Chapter 162 Heartache

Leon was at home practicing his characters.

No master's hand — something younger than his present writing, the bones of the characters unsteady, like a boy who had had a few years of schooling.

But stroke by stroke he worked at it, serious as a scholar.

"What's this? Moved into a mansion of your own, and now it's cultivate-the-heart season? We're supposed to be setting out each on his own road to the future, you know." Felix pushed through the door-curtain and found Leon at his writing.

Leon smiled faintly, took up the finished sheet, saw that the ink was dry, and held it out to Felix: "See for yourself."

This writing? Felix hesitated. "This is... your boyhood hand?"

"It's also my second brother's boyhood hand."

"Now I remember — you learned your writing copying his. Back then Master Lovell had only newly come to Augustburg as writing-master, and the late King set him to tutoring the First and Second Princes."

Felix had been in Augustburg in those years too — a few years the younger, too small to study under Master Lovell — and he and the other boys had always practiced from the Second Prince's copybooks. The Second Prince being, of course, the King who now reigned.

The King, setting eyes on that hand, could hardly help remembering the brotherhood of their boyhood, could he? A crippled prince who could contend for no throne — what threat was he to anybody?

"You mean to go back to Augustburg already?"

Nothing less than a childhood playmate — he had hit Leon's intent in one. Felix set the sheet back on the desk.

"Without a summons I can't return — but a man can still make ready. And you? All prepared? You travel the same road as Alvin tomorrow, don't you?" Leon settled back into his wheeled chair as he spoke.

All at once Felix spied a pinwheel of colored paper stuck into the backrest of the chair, and had to smile:

"If I were you, I'd want nothing else in this world."

"The pinwheel? Faye's family opened the doll shop today — Yvonne sent me over a few of her wash-set gift boxes, and the pinwheel came along: the little something every customer who walks in gets. Go home and look — yours has most likely been delivered already."

"A doll shop? Now that's a new one."

Felix let the doll shop go and came back to the main thread: "We're off at first light tomorrow. Alvin sees the King before he goes on to Falconberg — the same road as mine, conveniently.

The General and the rest of them go in a few days more. We have planned this half a year — waiting on one night, Harvest Home night, to pull the Windsor house's capital faction out root and branch. After that, they have nothing left to threaten the Odenheims with.

The ranch fire — Terence has owned to that. But who killed Windsor Yves, that I truly have no thread of. Terence and Windsor Fortune both deny it, and press them any harder and you would have a confession beaten out of a man — which is worth nothing. It goes in the box for the next sheriff."

"Tonight the Princess's mansion throws your farewell dinner, I suppose? The Odenheims too, no doubt. Go easy on the wine — eat fast and come straight over. I'm holding your farewell wine here."

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His leave of Leon taken, Felix walked toward the Princess's mansion. It wasn't far; he went on foot, down the Royal Avenue at an easy pace, Jonan Carey and the rest trailing behind.

"My lord — buy a wooden doll, do! See how pretty she is — her arms move and all! Doesn't she look like your first love?"

First love?

Half understood, half not — but it had to be some new word that little sprite Yvonne had coined.

Jonan Carey had half a mind to shoo the little girl off — eleven or twelve, no more — but Felix said:

"Let me see."

The little girl was clean and neat as a pin, her hair knotted the same way as one of the wooden dolls'. She opened the box in her hands: only two dolls left — a foreign doll and an Empire doll.

He picked up the Empire doll in its red skirt. Her painted eyes curved with smiling — really rather like Yvonne at her most mischievous.

So this was "first love"?

He pulled a handful of coppers from his sleeve and handed it over: "Keep the change."

"The opening price isn't half that much... Shall I make it the box and the other doll too, all told? Then I can go back and draw my wages."

Delighted, the little girl pressed the whole boxful into Felix's hands and went trotting off, pleased as a pup.

Jonan Carey and his mate wanted to laugh and didn't quite dare. The Sheriff of Lohenheim, walking down the Royal Avenue carrying two wooden dolls that little girls play with.

Where now was the fearsome man who had beaten the shaven-head gang to death at the North Market?

Thank heaven for the brocade case, at least.

Felix had no thought of handing it off to his men — he carried the brocade case along himself. The Royal Avenue ran thick with folk, and hardly an eye found him out.

When he had come home crowned from the university — riding a tall horse tricked out in red down this same Avenue, how many envious looks he had drawn! The Grand Princess's eldest son, and young as he was, set straight into a first-class shire's sheriffship.

All of that turned its page today; tomorrow a fresh one opened.

"Dorothy Dunbar, are you blind? You knocked my sister's ice mountain right over. Do you know what an ice mountain costs in the eighth month? You couldn't buy one for love or money!"

Felix turned toward the voice. Dorothy had her back to him; facing her stood Odile Legard and Odile's cousin.

When the ice wells opened in the third month, cherry ice mountains and jam-and-honey ice mountains were common enough in the markets. Come autumn — the last winter's ice pretty well spent — they turned precious.

Dorothy, dabbing at her skirt with her kerchief:

"I was walking my own road. She ran into me — no apology, and now somehow the fault is mine?"

"Come along. One loses standing, bandying words with her sort."

Odile, face empty of everything, made to walk on — but her fat cousin couldn't let it sit. She snatched the doll set out of Ruby's arms, flung it hard on the ground, stamped it twice for good measure, then lifted her chin to go.

Ruby flew at her sleeve: "Oh no you don't! You broke our dolls — you'll pay for them!"

"Broke your dolls, so what? I'll break you too!" — and she seized Ruby by the collar and shoved her flat to the ground.

Dorothy wanted no trouble. But she wasn't one to stand being bullied for nothing either — and with her own maid sent sprawling, she caught the fat girl's arm and gave it one twist. The girl set up a howling:

"Murder! Dorothy Dunbar's killing me! Sister, save me!"

"Dorothy Dunbar, let go, or else! If I were you, I'd hide in the house the whole year round and never show my face — doing those filthy things with a man, near worthy of the flower-house fairies — only..."

Odile gave a little sneer: "You won't be attending the First Bloom auction, at any rate."

The idlers ringing them in laughed the way men laugh when it is not their own hurt. The "First Bloom" auction sold a maiden's first night — the costliest single night in all a flower-house fairy's life.

Those words, out of the painted mouth of a gorgeously dressed young lady, carried five extra measures of the shivering thrill men took from them.

Dorothy went white as paper.

If she had known Odile would throw even her own face to the wind and cry out so private a thing in public, she would have bolted just now at a dead run.

Felix stood a little way off, outside the ring of the crowd. He had seen the fat cousin's shove with his own eyes; the seed-cracking idlers' gleeful relaying of the tale did nothing but fan him hotter. That was Dorothy's scar — and whose was it, if not his?

The terror in Dorothy's eyes wrung his heart. He barked out:

"Broad daylight, and brawling in the street! Take every one of them to the shire court!"

At the sound of Felix's voice, Odile jumped. She had let her tongue run loose on the strength of nobody knowing her face — haul it into the shire court, and her father would confine her ten years, wouldn't he?

She forced her composure and pointed at the fat cousin, who stood scared speechless:

"The hitting was all her doing. Nothing to do with me."

"Take them all."