Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee (best e book reader .TXT) 📕

or brush ing off the surfaces. On approaching the kitchen, though, itwas usually remarkable only for its stillness and the lazy buzz of talk.

Tanaquil opened the door.

The cook sat on her chair with her feet on the row of ovens, most of which were cold. Two scullery maids were playingScorpions and Ladders, and the third was embroidering. None of

the sweeper boys was present. A large pot of yellow tea was onthe table, and a plate of pancakes. “Here’s your clock,” said Tanaquil, delivering it. She took apancake and poured herself some tea.

“There now. It goes. Just look. What a clever lady.”

“Is there anything else that wants mending?” asked Tanaquil.For five years, this was all that had stopped her from going mad,she thought. And there always was something. But as if out of spite the cook shook her shaggy head. “Not a thing. And thatdoll you saw to for Pillow’s child is still lovely, moving its armsand going Mamaa!”

“And she’s tried ever so hard to break it again,” said Pillow,the embroiderer. “Well, if there’s nothing,” said Tanaquil, trying to sound businesslike. She felt dejected.“Let’s see,” said the cook, “would the lady like to make a cake?”

Tanaquil fought with a blush. “No, thank you.” The cook had comforted Tanaquil when she was little, letting her make iced biscuits and gingerbread camels in the ovens, to keep her frombeing bored and lonely. But this was not the answer now. Evenmending something was not, although it would have helped. “I’llbe on my way,” said Tanaquil airily.

As she closed the kitchen door, she heard the cook say toPillow, “Madam really ought to have done something with that girl, it’s a waste.”

A waste, thought Tanaquil as she went back up the stairsfrom the kitchen. I’ve been wasted. And she shouted at a large ratthat was quietly coming down. The rats had never been infectedwith magical speech, or never bothered to use it if they had.Nevertheless it looked offended.

Tanaquil climbed again up the fortress. She now seemed toherself to have spent most of her days going up and down andaround it. She came out on one of the lower battlements, where the captain of the soldiers had his apartment in a turret. In fact hewas out on the wall walk with four of his men, rolling woodenballs at a mark.

“It’s the young lady,” said one of the soldiers.

They all straightened up and saluted her.

The captain offered her his beer flagon, but she refused.

“Nothing to repair,” said the captain. “You may have heardthe cannon go off last week—Borrik thought he saw an army

coming, but it was that dust storm, of course. Even so, the machine worked a treat, thanks to that hinge you saw to.”

“Oh.” said Tanaquil. “And the bows?”

“First class. Even Iggel’s throw-knife works, after you fixedthe balance. I expect something or other will go wrong in a dayor so,” he added encouragingly.

Tanaquil had a sudden humiliating idea that some of thekinder soldiers might muck up their equipment simply in order to give her something to do.

“What a relief,” said Tanaquil. “A free afternoon at last!” And she sauntered off.

The other occasional thing Tanaquil had been doing over the weeks, months, years of her life in Jaive’s fortress, had been to gofor a Walk. Her first memories of Walks were that her nurse— naturally, Jaive had had little time to spare—took Tanaquil upand down all the corridors, and sometimes out into the inner courtyard, which was quite large, and planted with orange trees,grapevines, laurel hedges, and one dusty dilapidated palm only thirteen feet high. At one end of the yard was a kitchen garden,rather overgrown, some grass where goats were penned, and anornate stone well on which was a stone eagle. Now and then theeagle changed shape, and it was always the first thing the littleTanaquil ran to see: Once it had looked like an ostrich. ThenTanaquil would play in the courtyard, alone but for the nurse, for there had been no children anywhere near her own age. AsTanaquil grew older, and the nurse more elderly, the Walks wended outside the fortress. In the beginning Tanaquil had beenvery interested in the desert. She had made sand castles of neaterappearance than the fortress. But beyond the shadow of the fortress’s walls, the dunes blistered. There was no oasis for miles, no village. The fort contained the only water. When she was older still, Tanaquil used to set out for the rock hills. The nursenever made it so far, and used to stand feebly calling on the sand,under her parasol. Tanaquil was twelve before she managed to getto the rocks. Her triumph was marred because there was abso lutely nothing on the other side but more sand exactly the same as the rest, stretching away and away to the lavender horizon.

Now Tanaquil went for a Walk every other day, solely toease her restlessness with exercise. The Walk was completely boring and purposeless. But to do it she must put on bootsagainst the burning sand and cover her red head with a silk scarf

tied with a band of ribbon. She would walk as far as the rock hills, sit in their shade, and drink some water she had brought with her. Sometimes she climbed their sides, and dug out small,frail fossils with her knife. Then perhaps she would walk a mileor so further off, west, across the sands. When she did this she fantasized to herself that she was leaving home. That just out ofsight was a mighty city of tiled walls, domes and gardens, foun tains, markets and noisy crowds. But she knew from the lessons her mother had given her for an hour every day until she wasfourteen, that although there was a city, it was a hundred milesoff. Nor in all her life had Tanaquil ever seen a caravan cross thedesert near Jaive’s fortress. They did not come this way. Strang ers were limited to desert traders, herders, and wild dogs and jackals. Near sunset, Tanaquil would face up to facts, turn round,and come back from the