Rosaliy

Rosaliy ran her pencil down a list of new names. Those loops, curves, and edges held so much excitement —so full of new stories and unforeseen potential.

“Chasma?”

“That's me,” said the bright-eyed girl with the wispy curls.

Pencil checkmark.

“Viola?”

“Right here.” Viola's timid response was a shy half whisper.

Check.

“Illona?”

An explosion punctuated by half a dozen shrieks brought attendance screeching to a halt.

Such an incident required immediate investigation, so Rosaliy scooted her handful of confused young girls toward the disturbance. They did not have far to travel to find the source—a huddle of blond heads in the middle of a grisly scene at the entryway to the palace. Sprayed across the front staircase and a different handful of slightly older spluttering children were the remains of a pulpy fruit. If Rosaliy had to guess, she would have guessed something in the squash family.

Introduction Day had suddenly become much more interesting for her new students. Rosaliy's young girls hung back, agape, watching orange pulp slide down a banister and ooze onto the floor.

She wanted to laugh, but instead, she crossed her arms and fixed a serious expression on her face, one befitting the Sorceress in charge of the early magical training of impressionable young girls.

“What happened here?”

A sea of little blond heads parted for her, revealing at its heart two heads of dark hair streaked with orange goop. She should have known. Without a word, the boy pointed a finger at the girl who was in front of a charred smudge—the epicenter of a sticky explosion.

“Tansy,” Rosaliy chided with a mix of patience and disapproval that seemed appropriate to the situation. “What did you do?”

The dark-haired girl rushed into an explanation. “I needed to turn a pumpkin into a coach, like the story. I know it would have worked, except all Zetta could find was a butter gourd, so that's probably what the problem was.”

The little girl put her hands on her hips and glared disapprovingly at the black smudge on the ground where the naughty gourd had been.

“Oh, this is the gourd's fault, is it?” said Rosaliy, dangerously on the edge of laughter.

“Must be!” she agreed emphatically. “Because by the time it was big enough to turn into a carriage, it just...well...you see. Boom!” Her small orange-streaked hands pantomimed the catastrophe.

Boom was right. A pile of slimy seeds dropped on Rosaliy from the ceiling. As amused as she was by this catastrophe, the timing was awful.

“You'll have to clean up this mess,” she told Tansy.

The girl's green eyes lit up, and her hands rose.

“By hand,” Rosaliy quickly elaborated. “Not magic. And you'll all need to help if we're to have this cleaned up by the time the emissaries arrive.”

Tansy was popular enough to weather the storm of an unjust punishment inflicted on her friends. Perhaps her little co-conspirators would even make an effort at being the voice of reason next time, not that reason would have much effect on Tansy.

Tansy's pale face scrunched up, and she whined, “Can't the servants just—”

“Don't you finish that sentence, or you'll be explaining it to your mother,” Rosaliy threatened. “You know how busy they are preparing for all the guests.”

Tansy flushed pink and her green eyes were suddenly very interested in the floor. “I'm sorry, Rose,” she squeaked.

She was sorry. She was always sorry eventually.

Rosaliy knelt down in front of the girl and used her thumb to scrape off a pile of pulp oozing its way down Tansy's cheek.

“Sorry doesn't make an entryway and a staircase spotless,” she said, but her blue eyes sparkled with forgiveness when she said it. “Get to work!”

Tansy spun and clapped her hands, waving the older girls to gather around. They gathered, because this was Tansy. “Ok, we're all trapped in the evil dragon's fortress in the Burning Mountains,” she told her friends, “and there's lava seeping in to the dungeon everywhere. The only way to save ourselves and defeat the dragon is to gather up the lava and...”

Rosaliy missed the end of the break-out plan because the servants had sensed the destruction of their carefully-ordered stairway and swooped in with a mountain of cleaning cloths and soapy water. Rosaliy put them on strict order not to let Tansy get out of doing the work. She would have reassured her impressionable new charges next, but Tansy had already co-opted them into the dragon dungeon escape. They were cheerfully busy scraping gourd chunks into a growing pile in the middle of the floor while secretly hoping someday they, too, would be powerful enough to explode fruit.

Poor little Taurin appeared to have borne the brunt of the explosion. In fact, he always seemed to get the sticky end of his twin sister's schemes. Rosaliy picked a few shards of gourd out of his sticky dark hair and declared him a lost cause.

“You're going to need a bath and a change of clothes, Duck,” she told him. Always waddling after his sisters since the minute he could walk, that was the nickname that stuck. He groaned.

“And wash your hair,” she chided the unhappy boy. “With soap.”

“But Roooooose,” he moaned.

“You'd best hurry before your papa sees you,” she chided, “or there will be jasmine oil involved.”

That threat got him moving as quickly as she hoped it might. Taurin would live outside if he could, covered in mud from head to toe.

Rosaliy's morning had been derailed, but that was nothing new. Maybe she could salvage some magical training after all.

“May I borrow that?” she asked a girl using a thick cloth to shovel pulp into a pile. The girl was too happy to hand over her cleaning tool.

Rosaliy waved over her young trainees.

“While we're in the Glade or near magical people like Tansy, we can use our own magic,” she said. “You each have special talents, and you'll learn what they are by practicing all sorts of magic.”

Five sets of glowing blue eyes watched her, and a few more stopped their frantic cleaning to see as well. These girls were from vastly different kingdoms and ways of life, but magic linked them all.

“I've always been good with animals and enchanting objects, myself,” explained Rosaliy.

She concentrated on the cloth, feeling the swirling magic of the palace respond to her call, drawn to her like an old friend. The edges of the cloth fluttered. It hopped a few times and jerked upward until it leapt from her hands and arced skyward, cloth corners flapping like a bird.

Rosaliy waved it toward the gooey mess, and the cloth bird set to scrubbing the ceiling.

“Will we be able to do that someday?” whispered Viola.

“If you return to train here next year, you'll be able to do much more,” Rosily promised, but qualified, “with practice.”

“Wow,” breathed Chasma, watching the cloth flutter about the ceiling.

This group of mesmerized girls appeared highly interested in returning to train at Crystal Palace, which was a relief because Rosaliy had no time to finish her standard introductory speech.

By now, the interference of the children had become more of a punishment to the servants than to the mischievous magic trainees, so Rosaliy shooed the girls away to get cleaned up.

Tansy's wild dark-curled head dashed out of sight. At five, she was already manipulating objects. Incredible. Rosaliy was a quick learner, but even at nineteen, she did not have a fraction of Tansy's natural talent or her Naxturaen blood. Tansy had generated a weather system last week—thunder and lightning at lunch. How much more powerful would Tansy be in five years? Ten?

Consumed with her thoughts, Rosaliy almost ran headlong into someone else in a hurry. Before she could offer an apology or a greeting, there was a clatter at the door.

“The Baysellians,” she moaned, wondering just how disheveled she looked.

“I'm assuming the servants are scrambling to clean up after that explosion?” asked the man.

“Yes, Sir,” she agreed.

“Do I need more than one guess as to the perpetrator?”

“No, Sir. She wanted to turn a pumpkin into a carriage today.”

“That may be my fault,” the man chuckled. “How close did she get?”

“She seems to have inflated it like a balloon, more or less. It was the size of a carriage when it finally—” She waved her hands, at a loss for words.

He reached forward and picked a gooey seed from the pile of gourd sliding down her shoulder. “I see,” he mused, green eyes sparkling. “Since everyone is busy, you'd best help me with the doors.”

The massive wooden doors stretched high above them, and opening them did take cooperative effort. They could see the Baysellian emissaries below handing over horses and regrouping.

Rosaliy smoothed back her hair, but her fingers ran through slime. There was no hope for her.

“I'm sorry,” said the man, but the twinkle in his eyes and the smirk on his lips said otherwise.

The group swept inside, spilling into the marble entryway like a wave. Rosaliy chuckled over the metaphor to herself, because this group was from the Bayselle protectorate hugging the ocean. She was by no means well traveled, but she did meet families from all four protectorates, and Baysellians were the easiest to identify at a glance. They carried the sun and salt of their ocean kingdom with them wherever they went. She would recognize their white blond hair, clear blue eyes, and sun-browned skin anywhere. Plus, they all had a distinctive odor, a little like salty fish. The smell was more exotic than unpleasant.

The group's leader stomped in, trying to look important. Bayselle was going through a period of upheaval. The monarchy had all but dissolved, and Bayselle was fragmented into smaller ruled segments of land, controlled by local leaders or pirates or merchant conglomerates. Those factions were meeting here to discuss ground rules that might ease the mounting tension in the area.

In other words, several leaders who were new at the game of politics were coming to Crystal Palace to pretend at being more important than they were. This one was looking for a queen, so his eyes scanned Rosaliy first. He found someone he probably assumed was a kitchen assistant losing a battle to dessert.

“Welcome to Crystal Palace,” greeted the man next to her.

The leader's eyes swung his way, and he puffed out his chest, like a cat trying to look bigger than he was.

“Inform the Queen that Cliffinzo of the Lansilia Coalition has arrived,” ordered Cliffinzo of the Lansilia Coalition, presumably.

Then he waited for someone to comply with his order. He must not have realized whom he was addressing.

“You must be confu--” Rosaliy tried to interject.

“--exhausted,” interrupted the man next to her with a devious smile.

“Yes, thank you,” said Cliffinzo, puffing up again with his self-importance. “The horses need to be watered and we could use...all the normal things after an arrival from a trip.” He actually waved his hand here, like that was what people did when ordering others to do their bidding. He was lucky Queen Katyrinna was not here to see this.

“Of course,” the man next to her agreed with overdone sympathy. “After such a long trip.”

Rosaliy raised her eyebrows, but he just grinned back, green eyes sparkling with mischief. As much as Issabeth got the blame for Tansy's rambunctiousness, Rosaliy knew where that facet of the little girl's personality had come from.

Cliffinzo smiled broadly, pleased with himself for ordering servants around successfully. “Drake, hand over our things.”

Loaded down with the well-worn bags of travelers and not wealthy diplomats, Drake was in the middle of taking in the beautiful entryway of Crystal Palace. He had been ogling the oak tree growing in the corner when Cliffinzo's order hit him.

“To...to him?” stammered Drake, gripping the bags he was not about to hand over.

Rosaliy liked Drake immediately, although she did wonder how his pompous friend had talked him into making this trip. He looked as if he might turn and bolt at any moment.

“Of course,” said Cliffinzo, annoyed.

With his eyes, Drake tried to explain Cliffinzo's faux pas to him, but the Baysellian was too busy pretending like he was not close friends with his servant to notice. “But he's—”

“Very skilled at his job, I'm sure,” Cliffinzo interrupted.

For the second time today, Rosaliy had to hide a serious case of laughter.

“Very skilled,” mused the man. “It's true. That's what I tell everyone, anyway. Come with me, Drake.” He winked at

Rosaliy and left her with the delegation. They surely deserved the treatment, but she did not see how she did.

She attempted an introduction. “I’m Sorceress Rosaliy.”

Cliffinzo reevaluated her. She was now worthy of speaking to. She fought the urge to roll her eyes.

“Will the High Queen be free for an audience?” he pressured.

She could think of no tactful way to say the High Queen had little interest in taking sides in Baysellian squabbles and had equally little interest in him. He would have done better to speak to her more politically-minded husband while he had the opportunity. Instead, with all the fake politeness she could muster, she said, “Please come to the Great Hall. You're the first to arrive, but we have plenty of food and drink while you wait.”