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Lio followed through with a bow. “I would be happy to assist. Should it please you, Second Princess, I will convey your words faithfully. I have much to learn from your discourse.”
To his relief, she accepted his peace offering, and in Vulgus. “Very well, Firstgift Komnenos. Translate my words for Lady Cassia and our other noble guests from Tenebra into their own tongue.”
“It will be my honor, Second Princess.”
With another curtsy, Cassia thanked her.
Konstantina gave a gracious nod and delivered her riposte to Chrysanthos. She and Chrysanthos proceeded to exchange verbosities that masqueraded as compliments, while in fact lauding their own virtues, prodding at each other’s views with vicious distaste, and dropping hints about how the other was violating the sacred.
Lio found it rather exhilarating to keep up with them. He reached for parallel words in Vulgus moment by moment, striving to shed light on the princess’s meanings.
Apparently Eudias took the Dexion’s silence as permission to fulfill Cassia’s request to assist with the translation. He repeated Chrysanthos’s statements with remarkable eloquence of his own. It would be apparent to any Hesperine there that the young scholar had received a Cordian education, and applied himself to it.
The Cordian mages’ ruse was wearing thin at this moment, and Chrysanthos seemed to realize it. He reiterated that he was a mage from Tenebra who had served as an emissary to Cordium and proceeded to drop names of many famous mages he knew from, he claimed, his travels.
Although Cassia said nothing, Lio found the greatest thrill in feeling her mind at work, quick as the dueling tongues. She must be translating for herself what the mage and the princess left unspoken, as surely as Eudias and Lio translated their words.
The princess and the Dexion dragged them all along for a lengthy contest. And Lio thought he was wordy! Was this what mage politics had resembled in the Great Temple Epoch? What an incredible glimpse of what society might have been like when Hagia Notia had thrived in Corona, and the most sophisticated mages of Hespera had negotiated with their colleagues at the Hagion of Anthros. Hypatia had once dwelt at the center of that society. Konstantina now vanquished it.
“‘As a servant of my people,’” Lio translated, “‘I strive ever to uphold the rule of law. I have been blessed with the calling to codify the Queens’ acts and decrees in writing for their people. It is my honor to be their speaker before the Firstblood Circle and to keep its annals in order to preserve the wisdom of all Orthros’s leaders. I seek ever to be the faithful keeper of Orthros’s writ of law and executor of my mothers’ kind and just judgments. When I preside at disputes and mediate for our people, I strive to see the Will of the Queens and the Goddess done.’”
Eudias said for Chrysanthos, “‘Mankind’s ambassadors find themselves greeted by a female who is truly without compare. A woman who is the author of laws is unheard of among us. No man here has ever bent his knee to laws written by a lady’s hand.’”
When the princess smiled again, it was clear she was about to have the last word. “What a new experience for you to do so, now that you must abide by our laws during your stay here. In a land so foreign to you as ours, you are sure to have many unprecedented experiences. Welcome to Orthros.”
THE SANCTUARY ROSE
Cassia found the celebrationin the Second Princess’s residence as impressive as Konstantina herself. Moon hours carried the embassy through halls of marble and glass at Orthros’s stately pace. Each long moment was filled with the aromas of coffee and roses, the seduction of drums and flutes, and the gleam of silk. Vulgus and Divine feted and challenged each other from the library to the music room and through galleries of sculpture, textiles, and ceramics.
When Konstantina’s Grace joined her in debating the mages, Cassia could see he was the princess’s ally, partner, and equal in all things, including scholarship. Cassia gathered that Grace-Prince Adwene had been a formidable intellectual at the Imperial university in his mortal life, some thirteen centuries earlier. Their children and descendants who were in attendance all proved just as accomplished. Cassia dreaded forfeiting the princess’s respect with one ignorant remark or one inattentive mistake regarding who was related to whom.
Cassia paused by an enormous vase packed with fat rose blooms. Lio halted on the other side of the arrangement from her. That kept the proper distance between them. It also, she observed, imposed a mass of flowers between him and the watching gazes of Benedict, Callen, and Perita. They had lost Eudias somewhere along the way. Knight plopped down between Lio and Cassia and panted in contentment.
Lio gave her a look that made her forget what she had stopped here to ask him.
She swallowed. He looked so very fine in his high-collared black formal robes, with his silver medallion of office upon his breast. “Ambassador…”
“Yes, Lady Cassia?” His gaze caressed her neck.
She tried to gather her scattered thoughts. “A question about tonight’s event…”
“Ah, yes.” He cleared his throat, and his gaze returned to her face.
“Do we have the honor of meeting all of the princess’s descendants tonight?”
“All those who are of age,” he confirmed. “The children were not deemed ready for such an occasion.”
Cassia nodded to show she understood his code forkeep the babies as far away from Chrysanthos and Skleros as possible.
At Cassia’s elbow, Benedict appeared as if the collar of his tunic were too tight. Perhaps the fragrance of the roses was suffocating him. “There are more of them?”
“I take it upon myself to be prolific.” Konstantina rounded the vase of roses, a silver cup of coffee in her hand.
Knight wagged his tail and gazed hopefully at the princess, who ignored him. With his hand on his heart, Lio gave the princess a bow nearly as deep as Cassia had seen him give the Queens. Benedict disguised his startle as a bow of his own.
Cassia curtsied and attempted to smooth over Benedict’s blunder. Of all times for his courtesy to fail him. “How fortunate Orthros is that you have so strengthened the royal line, Second Princess.”
Cassia had yet to stand this close to the Queens’ eldest daughter. She was an image of Hesperine beauty, her height regal, her skin dark as the night sky. She wore a robe woven in black-and-white geometric patterns that draped over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. The thick coils of her hair fell to her ankles, bound at intervals with silk bands that glittered with black-and-white jewels. Were those opals and the fabled moonstones? Her brown eyes were sharp with intelligence, missing nothing.
