Free Fairy Debt by Gail Carriger Page B

did a back bend, kicked my heels up, and walked away from the two royals on my hands until I'd rejoined the Most Jester. Then I flipped to standing.
    The princess clapped delightedly.
    I bowed to them both.
    "Tomorrow at noon, Cups," she ordered.
    "Noon, Princess Goob," I agreed, and followed the Most Jester out of the audience chamber.

    "Do you think it's enough of a service?" I asked Aunt Twill that evening through a small cup of tea.
    Her image wiggled in the brown liquid. Normally tea talking is a delicate spell requiring both parties use bone china, Earl Grey, and silver stirring spoons. But Aunt Twill had a contract with the tea daemons that allowed her conversational access (between the afternoon hours of half-past three and five o'clock, of course) to any cup in the kingdom. It's a naiad gossip thing.
    My aunt extracted a small gudgeon fish from her hair and ruminated. "I doubt teaching a princess acrobatics constitutes proper repayment of an honor debt. Though it is a nice thing to do. Why would she want to learn, do you think? It certainly isn't normal princess-y behavior."
    I shrugged. "She isn't a normal princess. More like a normal dairymaid. Poor thing."
    Aunt Twill nodded. "Plain ones happen sometimes. I'll do a little research and get back to you on the tumbling. Until then, I'd proceed as though this were not the answer."
    I sighed. "Very well, Aunt Twill."
    "Oh, and niece," I looked up, "that's a hideous hat."
    I stuck my tongue out at her and lifted up the bone china cup. Her face wavered in the brown liquid as I drank down the tea. 
    Fairies invented tea, did you know that? It was one of our best collective spells, until the daemons stole it, and humans got in on the idea. Still, it explains my Child Wishes: baked goods go very well with tea.
    There wasn't much for the jester contingent to do during the daytime at court. Most of our entertaining work was done at night, or at feasts, or at festivals. The rest of the time we were left pretty much to our own devices.
    I spent the first few weeks poking about looking for spells or curses I could break – princes disguised as dung beetles or the odd evil loom weight. Nothing. Not a single enchanted sausage. Smickled-on-Twee had to be the most boring principality in the entire province of fairy-kind. The princess was painfully average. The queen had died a perfectly respectable death (by plague). The only thing out of the ordinary the king had done, in his long and uninteresting career as ruler, was rescue my mother. And he didn't seem to remember doing that.
    Princess Goob and I became fast friends. She was hopeless at tumbling – far, far too clumsy. But I soon realized that the lessons were only an excuse. What she really wanted was the company of someone her own age, and to get out of the castle once in awhile. In keeping with these two desires, I announced that we really must practice on a mossy lawn every afternoon, so took her through the castle gates and over the drawbridge to a sheep pasture near the moat. There I pretended to show her handstands, cartwheels, and flips. She pretended to try and learn them. Mostly we lounged about and chatted.
    "I always wanted to be a shepherdess," she confided in me one afternoon. "I think I'd be better suited to that kind of life."
    I looked at her from my supine pose on the grass. She wore a very plain dress, borrowed from one of her maids, and long brown bloomers underneath, which were supposed to be for riding. She'd tucked the skirt of the dress up on each side and tied a kerchief about her hair. She looked very like a shepherdess.
    "I think the role would suit you."
    "That's what I like about you, Cups. No silly pandering or hedging. Everyone else secretly agrees when I say such things, but they all pretend to be shocked. Or worse, tell me what a perfect princess I am."
    She flipped onto her stomach and began picking at the grass. "I never had a fairy godmother, you heard by now I suppose? Shocking thing. Dad