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“Which means he either changed his mind about his aims or he felt he could achieve them more effectively by waiting to speak to Sai, and possibly me, directly,” Magnus said. He followed that with a smile for me. “You did well, Sebald, even though you don’t think you did.”
“I could have done better,” I said with a sigh and sat back in my chair again. “About everything. I could have done much better.” I stroked a hand over Avenel’s neck. I hadn’t even broached the subject of Bee and the uncomfortable possibility that he was mistreating his wife, my former betrothed. I wanted Magnus’s counsel on that too.
Magnus laughed. “Believe me, my friend, you have done much better than you believe you have done. I have no regrets whatsoever about trusting you with this position.”
I smiled and relaxed a bit more. “That means more to me than you could ever know,” I told him.
We spent another half hour or so talking about things I’d discovered about the Kostya Kingdom in the last two months. Some of the things that I thought were important Magnus merely nodded over, and some things I thought were trivial, Magnus questioned me about at length. I felt like a sponge that had been soaking things up for two months, and Magnus was just beginning to wring me out.
The whole time we spoke, I was aware of Avenel and Gennadi watching each other. If the two of them hadn’t just met, I would have assumed they were close enough that they were having a silent conversation of looks. Avenel was slightly tense as he leaned against me—I hadn’t pushed him to kneel straight or to take his head off my thigh, and he seemed content to show total submissiveness in front of everyone else—but it was the wistful look in Gennadi’s eyes that threw me a bit. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought Gennadi was jealous of Avenel.
Those thoughts and half a dozen more were forgotten when one of the palace pages appeared around the corner of the house.
“I knocked,” he said to announce himself, “but no one answered.”
Avenel snapped straight, then stood when I did. He went to work clearing up the tea and snacks. Gennadi stood and came over to help him. I only barely heard the two of them introduce themselves in whispers.
“We’ve been in the garden the whole time,” I told the page.
The page nodded. “King Sai has sent me to call you to this afternoon’s meeting,” he said. “Jorgen Iceblade and Hati are already at the palace.”
My heart felt like it skipped a beat, and I glanced to Lefric and Olympus, then to Magnus. This was it. The meetings were about to begin in earnest.
“I’ll just go fetch my darling, difficult Peter and my ever-patient sunshine, Neil,” Magnus said, heading toward the cottage where Peter and Neil had retreated. “I might need to tan Peter’s backside to the point where he can’t sit down, but I’m certain whatever meeting space King Sai has prepared for us will contain cushions.”
Magnus headed on with a chuckle for his own joke.
The page stared after him with wide, shocked eyes.
“He doesn’t mean it,” I reassured the young man.
At least, I didn’t think he meant it. You could never tell with Magnus.
