“What about you?” Kel said. “I cannot imagine this is what you would have chosen for yourself, either. You are the Princess’s guard, so this is effectively a sort of exile. Do you think, in some years, after she—after they marry, you will be able to return to Aquila?”
She looked past him, squinting against the sun. “I will not return to Sarthe unless Luisa does. I am not only her guard; I have sworn an oath to protect her that will last as long as she lives. Where she goes, I go. It is my calling. I suppose that is hard to understand.”
“Not really,” said Kel. “I understand it perfectly.”
Luisa had come running up to them, her curls bouncing. “Look, I caught a bird, a pretty bird!” she cried in Sarthian. And indeed, in her cupped hands rested a small red bird with yellow markings on its wings.
“A scarlet tanager,” said Conor. “Something of a lucky creature here, considering its colors are Castellane’s.”
Kel looked up in surprise; he had not noticed Conor emerge from the Castel Mitat, which was atypical. Usually he was more attuned to Conor than that.
Luisa gave a little gasp, and the scarlet tanager flew out of her hands. It seemed she was not as disenchanted with Conor as Kel might have guessed. He wore a black velvet coat with gold frogging and a more-than-fashionable amount of white lace at the cuffs and collar. Around his throat was a pendant: two birds shaped out of gold, holding a ruby between them.
“Maravejóxo,” Luisa sighed. Vienne, barely perceptibly, rolled her eyes.
“Princess Luisa,” Conor said, switching to Sarthian. “I imagine you might like to see my mother’s garden. It is far more grand than this one, and there are peacocks.”
Luisa seemed delighted. Vienne was still looking at Conor rather narrowly, which he was ignoring. Kel could see he was not about to offer any apologies for the night before. He said, “Kellian, would you show the Lady Vienne where to find the Queen’s Garden? I would myself, but I have an appointment in the city today.”
An appointment? Kel wasn’t aware of such a thing, but he couldn’t ask now, in front of Vienne, which was doubtless the reason Conor had chosen this moment to announce his plans. He gave Conor a sharp look, but Conor only looked decidedly innocent, his gray eyes wide.
“Benaset will accompany me,” he said to Kel, which seemed to be his way of offering reassurance. And it was a bit reassuring; there was a limit to the trouble Conor could get into with Jolivet’s right-hand man watching him. “And I believe tomorrow night is the great banquet? We welcome our new Princess on Ascension Day.” He turned to Vienne. “I trust Luisa has everything she needs?”
Luisa, understanding the word Princess, and her own name, smiled at him. Vienne said, “You would have to ask her lady’s maids, but I believe she is well prepared, yes. I trust the banquet will be more—appropriate—than last night’s entertainment?”
Conor’s smile did not waver. “Oh, indeed,” he said. “My mother has been planning it for weeks now, and everything she does is exactingly appropriate. I do not think, Lady Vienne, that you will find anything in the way of surprises in the Shining Gallery. Or at least,” he added over his shoulder, as he left the courtyard, “one hopes that what surprises there are will be pleasant ones.”
“I’m not surprised Demoselle Alleyne decided to look after the little Princess,” Mariam said. She was sitting on Lin’s bed, wrapped in a shawl. She was pale, but there was bright color in her cheeks—put there, Lin suspected, by her excitement over Lin’s tale of the party at the Roverge house. It was why Lin was telling it, despite her reservations. “She’s quite a bit kinder than most of those ladies up on the Hill. That’s the thing about being a seamstress,” she added. “You are all but invisible to the nobles, and they forget you are observing their behavior.” She leaned forward. “So what happened after Roverge demanded that the little girl dance? Did the Prince stop him?”
Lin sighed inwardly. She was barefoot, wearing a plain gray frock. When she had come home from the party last night, she had scrubbed every last bit of paint from her face, and nearly torn off her beautiful indigo dress in her haste to be rid of it. She had gone to bed still furious, and dreamed—well, she could hardly remember what she had dreamed. It had been a version of the dream she had often now, about the last moments of the Goddess, only it had ended very differently from the others. She knew it was just a dream, no more—the story of Adassa’s last moments was well known to all Ashkar—but she had woken trembling and damp with sweat, her skin so hot she had needed to sit before her open window for nearly an hour before she could lie down again.
All she wanted now was to forget about the entire night, but Mariam was hungry for details, and Lin wanted to make her happy. “Well, he didn’t, to be honest,” she said, and immediately felt a bit guilty; Mariam only wanted to hear things that were happy or scandalous or both. “But someone else stepped in to dance instead, so the evening could continue.”
“Who was it? Oh, never mind, I don’t remember who half those young nobles are anyway,” Mariam said cheerfully. “Anyway, it seems entirely an inappropriate sort of party to throw for a twelve-year-old. When I was twelve, all I was interested in was playing tricks on the boys in the Dāsu Kebeth.”
Lin laughed at the memory, but sobered quickly. “The thing is, the Castellani nobles were expecting a twenty-year-old Princess, and they simply haven’t bothered to change any of their plans. I imagine it would seem too much like accepting what Sarthe has done. There’s some sort of welcoming banquet tomorrow—their Ascension Day celebration—that will be nothing but speeches in a language Luisa doesn’t speak. She’ll be horribly bored.”
Mariam furrowed her brow. “Are you going to the banquet?” At Lin’s surprised look, she added, “I thought Mayesh might be bringing you to more events on the Hill—”
“No,” Lin said. She thought of the quiet ride home in the carriage from the Roverge house, Mayesh watching her with sharp eyes, clearly waiting for some sort of reaction from her, some verdict on the party. But she had said nothing until they reached the Sault. Standing in the shadow of the gates, she had said, “I will tell you if I think there is a point in my returning to the Hill.”
He had not asked questions, only nodded and let her go.
“I won’t be at the banquet, don’t worry,” said Lin. “It’s the same night as Tevath.”
“It’s all right. If you’d rather go to the party.”
“Mari,” Lin said sternly. “I’d rather be at the Goddess Festival, with you. It’s our last year.”
“I just feel as though you’ve gone off into a wonderful story,” Mariam said, with a smile that held a wisp of sadness. “A party with the Charter Families. The Prince himself there. In a Story-Spinner tale, you’d already be secretly engaged to him.”
Instead, he kissed me, then flung me away and said he must have been drunk, Lin thought. Ever so romantic.
“In a Story-Spinner tale, that would mean I’d be about to be kidnapped by pirates so he could save me,” Lin said, crossly. “Mari. The Prince is of the malbushim. Even if he weren’t the Prince, I couldn’t—he is not like us. You must notice,” she added, “that none of the girls in the Story-Spinner tales, even if they are peasants, are Ashkar.”