Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [37]
“Tell the rest of the kingdom, why don’t you?” he muttered crossly. “I’m sure there are a few people at the border who didn’t hear you.”
But the unicorns were ignoring him as they looked from one to another of their number. Finally Ilya spoke.
“Um,” he said hesitantly, “problem.”
The other three just sighed. “There is now,” said the leader, with resignation.
The full round of the Kingdom of Led Belarus took several days. Summer was a good time for that, though Sasha had no set times or seasons when he made his rounds. For one thing, although he might be the Fool to the ordinary folk of the Kingdom, the magical folk knew very well who he was and what he did, as evidenced by the fact that the Rusalka had recognized him. That meant magical folk both kindly and unkindly. If word spread that, say, on the day after Midsummer’s Eve, the Fortunate Fool made his rounds, the unkindly could go into hiding until he returned to the Palace.
Or something much more powerful than anything he’d ever had to face could ambush him and do away with his possible interference.
There were some very nasty pieces of work out there, Traditionally speaking. He just considered them all fortunate that they seemed to concentrate on larger Kingdoms than Led Belarus. Perhaps it was the name, which meant “Lovely Land of Ice,” although the winters were no worse here than in other Northern Kingdoms. The Kingdom of the Sammi was far, far colder. But the name might well be one of the reasons why they were left alone. Who wanted to rule over a kingdom of ice?
Perhaps it was that it was so small, small enough to ride around in a fortnight. Perhaps it was that, although it was a happy and prosperous place to live, Sasha took care that it was not too prosperous. He made sure never to sing of gem mines, for instance, nor silver, nor, heaven forefend, gold. In fact, he didn’t think there was more than a bucket-load of gold in the entire Kingdom, and that was just fine with the entire Royal family.
The most complicated problem that Sasha had ever been forced to deal with was that of the Rusalka, and that was mostly because the unicorns had come charging into the middle of it.
He felt himself blushing, and was glad that there was no one on this coast road to see him.
Once he had been assured that the Rusalka was going to keep her word and not go egregiously about drowning people, he’d negotiated with her for her right to remain. She would be permitted that patch of forest and he would leave her alone. In return, she had to pledge never to harm anyone—
But she did have the right to frighten them, because that was not entirely a bad thing. Sasha had always made it a policy not to chase every dark thing out of the Kingdom, so long as they kept themselves and their powers under control. A story that was all sunshine and roses quickly became boring; a Kingdom without some frightening places grew people that were complacent about the darkness. And when people grew complacent, and were sure that terrible things could never come to their homeland, they became easy targets for those terrible things.
This was the sort of opening that The Tradition would seize on and exploit to dreadful results.
So Led Belarus was never perfect, and the Rusalka fit very well into that scheme of things. “After all,” he’d told her, “which would you rather? Go about avenging your wrongs on fellows who have never even heard of you? Or prevent little boys from growing up into the kinds of lying blackguards who use and discard women without a second thought?”
When that caught her interest—which it did immediately, her being a ghost and all—he had outlined his plan. It was simple, really. All she had to do was frighten the boys and girls who ventured into her part of the forest. The boys, she would terrify, letting them think she was going to drown them for the wrongs she had suffered—and she would go into great detail. The girls, however, she would frighten in an entirely different fashion. She would take them to the rankest, swampiest part