The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

grooming. Not once did her long skirt even brush the eight-pointed star on the floor.
    “If Uncle Rumbelly has a new candidate for my hand, I won’t sit at the banquet, even if I don’t get any fish.”
    “I don’t know what the Lord Regent has planned.” Janataea clasped Rosie’s hand in her own and led her from the luxurious suite.
    “I can’t go until I have washed my hands and face,” Rosie said, drawing back.
    “Very well, but hurry.”
    Half a candle-length later, Rosie paused behind the draperies covering the doorway to the family salon behind the banquet hall. She watched the quiet room for several moments before entering.
    Rossemanuel sat at a narrow table. Sheaves of parchment littered every available surface. His hasty writing kept pushing a bottle of ink precariously close to the edge of the table.
    He stopped writing a moment. A quill pen made from the long flight feathers of a Kahmsin eagle dangled from his fingers. The pen dripped ink onto the document in front of him.
    “Rossemanuel, cease your endless writing. No one ever reads your reports anyway.” Lord Rumbellesth’s temper was at the growling stage. He’d quaffed at least three tankards of beta’arack. Distilled from the monster treacle beta, the liquor was one of two exports from Rossemeyer. Valiant mercenary regiments were the other.
    Manuel looked up at his uncle, biting his lower lip in thought. Then his eyes glazed over and he returned to his writing.
    The Lord Regent shrugged his sloping shoulders and poured himself another tankard. His distended belly marred the straight fall of wide pleats from shoulder to toe of his traditional, black sand-colored robes. The vast amount of fabric issued to clothe his otherwise spare frame was a symbol of his power and wealth. But none of those advantages could cure the growth that ate away at his innards. Only increasing doses of beta’arack could temporarily numb the pain, a little.
    “Eavesdropping again, Princess?” Rumbellesth threw the draperies aside so quickly the supporting rod nearly broke from its brackets.
    Rosie narrowed her eyes to look more closely at her uncle’s puffy skin and mottled red nose. His hair was thinning on top, streaked with gray where it fell to his collar in limp, greasy strands.
    She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the Lord Regent’s lack of fastidiousness. How did he tolerate all of that body dirt accumulating hour after hour, day after day? Even in a land noted for its lack of water, there were other ways of cleansing the body. Her feet began an unplanned retreat from the room.
    “Don’t go yet, Sis,” Rossemanuel protested.
    Rosie smiled at her favorite brother. He was younger than she by two years, but taller, with the same brindled brown hair and greenish-hazel eyes. She embraced the boy who was always gentle in his teasing. In less than a year he would achieve his sixteenth birthday and his anxiously awaited crown.
    He would take control of Rossemeyer away from their increasingly erratic uncle.
    As Manuel resumed his chair, Rosie moved the ink bottle to a more stable position and set the dripping quill into it. She automatically began straightening the parchments into neat piles.
    “Leave your endless fussing while I address you,” Rumbellesth roared.
    Rosie’s hands continued their work as she looked over her shoulder toward the regent. He sighed in exasperation.
    “Your brother has convinced me to tell you privately, before the gathering of the court, that I have found you a husband.” Uncle Rumbelly swilled another huge mouthful of his potent drink.
    “Niow!” Rosie protested. Her fingers curled inward until her long nails dug into the table wood.
    “Yes, Princess,” her uncle sneered. “ ’Tis your duty to marry. ’Tis my duty to provide you with a husband. And you will do us the courtesy of not rearranging the tableware before you consent to pick at your food.”
    “Tell me it isn’t true, Manuel.” She reached for her brother in desperation. “You know how strangers frighten me. They want to touch me, to trap me in a cage! They ask questions about. . . .” She reached a tentative finger to the streak of white hair above her right temple.
    “Don’t, Rosie. Don’t frighten yourself. Prince Darville is not a cruel man. I met him once. A few years ago. We had a grand time hunting together. He has a marvelous sense of humor. You’ll love him.”
    Rosie didn’t think so.
    “Think of Rossemeyer, Princess,” Uncle