The Consort slid her slippered foot sideways, hard, into the King’s armored boot. The Vizier heard the meaty thump and winced on the Consort’s behalf. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink, when her husband looked at her.
The King cleared his throat. “Welcome,” he said again, to the First Fairy. His eyes clutched at the Vizier. Then, carefully, mechanically, the King welcomed the rest of the fairies. One by one.
By the fourth (aquamarine, angular, and very tall), the Vizier was sure they were xenos. By the ninth (cobalt, whose robes draped in a fashion that suggested rather too many limbs for a human), he was unsure again. By the twelfth (the smallest, pale, and round as the second moon), he simply didn’t care. They were beautiful. They were magical.
One by one, they approached the cradle. One by one, they offered their gifts to the Princess, who woke up at some point and stared at her visitors with wide dark eyes.
“. . . bestow the gift of harp-playing, that you may hold a room rapt and beguile men’s hearts and minds.” The green fairy leaned over the baby. Tapped her forehead with a small, green finger.
Rory gurgled.
Only one left. The Vizier realized he was holding his breath. Let it go, slowly. His stomach hurt. All this worry for nothing, like most of his efforts.
And, then, from the doorway, came a voice: “Oh, I see. You started without me.”
The thirteenth fairy had arrived.
She sauntered across the basilica on silent boots, spike-heeled and made of a shiny, very-much-not-traditional material, with silver laces, like wire. She had a shock of pink hair cresting upright along the middle of her scalp. The sides of her skull were shaved bare, and marked with intricate, disturbing tattoos that seemed to move if one tried to look too closely. She wore a black jacket, too big, flapping open, so that the buckles jingled and clinked, and a too-short skirt over too-long legs wrapped in hose that looked like fishing net. The garment under the jacket was the same shade as her hair, and it looked as if it had been slashed by razors. Her skin was metallic, shifting pewter to bronze, flirting with the light. Instead of scales, rings and rivets studded her skin, all polished to a high gleam.
The guests said nothing. Didn’t move, as if they worried she might notice them. The other fairies drew closer to the cradle and made a wall of glittering fabric, like martial butterflies. The first raised her vermillion hands and waved her fingers, go back, go away.
The thirteenth fairy ignored her. She climbed the dais steps. Paused at the top, and stared at the rest. They wilted aside. Then the thirteenth fairy lasered her attention at the King and the Consort. Dragged her eyes the height and breadth of them.
“Is it custom to begin important ceremonies without all the important guests?”
The King and Consort looked at each other. The King flinched. He scuffed his gaze along the stones and said, as if through a mouthful of velvet, “Well, no. But you weren’t invited. So, ah, I’ll thank you to leave, now.”
The thirteenth fairy’s brows rose. The twin rings above her left eye gleamed like tiny suns. “Excuse me? I was very much invited.”
“Majesty.” The Vizier’s voice wisped across the dais. “It’s my doing. It seemed—imprudent to leave her out this time.”
The King stared at him. Opened his mouth and left it hanging. His tongue wiggled, pink and furious.
“You are welcome, then, Lady,” said the Consort. She plucked at her skirts, which was as close to a curtsy as she could manage while gathering herself to leap at the fairy, should she try something untoward toward the Princess.
The thirteenth fairy smiled. The tiny silver ring at the corner of her mouth winked. The Vizier noted that she showed a lot of teeth. He also noted that they were unusually pointed. Sharp, even.
“Thank you, Consort.” She glanced sidelong at the King. “You would have left me out again.”
“I even didn’t think you were—”
“Real?”
“That. Yes. And the last time you came to a Naming, you tried to murder the baby.”
“I did not.”
“Well, you certainly didn’t—”
“What? Bring a gift? Is that what you think this lot have passed on? Kindness, beauty, a pure heart. Some wits thrown in to differentiate the poor thing from a doll. And the ability to play the harp. So useful for a royal scion in this age of galactic empire. Do you play the harp, Majesty?”
“I—no.”
“Then why should your daughter need that skill?”
The King seemed to recall who he was, and that people didn’t interrupt him more than, well, ever. He drew himself up straight and threw back his shoulders. For a moment, the thirteenth fairy saw the ghost of the man he might have been, and her smile faded.
The King mistook that as encouragement.
“I mean,” he said, and his tone could have sliced stone, “that my foremother would have died, if you’d had your way, on her sixteenth birthday. You cursed her, my lady. I think harp-playing is infinitely preferable.”
The thirteenth fairy said nothing for a very long time. The silence squeezed into every crevice and crept into open eyes and nostrils and mouths and breathing tubes, filling mouths and lungs and air sacks and cranial vents.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I suppose you would. Your worth does not hang on your ability to please others.”
She turned a shoulder to the King and looked at the rest of the fairies. The pink crest on her scalp quivered. The tips caught the light and gleamed like glass. “And you. I expected better. Half a millennium passes, they crawl out of their gravity wells and travel all the way here, and all you can do is repeat the old words.”
The first fairy spread her hands. “Here or there, then or now, they are much the same.”
“What they value in a daughter has not changed,” said the fourth fairy, pale yellow, whose gift had been clear skin. “Nor,” she added under her breath, “have their inheritance laws.”
“We understand,” added the third fairy, “what you were trying to do, back then.”
“We just didn’t much like your methods,” said the eighth.
“And we are not without mercy.” The cobalt fairy drifted a step out of line, like a shadow tracking the motion of an invisible sun. “You will note, sister, that this is the first girl born in almost two hundred years to this line.”
The import of that statement took a moment to settle. Then a collective gasp ricocheted through the guests. The k’bal put their heads together, clicking and gusting to themself, while their hat-flames snapped and creaked. The mirri’s daughter-buds spun in eccentric, erratic orbits, while the President herself tipped onto her suit’s belly and rocked there. The humans covered their mouths, some of them; or put heads together to mutter about how could that be. More than one impossible bounced off the tile and tapestry before evaporating into uncertainty.