Somebody coughed. Morfett twisted around and saw a lady in pearls and a gown edged in snow lynx raise a quick hand to her mouth. Her tissue-clad shoulders still shook, which betrayed her smothered laughter. At her side, cloaked in white ermine and official city scarlet, and bedecked with a dazzle of diamonds and gold chains, her brother Diegan, commander of the guard, looked stiffly furious. Oh no, concluded Morfett, neither time nor bloodshed would soften his city’s stance. The prince Etarra’s governors had been rousted out to greet was going to be driven from his attempt to restore the monarchy with tucked tail like a mongrel cur.
The sorcerer in his tawdry robe incongruously began to chuckle. ‘Dharkaron’s Chariot,’ he swore mildly. ‘I can’t wait to see what happens when you meet your royal liege.’
‘A boy, just barely grown,’ Morfett sneered. ‘He’ll be sorry to find that bribes won’t buy him sovereignty.’
At this, Sethvir seemed stunned speechless.
Lord Governor Morfett stroked his chins and fatuously gave himself the victory.
The prince’s party must have rounded the last switchback then, for shouts arose from the countryfolk gathered along the lower roadway. Their cheers were boisterously joyful, after the sorcerers’ promise to pry croft rents away from the land-guilds. Since the ministers whose authority had been bypassed had ratified no such relinquishment, of course, the blandishment was false. Morfett sweated in irritation. Though nothing could be seen yet from his vantage-point before the gatehouse, the officials all began to elbow and press in their eagerness. Shorter than his peers by a head, Morfett had to crane his neck like any bumpkin to retain his view of the valley.
He anticipated a cavalcade, resplendent with jewelled trappings and trailing banners; and wagons with silk streamers and canopies. That was what one would expect of a prince, or so his wife had speculated in her gossip with cronies for a week. Since pomp in Etarra established status, a royal retinue would only impress if it was blindingly, ostentatiously lavish.
Morfett saw just four horsemen, unattended, on mounts that wore no caparisons. They carried no banners or streamers; neither did they prove to be outriders for another larger party. Asandir was the one astride the black; at least, the dark, silver-bordered cloak that billowed in the gusts was unmistakably his austere style. The fat man in russet on the paint looked too undignified for a prince; his companion, a fair man, owned the bearing, but though his velvets were cut from indigo deep enough to raise envy from the cloth guild he wore no royal device.
That left the slight, straight figure on the dun with the irregular marking on her neck.
Morfett’s narrowed eyes fastened upon that last rider with the keenness of a snake measuring its distance to strike.
A green cloak with the silver heraldic leopard of Rathain muffled the man and most of the horse. The hands that gripped the dun’s reins were spare as any boy’s, and skilled. The dun was inventively difficult. From a distance the face of the rider looked fine-chiselled, and the black hair Morfett heard was distinctive of s’Ffalenn blew uncovered in the breeze.
The Lord Governor smiled in viperish glee. ‘A child,’ he exulted. His supposition to Sethvir fortuitously seemed confirmed: the pretender to Rathain’s throne was a green youth, and Etarran politics would devour him.
Expansive, nearly happy, the Lord Governor bestowed a dimpled smile upon the Warden of Althain, who now looked distractedly deadpan. ‘Sorcerer,’ Morfett mocked, ‘here’s my sanction. Let the affirmation ceremony for this prince’s right of ancestry take place on Etarran soil. His Grace has my leave to chill his feet in our dirt, may he grub the worms’ favour from the honour!’
Chuckles rippled through the ranks of Etarra’s officials. Women tittered while, like the boom of a storm surge against the slope below the walls, cries of redoubled welcome arose from the riff-raff of farmers.
‘Come forward,’ Sethvir invited over the noise. ‘Your word as given, Lord Governor, we’ll proceed to acknowledge Rathain’s prince.’
‘Then I don’t have to kiss his royal cheeks until he’s barefoot?’ Morfett roared with laughter; by Ath, he
Flushed as he enjoyed his huge joke, Morfett parked his rump on the combing of a terracotta retaining wall. The pruned stubble of rosebushes that hitched at his gold-stitched jacket scarcely merited attention, the charade to be enacted in the flowerbeds being far too rich to miss. In signal unconcern for their silks and their ribbons, high city officials and the pedigreed curious who were last to arrive jockeyed for position between rows of potted trees and greening topiary. The prince’s party entered. Jeers blended with the trickle of the fountains, while Asandir caught the dun mare’s reins to foil her spirited sidle. Her royal burden dismounted.
Up close, the green cloak more than ever overwhelmed the lightly knit frame of the prince.
‘Do you suppose he’s inbred, to be so delicate?’ muttered Diegan to a stifled explosion of hilarity. Somebody passed a flask of wine. Fanned by Morfett’s bold sarcasm, the mood of Etarra’s well-born displayed the viciousness gloved in gaiety that would have enlivened an out-of-season garden party. The courtyard’s eight foot high mortised walls reflected the women’s disparaging remarks with the clarity of an amphitheatre.
The dun’s reins were passed to an unseen attendant while the fair-haired companion in his elegant velvets unclasped the green cloak and bared the royal shoulders.
Morfett moistened plump lips and lingeringly assessed his enemy.
To Etarran eyes the prince who stood revealed was plainly clad to a point that invited ridicule. His tunic and shirt were cut of unadorned linen that anyone less lazy than a peasant at least would have bothered to bleach white. The natural fibres emphasized a complexion that looked tintless and porcelain-pale. When Asandir faced the prince and took slender fingers into his own to escort his royal charge forward, Morfett could have crowed. The s’Ffalenn wore no jewellery. The only gemstones on him were the emerald in his sword-hilt which, though well-cut, could not be called large; and an ordinary white gold signet ring that showed the battering of hard wear.
‘Plain as a forest barbarian,’ jibed the minister of the weaver’s guild.
Sethvir raised his eyebrows in reproof. ‘Every s’Ffalenn to be sanctioned for succession came to his ceremony unadorned.’
But the spirit of exuberant contempt by now had infected the whole gathering.
The prince’s poise showed stiffness as he removed his boots. He assumed his place in the flowerbed, ankle deep in black soil hoed up by the gardeners and awaiting the sprouting of spring lilies. Asandir kept hold on his hands and intoned a ritual in a softly sonorous voice. None of Etarra’s elite cared to hold still enough to listen. Diegan’s sister was loudly pointing out to the half-deaf seneschal of the treasury that the royal ankles had scars
