woman who could give him a son. Thus she intended to provide the long-awaited male heir herself, become his legitimate wife, and preside over the marriages of his seventeen daughters.
Their marketability was the one good thing about them. For the foreseeable future they could be parceled out like gold coins to reward useful men. Roelstra would be pleased to have tedious negotiations taken care of by Palila, and even more pleased when her arrangements increased his power. She would make herself essential to him politically and gain a tidy profit for herself into the bargain through bribes exacted from princes and lords wishing to marry the High Prince’s otherwise useless daughters.
She went to her own girls and hugged them, laughing aloud in anticipation of the time when she would find for them the richest and most important men in all the princedoms. But they were very young and she need not worry about their futures yet. Currently she was shopping for men to marry the legitimate daughters, and her primary prey was Prince Rohan. He was rumored to be studious, so Naydra’s quietness might attract him; he was also said to be rather blank of eye on occasion, so perhaps Lenala’s stupidity would suit him. Palila promised herself that neither clever Ianthe nor sly Pandsala would have him, for the idea of either married to such power was intolerable.
“Just look at her,” Pandsala whispered to Ianthe. “That bitch!” Ianthe smiled sweetly. “Lenala, you cannot play the horse atop the rider, dear. Naydra, explain the rules to her again, won’t you? Sala and I are going for a stroll.”
The younger pair left the elder and wandered across the lawns. Vines spread splashes of color across rough-hewn stone walls that rose to twice the princesses’ height and sealed in the trellis garden, just as the rest of Castle Crag and, therefore, their world was sealed. But they could feel the sheer drop of the cliffs beyond the wall, and the free, swift rush of the Faolain far below, just as without looking at it they could sense the silent, spired bulk of the castle behind them. Generations of their forebears had made it the most imposing keep in all the princedoms. The maze of rooms and corridors, antechambers and staircases was punctuated with turrets and towers jutting out wherever builders had found breathing space—with the result that there was no breathing space anywhere in the piles of gray and black stone. It was said that long ago the dragons had favored the cliffs here as a summer home during non-mating years, and had flown across the sky in so many hundreds that they blocked out the sun. It was from this place that Ianthe and Pandsala wanted desperately to flee, as the dragons had done long ago.
Pandsala plucked a rose from the wall and put it in her hair. “When are we going to do something about Palila?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.” Ianthe’s dark eyes sparkled gleefully. “Have you ever noticed how many women there are at Castle Crag, and how many of them are pregnant at any given time?”
“It must be in the air,” Pandsala replied, making a face. “Women breed, and they breed daughters.”
“Not all of them.”
Pandsala frowned, then stared. Ianthe laughed.
“If Palila has a son—which isn’t likely, but all things are possible—I have my eye on several girls right now who are just as far along as she is.”
“Why not do to her what she did to poor Surya?”
“I’ve considered it,” Ianthe admitted. “But her personal servants are absolutely loyal—Goddess alone knows why! She sleeps either with Father or with guards outside her door and two women on the floor of her chamber. She doesn’t go out riding, she doesn’t leave the grounds, she doesn’t bathe with the rest of us and she never eats anything her own servants haven’t prepared. If you can find opportunity in those things, be my guest!”
“I always did think her ‘delicate stomach’ was a flimsy excuse.”
“She doesn’t trust us any more than we trust her. Oh, she makes sweet eyes at us and pretends we’re all the closest of friends. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling—certainly not Father!”
“He doesn’t give a damn about any of us, except when we can amuse him. Ianthe, I’m so tired of amusing him! Tell me what you have planned.”
“If we’re to be rid of her, we’ll have to be even more devious than she. You know she’s planning to sell us to the highest bidder.”