Banks, Iain Culture 06 Inversions

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identical twin sisters and to whom the King seemed to have taken a particular shine. Each had gold-green
eyes, yellow-white tangles of hair and seemed to be almost but not entirely in control of tall, sinuous
bodies that in places appeared to defy the law of gravity. Each was clothed in a cream-coloured dress
edged with red piping and ruffled with lace, which, if not exactly what a rustic shepherdess might wear,
was perhaps what a famously handsome and well-endowed actress might have worn if she was taking
part in an expensively produced Romantic Play which featured rustic shepherdesses. One such creature
might have caused a normal fellow's heart to melt into his boots. That there were two such beauties
capable of occupying the same world at once seemed unfair. Especially as both seemed quite as taken
with the King as he did with them.
I confess that I had been unable to take my eyes off the two golden-brown globes which bulged like
swollen fawn moons at the lacy cream horizon of each girl's bodice. The sunlight poured down over those
perfect orbs, highlighting the nearly invisibly fine down there, their voices tinkled like the fountains, their
musky perfume filled the air, and the King's very talk and tone taunted and teased with the implication of
romance.
`Yes, those little red ones. Some of those. Mmm. Deli-cious. How one does enjoy those little red ones,
eh?'
The two girls giggled.
`How's it looking, Vosill?' the King said, still smirking. `When can I start chasing these girls?' He made
to lunge at the shepherdesses and tried to grab them, but they yelped and danced out of the way. `They
keep getting away from me, dammit. When can I start hunting them properly?'
`Properly, sir? How would that be?' the Doctor asked.
The Doctor and I were there tending to the King's ankle. The Doctor changed the strapping on it every
day. Sometimes she changed it twice a day if the King had been out riding or hunting. As well as the
swelling from the sprain, there was a small cut on the ankle which was taking its time to heal, and the
Doctor was scrupulous in keeping this cleaned and treated, nevertheless it still seemed to me that any
common nurse or even chamber-servant could have performed this function. However, the King
appeared to want the Doctor to do it each day herself, and she seemed quite happy to acquiesce. I
cannot think of any other doctor who might have made an excuse not to treat the King, but she was quite
capable of it.
`Why, properly in the sense of having a decent chance of catching them, Vosill,' the King said, leaning
forward towards the Doctor and using what is, I believe, called a stage whisper. The two shepherdesses
laughed tinklingly.
'Decent, sir? How so?' the Doctor asked, and blinked, it seemed to me, more than the flower- and
leaf-shaded sunlight called for.
'Vosill, stop asking these childish questions and tell me when I may run again.'
`Oh, you may run now, sir. But it would be most painful, and your ankle would probably give way within
a few dozen steps. But you most certainly can run.'
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`Aye, run but fall over,' the King said, sitting back and reaching for his wine glass.
The Doctor glanced at the two shepherdesses. `Well,' she said, `perhaps something soft would break
your fall.'
She sat at the King's feet with her back to Duke Walen, cross-legged. This odd and unladylike position
was one she adopted often, seemingly without thinking, and which made her adoption of men's clothes,
or at least some part of them, almost a necessity. For once, the Doctor had changed out of her long
boots. She wore dark hose and soft pointed shoes of velvet. The King's feet rested on solid sil-ver
footstools topped with plump cushions, vividly dyed and patterned. The Doctor washed the King's feet
as usual, inspected them and, on this occasion, carefully trimmed his toe-nails. I was left to sit on a small
stool at her side, holding her bag open while she lost herself in this labour.
`Would you break my fall, my lovelies?' the King asked, sitting back in his chair.
The two girls dissolved into laughter again. (The Doc-tor, I think, muttered something about being most
sure to if he landed on their heads.)
`They might break your heart, sir,' Adlain observed, smiling.
`Indeed,' Walen said. `With one to pull in each direction, a man might suffer terribly.'
The two serving girls giggled and fed more little pieces of fruit to the King, who made to tickle them with
a long feather from a fan-tailed tsigibern. Musicians played on a terrace behind us, fountains plashed
melodiously, insects hummed but did not annoy us, the air was fresh and full of the scent of flowers and
freshly tilled and watered earth, and the two servant girls bent and leant to pop fruits into the King's
mouth, then squealed, jumped and jiggled when he lunged at them with his feather. I confess I was glad I
did not have to pay too much attention to what the Doctor was doing.
`Do try to keep still, sir,' she muttered as the King stabbed at the two girls with the tsigibern feather.
Chamberlain Wiester came panting up the path beneath the flowers and vines, his splendidly buckled
shoes glinting in the sunlight and crunching on the semi-precious path stones. `Duke Quettil, your
majesty,' he announced. A blare of trumpets and a clash of cymbals sounded from the garden gates,
followed by the roaring scream of what sounded like a fierce and angry animal. `And retinue,' Wiester
added.
Duke Quettil arrived with a bevy of maidens scattering scent-crushed petals in his path, a troupe of
jugglers tossing glittering clubs back and forth across the path, a band of trumpeteers and cymbalists, a
pride of chokered, growling galkes each with its own grim, oiled and mus-cled handler straining to keep
his charge in order, a school of identically dressed clerks and retainers, a clutch of beefy-looking men [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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