Chapter 9

62

Chapter 9

A gift , they called her song. Oriane had never thought to consider it as such, but it felt like one now. Some people were born with a gift for music, crafting melodies from instruments or words. Some put words on paper, painting pictures in a reader's mind. Some painted real pictures, capturing beauty or feeling with brush and canvas and pigment. Oriane had learned all that from her books and from her father's stories. But she had never thought of the gift she might possess. Perhaps it was as precious as that of the musician or the writer or the artist. Perhaps she could bring people joy or help them through sorrow, not with a ballad, book or portrait, but by calling for the sun, just as she had always done.

The rest of the morning flew by in a blur. She ate a sumptuous meal, then penned a quick, excited letter to her father, extending the king's invitation for them both to stay at the palace. Andala soon returned to help her change out of her buttery gown and into a plainer, less elaborate one. It felt more like what she usually wore, though it was still ten times finer than anything she owned.

Oriane didn't see the king or Hana again throughout the day, but soon after she had changed, Kitt arrived at her door.

‘I wondered if you might like to take a tour of the palace,' he said, the corners of his kind eyes crinkling. 63

‘I would love that,' Oriane replied at once. ‘Thank you.' She hesitated, then turned to Andala, who was fitting the yellow gown carefully to a hanger. ‘Would you care to come too, Andala?'

Andala's gaze shot to her, then to Kitt. Oriane wondered whether she'd done the wrong thing. Perhaps it was not her place to have invited her lady's maid on such an excursion, or maybe—

‘Perhaps I will join you later,' Andala said, returning her attention to the gown.

‘Of course,' Kitt said immediately, and Oriane breathed a silent sigh of relief; whatever her faux pas had been, it seemed forgotten now. ‘The gardens are the best part of the whole place, of course, but I'd be pleased to show you around the palace itself first, and perhaps my workroom—'

A little scoff sounded from across the room. ‘So you can pester her with questions and study her like one of your experiments?' Andala asked, raising her eyebrows as she hung Oriane's dress in the wardrobe. ‘Very subtle.' She must have caught Oriane's faint look of alarm, because she added briskly, ‘You've nothing to worry about. He's a boffin, but he's also annoyingly honourable.'

Kitt ignored all of this, turning a gracious smile Andala's way. ‘You really should join us later, Andala. It's a beautiful day out – some sunshine in the gardens might do you good. Have I told you you've been looking a touch ghostly lately?'

Andala shot him a wry look, but amusement tugged at one corner of her mouth, so there was no real venom in it.

‘Do you know each other well?' Oriane asked, looking between them curiously. There was a familiarity to their exchange that suggested something more than the usual courtier–servant relationship.

Kitt nodded. Then his eyes widened as he caught the meaning of her glance. ‘But oh, skies, not like that .' 64

Oriane laughed; she couldn't help it.

Andala rolled her eyes at Kitt. ‘I'll try not to be offended,' she said dryly. Then to Oriane, ‘We're friends. Kitt …' She paused, seeming to consider him. ‘He has always been kind to me, even though someone of his position doesn't have to be.'

Oriane was touched by the hint of tenderness in Andala's voice. Friends. This must be what friendship was like, then. Kindness, and teasing, and a comfortable intimacy.

She wanted so badly to experience it for herself.

‘Oriane?' Kitt was saying gently. She realised she must have been staring vacantly. Trying to pull herself together, she smiled at them both.

‘I would love to see the palace. When can we go?'

After Andala agreed to meet them in the gardens later, Kitt took Oriane on a whirlwind tour of the palace, which culminated in her favourite space by far: his workroom.

She was taken aback by the size of the chambers. They comprised three huge spaces, separated by partitions: one was filled with bottles and vials and various medical equipment, one housed Kitt's living quarters, and one was dominated by an enormous wooden workbench, littered with peculiar tools and bits of metal.

‘You're an inventor, too,' Oriane marvelled. Of course – what was it the king had called him? A jack of all trades . The room was filled with contraptions and creations. A long brass cylinder mounted on three curved feet stood poised at an angle by the window. A strange device full of metal wheels and levers sat in the middle of the workbench, surrounded by papers covered with diagrams and calculations. 65

‘I don't really like to call myself that,' Kitt said. ‘ Inventor implies a certain sense of usefulness in the things I build. In reality, I'm a grown man still playing around with toys.'

In Oriane's opinion, he was being absurdly modest. She watched, enraptured, as he showed her the intricate workings of a large mechanical clock and a tiny rabbit he'd made entirely of metal, whose ears actually moved when the right gears were pulled.

‘But you made all these,' she insisted. ‘Toys or not, they're wonderful, Kitt.'

‘I made most of them,' he corrected. ‘Andala actually bought me this one.' He picked up a tiny wooden box and turned a key at its side, and to Oriane's delight, it began to play a delicate, twinkling tune. ‘It's a traditional song from Sengela, the country where my parents were born. They arrived here on board a tiny boat a few years before they had me.'

‘Why did they leave your homeland?' Oriane asked, fascinated. She had thought leaving her own home was a leap into the unknown; it was nothing compared to travelling across the vast, unknowable ocean.

Kitt considered this, turning the music box over in his hands. ‘They wanted a different life, I suppose. Not so much for themselves as for their future children. For my brother and me.'

‘You have a brother!' Oriane had wished for a brother when she was younger. Or a sister; any kind of sibling, really.

‘I do. But I haven't seen him in a long time. He went back to Sengela after our parents died.'

‘Oh.' Something told Oriane not to pry here, not to probe at the bruise she thought she heard beneath Kitt's breezy tone as he spoke of his family. ‘Would you ever want to go there? To Sengela?' she asked instead. 66

‘Yes.' He was still studying the contraption in his hands, too intently to really be seeing it. ‘Yes, I think I would.'

Oriane found herself unsure how to respond. It was the first time that afternoon she'd so keenly felt the gap in her own experience – the lack of interactions with others that might have taught her what to say, when to say it. Fortunately, Kitt broke the silence, bouncing back to his usual self.

‘Speaking of families – when do you think we should expect your father to arrive?'

Oriane clapped a hand to her chest, aghast. Her father . She'd written to invite him to the palace that morning, but in all her rapture over the sights she'd seen since, she had completely forgotten to pass on the letter to the king's messenger.

Kitt was frowning at her. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I have a message for him that I have not yet passed on to be delivered,' she admitted. ‘You don't think it's too late, do you?'

‘Not at all.' Kitt stood and offered her a hand up from the workbench where they sat. ‘I know where to find Marcel, and he's always up for a job. If we catch him soon, he might even be able to get away and back before dark.'

Oriane hoped so. Guilt seeped like poison through her insides as she pictured her father alone in their cottage, staring at the sky as it darkened towards the close of another day. There is no need to come after me , she'd written in her first letter. I will be home with you soon .

It would be all right, Oriane reassured herself. Soon her father would be here with her instead.

Before they had gone more than twenty steps into the hall outside Kitt's chambers, a figure emerged from a corridor and into their path.

‘Afternoon, Terault,' Kitt greeted him. 67

Terault gave a smile and a neat bow. ‘Kittrick. Lady Oriane. What good fortune I have to run into you. I trust you are settling in well?' His question was directed at Oriane. She nodded gratefully.

‘We were just on our way to find Marcel,' Kitt explained. ‘Lady Oriane has a message for delivery to her father.'

‘Well, this is good fortune indeed – I happen to be on my way to see Marcel myself.' Terault looked to Oriane. ‘We see rather a lot of each other, with the amount of correspondence I must carry out on the king's behalf.' He patted his breast pocket, where Oriane imagined all manner of important messages must lie.

‘Will he be available to deliver my message, my lord?' she asked, anxious that she had missed her opportunity. ‘If he has other business to attend to for the king?'

‘I will make sure of it,' Terault said. ‘You have my word.'

Kitt nodded at her encouragingly, so Oriane fished the letter out of her pocket. Terault tucked it away, then, with another bow, bid them good day and turned smartly on his heel to return the way he'd come.

‘Lord Terault?' Oriane called after him, her voice tentative.

He turned back. ‘My lady?'

‘Did … did Marcel have any message for me, when he came back from delivering my first letter? Any word in return from my father?' She had been sure her father would have sent some reply; perhaps it had been forgotten by the king's messenger, busy as he was.

Or perhaps he is too angry with me to respond.

She tried to brush the thought away, but her heart sank as Terault's expression softened with regret, or sympathy. ‘I am sorry, Lady Oriane, but Marcel brought no message. I will ask, though, that he request a reply with this next missive.' 68

‘Thank you,' Oriane said quietly. She hoped that reply might not be a letter at all, but her father himself, arriving at the palace. Then she might be able to relax fully, with him back by her side.

‘Are you well, Oriane?'

The question snapped her out of her fog of worry. Terault had disappeared, and Kitt was appraising her, looking concerned.

She nodded. ‘Perfectly well.'

‘You'll hear from him soon, I'm sure of it,' Kitt said. ‘And I very much look forward to meeting him when he arrives.'

Oriane managed a smile, grateful for his kindness.

He offered her his arm with a wink. ‘In the meantime, Lady Lark, might you accompany me on a ramble through the gardens?'

Andala met them outside, and the three of them spent the afternoon wandering the expansive gardens that surrounded the palace. Oriane had never seen a more beautiful place. There were people out here, too – people other than the handful she'd met since she arrived. She hardly knew where to look first: at the flowers or the fascinating strangers who walked among them.

But even more than the sights, she enjoyed the conversation. It thrilled her to be able to talk with Kitt and Andala as if it were nothing out of the ordinary – as if this were not the first occasion she had spent time like this with anyone but her father.

Kitt did ask her a lot of questions, as Andala had predicted he would, but they didn't seem to be solely borne of scientific interest. He wanted to know about her life before she had come here. About her father and their cottage, and what had happened to her mother. The last he asked with careful delicacy, but Oriane 69 didn't mind talking about her mother. She couldn't remember Ilana, so the pain of having lost her wasn't as sharp as it might have been otherwise.

‘She died the day I was born,' she explained as they meandered past fruit trees and flowerbeds. On her left, Kitt was listening with his head lowered respectfully, but to her right, Andala's scrutiny was like sunlight on her cheek. ‘She was the skylark before me, of course. And her mother before her, all the way down our line.'

‘And she transferred her power to you? Right before she died?' Andala asked.

Oriane frowned. ‘I'm not sure transferred is the right word. I … inherited it, I suppose, as all the larks do.'

Andala nodded slowly, now staring at the path beneath their feet.

‘And your power …' Kitt began.

‘Here he goes,' Andala muttered, and Oriane stifled a grin.

‘Could you describe it to me? How it works, how it feels?'

Oriane was silent a moment, trying to figure out how to put it into words. ‘I'm not sure how it works, exactly, but I do know that it's as if … as if there's some sort of tether between the sun and me …' She put a hand to her heart, imagining the end of the tether there. ‘And when I transform it pulls taut. And when I sing, it's as if I'm pulling the sun above the horizon – but it's not heavy, or difficult. It's like breathing, really. Something I do without thinking, that I suppose I couldn't stop even if I tried.'

The gravel footpath crunched as they walked on. A breeze ran its fingers along the hedges, the carefully manicured leaves shivering in response. Somewhere nearby, a bird was singing. Its warbling call was much more melodic than Oriane's.

‘ Have you tried? Can you control the transformation?' Kitt asked. ‘The process of turning back and forth?' 70

‘Turning back, yes. It took me a while to master it, but now I feel quite confident that I can become human again at will. Turning into the lark, though … I'm not so sure.' Oriane paused. ‘I've never actually tried to transform outside of the usual period at the end of the night. It just comes over me – the feeling that it's time. And then it happens.'

‘Perhaps that's something we could experiment with together,' Kitt said, smiling warmly at her. ‘If you're interested, of course.'

She had never really thought about it before, but she supposed it might be a useful thing to learn. It was her power, after all – why shouldn't she master it? ‘I'd like that,' she said.

‘If you'll excuse me,' Andala said suddenly, ‘I've been neglecting my duties this afternoon. I'll see you back in your rooms to help you get ready for dinner. I expect the king will want to dine with you.'

And with that she took off, rounding a green-hedged corner and disappearing from view.

Oriane looked at Kitt, puzzled.

‘She tends to do that,' he said with an apologetic grimace. ‘Once she's ready to leave, she'll leave, propriety or politeness notwithstanding. I've tried to tell her it will get her into trouble one day.'

Oriane smiled and waved it off. But there was something about Andala's abrupt departure that didn't sit right with her. A feeling of something unfinished, like the sun going down on an argument, or an unresolved cadence in a song.