For the moment she looked at the high wall around her garden with satisfaction; Ash was no more than half grown and already she could leap higher than Lissar's head. The little round room, for her, and the big walled garden, for Ash, made her new chambers perfect. The other rooms mattered little, but … it would probably be wise not to ask that the statue be removed; she could learn to ignore it. And perhaps a few pillows could stun the purple of that couch.
The minister had been trying to break into her reflections for several minutes; she'd heard a grunt of suppressed protest when her hand had first touched the plain door next to the extravagant sofa. She turned to him gravely as Ash disappeared into the undergrowth, waving stems marking her passage. She was now willing to hear, and to pretend to listen, to what he might have to say, now that she had found what she was looking for.
"I am terribly sorry, princess," said the minister. "I wished you to see your new rooms at once, and so the work of preparation was not complete; the door to this place was to have been closed off."
"I am very glad it was not," said Lissar. "I will want the little round chamber set up as my bedroom, and this garden is perfect for Ash. It is for Ash that I wished to move to the ground floor, you understand," she explained, kindly, as he had obviously not taken this in the first time she spoke to him. "Ash is only a puppy, and it will make her training much easier."
The minister's jaw dropped. He looked toward Ash, who had re-emerged from the shrubbery, and was defecating politely by the side of one of the overgrown paths, flagged with the same rough-surfaced stone as the three small stairs down to the base of the tower. He jerked his eyes away from this edifying sight, and worked his lips once or twice before any words emerged.
"But-princess-" he said, or gabbled, "the tower chamber will-it is very small, and it will be damp, and there is only the one window, and the ceiling is so very low, and the walls are not smooth, and enormously thick, they will be very oppressive, and surely one of your waiting-women can-er-attend your dog out-of-doors?"
Lissar refrained from laughing. She had, it was true, acquired waiting-women with her new rooms, or so it-or rather they-appeared; and the minister wished delicately to claim their assignment also. But Lissar knew that he had not been the only one looking her over, and knew also that he would not have been able to arrange for her new rooms entirely by himself and in secret. Some of the waiting-women were ladies, and had assigned themselves; some had been maneuvered into position by other ministers. Since the presence, and hypothetical usefulness, of waiting-women appealed to Lissar about as strongly as did the statue in the hall, it was not a point she felt compelled to dwell on.
"The bed-chamber you so beautifully set up for me is too large," said Lissar firmly, "and while I thank you very much," here she dropped a tiny curtsey-"the round room will suit me much better. I want a bed only so wide that my hands can touch either side simultaneously. And the rough walls can be hung over with rugs and drapes, pink, I think, because I like pink, which will also brighten it despite the one window and thick walls. These, with the fire that will be in the grate, will take care of the dampness. My waiting-women, perhaps, can make use of the bed-chamber."
The minister swallowed hard. He had little experience of dealing with anyone so apparently unmotivated by greed. He could not think what to do in this instance, and so in confusion and dismay he acquiesced, assuming he could regain lost ground-for he felt sure that somehow he had lost ground-later. He was too good a player to withdraw; this was but a pause to recoup.
In this he was mistaken, for in awakening to the fact that she had a mind to use, Lissar was discovering the pleasure of using it. And by using it, she came to know it. Had Ash not come to her, she might have discovered greed instead, for her world as she understood it had ended with her mother's death; and what she had learned by that death was that she was alone, and had always been alone, and had grown accustomed to it without knowing what she was accustoming herself to.
With the knowledge of her aloneness came the rush of self-declaration: I will not be nothing. She was fortunate, for Ash happened to her before the minister or his kind did. She understood that she was fortunate, but not for years would she understand how fortunate; she did not see, because she already had Ash, the threat that the minister really was, behind the machinations she saw quite well enough to wish to avoid.
The little tower room was furnished as she wished; and she herself began the work of reclaiming the garden, although she was frustrated in this for some time, since she could only guess at how to do what needed to be done. There was no one to ask; her muddy fingers and green-stained skirt-knees and hems horrified the waiting-women, whose ideas of gardening began and ended with baskets full of cut flowers and graceful pairs of shears specially made for a lady's soft delicate hands. Lissar, indeed, proved so odd in so many ways that one or two of the waiting-women decided at once that the game was not worth the candle, and disappeared as mysteriously as they had come. Some of the others stayed for the pleasure of a turn in the bed-chamber that had been outfitted for a princess.
A few of the waiting-women and one or two of the ministers (not including the one whose statue continued to grace the princess's receiving-room) had enough common sense to recognize what was under their noses, and cultivated relationships with Ash. Lissar, who was learning many things, rapidly formed a working definition of expediency, but could nonetheless not quite harden her heart against anyone who smiled at her dog. Ash, who thought that people existed to be playmates for puppies, was only too happy to be cultivated.
Lissar became friends with one of her ladies, not a great many years older than herself, who obviously was not pretending her affection for Ash, nor her admiration for a fleethound's beauty. It was novel and interesting to have a human friend, Lissar found, although a little alarming; she was never quite sure what she could say to Viaka. Viaka laughed, sometimes, at the things Lissar said, and although her laughter was never unkind, Lissar was puzzled that she had laughed at all, and thought it was perhaps because she, Lissar, had had so comparatively little practice talking to other people. But when she suggested this to Viaka, Viaka became so distressed that Lissar stopped in the middle of what she was saying. There was an unhappy little pause, and then Viaka patted Lissar's cheek and said, "You mustn't mind my laughing; I am a very frivolous person. Everyone knows that." But her eyes were sad as she said it, and not frivolous at all.