Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [47]
It was possible to get cooked foods and even baked things in her father’s Kingdom, but you had to leave the Palace grounds to do so. Elsewhere, people could use magic to cook food and even to make little pockets of air where you could have something baked and eat it, too, if you were the sort that could breathe air as Katya was—a gift that was rare outside of the Sirens, the mer-folk, and the seal-people. But Katya never seemed to have the time to go to one of these places anymore….
And anyway, everything still tasted of salt.
She realized he was watching her with a little half smile on his face.
She stopped eating. “What is it?” she asked. “What have I done?”
“Done? Nothing,” he said pleasantly. “I’m just trying to figure out what sort of magical creature you are, Katya.”
She froze, and he went on. “There are not a lot of human sea creatures in Led Belarus Tradition, except maybe a swan maiden—swan maidens do land on the ocean. But you haven’t a suggestion of anything feathery about you, and anyway, swan maidens travel in flocks. So that means you must be outside the Led Belarus Tradition, and I’ll admit you have me stumped.” He scratched his head and grinned ruefully. “All I know about are the mer-folk and you haven’t a tail. Well, and the Sirens, but you haven’t tried to drown me, or sing at me to make me love you, so I think I’m safe there.”
She opened and closed her mouth several times. It was taking her a moment to compose herself. Finally, “I’m the Sea King’s daughter,” she said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Really! And what brings you to Led Belarus, Princess?”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, blushing. “Call me Katya. And—you are what brings me.”
Now it was his turn to open and close his mouth, as if about to say something, then thinking better of it. “Me!” he said finally. “But I’m not important. Well—”
“You’re a Fortunate Fool, and a Songweaver,” she replied, cutting him off. “And you’re the Seventh Son of the King of Led Belarus. But it isn’t so much you yourself that brought me here. It was what you’re doing.”
He blinked, and nodded. “But all I’m doing is making things peaceful—” he said feebly.
Katya laughed, and popped a grape in her mouth. “Too peaceful! Or so my father said. He was afraid that things here were about to turn very bad, the calm before the storm, you see. But then I met you and I heard you, and I realized you were a Songweaver, so then, of course, it was all right.”
“I’m a—” He hesitated. “I’m a what?”
“A Songweaver. It’s not moving big magics, like a Bard can. It’s smaller things.” She paused, not sure where to go with this explanation.
But he—oh he was a quick one. “Spinning songs for good harvests and fine weather. Catching evil things and singing them out by making them all too visible to both ordinary folks and their own enemies. Or just singing them out by making it too cheerful for them, because happiness is poison to them. That’s what I do with ghosts, when they’re vicious haunts….”
“Exactly!” She nodded with relief. “And you can make your songs do more than any other Songweaver I’ve ever seen or heard of, because you’re a Fortunate Fool.”
“Oho! That’s the explanation!” He seemed pleased. “I had wondered. I thought the reason that the songs were working was only because I am a Fortunate Fool.”
She wiped her hands off with a napkin and shook her head. “No, it’s the two things working together. By themselves, each is good, but together you make your own luck.”
“Within reason,” he added for her.
She nodded. “Within reason. You can sing a ghost out of existence because you can make it unable to resist the pull of the other side. Ghosts are always in a kind of tug-of-war within themselves, and you just add a little push. But you couldn’t sing a demon out of existence.”
“But!” he said, raising a finger. “I can recognize one when I see him, and I can sing that a priest comes along at just the