indescribable.
She squinted at his appraisal. Froi squinted back.
Gargarin appeared beside him and the girl disappeared.
‘I’m presuming that was the Princess,’ Froi said. ‘She’s plain enough. What is it with all the twitching? Is she possessed by demons?’
‘Lower your voice,’ Gargarin said sharply.
‘Does she know what they think of her out in the provinces?’ Froi continued. ‘That she’s a useless empty vessel and that they call her a whore?’
After a moment the girl peered out from her room again.
‘Well, if she didn’t before, she certainly does now,’ Gargarin muttered.
That night, the great hall was set up with three trestle tables joined together to accommodate at least sixty of the King’s relatives and advisors. Froi had met most of the advisors, each titled according to their rank.
‘Why would you want to be the King’s Eighth Advisor?’ he said to Gargarin, as they were escorted to their chair by the King’s Seventh Advisor.
‘Once upon a time Bestiano was the King’s Tenth Advisor,’ Gargarin replied. ‘If you stay long enough, you get rewarded.’
‘And what were you back then?’ Froi asked.
‘A fool,’ Gargarin said flatly. ‘With a bond.’
Froi was placed beside the strange Princess, who was dressed in the most hideous pink taffeta dress, bunched up in all the wrong places.
‘Good evening, Aunt Mawfa,’ she called out, her voice indignant where indignance wasn’t required. ‘Good evening, Cousin Robson.’
No one responded to her greetings. Most belonged to what Finnikin would have called the vacuous nobility, and droned on and on about absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Froi was hungry and before him were steaming platters of roasted peacock, salted fish, pastries stuffed with pigeon meat and the softest cheese he had ever tasted. He had been warned about the flatbread of Charyn and watched the way the others gathered their food with it.
But what caught his attention was most people’s reaction to Gargarin. He seemed to be the man everyone wanted to speak to.
‘Interesting talk in Paladozza, Sir Gargarin, of the Provincaro’s plans to dig up his meadows to capture rain,’ one man called out from the head of their table.
‘Not a Sir,’ Gargarin corrected, ‘and not so strange at all. I was disheartened to see the outer regions of the Citavita today. I drew up plans for water catchment here long ago, yet they seemed to have gone astray,’ he continued, his attention on the King’s First Advisor.
‘Would you contemplate visiting Jidia to speak to the Provincara Orlanda when you leave here?’ another asked.
‘No, he’s to visit Paladozza this winter,’ a man spoke up from the end of their table. ‘Is it not what you promised the Provincaro, Gargarin?’
‘Indeed.’
Gargarin kept his head down. Something told Froi that Gargarin was making no plans to go anywhere. The talking had caught Bestiano’s attention and he watched Gargarin carefully. Enviously? Was Gargarin a threat to Bestiano’s role as the King’s First Advisor? Gargarin hardly noticed. Once or twice, Froi caught Gargarin looking at the strange Princess Quintana, while the Princess blatantly stared in turn at Froi throughout the entire meal, with little apology or bashfulness.
As Rafuel had explained, the Charynites gathered their food with soft breads to soak up the juices and wipe their plates clean. The Princess chose to share Froi’s plate. Froi liked his food all to himself, it came from years of having to fight for his own. Worse still, the Princess made a mess around the dish. Her hair fell into the plate often and Froi was forced to flick its filthy strands away more than once. She resorted to leaning over to grab pudding from the plate of a whining duke who had called the servant over four times already to fill his cup of ale, complaining in a loud whisper that there was wine as per usual on the other side, but not theirs. When Quintana spilled food for the umpteenth time the Duke of Who-Cares-Where grabbed his cup and slammed it hard on the table, catching the tips of her fingers. ‘Beastly child.’
Bestiano excused himself from where he sat and walked down to them, tugging the Princess by the sleeve of her dress. ‘Perhaps you can show Olivier to your chamber,’ he hissed. ‘Make yourself useful rather than making people sick to their stomach, Quintana.’
One of the women tittered, putting a hand on Gargarin’s shoulder. ‘She’s no more useful in the bed chamber.’
Gargarin moved his shoulder away.
The Princess smoothed down the creases in the awful gown and stood, beckoning with a gesture for Froi to follow. Froi stared at the food before him, reluctant to leave it behind.
‘Good night to all,’ she called out. No one looked up except for Gargarin, and the noise of the big hall continued as though she had never spoken.
The Princess continued her farewells down the shadowy narrow passageway lit only by one or two fire torches that revealed a guard in every dark crevice.
‘Good night, Dorcas.’
‘Good night, Fekra.’
‘Good night, Fodor.’
Some muttered under their breath. No one responded. But she greeted them all the same.
Froi used the time to take in the various nooks and crannies and count each guard he passed.
When they reached their quarters, Quintana stood at his door and waited. He wondered if she was expecting him to perform tonight.
‘I’m very tired,’ he said. He yawned for effect.
‘Do you not have something to tell us, Olivier of Sebastabol?’ she asked in an indignant whisper.
He tried to think of what he should say. Was there something Rafuel had left out in his instructions?
‘Perhaps tomorrow we can go for a walk down to the Citavita,’ he said pleasantly. Dismissively. ‘How about that?’
She shook her head. ‘We prefer not to leave the palace.’
‘We?’ Froi asked, curiously, looking around. ‘We who?’
After a moment she pointed to herself.
‘What’s the worst that can happen if we go for a walk around the Citavita?’ he asked.
‘We could come across assassins, of course,’ she said, as though surprised he wouldn’t think of such a thing.
‘Of course.’
She studied his face for a moment.
‘How is it that you don’t know much, Olivier of Sebastabol?’
He shook his head, ruefully. ‘Exhaustion turns one into a fool.’ He bowed. ‘If not a walk around the Citavita tomorrow, then a walk around the palace walls will have to do.’
He shut the door on her before she could say another word.
Early the next morning a sound from outside the room alerted Froi. The mattress below was empty and from where he lay, he could see out onto the balconette where the sun had just begun to creep up. There Gargarin stood, staring across the gravina. Froi couldn’t see much in the poor light, but when he looked across towards the godshouse he saw the outline of a man on the balconette opposite and suspected it was Gargarin’s brother. A moment later, Gargarin turned and hobbled back inside.
As Gargarin stood at the basin and splashed water onto his face, Froi stepped outside, curious about the Priestling. He marvelled once again at how the godshouse could sit so high on a piece of tilted granite, promising to plunge towards them at any time. Froi went to turn away, but suddenly he felt ice-cold fingers travel down his spine. He swung around, his hand grabbing at the fingers, and saw that it was the Princess, leaning over the cast- iron of her balconette and reaching towards him, standing on the tip of her toes.
Her stare was cold and it made him flinch, but he saw fear and wonder there, too.
