Image: Sehaèri, Princess of Pendarazloch by D. Denise Dianaty
Sabrina spent the rest of the morning in her office with Lady Selémahs nar Ruschar, chief attendant to the Guardian and therefore Sabrina's main ally in keeping Mara's life running smoothly. In between the myriad tasks involved in managing the Royal Household staff and finances, Sabrina found time to talk herself into a slightly more confident acceptance of Mara's scheme. Selémahs, who had a quiet serenity remarkable even among Miahns, listened to her, sympathized, and gave advice where indicated.
Once she agreed with Sabrina's assessment that Rayland was the most probable choice for regent, Sabrina relaxed. She liked Rayland, and she was sure he wouldn't interfere with her much, or if he did, that she wouldn't mind—much. On the other hand, Mara's other remaining close relative, her great-aunt Imari, first chair of the Council of Trême, regarded Sabrina as an interloper and a bad influence and would be an extremely uncomfortable boss.
"It will be good for them to get away and learn to be married without all this other stuff," Sabrina remarked.
"Yes," Selémahs said. "It will do them a great deal of good, I am sure. And perhaps it will not have to be so disruptive here. Commander Rayland is still on medical leave, so it will not interfere with his other duties, and everyone has a great respect for his judgment. However," she sighed, "it will not be a popular move, and the people have still not adjusted to the marriage, which, I am sure you know, was not popular either."
"I know," Sabrina said. "But if we can stop these attacks, or at least stop them occurring right here in Praxatillus' space, some of that will improve."
"Almost certainly."
"And if Homeworld sees that we're not keeping Khediva tied to Praxatillus, maybe they'll let up a little, give us an opportunity to make some kind of truce."
"Perhaps."
"At any rate, something has to be done."
"Inarguably."
Sabrina glanced at Selémahs and grinned a little. "I'm sorry. We've been over this a dozen times, haven't we?"
Selémahs smiled back. "And we will go over it a dozen more, if you need to. But I rather think we might find it more useful to go over a plan for operating in Her Majesty's absence, since that is the situation we are facing."
"Well," Sabrina mused, "I suppose we could start with giving leave to the ladies-in-waiting and maids, rather than having them here eating their heads off."
Selémahs frowned for a moment, deciphering the Earth idiom, then said, "I wonder whether it is wise to remove that support from them, however, at this difficult moment in Praxatillus' economy. Jobs are scarce."
Food is scarce, Sabrina thought. She knew she had lost weight since she had come to live on Praxatillus, and it wasn't just because of anxiety and overwork. Selémahs had a point: the royal treasury might be nearly bare, but they had an obligation to support the economy as far as they could by providing what jobs they could. With the Xoentrol War over, trade had picked up again, and farming was reviving; if things had continued uninterrupted, Praxatillus should have been harvesting enough to feed its depleted population by next year. However, now that they were at war with Homeworld, their trade was threatened again. Few cared to risk running into a Wayfarer force for what meager reward Praxatillus could offer.
Sabrina shrugged the problem away, glad she wasn't the one responsible for solving it. Managing temperamental ladies-in-waiting and supporting Mara's royal lifestyle on almost nothing seemed easy by comparison.
There was a knock at the door, and Sabrina called, "Come in."
Sehaèri ya yel Oännavhghaï nar Rischlov, Princess of Pendarazloch and the lady-in-waiting on duty this week, entered. Her solemn brown eyes swept the room, then lightened a little as she smiled at Sabrina, nodding a greeting. "Sabrina, I am going to lunch with Miosch now, if you or Her Majesty should need me."
"Thank you, Sehaèri," Sabrina replied. "I doubt we will; I have a suspicion Her Majesty will be tied up with the Council of Ministers for quite some time. Have a nice lunch."
"Thank you." Sehaèri glanced at a small mirror hanging on the wall, patting a strand of her dark brown hair into place before departing. As she went through the door, a young man with light brown hair and gray eyes entered, bowing to Sabrina and Selémahs.
"Therenden!" Sabrina greeted him with pleasure. "How are you?"
"Very well, thank you. I am pleased to see you suffered no ill effects from last night's incident," the Deputy Minister of Justice replied.
Sabrina grimaced. "Scotty took the brunt of it, I'm afraid."
"So I heard," Therenden smiled. "And good morning to you, Lady Selémahs."
"Good morning, Deputy Minister," Selémahs replied, nodding. "If you will both excuse me, I too have a luncheon engagement."
"Oh?" Sabrina said, surprised at Selémahs' announcement, though not at the tact behind it. "Not, by chance, Lord Leran again?"
Selémahs' cheeks colored faintly. "He is an agreeable companion. Shall we resume after lunch, Sabrina?"
"Yes, whenever you're ready," Sabrina said. "Have a nice lunch."
"Thank you. I shall," Selémahs said. "Good day, Therenden."
"Good day," he replied. He smiled at Sabrina when they were alone. "Excellent. I hoped you would not have made luncheon plans yet. Could I persuade you to give me an hour of your time?"
"If you'll answer some cultural questions for me," Sabrina said, getting up.
"Certainly."
"What is it about having lunch around here? I didn't know it was such a, um, social thing."
"Well," Therenden chuckled, "dinners are usually state occasions, or at least royal ones. Lunch is a much better opportunity for conversation and getting to know one another." He offered Sabrina his arm as they left her rooms.
"Ah." Sabrina thought about the number of times she had had lunch with Therenden and opened her mouth to comment. Then she closed it again. She needed to think about this, she realized. There was a rash of Miahn couples pairing off at the moment, the need to replenish the population being so urgent, but they nevertheless did it with circumspection and due ceremony. The last thing she should do was tease Therenden if, in fact, he regarded her with anything more than friendly curiosity.
She knew he liked her, but she honestly couldn't tell anything more than that, unfamiliar as she was with the nuances of Miahn relationships. In her two months at court, several announcements of marriages had astonished her with what seemed their suddenness but had not surprised Selémahs or Mara at all. It was, apparently, perfectly normal to be calmly discussing the weather one moment and setting a wedding date the next. And then, from what she could tell, one went back to discussing the weather again.
Will I ever get the rules down for this crazy place? she wondered. Then she wondered if having lunch a certain number of times qualified as seriously dating, and if she had committed to something without even realizing it. Not that she didn't like Therenden; she did, very much. But she had no intention of seriously involving herself with anyone at the moment, particularly someone who would still be young while she aged and died. Miahns lived hundreds of years, and Therenden was only about a hundred, about half to a third of the way through his lifespan. Another fifty years would make little difference to him, but would make Sabrina an old woman. Besides, I want to go home, someday.
"You're very quiet," Therenden observed. He grinned a little. "Counting how many times we've been to lunch?"
Sabrina blushed. "I can't remember. How many has it been?"
"This will be the twenty-second lunch we have shared since you returned with the Queen," Therenden said. "Although I think the first few don't count, on a purely social basis, since they were related to the Tirqwin's arrest and your brother's court-martial."
"You probably should have been billing me for professional advice," Sabrina said wryly.
"I think I have learned every bit as much as I have taught you," he said. "It is refreshing to see our culture through your eyes. I also confess to an interest in how your mind works. Let me guess: you are trying to decide how our having lunch is perceived by myself and everyone else, as opposed to how you perceive it."
"Well," Sabrina said, "yes. There was an Earth culture once where drinking a cup of cocoa was all it took to get engaged."
"Let me set your mind at rest," Therenden laughed. "Having lunch, no matter how many times, is not enough to constitute a betrothal. It may give rise to speculation, but no more. And it is perfectly possible for a man and a woman to have lunch together often while remaining only friends."
"I thought so, but I was beginning to wonder," Sabrina said. "Maybe it's just the marriage madness around here."
He sighed. "The Miahn population is perilously close to the genetic threshold for survival. We must begin to have children again, and make sure they live to have children of their own."
"Then shouldn't you be taking some nice young Miahn lady to lunch instead of me?" Sabrina grinned, before she could stop herself.
"Now you're beginning to sound like my mother," Therenden laughed. "I told her that she is still capable of having more children herself. She is only one hundred and fifty-two."
Sabrina remembered her brief meetings with Therenden's mother Gemaria, a graceful lady who had been an archaeologist before the Xoentrol War had called her to a more military career as a forensic specialist in explosive attacks. "Well," she said, "I'll be incredibly lucky to live to one hundred."
"It's not how long you live, but what you do with the time," Therenden said.
"I'll have to remember that," Sabrina said.
They were on their way back from lunch when Commander Rayland intercepted them. Before Sabrina quite realized it, Rayland had detached her from Therenden's arm, attached her to his own, and whisked her off to a seldom-used sitting room in his suite.
"I am sorry to interrupt your day," he said, when he had settled her in a comfortable chair and provided her with a drink, "but it seems as though we must resign ourselves to a regency, and I wanted to hear your observations on a few key subjects."
"Surely you must know more about what goes on around here than I do," Sabrina said, surprised.
"I have concentrated solely on defense matters for so long that I feel out of touch. And I do not have the benefit of a monarch's training. You at least have been on the periphery of that; Tirqwin says that you shared Maratobia's studies."
"Well, yes," Sabrina admitted. Some of the political studies had interested her, as being related to her own psychology major back on Earth. And the social aspects fascinated her. "But if you want to know about that, you ought to ask Mara, or Tirqwin."
"Do you not feel you absorbed anything of use, then?"
"No, it's not that. I learned a lot, I think."
"Then I should like to hear it from you. Mara is quite busy, and so is the Tirqwin. Not that I mean to imply you are not—like all of us, you have much to do, I know. I have been meaning to tell you what an excellent job I think you are doing as Mistress of the Private Household. The new, simpler dress styles are catching on, and the way you have managed to convey majesty without great expense is admirable."
Sabrina wondered if he would like to hear some of her more amusing anecdotes about recycling clothes, ceremonial objects, and even curtains. She had scandalized everyone in the palace from the Royal Chamberlain to the dismayed cleaning staff when she ordered the draperies stripped from a disused guest chamber to make a decent tablecloth for a state dinner a week ago, and she had quietly ransacked Mara's mother's wardrobe (left entirely intact, though she had been dead for well over a year) for material to dress Mara, herself, and the ladies-in-waiting.
Next, she supposed, she would be turning faded tapestries into carpets to replace the frayed, worn ones in Mara's rooms—if the Chamberlain, who had joined her recycling projects once she'd gotten over her shock and indignation and realized what a difference apparently new things made to the court, didn't beat her to it. Next week they were planning a wholesale sweep through the damaged areas of the palace to scavenge anything useful. Even the Castellan had caught on, using building materials from crumbled walls to repair those still standing.
But we can only eat our own tails for so long, she thought, recalling the Castellan's warning. Sooner or later, they had to have income.
She brought herself back to the current conversation. "Thank you. I...my brother and I have had to portion out what little money our parents left us very carefully, to pay for school. I guess it was good training."
Rayland smiled faintly. "It is good to try to bring something positive out of your misfortune. That is what Praxatillus needs."