Split Heirs by Esther Friesner, Lawrence Watt-Evans

under the rug, rather than out the mouth of the cave where they belonged. At age seven, when Clootie had intended to have the boy take over washing the dishes, Wulfrith chained a water elemental to the sink and taught that to wash dishes.
    It took him four days and cost half a dozen pieces of Clootie’s best china, however, in addition to the six hours he had needed to conjure the thing up in the first place.
    â€œThat’s all right,” Clootie said, when he saw Wulfrith’s distress. “Water elementals are tricky things.” He did not mention that no one else had ever kept one confined for more than three or four hours, or taught it to do anything more complex than drowning a wizard’s mother-in-law.
    Clootie watched the elemental as it scrubbed vigorously at a platter, spattering fat drops in all directions. The boy intended to keep it in the cistern above the sink, and the idea of having an angry water elemental so close at hand made Clootie slightly uneasy — but he could hardly admit that to the child.
    A water elemental could probably be very useful against the Gorgorians — if anybody ever got around to fighting them again. Stories of the Black Weasel and his Bold Bush-dwellers still circulated in the valleys and villages as much as they ever had, but nobody ever seemed to mention any plans for doing more than waylaying and murdering any Gorgorians stupid enough to venture into the eastern mountains.
    In fact, it rather seemed to Clootie that people were becoming accustomed to the Gorgorians.
    Besides, he couldn’t very well ask a seven-year-old boy to go out there and fight for the rightful ruler of Hydrangea; the boy hadn’t even been born when the Gorgorians came, and nobody seemed entirely sure any more just who the rightful ruler was . Prince Mimulus seemed to have vanished and might be dead, Princess Artemisia was the Gorgorian’s queen…
    It would clearly be simpler to stick to washing the dishes, and let Hydrangea take care of itself.

Chapter Seven
    Queen Artemisia sat before her mirror and considered the tale it told. In the fourteen years since Prince Arbol’s birth she had not acquired so much as a wrinkle or a gray hair. As a happenstance, that would be wonderful enough in and of itself for any mother, but taking into account the constant, unremitting, merciless stress under which she lived each day, it was a miracle.
    â€œI just don’t know how I do it, Mungli,” she told her lady-in-waiting. “It’s not the easiest task in the world raising a child, let alone a royal one and the heir to the Gorgorian Empire to boot, but if you only knew the real story about Prince Arbol, it would take your breath away.”
    â€œGkkh,” said Mungli, running an ivory-backed brush through the queen’s blond hair. It was about as much of an answer as Artemisia was going to get from Mungli, now or ever. The queen’s chosen lady-in-waiting was a Gorgorian wench who had gotten into a slight disagreement with her lover’s senior wife. Mungli had always been one to speak her mind, and it was a very creative mind, particularly when it came to dreaming up synonyms for old , ugly , and possessing the sexual attraction of silt . The wife was one of those Gorgorian women who cultivated the magical arts, one, in fact, who had developed them to an exceptional level, and who thought it appropriate to teach the upstart trollop a lesson about keeping a civil tongue in one’s head. She did this by removing Mungli’s tongue almost entirely.
    This was rather more magic than Gorgorian women were supposed to have, certainly more than they commonly used, but these were not common circumstances; most comely young Gorgorians knew better than to argue with their magically-gifted elders.
    Still, while it wasn’t a very nice spell, it was reversible — sort of a sorcerous warning shot across the bows, intended more to instruct than to