Prince of Time

Chapter Twenty-One - Masquerade

The masquerade ball was like nothing Maple had ever seen. A riot of colour, pillars strung with flowers and ribbons, music playing, dancers in coloured silk swirling: it was an overwhelming kaleidoscope of the senses.

 Maple stood to one side, absently twirling a fan around her hand, watching the proceedings. Her mask dangled from her wrist. She was again in green, with pinned hair and painted face. It seemed unbelievable.

“Hello.”

She turned, and blinked. Tobiah had chosen an eagle’s mask, a simple one in brown and gold. It was as if he was trying to emphasise his differences from the frosted peacocks and prowling cats of the Duke’s court.

“Hello,” Maple forced a smile. “Isn’t this a fabulous party?”

“If you insist on small talk, I’ll leave right now,” Tobiah looked out across the sea of dancers.

Maple hesitated. “I met Lilia. Apparently we’re best friends.”

Tobiah gave a quiet snort. “That sounds like Lilia.”

“She says you and her are going to be married.”

“She giggles,” Tobiah said, in a final tone.

“She seemed…nice,” Maple ventured.

Tobiah gave her a look that said that no amount of niceness could ever make up for the capital offence of giggling. Maple was almost inclined to agree.

“How do you intend to get out of it?” Maple wondered. “It seemed very fixed for her.”

“In a political sense, it is,” Tobiah agreed. “It makes perfect sense. She is distantly aligned to the throne but the complications of her gender make that confusing if she remains unmarried. The sensible thing to do is bolster her chances and marry high.”

“Marry a prince,” Maple clarified.

“Exactly,” Tobiah nodded at her. “Particularly a prince of a small kingdom that Harian wishes to reabsorb. Should Lilia have to take the crown, I will take it beside her and the two will merge into merely separate states. It is desirable for Harian nobility.”

“And you’ll go along with it?”

Tobiah sighed. “No, I’ll find a way to get out of it somehow. Elope. Run away. Sell my soul.”

“Why won’t you marry her?” Maple asked, reasonably. “You might grow to love her, and politically it will help you.”

Tobiah ran a hand through his hair. “Here you can choose which prince you want to be serving.”

“What?”

“Ladies don’t say ‘what’ in that tone,” Tobiah informed her, loftily. “They say ‘pardon’.”

“And warriors say ‘what’,” Maple resisted the temptation to kick him in the shins. “What?”

“Do you want the good prince, the one with light in his soul, or do you want the dark one who slashes open the faces of innocent girls?”

“The good one,” Maple decided. “Definitely.”

Tobiah shrugged. “I don’t want to ruin the life of someone as innocently oblivious to a painful world as Lilia is.”

Maple considered. “Just out of interest, what was the other option?”

“I’m a selfish person and I don’t want my life destroyed by being forever tethered to a vapid, giggling doll of a girl who will continue to grate on my nerves until the day I die.”