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“I said youlookedlike a horsemonger.”
“Her Majesty is very rude and hurtful,” he crooned to Eyne.
“I’ll just have the Mistress of the Table fire the new Vintish chef, then, shall I?”
He spared a glance for the selection of food laid out—a huge amount for three people, but then it usually was. There was thick-crusted bread, butter, eight kinds of jam that Kadou couldn’t even begin to identify; poached eggs under blankets of thick, creamy yellow sauce; duck confit; a selection of cured meats sliced paper-thin and rolled into the shape of flowers; two varieties of quiche; a selection of pastry; cream tarts topped with glistening jewels of fruit; a large pancake with edges so puffy and browned that it was bowl shaped, filled with slices of spiced pears; a stack of crepes folded into quarters; coffee, tea, and fresh fruit juices. It wasn’t appreciably different from the typical breakfasts they were served in terms ofcontent—eggs, meats, breads, jams, and drinks—it was only the quantity and the execution of the dishes that was different, and the fact that so many of them were sweet rather than savory.
“Are you trying to butter me up for something?” Kadou asked suspiciously.
“Not at all. It’s the new chef—she’s trying to butterusup. Well,” Zeliha said, thinking again. “Iambuttering you up, but not with the food. Sit down, I have something to show you.”
He sat at the table, arranged a few of the floor cushions next to him into an impromptu cradle for Eyne, and helped himself to the food while Zeliha fetched something from the next room. The silence between him and Siranos was palpable, but Kadou shoved away his nerves.
Zeliha returned with an object, flat and wrapped in cloth, about a cubit long and a foot wide. Kadou set down his bread and jam and took the parcel when she handed it to him—it felt like a picture frame.
“A painting?” he said, unwrapping the cloth.
“Mm,” Zeliha said eloquently, and poured them both coffee.
It was a painting of a man—a rather handsome man, with reddish blond hair, light-colored eyes, and pale skin. The man was wearing expensive brocade in the Vintish style with a stupendously complex jewel in the shape of a many-pointed starburst pinned to his left shoulder over his heart. The pearls and diamonds of it were so finely rendered as to look like they might roll right off the surface of the canvas. Only royalty would wear cloth and jewels that fine.
Siranos leaned over to look at the painting. Slowly, he said, “Zeliha, who is this?”
“Phillipe Marcelet du Vigier, Duc de Resti.La douzième fleur,I’m told, twelfth in line to the throne. He has a pedigree of other titles, of course, you know how those Vints are. He sent the new chef, along with the painting. What do you think, Kadou?”
Why was she asking him? She surely wasn’t thinking of getting married. That would have been entirely ill-advised,especiallyif it bound them with the Vints, who had horrifically complex inheritance laws that didn’t at all need to be muddling up the tidy and straightforward Arasti system. “The food looks good, and it’s a nice painting,” he said cautiously.
“I was thinking of inviting him to visit,” she said with the particular glint of cunning mischief that had always meant she’d concocted some scheme that she was particularly looking forward to.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kadou saw Siranos twitch and abruptly turn back to his breakfast.
Oh. Oh! This must be the new Siranos, the potential body-father of another niece for Kadou. He looked at the painting again with fresh eyes. A young man, about his and Zeliha’s age, dressed in shining ice-blue overlaying pine-green. He had a short ruddy-blond beard, clipped neatly to his jawline, and the neutral expression that nearly all portraits had—it was, after all, very dull to sit and stare off into the middle distance for hours at a time. The expression was rather like Evemer’s stone-wall one. Peeking up from one of the lower corners of the painting was a hunting dog wearing a red, jeweled collar. The dog was extraordinarily badly painted in comparison to the rest of the picture except for the jewels on its collar, which were as finely rendered as the duc’s brooch.
He glanced between the painting and Zeliha, imagining her features blended with the duc’s—a child with the Mahisti blue-black eyes and a reddish cast to the classic dark Arasti hair might be very handsome. “He looks nice,” Kadou said, more warmly. He resisted the urge to glance at Siranos, but couldn’t resist saying, “You should invite him, if you like him.” And if that meant that Siranos left sooner rather than later, so much the better.
“You think so?” Zeliha said brightly. “I’ll mention it to the ambassador later today, then. If the weather’s good, we could expect him here in, say . . .” She tilted her head back and forth. “It’s about a month’s voyage to Vinte, so . . . Say two and a half or three months, then, to allow him time to pack and get his affairs in order, assuming he wants to come. Right around harvest time!”
“I was thinking of going out to Sirya for the harvest,” he said, sipping his coffee. That would be well timed. He’d be out of her hair, and she could have all the space she needed to seduce the duc, or whatever her plan was.
“Perhaps His Grace would like to see some of the country. You could take him with you,” she said. Kadou gave her a puzzled look. “What? He’s a nice young man, by all accounts. He has land and money and several dogs, reads books, writes poetry, knows how to dance . . .”
“Vints,” grumbled Siranos under his breath.
“He sounds very pleasant,” Kadou said. More pleasant than Siranos, anyway—Oh!he realized with a start. Oh, was Zeliha trying to choose a lover who Kadou might be able to be friends with? Someone who he wouldn’t clash so badly with, who might fit in better with the family?
That was . . . rather sweet of her, actually. There really was no need for her to take any notice ofhisfeelings in these matters. But then, hewasthe uncle in this family, and as she would never marry, his claim on her children would always outrank that of any of her lovers . . .
Well, it didn’t matter whether she was making this gesture out of familial caring or political prudence. The effect was the same either way, and Kadou did feel rather touched that she would give any weight to his opinion.
Eyne made a delightful noise, and his and Zeliha’s attentions were immediately arrested. Kadou set the painting aside, and when they had stopped being distracted by the baby, they were distracted by the excellent food and spoke no more of Phillippe Marcelet du Vigier, Duc de Resti.
By the end of breakfast, he was stuffed with more food than he generally cared to eat in the mornings. He couldn’t even bring himself to mind Siranos’s presence—after the painting had been put away, the man had gotten all charming: He’d told an amusing tale that had made Zeliha laugh aloud and had discussed the political situation in his home country with grace. Arast owned over four hundred thousand altinlar of Oissos’s debt, and due to a few extremely unfortunate political events and three years of bad harvests, their already-debased coinage had been weakened even further. The exchange rates between their currency and anyone else’s were growing ever more atrocious. Siranos made some offhand comment that such things were no longer going to be his problem and mentioned that he’d written to his sister, who resided down in the city, and to the rest of his family in Oissos to inform them of his intentions to stay in Arast, but Kadou’s nerves barely blinked at the prospect. Siranos had too much pride to stay hanging around for years or decades when there was some nice Vintish duke around to charm Zeliha.
Kadou nursed a third cup of coffee while Eyne dozed in the crook of his arm, and during a lull in the conversation, he found that he was food-stupid enough to sidle up to a hard question and take it by surprise before his fear-creature could frighten him out of it. “Am I still banned from court?”
“Yes,” Zeliha answered simply. She was lying on the floor next to the table, a couple cushions shoved under her head.
“Oh,” he said.
