body, and intended that this fifth child—A boy, a boy at last, she chanted silently—would leave no mark on her, either. The cut of her dark violet gown concealed her thickening waist for the time being. As ardently as Roelstra desired a son, pregnancy repelled him. But Palila knew she would have to go on getting pregnant until she presented him with a male heir. And then she would be mistress no longer, but wife. Princess. High Princess.
There were princesses scattered all over the gardens this afternoon. Four of them, plus thirteen other daughters dignified by the title of “Lady”—seventeen girls, she thought in disgust. By six different women, all that Roelstra had managed were girls and yet more girls. His only legal wife, Lallante, had birthed three boys who had all died within a few days. After his wife’s death, the High Prince’s search for a single male offspring had taken him through five mistresses—all nobly born and all dead now, with the exception of Palila. She had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that she was indeed the exception. Castle Crag positively seethed with women, and the oversufficiency frayed her nerves. She loathed her own sex on principle, seeing all women as rivals for Roelstra’s attention. She was fond enough of her own daughters, but not even they escaped this basic suspicion. Palila rested one hand on her belly and vowed that this time there would be a son.
She descended the short steps, irritated anew that Roelstra was busy elsewhere in the keep, for the gardens were a charming context for her beauty—and for the little play she had perfected over the last few years. The place was a great bowl sunk into the rock, filled with flowering vines and daughters in bright summer silks. Palila visited each little group, pausing to smile and chat, keeping up her role of solicitous foster-mother to them all. Her position as their father’s sole mistress for the last four years had gained her their respect, if not their liking. She cared little whether they liked her or not, so long as everyone behaved as if terribly attached to everyone else—no matter how much they all hated each other.
The four princesses were seated beneath a trellis, playing cards. Tall, dark, well-built girls; of the four, Ianthe alone had inherited their father’s shrewd brain. Naydra was placid and biddable, Lenala was simply stupid, and Pandsala had a sidelong way of glancing at people which Palila thought might be a sign of slyness or intelligence or both. But Ianthe, at twenty-two the youngest of the four, was sharp and never bothered to hide it.
Lady Vamana’s four girls were plain and boring. Their mother’s looks had been lost somewhere; Vamana had lost them, as well, to a disease that might have been cured had Palila not switched medicine bottles. She hadn’t meant for Vamana to die—but she hadn’t wept at her pyre, either. Lady Karayan’s daughters stood by the rose wall solemnly tossing a ball back and forth. Palila dismissed little Kiele and Lamia with a shrug, much as she had dismissed their mother from Roelstra’s service with a drop of poison in her breakfast wine.
Lady Surya’s girls, Moria and Cipris, were near in age to Palila’s elder daughters and competed with them for Roelstra’s attention, just as Palila had with their mother until a slip on wet tiles by the bathing pool had cracked open Surya’s blonde head. Palila hadn’t even had to push her very hard.
Yet having rid herself of three rivals, she had soon been presented with a fourth. Roelstra’s infatuation with charming, empty-headed Lady Aladra had lasted for two miserable years. She had been genuinely liked by all the daughters; Palila’s stomach curdled whenever the pretty idiot opened her mouth. Her death in childbed, giving birth to another daughter, had sunk the castle into honest mourning. Palila, though innocent in this case, had made a substantial donation of wine to Goddess Keep—supposedly in Aladra’s memory, but really in thanks for her deliverance.
There had been no new mistresses since. Palila reigned supreme. Even though she was no novelty to him, her hold on Roelstra was still strong and the baby on the way had increased it. Yet fond as he was of the daughters she had given him—his “little flowers,” he called them—and showing no signs of becoming bored with Palila, she knew that neither sentimentality about his children nor sensuality in her bed would be proof against a