Sleeve touched the King's shoulder. "She is Nasilee's daughter. Imagine how much mercy she would have if she ever had the Flower Princess in her power."

At the mention of the Flower Princess, King Palicrovol bowed his head. "I remember the Flower Princess, Sleeve. I have not forgotten. This girl is so much Nasilee's daughter that even as I took her, she tried to seduce me. That is the sort of animal that was bred in Nasilee's palace."

Asineth went cold, for he sounded horrified at the memory. She had tried to be Berry, but this man only pitied her, and the others looked at her with contempt. Her shame before had been the shame of a King's daughter degraded; now her shame was of a woman despised, and she hated herself for having tried to make him love her, and hated Berry for being so much more beautiful than she, and hated Palicrovol and Zymas and Sleeve for knowing her pitiable attempt at womanhood, and hated most of all this unknown Flower Princess who never would be raped upon the Hart. She cried out against the gag, and Palicrovol ordered them to free her tongue. "If I am an animal, kill me!" she cried. With no crowd to watch her now, with all dignity gone, she was willing to beg. "Kill me now! Like my father!"

"But never Enziquelvinisensee Evelvenin," said Sleeve.

"No," said Palicrovol. "But we ask the gods for only one miracle in a lifetime."

"You have broken and humiliated her," Zymas said. "Nasilee's daughter will not forget."

"I have broken and humiliated her," Palicrovol echoed, "and killed her father before her eyes, and taken away her kingdom, and to harm her any more would make me despise myself more than I can bear. If I do not temper my victory with one act of mercy, even one that is dangerous to myself, then how will I look in the crystal and say to God that a better man than Nasilee now wears Nasilee's crown?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Sleeve stepped forward and took Asineth by one of the clumsy boards that encased her hands. "If you insist that this broken creature live, then put her in my care. I alone am strong enough to guard her in her exile, and hide her from the eyes of all your enemies who would love to find her and use her to destroy you."

"I need you by me," protested the new King.

"Then kill this woman."

Palicrovol hesitated no longer. "Take the little Queen, then, Sleeve, and be kind to her."

"I will be as kind to her as you will let me be to one whose only desire is to die," said Sleeve. "By my blood I wish that you had truly been merciful."

Sleeve enclosed her in the folds of his own robe, so that no one could see the naked body of the little Queen. Little Queen, thought Asineth. I will remember the name he called me, she told herself. He will know someday who is little, and who is great. Are you the strongest of all men, so strong that you can be merciful to me, a weak woman? Here is the undoing of your strength: I am not a weak woman. I am not a Little Queen. And your mercy will be your undoing. You will regret leaving me alive, and someday you will remember possessing me, and yearn to possess me again.

What was the third lesson that Asineth learned? She told me herself, many times, when she dwelt in your palace and you hopelessly wandered the forests of Burland.

Asineth learned that justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all. That would be useful to her. She would remember that. That is why she left you alive for three centuries when she had the power to kill you whenever she wished. As the Godsmen say, no act of mercy goes unrewarded. Ah, Palicrovol, will you not learn that mercy is as good as the person to whom the mercy is given? You spared Asineth, who should have died; now you will not spare Orem Scanthips, called Banningside, whose good heart should be born a hundred thousand times upon the earth. Are you like Asineth? Will you learn all your lessons backward?

3

The Descent of Beauty

This is how Beauty came into the world, struggling to find her true image among many faces.

The Priestess of Brack

The wizard fisher came in a smallish craft and without greeting built his hut on an unused place at the bottom end of the bay. The other fishermen of Brack eyed him carefully. His ship was too slow for a pirate, which was just as well—a pirate would starve on what he could steal from their fishing boats. His ship was rigged for just one man, and from the look of him he was not a sailor. So it was not jealousy that made them fear him. It was the way he kept himself covered in all weathers, as if he feared the sun; it was the stark white hair of his head, the gleam of pink in his eye like a crazed treehopper; it was his secret way. He knew more than they did, knew more than the wind as it teased the sea, knew more than the air-breathing octopus that spread himself on the water, knew more than the priestess of the Sweet Sisters who tended her burning stones at the point of the bay.

"What is he?" the fishermen asked their wives. "Who is he?" the wives asked the priestess. She touched the hot obsidian; the flesh of her finger sizzled; and she looked deep into her pain and said, "He rules by the power of blood. He finds shelter from storms in the open ocean. He finds shoals that make no whitecaps on the sea. He can dip into salt and bring up fair water. And the fish follow him dreaming, dreaming."

A wizard then, but not to be dreaded. So they took to watching him respectfully, and in a matter of weeks they learned that he meant to be kind. For if they followed him out to sea in the early hours before dawn, he would sail in his clumsy fashion for an hour or so, then stop and cast in his net. If the fishermen cast in their nets at that time, they found nothing. But if they waited until his net was full, if they watched as he laboriously brought it aboard, then he would sail back home, and they could then dip their nets into the sea and catch well, every day that they followed him, boats full to the brim with fish on some days, and never a day that the fish escaped entire.

So the coming of the pink-eyed wizard brought good to Brack. Not that they ever became friendly with the man. It's never good to mingle with folk who draw their power from the living blood. Besides, even if they had lost all their fear of the wizard fisherman, there was his daughter.

It seemed at first that she hardly knew she was a woman. She never left his side, and when he drew in his heavy nets, there she was beside him, pulling on her side, and pulling well—when the fishermen still thought she was a lad, they praised the boy among themselves for his hard work, if not for his skill. They knew soon enough that she was a woman, though. If the wizard dressed too much under the hot sun of the southern sea, his daughter dressed too little, wearing dungarees like a man, and casting away her shirt when the day was blazing, until back and breast alike were burnt dark: She seemed at first to care nothing for their gaze; as time passed, however, they began to think she was something of a wanton, shedding her clothing deliberately, so they would see her. They saw how her breasts grew fuller and more sluggishly pendulous as she worked. They saw how her belly swelled. She could not be more than a year or two into womanhood, and yet she was full of a child.

The priestess of the Sweet Sisters knew better, however. She, too, could count the months, but when she poured tears, sweat, and seawater drops on the hot pumice, they beaded up and stayed, skittering for a moment, then drifting across the rough stone like a fleet of sailboats in a bay, runing for her the message of the Sweet Sisters to this watcher by the sea. It was no incestuous child that would be born, but a daughter whose blood was filled with awesome power: a ten-month child ruled by the moon from her birth.