* * *
• • •
The fairy invitations were written on vellum, hand-scribed with genuine ink and a genuine pen in period-specific calligraphy that only the Vizier himself could write, much less read. He could have written the cook’s favorite cobbler recipe, or enumerated the King’s favorite athletic teams, or made a list of all the bullies he’d survived during his childhood. But being both arithmancer and historian, the Vizier was more than a bit obsessive, and very devoted to detail, so it is no surprise that he wrote the invitations as best he could to the specifications set forth in the record. He had to consult with the court astronomer to calculate the calendar for a single moon and the homeworld’s longer solar revolution, and although he consulted with local biologists for local equivalents, he chose in the end to use homeworld fauna.
The Royal House of Thorne
requests the Honor of Your Presence
at the
Naming Day
of the
Princess Rory Thorne
on the
First Day of the Seventh Moon
in the
Year of the Wolf
Lacking the authentic delivery system—sparrows being in short supply, and not well-suited to tesser-hex—the Vizier elected to leave the invitations, neatly rolled and tied with silk ribbons, in a secluded corner of the royal gardens. He tucked them into the branches of the single homeworld tree species that would grow in the light of a foreign sun. It was not a large tree, and the Vizier felt sorry for it, burdened as it was under the weight of the tradition.
He gave the gardener strict orders to leave the invitations alone.
When, three days later, the gardener reported the invitations missing, the Vizier assumed that local fauna (probably tree-rats) had developed a taste for vellum. It was an ignominious end to his labors, but then, he was accustomed to that.
The rest of the guests got the standard electronic invitation, delivered from one impersonal machine to another, and filtered up through the appropriate chain of attendants. It was less aesthetically satisfying, but ultimately more reliable. The Vizier consoled himself with the planning of the actual ceremony: commissioning costumes and choosing which women were best suited to play the twelve fairies in the pageant, where best suited meant politically inoffensive, prudent, desirable, and/or necessary, in that order. That was, in the end, a great deal more work than the fairy invitations had been. And it proved to be an entirely wasted effort.
The vellum, ink, and ribbon, however, did not.
* * *
• • •
On the first day of the seventh moon, which was technically the third pass of the second of the two moonlets, in the year of an animal the only knowledge of which came from old homeworld video footage that only the Vizier and the Consort had bothered to watch, the unofficial Princess Rory Thorne became the official Princess Rory Thorne.
The party was spectacular. All the guests had, per the King’s request, come in historically authentic costume. Or, rather, they had tried. There were imported silks and velvets mixed with Martian brocades and leather (from various animals, both native and not) boots. But the overall shape of the garments was correct, and although the Vizier suspected some of the guests might have chosen less than academically reliable sources for their inspiration, he decided he could not complain.
Even the xenos had gotten into the spirit. The foreign attendees, some of whom had too many (or too few) limbs to manage corsets and hose and boots, came as culturally appropriate inanimate objects. The k’bal had come as a five-armed candelabrum, standing two meters tall, with blue carapace showing where the cosmetics had rubbed off. Each head wore a little flame-shaped hat, made of a fine metal mesh that fluttered with each exhale from its cranial vents. There was a teapot, too: an adapted environmental suit for the mirri President, whose daughter-buds had come as little cups.
When the designated hour for the ceremony arrived, the Vizier rang the silver gong. It was a perfect and exact replica, the original having been lost to looters in the initial instability following the first Rory incident, when the homeworld kingdom found itself absent a royal family and possessed of a very large, overgrown patch of briars. The guests obediently withdrew to the great hall’s perimeter. The Consort entered with the Princess in her arms. She, too, wore a costume: an elaborate confection of silk and velvet involving a great many laces along the torso. She didn’t look happy about it. Her grim-lipped body-maid, in a much simpler garment, stalked along in the Consort’s wake, raking suspicious eyes across the guests. Even the gentle little mirri teacups got a scowl.
The King was already in place on a dais, beside the royal cradle—which was the original—resplendent in furs and reproduction armor. He beamed at the Consort. At the Princess. At the multiverse in general. After his initial skepticism, he had thrown himself into the Naming Day preparations with startling enthusiasm. The Vizier suspected the armor was to blame. It was heavy, metal, ridiculous, and very manly.
The Vizier edged closer to the King, in case his Majesty needed prompting through the script. He needn’t have worried. The King boomed out a formal welcome to his guests, presented the Consort, and oversaw the placing of the Princess into her cradle. Tradition dictated that the guests would, one at a time (as species-appropriate), come to the dais and offer both blessing and gifts to Rory. But first, the fairies.
“I welcome first the guardians of my kingdom, on whose goodwill all our luck rests.” The King sucked a deep breath. The Vizier spotted motion reflected in the King’s breastplate, a pinkish blur, from the far doorway. He turned that way, expecting to see the General-Commander’s wife stuffed into her First Fairy robes.
And so the Vizier, man of arithmancy and education, possessor of two degrees in the obscure and overlooked, was the first human being to see a fairy in five hundred years.
She was taller than he’d imagined (because a man does not spend a large slice of his life studying quaint folk beliefs and not wonder what a fairy would look like). She stood at least half a meter taller than the tallest human in the room, which put her at a level with the tallest of the k’bal’s cranial stalks. Her dress was an iridescent, impossible close cousin of red, and as unlike red as stars were to swamp gas. Her skin was faintly pink, the palest echo of her dress. Tiny scales shimmered along her cheekbones, her forehead, the proud arch of her nose. Silver-shot vermillion hair, blasted white at the temples, coiled in a severe knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes matched her hair, bisected by a single silver pupil. She did not walk as much as she floated across the tile. Not a whisper, not a sound.
She climbed the dais. Took her place on the far side of the cradle. Nodded encouragement at the King.
Who stared saucer-eyed at the Vizier. But you said they weren’t real warped his lips, fluttered in his throat. Came out as a breathy, strangled, “Wah.”