Lady Alleyne? House Alleyne held the silk Charter. Which meant Antonetta, who was currently playing with her fork, stood to inherit the richest of all the Charters. Kel felt a little sick to his stomach.
“Silk has other uses besides fashion,” Antonetta interjected. “The Ashkar use it in bandages and thread. One can make sails from it, and in Shenzhou it is used instead of paper to write upon.”
Sena Anessa chuckled. “Very clever, Demoselle Antonetta—”
“Too clever,” said Artal Gremont. “No one likes a clever girl. Do they, Montfaucon?”
Montfaucon was apparently the man sitting across from him. He was spectacularly dressed in pink velvet and silver braid, his skin a dark, rich brown. “Gremont,” he began, sounding irritable, but did not finish his sentence, for the food had arrived.
And what food it was. Not the mush and stews they served in the Orfelinat, but roast capons with white cabbage, ducks stuffed with curried plums, herb and cheese tarts, whole grilled fish dressed with oil and lemon, and Sarthian dishes like pork basted with rosewater on a bed of noodles.
You may eat as much as you like as long as you do not make yourself sick, Bensimon had said.
Kel went to work. He was hungry half the time anyway, and he was starved right now, having emptied his stomach on Jolivet’s boots. He tried to copy what the others were doing with his cutlery, but hands were faster than knives and forks. When he sank his fingers into a slice of cheese and sage tart, he saw Bensimon glare at him.
Antonetta, he noted, was not eating, but was looking down at her food with a furious expression. The glamorous Montfaucon winked in her direction. “When beauty and wisdom can be married together, that is the ideal, but in the usual course of events the Gods gift one or the other. I do think our Antonetta might be one of the lucky exceptions.”
“One cannot have everything, or the Gods would come to envy mortals,” said another man, this one with cold eyes. He had narrow features and light-olive skin, and reminded Kel of illustrations in his schoolbooks of Castellani nobles going back hundreds of years. “Is that not what happened to the Callatians? They built their towers too close to heaven, challenged the Gods with their accomplishments, and for it their Empire was destroyed?”
“A dark view, Roverge,” said a kind-looking older man. He was pallid, like someone who spent a lot of time indoors. “Empires tend toward entropy, you know. It is difficult to grasp so much power. Or so I was taught in the schoolroom long ago.” He smiled at Kel. “Have you not been taught the same, Prince?”
Everyone turned to look pleasantly at Kel, who nearly gagged on a mouthful of tart. Wildly, he imagined what would happen the moment they realized he wasn’t the Crown Prince. He’d be surrounded by the Castelguard. They’d drag him from the Palace and toss him over the walls, where he’d roll down the mountain until he splashed into the ocean and was eaten by a crocodile.
“But Sieur Cazalet,” said Antonetta, “are you not the master of all the wealth in Castellane? And is not wealth also power?”
Cazalet. Kel knew the name: The Cazalet Charter was banking, and gold crown coins were sometimes called cazalets on the street.
“See?” said Artal Gremont. “Too clever.”
Kel plastered a smile upon his face. He could not make his mouth stretch very far, which was likely fortunate; it gave him the aspect of smiling coolly, rather than enthusiastically. Enthusiasm, as he would later find, was deemed suspicious in a prince. “I am still learning, of course, Sieur Cazalet,” he said. “But it is said by the sages that he who desires all, loses all.”
Bensimon’s mouth quirked, and a look of real surprise went over the Queen’s face, quickly hidden. Antonetta smiled, which Kel found pleased him.
The King reacted not at all to this pronouncement by his pretend son, but the russet-haired delegate from Sarthe chuckled. “It’s nice to see your son is well read, Markus.”
“Thank you, Sena Anessa,” said the Queen. The King said nothing. He was regarding Kel shrewdly over the rim of his tall silver cup.
“That was nicely said,” Antonetta whispered to Kel. Her eyes shone, making her look twice as pretty. Kel’s stomach tightened again, in an unfamiliar and this time not unpleasant way. “Perhaps you are not so ill after all.”
“Oh, no,” Kel said fervently. “I’m extremely unwell. I might forget anything at any moment.”
The adults had gone back to their own conversation. Kel could hardly follow it—too many names he didn’t know, both of people and things, like treaties and trade agreements. That was, until Senex Petro turned to the King with a bland smile and said, “Speaking of outrageous demands, Your Highness, is there news of the Ragpicker King?”
Kel’s eyes widened. He knew the name of the Ragpicker King; everyone in the city of Castellane did, but he would not have thought the nobles familiar with it. The Ragpicker King belonged to the streets of the city, to the shadows where the Vigilants did not dare to go, to the gambling hells and dosshouses of the Maze.
Once, Kel had asked Sister Bonafilia how old the Ragpicker King was. She had replied that he had always existed, as long as she had been aware to know it, and indeed there was something timeless about the figure he cut in Castellane, striding through the shadows all in black, with an army of pickpockets and cutpurses at his beck and call. He did not fear the Arrow Squadron or the city watch. He feared nothing at all.
“He is a criminal,” said the King, his rough voice uninflected. “There will always be criminals.”
“But he calls himself a king,” said Petro, still with the same easy smile. “Does that not seem a challenge to you?”
Sena Anessa looked anxious. It was almost, Kel thought, like someone in the schoolroom throwing a punch. One waited to see if the punch would be returned or ignored. Friends of the one doing the punching fretted. Going on the attack was always a risk.
But Markus only smiled. “He is no threat to me,” he said. “Children play the game of Castles, but it is no challenge to Marivent. Now, shall we discuss the issues I had raised earlier, about the Narrow Pass?”
Sena Anessa looked relieved. “An excellent idea,” she said, and voices along the table began to chime in with comments about trade and the Great Southwestern Road that might as well have been spoken in Sarthian for all that Kel understood them.
Antonetta tapped Kel’s wrist with the dull edge of her knife. “They’re bringing dessert,” she said, gesturing for Kel to pick up his cutlery. “You were right. You are forgetful.”
Kel was mostly full anyway, or so he thought until the sweets appeared. Plums and peaches soaked in rosewater and honey, flower petals crystallized in sugar, glasses of sweet-sour iced sherbet, mugs of sweetened chocolate and cream, custards studded with pomegranate seeds, and plates of marzipan cakes decorated with colorful pastel icing.
The musicians played a soft tune as the last silver platter was brought out, bearing a magnificent cake in the shape of a phoenix, lavishly frosted with gold and bronze, each shimmering wing perfect down to the last feather. As they set the cake upon the table, it burst into flame, to a chorus of admiring noises.