Siegfried's people might have been barbarians by some standards, but they were quite fastidious about cleanliness. Every Clanhouse had a bathhouse attached, and bathing was not a luxury; it was needful. In the winter, the bathhouse was one place you knew you could go to get warm when you were half-frozen, and when your clothing tended to be made of wool and fur, it was a good idea to deflea and delouse them and yourself quite regularly. Bathhouses, as Siegfried knew from experience, were excellent places to have a conversation that you didn't want overheard. The bath attendants would cheerfully put you to soak or steam, and then leave you alone, especially in summer. The walls of a bathhouse were thick to keep in the heat, and usually made of stone or entire logs, which had the effect of preventing most eavesdroppers from listening through walls.
The bathhouse attached to The King's Arms was no exception, with walls at least as thick as Siegfried's arm. It had several small rooms with two tubs in them rather than one big soaking pool, but that was the only way it differed from most of the others Siegfried had seen. The idea was that you scrubbed down, the attendants doused you with buckets of water to clean off the soap, then you soaked in the hot tub. The tubs were very much like oversize barrels, and you soaked in hot water up to your neck in them. Siegfried would have preferred a northern-style steam bath, but this would certainly serve to soak out the aches of riding. He knew how to ride of course; he just didn't do it often. Drachenthal wasn't suited to horses, so he hadn't actually learned until he left his homeland, but even after he had learned, he preferred not to travel in the saddle. He tended to lose horses, actually. Or rather, people tended to shoot them out from under him. He would get fond of the one he had, only to have someone decide that the best way to get rid of the big blond hero was to kill the horse under him. It got disheartening after a while.
He was just settling in for a nice quiet soak, prepared to think about nothing for a while, when he was interrupted by Leopold taking him at his word and bringing up the subject of the Godmother again. "So," Leopold said softly, "tell me what gave you the idea that Queen Sable was the Godmother."
Siegfried eased himself back in the water, bracing against the side of the tub. It was hard to pinpoint exactly where his suspicions had started. "The name, maybe. It's just a small thing, but it was what made me wonder in the first place. It was...too obvious. Too blatant. Who names their daughter 'Sable'? The name is both the color black and a nasty little weasel that lives in the north. King Thurman was supposed to be no fool, and you would think he would see someone named Sable and avoid her at all costs. He wouldn't marry her. And if someone was named Sable, whether she was born with that name or took it on herself, and if she wanted to marry King Thurman, you would think she would know that and use another name."
Leopold considered that, as the steam from the water rose up around his face. "All right. That's got some logic to it, although I think you could be reading far too much into a name. What else?"
Siegfried couldn't blame him for being skeptical. Leopold wasn't able to understand the bird, and it was likely he was having second thoughts about leaping to the same conclusion. He would have to be very careful about mustering his arguments. "It seemed strange to me in retrospect that the Godmother rescued the Princess, delivered her to the gate, then vanished, and only then did Queen Sable appear." Time to elaborate on that statement. "I would have thought that the Godmother would have stayed to have some sort of confrontation with the Queen, warn her that the Princess was under her protection. Wouldn't you?"
Leopold examined his nails critically before answering. "I could think of reasons why she wouldn't, but...they seem a bit specious, since the Godmother here seems to be pretty powerful."
"It seemed very odd that she just drove off," the Northerner persisted. "And the more I thought about it, the odder it seemed that we never again saw her, even though her magic was clearly everywhere." He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to think of examples before Leopold could challenge him. "The mouse-horses. Why would the Godmother give the Queen mouse-horses to use in the trials? That made no sense at all. The idea for the first trial was a smart one, but there was no reason for the Godmother to supply mounts for it. If the Queen was a powerful sorceress, and those were her mouse-horses, why didn't she...do more?" He groped for more examples. "It was a great many very small things. The Godmother and the Queen are exactly the same height. I'm good at measuring those things by eye. The Godmother and the Queen have exactly the same accent, yet the Queen is supposed to be a foreigner. They have the same inflections when they are angry."
He glanced over at Leopold, whose long hair had gone wild in the steam, curling around his face in tendrils. He wondered if Leopold was listening to all this and thinking he was a loon, Leopold nodded. "Then there was the Princess. When she arrived, she wasn't out of her rooms for two days, and when she did appear, the Queen took her off to the Royal Suite and was locked up with her when the messenger came. After that, she's been spending most of her time at the Queen's side. And you would think she would be terrified, being locked up with the Queen for hours at a time. The Queen is older. She has a commanding way, and a young woman like that can only stand up to a woman like the Queen for so long. You'd think she'd be cowed, getting meeker every day." He waited for a response from Leopold.
The Prince scratched his head thoughtfully and stared off into space for a moment. "She wasn't. Even I could see that. She didn't seem properly frightened, in fact, it seemed like she was — they were — "
"Acting together." Siegfried nodded. "It looked to me as if they were pretending they didn't like each other, but they didn't go any further than that, because people here already don't like the Queen and they'll think anything bad of her that you suggest. But the two of them, when it came to getting things done, didn't argue. The Queen didn't even give the Princess an insult now and again, or sneer at her. All she did was keep up the glacier facade, and even that didn't hold up if you looked at her closely."
Leopold pulled a face. "You are still making sense. I didn't even think about it, but then, why would I?"
"Why would anybody? People see what they expect to see." Leopold mustered his thoughts, splashing some hot water over his face to rinse off the sweat. "Then they put together the first contest. I was wondering, when they said that it didn't matter if the contestants didn't have a horse or armor, because they would supply them, if somehow we were going to do this thing in small groups over the course of several days. Because there just weren't enough horses in the Palace stable for all of us, and armor doesn't grow on trees. But no, they say it's going to be one big race, and suddenly there's enough horses for all of us, and matching armor out of nowhere, all the same."
"Magic," said Leopold. "Could have been the Queen — "
"But she had never done anything like that before. That's not small magic. Transforming, creating out of nothing — that's big. If the Queen could do things like that, what does she need with a little Kingdom like Eltaria? No, that's Godmother magic. But where's the Godmother? Nowhere." Siegfried returned Leopold's nod. "So you see. Then I realized the horses were the same ones we rode here on. Exactly the same. I'm big, and there aren't many horses, transformed or not, that are up to my weight."
"Still — " Leopold looked as if he was about to agree but still had a reservation or two about Siegfried's conclusions.
So Siegfried drove his argument home. "But what clinched it was when I saw the Queen and the Princess at the starting line, watching, and then when we got to the middle section and sheep part, there they were again, watching.Maybe they could have gotten faster horses than ours, but we would have seen them passing us. They couldn't have gone by horse, so they had to go by magic and the Godmothers are the only people I ever heard of that could do that." He had to smile as Leopold accepted his clinching argument.
"Do we tell them?" the Prince asked instead. "Do we tell them that we know what the Queen is?"
He shook his head. "Not unless something comes up and she needs to know that we know. It gives us an advantage. I like advantages. I like — " he was about to say "the Princess," but stopped himself in time " — the idea of knowing things no one else knows in a situation like this."
"The bird might tell — " Leopold began, then shrugged. "I suppose you can ask it not to."
"And I will." Siegfried ducked farther down into the hot water. "Tomorrow. Right now I want to soak until all my aches are gone, and then I want to sleep past dawn."
Leopold rolled his eyes and laughed. "Past dawn! Shame! Civilization is making you soft!"
Siegfried threw a handful of water at him.
The Palace ballroom, which had many doors that opened up on the garden, had not been in much use over the past few years. Every time Celeste intended to hold a ball, it seemed, the enemies on the border decided it was time to rattle sabers again, and off King Thurman would go.