“That’s the boy?” she asked. Her voice was rich, sweet as sugared rosewater.
“Quite,” said Bensimon. He seemed to have a real fondness for the word. “Are you ready, Highnesses?”
The Queen nodded. The King shrugged. And the Castelguards threw open the golden door as the music in the Gallery turned to a processional tune. The King passed slowly through, the Queen following. Neither of them glanced back.
Kel hesitated. He felt his hair ruffle; Bensimon had placed something on his head: a golden circlet. He felt the adviser’s hands linger over his head, almost like a blessing.
Bensimon grunted, then gave Kel a shove. “Go after them,” he ordered, and Kel stumbled through the golden door, into the blinding light.
Kel noticed two things at once. First, Bensimon had been right: The Gallery was now full of nobles. Kel had never seen so many in one place. He was used to a glimpse of a decorated carriage rolling through the cobbled streets, perhaps a gloved hand dangling languorously from an open window. Sometimes a noble in velvets and jewels might be found on a tallship, arguing with the captain about whether or not to sell shares in the ship’s next voyage. But that was a rare sighting, like the sighting of a salamander. He had never imagined being surrounded by them—either nobles or salamanders.
The second thing was the room itself. He now understood why it had seemed so white. It was clearly kept blank, an untouched canvas waiting for the painter’s brush. The walls, which had been bare, were now decorated with jewel-toned frescoes depicting the glories of Castellane. Kel did not know how it was possible. （Later, he would find out they were transparent screens, lowered over the walls, and not paint at all.） Look, they said, how grand a place is our city, and how great.
The floors had been covered with thick Marakandi rugs, and along the east wall curtains had been drawn away to reveal a pillared arcade. In between the pillars were potted trees painted gold, their leaves gilded and apples and berries of colored glass hanging from their branches. Above the arcade, a gallery of musicians played, all of them in the Palace colors of red and gold. The great hearth was the same, but now a fire blazed in it, large enough to roast a dozen cows.
The inhabitants of the Hill had come to line a sort of shining pathway to the high table, smiling and inclining their heads as the royal family progressed through the room. In the tepidarium, Bensimon had told Kel to keep his head up and glance to neither the right nor the left, but Kel could not stop himself from looking.
The men wore brocade coats and high boots of incised leather; the women were floating clouds of silks and satins, bows and lace, their hair swept up and pinned through with ornaments of all shapes: golden roses, silver lilies, gilt stars, brass swords. Such finery was the stuff of the society drawings one could buy from artists in Fleshmarket Square, where the daughters and sons of merchants went to learn of the scandalous doings of the noble Houses, and imagine marrying into one.
Bensimon had fallen into step beside Kel, the crowd of nobles thinning out as they reached the high table. It looked much as it had before, though yet more decoration had been added. Peacock feathers dipped in gold paint drooped over the sides of gilded epergnes, and a ribbon of lilies laced together with golden chains snaked down the center of the table. Their scent—waxy, too-sweet—filled the room.
In a daze, Kel allowed himself to be guided by Bensimon toward one of the three tall chairs grouped in the middle of the table. The Queen was on Kel’s left; on his right, a pretty girl about his own age, wearing pale-yellow silk, her dark-blond hair in tightly curled ringlets.
Kel shot a look at Bensimon, almost of panic: Why had they sat him next to another child? An adult might have ignored him, but the blond girl was already looking at him with a lively curiosity that indicated she knew Prince Conor fairly well.
Bensimon raised an eyebrow and was gone, taking a place just behind the King’s chair. The blond girl leaned across her plate to whisper to Kel.
“I heard you were sick,” she said. “I didn’t expect you’d be here.”
It was a lifeline. Kel caught at it. “The King insisted,” he said, in a low voice. Hopefully that was how the Prince referred to his father? Kel knew Bensimon had said that the talisman would make him sound like the Prince as well as look like him, but surely it could not change the words he said. He chose them carefully, thinking as he did so of all the times he and Cas had played at being highborn adventurers, how they had modeled their speech on that of the nobles who they’d read of in books. “I was offered no choice.”
The blond girl tossed her curls. “You are ill,” she said. “Usually you would have made a fuss about coming, or be joking about it at least.”
Kel put that away in the back of his mind. The Prince was someone who had no trouble kicking up a temper, and liked to make jokes. So they had that in common. It was useful information.
“Antonetta.” The woman seated opposite them spoke under her breath, her eyes on the blond girl. “Do sit up straight.”
Antonetta. So that was the girl’s name, and the woman must be her mother. She was very beautiful, with coils of fair hair and a great deal of pale bosom swelling over the bodice of a raw-silk dress the same color as her daughter’s. Her attention rested on Antonetta only for a moment, though, before she was engaged in conversation with a black-bearded man with clever eyebrows.
“Who’s that man?” Kel muttered to Antonetta, who was now sitting rigidly upright. “The one flirting with your mother?”
It was a bit of a daring thing to say, but Antonetta grinned—as if she expected this sort of comment from Conor Aurelian. “You don’t recognize him?” she said incredulously. She was folding her napkin on her lap; Kel mimicked her movements. “That’s Senex Petro d’Ustini, one of the ambassadors from Sarthe. Next to him is Sena Anessa Toderino.”
Of course. Kel should have recognized them immediately: a man and a woman, both in Sarthian dark-blue. Senex Petro’s sapphire earring glittered against his olive skin, while Sena Anessa had a great deal of hair piled in knots on her head and a long, patrician nose.
Farther down the table sat another boy around Kel’s age. He looked Shenzan, with straight black hair and a mischievous face. He winked at Kel, who liked him immediately, though he knew the wink was meant not for him, but for Prince Conor.
“I see Joss is trying to get your attention,” said Antonetta, making a face at the boy. It wasn’t an unfriendly face, more a teasing one. “He’s probably miserable having to sit next to Artal Gremont.”
Antonetta must mean the heavyset, thick-necked man on Joss’s left. His hair was chopped short, as if he were a soldier, and he wore the armband of a gladiator, which looked a little ridiculous over the damask silk of his tunic. Kel had heard his name before. Though he was a noble, he amused himself battling some of Castellane’s most famous fighters in the Arena. Everyone—save Gremont, perhaps, who was in line to inherit the tea and coffee Charter—knew the games were rigged in his favor.
“Lady Alleyne,” said Senex d’Ustini to Antonetta’s mother. “Your gown is truly magnificent, and is that not Sarthian sontoso embroidery upon the cuffs? You are, indeed, a walking endorsement for the glories of the silk trade.”