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Kel had returned to Marivent to find that Conor and Lilibet, Bensimon and Jolivet, were locked away in the Shining Gallery with the delegates from Sarthe. He could hear shouting from behind the doors. He tried to get close but was shooed away by Benaset. “Not your place, Anjuman,” he said. “Jolivet told me expressly to make sure you stayed away. Go amuse yourself elsewhere.”
Kel was furious, but he restrained himself. He headed back to the Castel Mitat to collect his thoughts; besides, he could at least change out of the wretched velvet coat he’d been roasting in all day. (Lilibet’s desire for him to represent Marakand in velvet and brocade was rarely practical where the realities of Castellani weather were concerned, and it had been a depressingly beautiful day, the sky arching overhead like a dancer in pale-blue satin, the sea a sheet of unbroken teal-green glass.)
He expected to find the courtyard of the Castel Mitat empty, but it was not. The small Princess, Luisa, was there, playing along the edge of the tiled fountain. Kel and Conor had done the same when they were children; on hot days, it was a good way to cool down. The memory sent a piercing sadness through Kel: for his old self, for Luisa now.
With her was the bodyguard, Vienne d’Este. She did not seem at all bothered by the heat. She was walking alongside Luisa as the girl bounced a ball against the statue of Cerra in the fountain’scenter, catching it as it rebounded and giggling when it splashed into the water.
They both turned to look at him: Vienne with a cool suspicion, her eyes flicking down (So there’s a blade in your boots,he thought,I know your tricks, bodyguard, though you will not guess why I do), while Luisa glanced at him, smiled, then frowned and said in rapid Sarthian, “Mì pensave che xéra el Prìnçipe, el ghe soméja tanto.”
“She thought you were the Prince,” said Vienne. “She says you look very like him.”
Kel turned to Luisa. “Cosin.”
Luisa smiled her gap-toothed smile. “Dovexéloel Prìnçipe?Xelodrìo a rivar a zogar con mì?”
Vienne retrieved the ball from the fountain where Luisa had dropped it. “The Prince can’t come now, darling, he has business. I am sure he’d rather be playing.”
That’s probably true,Kel thought drily,though not in the way you mean.
“I’m Kel Anjuman,” he said. “I’m at your service, and, of course, the service of the Princess.”
He swept a bow, which seemed to delight Luisa. Vienne, holding the red ball in her hands, seemed less charmed. “Well,” she said. “If you wish to help, truly—”
Kel raised an eyebrow.
“The quarters we have been given were decorated for someone much older than Luisa,” she said, rather stiffly. “If you could find some old toys, perhaps, or a few pretty things she might like—that would be helpful.”
It was clear on her face not only that she was the Princess’s bodyguard, but that she loved the girl like a little sister. She had handed off the ball to Luisa, who was dancing along the fountain’s edge. The hem of her pinafore was draggled by water and mud.
Kel wanted to say,I know what it is like to love someone and be sworn to protect them, someone who has so much more power than you do, but whom you cannot save from the consequences of that power.
But Vienne would simply have thought he was mad. At least Luisa seemed entirely unaware that there was a political firestorm raging around her—one that had wholly to do with the fact that her arrival was a disappointment. That she was unwanted.
Kel promised to see what he could do, and trudged upstairs to his rooms, a great weariness weighing him down.
—
The moon that night was blue. An unusual moon, said to augur the approach of confusing events. Kel, up in the West Tower, watched as it rose, turning the sky to a deeper indigo, the sea to moving lapis. Even the sails of the ships in the harbor appeared tinted with blue, as if seen through the lenses of Montfaucon’s blue spectacles.
The long and terrible meeting in the Gallery dragged on; Conor had not yet returned. Lilibet seemed pleased that Conor had been pulled into her world of Palace negotiations and foreign interests, tellingly happy to have him at her side. Kel could picture what was going on: Bensimon and Anessa shouting at each other about what happened, about contractual points and details. Jolivet and Senex Domizio ready for talk of war. But he was, of course, just guessing. What he did know was that the King was not in attendance. Light glowed in the window of the Star Tower, and occasional smoke rose from the chimney.
He was not sure if he ought to be surprised, or angry at himself for being surprised. What else had he expected, when the King had not even gone to Valerian Square to meet the new Princess? For so many years, the Palace had put about the story: The King was a philosopher, an astronomer, a genius. His study of the stars would result in discoveries that would be passed down through generations, adding to Castellane’s glory. They had put it about so thoroughly that Kel had believed it himself, because it was easier to believe it than question it.
He guessed now that Conor had never believed it, but had never discussed it, either. He had allowed the Palace to play a game inwhich the King was sensible but eccentric. But Fausten’s presence in the Trick—a spike of dark-blue steel now; Kel could see it rising against the night—belied all that. He could not help hearing Andreyen’s voice in his mind:Perhaps it is Fausten you should speak to.
But Fausten was in the Trick, and no one was allowed in the Trick, save the Arrow Squadron guards and the royal family themselves.
In the end, Kel supposed, he did it because he was tired of feeling useless, tired of imagining what was going on in a room he was barred from. Among people who, save one, would not want him there. And because he no longer trusted the King. He had already put Fausten in the Trick, and had his own son whipped. If it were not for Lin, Conor would be bedridden still, and scarred forever. What else might Markus do, and why, and when?
He was supposed to protect Conor at all costs. And if that meant protecting him from his own father, then that was the situation he found himself in.I am the Prince’s shield. I am his unbreakable armor. I suffer that he might never suffer.
As if in a dream, Kel went down the spiral steps and to the wardrobe in their room. Not to his wardrobe, but Conor’s.
He dressed in black. Linen trousers, silk tunic, fitted waistcoat. Vambraces beneath his sleeves. Low black boots and, of course, his talisman around his throat. Lastly, he lifted a simple coronet from its black velvet box. Placing it on his own head felt like a crime, something impermissible, though he had done it dozens of times before.
But not without Conor knowing. Never without Conor knowing.
He slipped out of the Castel Mitat, finding the courtyard empty, though Luisa’s red ball was floating in the fountain like a water-swollen pomegranate.
