Her father swept her around, to face back the way they had come; her full white skirts whirled as she turned, and twinkled in the light. She raised her chin to look out steadily over the heads of her father's people, and she heard a collective sigh as they stared at her. Then she felt her father's big heavy hand clamp down over the fingers that rested so gingerly on his sleeve, and she felt as if his hand were a gaoler's bracelet of iron, and as she caught her breath in a gasp she heard, like a chorus with an echo, "How like her mother she is!"
"She is the perfect image of her mother!"
She found herself trembling, and her father's hand weighed on her more and more till she thought she would go mad, and there before all the people staring at her, try to gnaw her hand off at the wrist, like an animal in a trap. Her mouth fell open a little and she panted, like a trapped animal. Her headdress was as heavy as a mountain, and she could not keep her chin up; it was pushing her down, down to the floor, through it to the cold implacable earth, and she could feel her father's body heat, standing next to him, standing too close to him.
"She is just as her mother was!"
"How proud he must be!"
"How proud he is! You can see it in his eyes!"
"I give you," said the king, and at his side the princess trembled, "the princess Lissla Lissar, my daughter, who is seventeen years old today!"
The applause and cheers filled the room like thunder. She took the occasion to snatch her hand free, to bury both hands in her flooding skirts, and curtsey low to the people who hailed her. They loved this, and the cheers grew as enthusiastic as courtiers, well aware of their own dignity, ever permit themselves to become. The king raised his hands for silence, and the princess rose gracefully, tipping her chin up again in just the way her mother had, the white flowers in her headdress framing her young regal face. The king gestured to the musicians and caught the princess around the waist.
Perhaps a few of the onlookers noticed how stiffly the princess responded, how awkward she seemed to find it, held so in her father's arms. But the occasion was grand and dizzying, and she was known to be a modest girl. The light flickered as if the air itself were the breeze-ruffled surface of some great bright lake. There were thousands of candles hung in the great chandeliers of silver and gold, and thousands of clear drops and icicles of crystal that reflected each candleflame thousands upon thousands of times. The saner, more sober oil lamps that stood at all times at intervals around the huge room were lit, and, as always, polished till they were almost as bright as the crystals on the chandeliers, and the light they reflected was golden. But for grand occasions there were also heavy gem-studded rings hung round their throats, and these on this night flashed and sparkled as well.
The costumes the courtiers wore were the grandest thing of all, grander even than the tapestries that hung on the walls, that were worth the fortunes of many generations of kings. All the colors and fabrics that were the finest and richest shone and gleamed upon arms and shoulders, backs and breasts. Local seamstresses and tailors had outdone themselves, and when even this surpassing splendor was not enough, messengers had been sent far away for strange rare decorations heretofore unseen in this country; for Lissar's father's courtiers were very conscious that they were the richest of the seven kingdoms and must not be outshone by any visitors, however lofty and important. All the jewellery that present wealth could buy or past victories bestow upon its heirs was on display.
It is unlikely that anyone there was entirely undazzled, entirely themselves, or much inclined to see anything that they had not already decided beforehand that they would see. Almost everyone decided that the young princess looked just like her mother, and looked no further. Only two sets of eyes saw anything different: Viaka watched anxiously, but from such a distance, as she was not an important person, that she could not say for sure that the princess's frozen look was anything but the grandness of the occasion and the gorgeous dishonesty of thousands of candles reflected in thousands of gems and crystal drops. And the queen's eyes knew the truth, and hated it, but she was only paint on canvas, and could do nothing but watch.
And within her costume, her magnificence, her heritage, Lissar moved, invisible to the crowd. The music howled in her ears; it sounded no different to her, no more like music, than had the cheers of the crowd earlier. She went as her father guided her, and had no need to listen to the music, for this was the easiest thing she did that whole long desperate night, moving as quickly as possible away from her father's lightest touch, that he might not touch her any more firmly. As the king was an excellent dancer, Lissar stepped here and there as if she were an accomplished dancer herself, as if the music itself moved her feet.
And so the royal couple passed, magnificent, as dazzling as any chandelier, with the shining medals and golden chains upon the king's breast, and the gleaming tiny colored stones sewn upon Lissar's white dress, down the long hall they had walked up. And then the first dance was over, and most people stopped looking at the king and princess so that they might look for a partner, and seized upon whom they would or could; and the dancing became general.
The king courted the princess as assiduously as a young lover might; rarely and reluctantly, it seemed, did he release her into another man's arms. One foreign prince took offense, for he had understood that the purpose of the ball had been to introduce the princess to possible suitors, and he saw the king's reluctance as an insult to his eligibility. He and his courtiers left early, watched in dismay by the king's ministers, for he was a very wealthy prince. Two of the ministers then bore down upon the king; one took Lissar's hand and presented her to a duke who was looking for a young wife, and could afford to pay for one that suited him.
Lissar took the proffered arm in a daze, and danced away with the duke, the size of whose midsection necessitated a somewhat awkward arrangement Lissar's hand reached only as far as the duke's large, soft upper arm. Lissar danced lightly with this partner too, her body reflexively glancing away from the guiding hand at her waist. "How ethereal she looks!" murmured the onlookers. "Even with that great clumsy brute she moves like flower petals on the wind."
"How modest she is!" thought the duke. "She would do."
But the king would not listen to his ministers. After but the one dance with the duke he took his daughter away again for himself, and so the long night wore on. Occasionally she was permitted to stop, to rest, to sit down on some tall padded chair, to drink something cool and sweet. When it was once Viaka who brought her her glass, she barely recognized her friend; Viaka, looking into her face, thought she looked like one in a fever, her eyes too bright and unfocussed, but she dared not say anything. She dropped a curtsey to the king without looking into his face, where her friendship for the princess might have given her the same knowledge that glittered in the queen's eyes; but then perhaps not, for she loved her own parents, and they loved their children, as parents and as children. She went away again, swearing to herself that she would stay up however late she had to, to see the princess to bed herself.