A Mummers' Play by Jo Beverley

choking her.
    “I don’t see why being SVP means a person has to dress this way.”
    “Tradition, Princess.”
    Rozlinda looked at Mistress Arcelsia’s white robe and scarlet velvet cloak. “No one wears clothes like yours, either. Doesn’t it bother you?”
    “Not at all, Princess. They are the outward sign of my position and skill, and very comfortable.”
    “Mine are merely the outward sign of being the youngest fertile female of the blood, and they’re awful.”
    “Princess, do try to put your mind into a state receptive of magic.”
    “Fat lot of good it’s done so far,” Rozlinda mumbled, but only because the mage was drawing water for the scrying bowl and wouldn’t hear. They both knew Rozlinda didn’t have a scrap of magical ability, but they pretended.
    Mages could do magic, or so they said. Rozlinda rubbed a finger on the rounded edge of the bowl. “Is there some magical way to bring on Izzy’s flowers?”
    Mistress Arcelsia turned so sharply water sloshed. “No there isn’t, and it wouldn’t be right. You know better than to tamper with fate.”
    “I’d suspect she was concealing the bleeding if she wasn’t so desperate to be SVP.”
    “Princess Izzagonda would never do such a wicked thing. After last time.”
    Last time, when the ceremony had gone awry.
    Mistress Arcelsia poured the water into the bowl. “I’m sure she’ll flower before the dragon comes. She’s thirteen, after all.”
    “I’m not afraid of the sacrifice. I’m just tired of the Princess Way. Another year seems unbearable.”
    “The fates have their reasons.”
    “The reason,” Rozlinda said forcefully, “is that the royal family is having fewer and fewer girls, and no one seems to be doing anything about it.”
    “There is nothing to be done-”
    “Then hasn’t it occurred to anyone that we’re doomed?”
    The royal family of Saragond existed solely because their female blood had a mystical power to appease a dragon—the blood of a princess who had flowered but remained a virgin, that was. They married only within their line so that the blood would remain strong.
    “Well?” Rozlinda demanded.
    Mistress Arcelsia walked behind her. “Clear your mind for magic, Princess. Perhaps you’ll receive wisdom.” She put her hand on Rozlinda’s neck and pushed, so she had to look into the depths of the golden bowl. “What do you see?”
    Rozlinda sighed and concentrated. She had no magic, but she’d been trained all her life to respect ritual and tradition, and daily magical exercises were part of that. Part of the Princess Way, which was all to do with saving the world when the dragon came. If only it would come today.
    “Clear the mind, Princess!”
    Rozlinda squinted, trying to see images in the scant play of light on still water. She puffed a breath to stir the surface.
    Snakes? Ribbons? A jelly pudding?
    “Nothing, Princess?”
    Mistress Arcelsia’s assumption that as usual there would be nothing snapped Rozlinda’s patience. “I see water. A river, I mean, not the bowl. A deep one.” Might as well be dramatic. “There’s a storm coming. Lightning. A golden fish leaps out.”
    “A golden fish! An excellent omen.”
    She suspected that Mistress Arcelsia knew she was lying, but carried on anyway. “A man catches the fish. In a big, black net.”
    “Alarming, Princess. What sort of man?”
    “A . . .” Rozlinda’s imagination faltered. A knight, a prince, a brute? But then she gasped.
    She saw a man!
    She blinked, but this was no ripple-image. It was as if the round bowl had become a window through which she saw a strangely-dressed, pale-haired man. He was standing by a river or lake, but in sunlight.
    “Describe the man, Princess.” Mistress Arcelsia’s bored voice seemed from another world, and perhaps she was. Rozlinda was finally having a vision!
    “The picture’s changed. Now I see a sunlit scene. Countryside. Water. And a different man.”
    “Tell me more.” A sharp tone showed that