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Vienne shook her head slowly. “You’re his cousin, aren’t you? So I don’t suppose you’ll answer me honestly if I ask you something.”
“I’ll do my best,” Kel said, warily.
“Is he going to be unkind to her?” She glanced at Luisa, who was busy murdering tulips now. “I mean truly unkind to her, not just neglectful. I need to know what to be prepared for.”
“No,” Kel said, quietly. “He can be careless and capricious, but he is not cruel by nature.”
Vienne nodded slowly, but Kel was not entirely sure she believed him.
“He is angry and resentful of the situation. It is not the fault of the Princess Luisa, but he is disappointed. And feels he has been humiliated, publicly. It is not the Princess’s fault that she is just a child, but…”
“But she is just a child,” said Vienne, with the ghost of a smile. “So she thinks this is some sort of romantic game, or adventure, like a Story-Spinner’s tale. But I know differently.”
She turned restlessly to look at her young charge, who had grown absorbed in reading the inscription on the sundial. “She does not know everything that this takes from her,” Vienne said, her voice low and passionate. “Her childhood. The freedom to make choices for her own life, decide her own path, love who she chooses to love—all of that. Falling in love, the beauty and the pain of it, she will never experience, and she does not even know it.”
“Aside from childhood, those same things will be taken from Conor, as well,” said Kel. “And hedoesknow it.”
For a moment, there was a look in Vienne’s eyes—as if she understood him, sympathized with him, if not with Conor. She might not know he was a Sword Catcher, Kel thought, but she understood they were both caretakers, in their own ways.
“What about you?” Kel said. “I cannot imagine this is what you would have chosen for yourself, either. You are the Princess’s guard, so this is effectively a sort of exile. Do you think, in some years, after she—after they marry, you will be able to return to Aquila?”
She looked past him, squinting against the sun. “I will not return to Sarthe unless Luisa does. I am not only her guard; I have sworn an oath to protect her that will last as long as she lives. Where she goes, I go. It is my calling. I suppose that is hard to understand.”
“Not really,” said Kel. “I understand it perfectly.”
Luisa had come running up to them, her curls bouncing. “Look, I caught a bird, a pretty bird!” she cried in Sarthian. And indeed, in her cupped hands rested a small red bird with yellow markings on its wings.
“A scarlet tanager,” said Conor. “Something of a lucky creature here, considering its colors are Castellane’s.”
Kel looked up in surprise; he had not noticed Conor emerge from the Castel Mitat, which was atypical. Usually he was more attuned to Conor than that.
Luisa gave a little gasp, and the scarlet tanager flew out of her hands. It seemed she was not as disenchanted with Conor as Kel might have guessed. He wore a black velvet coat with gold frogging and a more-than-fashionable amount of white lace at the cuffs and collar. Around his throat was a pendant: two birds shaped out of gold, holding a ruby between them.
“Maravejóxo,” Luisa sighed. Vienne, barely perceptibly, rolled her eyes.
“Princess Luisa,” Conor said, switching to Sarthian. “I imagine you might like to see my mother’s garden. It is far more grand than this one, and there are peacocks.”
Luisa seemed delighted. Vienne was still looking at Conor rather narrowly, which he was ignoring. Kel could see he was not about to offer any apologies for the night before. He said, “Kellian, would you show the Lady Vienne where to find the Queen’s Garden? I would myself, but I have an appointment in the city today.”
An appointment?Kel wasn’t aware of such a thing, but he couldn’t ask now, in front of Vienne, which was doubtless the reason Conor had chosen this moment to announce his plans. He gave Conor a sharp look, but Conor only looked decidedly innocent, his gray eyes wide.
“Benaset will accompany me,” he said to Kel, which seemed to be his way of offering reassurance. And itwasa bit reassuring; there was a limit to the trouble Conor could get into with Jolivet’s right-hand man watching him. “And I believe tomorrow night is the great banquet? We welcome our new Princess on Ascension Day.” He turned to Vienne. “I trust Luisa has everything she needs?”
Luisa, understanding the wordPrincess,and her own name, smiled at him. Vienne said, “You would have to ask her lady’s maids, but I believe she is well prepared, yes. I trust the banquet will be more—appropriate—than last night’s entertainment?”
Conor’s smile did not waver. “Oh, indeed,” he said. “My mother has been planning it for weeks now, and everything she does is exactingly appropriate. I do not think, Lady Vienne, that you will find anything in the way of surprises in the Shining Gallery. Or at least,” he added over his shoulder, as he left the courtyard, “one hopes that what surprises there are will be pleasant ones.”
—
“I’m not surprised Demoselle Alleyne decided to look after the little Princess,” Mariam said. She was sitting on Lin’s bed, wrapped in a shawl. She was pale, but there was bright color in her cheeks—put there, Lin suspected, by her excitement over Lin’s tale of the party at the Roverge house. It was why Lin was telling it, despite her reservations. “She’s quite a bit kinder than most of those ladies up on the Hill. That’s the thing about being a seamstress,” she added. “You are all but invisible to the nobles, and they forget you are observing their behavior.” She leaned forward. “So what happened after Roverge demanded that the little girl dance? Did the Prince stop him?”
Lin sighed inwardly. She was barefoot, wearing a plain gray frock. When she had come home from the party last night, she had scrubbed every last bit of paint from her face, and nearly torn off her beautiful indigo dress in her haste to be rid of it. She had gone to bed still furious, and dreamed—well, she could hardly remember what she had dreamed. It had been a version of the dream she had often now, about the last moments of the Goddess, only it had ended very differently from the others. She knew it was just a dream, no more—the story of Adassa’s last moments was well known to all Ashkar—but she had woken trembling and damp with sweat, her skin so hot she had needed to sit before her open window for nearly an hour before she could lie down again.
All she wanted now was to forget about the entire night, but Mariam was hungry for details, and Lin wanted to make her happy. “Well, he didn’t, to be honest,” she said, and immediately felt a bitguilty; Mariam only wanted to hear things that were happy or scandalous or both. “But someone else stepped in to dance instead, so the evening could continue.”
“Who was it? Oh, never mind, I don’t remember who half those young nobles are anyway,” Mariam said cheerfully. “Anyway, it seems entirely an inappropriate sort of party to throw for a twelve-year-old. When I was twelve, all I was interested in was playing tricks on the boys in theDasuKebeth.”
Lin laughed at the memory, but sobered quickly. “The thing is, the Castellani nobles were expecting a twenty-year-old Princess, and they simply haven’t bothered to change any of their plans. I imagine it would seem too much like accepting what Sarthe has done. There’s some sort of welcoming banquet tomorrow—their Ascension Day celebration—that will be nothing but speeches in a language Luisa doesn’t speak. She’ll be horribly bored.”
