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Antonetta, he noted, was not eating, but was looking down at her food with a furious expression. The glamorous Montfaucon winked in her direction. “When beauty and wisdom can be married together, that is the ideal, but in the usual course of events the Godsgift one or the other. I do think our Antonetta might be one of the lucky exceptions.”
“One cannot have everything, or the Gods would come to envy mortals,” said another man, this one with cold eyes. He had narrow features and light-olive skin, and reminded Kel of illustrations in his schoolbooks of Castellani nobles going back hundreds of years. “Is that not what happened to the Callatians? They built their towers too close to heaven, challenged the Gods with their accomplishments, and for it their Empire was destroyed?”
“A dark view, Roverge,” said a kind-looking older man. He was pallid, like someone who spent a lot of time indoors. “Empires tend toward entropy, you know. It is difficult to grasp so much power. Or so I was taught in the schoolroom long ago.” He smiled at Kel. “Have you not been taught the same, Prince?”
Everyone turned to look pleasantly at Kel, who nearly gagged on a mouthful of tart. Wildly, he imagined what would happen the moment they realized he wasn’t the Crown Prince. He’d be surrounded by the Castelguard. They’d drag him from the Palace and toss him over the walls, where he’d roll down the mountain until he splashed into the ocean and was eaten by a crocodile.
“But Sieur Cazalet,” said Antonetta, “are you not the master of all the wealth in Castellane? And is not wealth also power?”
Cazalet.Kel knew the name: The Cazalet Charter was banking, and gold crown coins were sometimes called cazalets on the street.
“See?” said Artal Gremont. “Too clever.”
Kel plastered a smile upon his face. He could not make his mouth stretch very far, which was likely fortunate; it gave him the aspect of smiling coolly, rather than enthusiastically. Enthusiasm, as he would later find, was deemed suspicious in a prince. “I am still learning, of course, Sieur Cazalet,” he said. “But it is said by the sages that he who desires all, loses all.”
Bensimon’s mouth quirked, and a look of real surprise went over the Queen’s face, quickly hidden. Antonetta smiled, which Kel found pleased him.
The King reacted not at all to this pronouncement by his pretend son, but the russet-haired delegate from Sarthe chuckled. “It’s nice to see your son is well read, Markus.”
“Thank you, Sena Anessa,” said the Queen. The King said nothing. He was regarding Kel shrewdly over the rim of his tall silver cup.
“That was nicely said,” Antonetta whispered to Kel. Her eyes shone, making her look twice as pretty. Kel’s stomach tightened again, in an unfamiliar and this time not unpleasant way. “Perhaps you are not so ill after all.”
“Oh, no,” Kel said fervently. “I’m extremely unwell. I might forget anything at any moment.”
The adults had gone back to their own conversation. Kel could hardly follow it—too many names he didn’t know, both of people and things, like treaties and trade agreements. That was, until Senex Petro turned to the King with a bland smile and said, “Speaking of outrageous demands, Your Highness, is there news of the Ragpicker King?”
Kel’s eyes widened. He knew the name of the Ragpicker King; everyone in the city of Castellane did, but he would not have thought the nobles familiar with it. The Ragpicker King belonged to the streets of the city, to the shadows where the Vigilants did not dare to go, to the gambling hells and dosshouses of the Maze.
Once, Kel had asked Sister Bonafilia how old the Ragpicker King was. She had replied that he had always existed, as long as she had been aware to know it, and indeed there was something timeless about the figure he cut in Castellane, striding through the shadows all in black, with an army of pickpockets and cutpurses at his beck and call. He did not fear the Arrow Squadron or the city watch. He feared nothing at all.
“He is a criminal,” said the King, his rough voice uninflected. “There will always be criminals.”
“But he calls himself a king,” said Petro, still with the same easy smile. “Does that not seem a challenge to you?”
Sena Anessa looked anxious. It was almost, Kel thought, likesomeone in the schoolroom throwing a punch. One waited to see if the punch would be returned or ignored. Friends of the one doing the punching fretted. Going on the attack was always a risk.
But Markus only smiled. “He is no threat to me,” he said. “Children play the game of Castles, but it is no challenge to Marivent. Now, shall we discuss the issues I had raised earlier, about the Narrow Pass?”
Sena Anessa looked relieved. “An excellent idea,” she said, and voices along the table began to chime in with comments about trade and the Great Southwestern Road that might as well have been spoken in Sarthian for all that Kel understood them.
Antonetta tapped Kel’s wrist with the dull edge of her knife. “They’re bringing dessert,” she said, gesturing for Kel to pick up his cutlery. “You were right. Youareforgetful.”
Kel was mostly full anyway, or so he thought until the sweets appeared. Plums and peaches soaked in rosewater and honey, flower petals crystallized in sugar, glasses of sweet-sour iced sherbet, mugs of sweetened chocolate and cream, custards studded with pomegranate seeds, and plates of marzipan cakes decorated with colorful pastel icing.
The musicians played a soft tune as the last silver platter was brought out, bearing a magnificent cake in the shape of a phoenix, lavishly frosted with gold and bronze, each shimmering wing perfect down to the last feather. As they set the cake upon the table, it burst into flame, to a chorus of admiring noises.
Kel could not see what was admirable about setting a perfectly good cake on fire, but he knew he was supposed to look impressed when a piece of the phoenix dessert was placed in front of him, shimmering on a gold plate. It was sponge cake in hard, shining icing, like the carapace of a beetle.
He almost didn’t want to eat it. It had always seemed one of the greatest tragedies of the Sundering to him that not only had the world lost almost all magic, but that creatures like phoenixes and dragons, manticores and basilisks, had vanished overnight.
Still. He picked a piece of icing off the cake in front of him and put it in his mouth. It seemed to explode in flavors stronger than any he had ever experienced, a thousand times the sweetness of apples, mixed with spice and the perfume of flowers. He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth, half dazed with the savor of it.
He wished he could close his eyes. Everything seemed both as if it were fading and too clear at the same time. He could hear his own heart beating, and beyond that the voices of nobles chattering and laughing, with a sound like knives tearing through silk. He knew that, under the laughter, they were dueling with their words, insulting and challenging and praising one another in a language he knew, but did not understand.
Through the fringed curtain of his lashes, he saw the King looking at the phoenix cake. There was a sort of weary loathing on his face that surprised Kel. Certainly a monarch could not feel so strongly about pastry; the King must be thinking about something else.
Kel slipped further toward sleep as the night went on; apparently there was only so long that being terrified could keep one awake. Eventually he slipped his knife into his lap. Every time he found himself drifting off, he would close his hand around it and the pain would jolt him back awake.
