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“Iama mudrat from the Warren docks,” Kel pointed out.
“Not tonight,” said Bensimon.
—
Kel was brought to the tepidarium: a massive chamber with two stone-bound pools sunk into the middle of a marble floor. A rose window looked out over the nighttime glow of Castellane. Kel tried to keep his eyes on the horizon as he was poked, prodded, and scrubbed with vicious thoroughness. The water ran dark brown into the drain.
Kel thought about whether he trusted this Bensimon and decided he did not. Bensimon said the Prince was sick—indisposed—but Jolivet had come to the Orfelinat a month ago. He couldn’t have known then that the Crown Prince would take ill tonight and need a stand-in.
Nor did the idea that he’d be sent home at the end of the night with a bag of gold make much sense. There was a well-known tale in the Maze about the Ragpicker King, the most famous criminal in Castellane. It was said that he’d once invited three rival criminals to his mansion and fed them a splendid dinner, offering them a partnership in his illegal empire. But none of them had been able to agree on anything, and at the end of the night the Ragpicker King had regretfully poisoned his guests, on the grounds that now they knew too much about his business. (He paid for glorious funerals for all three, however.)
Kel could not help but feel that he had already been told a great deal that he ought not to know, and was about to learn more of thesame. He tried to think of what he would do were he playing a part in a game with Cas, but could imagine no better strategy than keeping his head down.
After the bath, he was dusted, perfumed, shod, and dressed in a steel-blue satin tailcoat with silver links at the cuffs and collar. He was given velvet trousers as soft as mouse’s fur. His hair was trimmed and his eyelashes curled.
When he finally went to look at himself in the mirror that covered the whole west wall, he thought, with a sinking feeling, that if he ever stepped out in the streets of the Maze looking like this, he’d be beaten six ways by the Crawlers and run up the flagpole outside the Tully.
“Cease shuffling your feet,” said Bensimon, who had spent the past hour watching the goings-on from a shadowed corner of the room, like a hawk planning its descent onto a family of rabbits. “Come here.”
Kel approached the adviser as the rest of the Palace servants melted away like mist. In a moment, he was alone in the room with Bensimon, who grabbed him under the chin, tilted his head up, and surveyed him unceremoniously. “Tell me again what you’re doing tonight.”
“Being C—Prince Conor. Sitting at the banquet table. Not saying much.”
Apparently satisfied, Bensimon let Kel go. “The King and Queen know who you really are, of course; don’t worry about them. They are well used to playing parts.”
Somehow Kel’s imagination hadn’t gotten this far. “The King is going to pretend I’m his son?”
Bensimon snorted. “I wouldn’t get too excited,” he said. “Very little of any of this is about you.”
That struck Kel as a relief. If everyone important ignored him, maybe he could make it through the night.
Bensimon led Kel back into the warren of corridors that seemed to make up the interior of the Palace. They took a back set ofservants’ stairs down to a small but elegant room full of books; there was a tall golden door at the far end of the room, through which Kel could hear music and laughter.
For the first time, Kel’s heart jolted with real longing.Books.The only reading material he’d ever had were a few shabby novels donated to the Orfelinat by charitable patrons, satisfying tales of pirates and phoenixes, sorcerers and sailors, but of course they didn’tbelongto him. The study books—histories of empires fallen, the building of the Gold Roads—were kept locked up by the Sisters, brought out to be read from during classes. He’d been given an old book of tales by a boatswain once, in return for running a message, but Sister Jenova had confiscated it. According to her, sailors only read two things: murder stories and pornography.
These books were as beautiful as the sun sinking behind Tyndaris. Kel could smell the scent of the leather that bound them, the ink on their pages, the bitterness of the stamping mill where the paper was made.
Bensimon was watching him with narrowed eyes, the way a professional gambler eyed a mark. “You can read, then. And you like it?”
Kel didn’t have to reply. Two people had swept into the room, surrounded by Castelguards, and he was stunned into silence.
Kel’s first thought was that these people were the most beautiful he had ever seen. Then he wondered if it was just because they were so fastidiously groomed, and their clothes were so lovely. He didn’t know the words yet for silk and satin and cloth-of-gold, but he knew when things looked rich and soft, and shimmered in firelight.
The King was familiar: unsurprising, since his face was on every coin in Castellane. On the coins he was in profile, gazing to the right—toward unconquered Sarthe, went the tale. But the coins did not show the breadth of him, his barrel chest or wrestler’s arms. He made Kel quail with his sheer size and presence. His eyes were light, high-set, his beard and hair a pale mixture of blond and early silvering.
The Queen had dark, flowing hair like the Fear River at nightfall, and smooth russet-brown skin. She was slim and tall, her hands heavy with rings, each set with a different, glimmering stone. Ropes of gold circled her neck and wrist, and her hair was dressed with pins in the shape of golden lilies. She had been a Marakandi princess, Kel remembered, and gold was a symbol of good luck in that country.
The Queen regarded Kel with the dark eyes that had been the subject of a thousand poems and ballads. The citizens of Castellane were competitive about the beauty of their Queen, and wanted it widely known that she was more beautiful than the Queens of Sarthe or Hind. The Queen of Hanse, Kel had been told, looked like a constipated waterfowl in comparison with Queen Lilibet of Castellane.
“That’s the boy?” she asked. Her voice was rich, sweet as sugared rosewater.
“Quite,” said Bensimon. He seemed to have a real fondness for the word. “Are you ready, Highnesses?”
The Queen nodded. The King shrugged. And the Castelguards threw open the golden door as the music in the Gallery turned to a processional tune. The King passed slowly through, the Queen following. Neither of them glanced back.
Kel hesitated. He felt his hair ruffle; Bensimon had placed something on his head: a golden circlet. He felt the adviser’s hands linger over his head, almost like a blessing.
Bensimon grunted, then gave Kel a shove. “Goafterthem,” he ordered, and Kel stumbled through the golden door, into the blinding light.
