have been fine, but marriage to anyone else who was tolerable would also have been fine. But Marit truly loves Kaleth, and I won’t let her be forced away from him. So we began laying all sorts of plans—we even tried to think of ways of faking our own deaths! I must say, though, it never occurred to us that the Great Ones would have done something like this.”
“But we knew if we made a fuss, we would be watched like vials of saffron, but if we acted happy about it—which we did—we’d be allowed to do anything we pleased. So we acted like children given sticks of honey,” said Marit. Her nose wrinkled with scorn. “Everyone must think we’re brainless, or that we’re frantic to get any husband. Or else that we’re so desperate to get back in the succession that we’d willingly marry the sacred baboons. Nofret made sure of that, by babbling about how honored and thankful she was and hanging all over that repulsive reptile they betrothed her to as if he was a god, and when I figured out what she was doing, I just did the same.”
“Oh, yes.” Nofret smiled cynically. “I was full of questions for the Great Ladies afterward. How quickly could we be married, would we have our places back in the order of precedence, how soon could our husbands be confirmed in the succession, when we were wedded would we get to wear the Lesser Crowns, would we have our own set of ladies and attendants suitable to our station—I think I was being so greedy there at the end that even the Great Ladies were beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea after all.”
Marit tilted her head to one side, knowingly. “Serves them right. There were a lot of honors we could have claimed that we didn’t because Toreth and Kaleth couldn’t be bothered with court functions. I started talking about having a Lesser Court of our own. That made them really nervous.”
“And they should be,” said Heklatis, slipping into the room behind them like a ghost. “I wonder if the Great Ones will ever realize that the moment you wed, their days are numbered?”
No one even jumped. They were all so used to Heklatis coming and going silently that they just nodded at him.
“Perhaps the Ladies will,” Nofret replied. “We certainly did our best to put the idea in their heads with our questions. Hello, Heklatis. We’ve run away.”
“So I gathered. And since there is no hue and cry being raised across the First Canal, I assume you found a way to do so without raising suspicion?” Heklatis said easily, taking a place next to Kiron, and looking around at them all. “Hello, Kiron, did you like my