As they approached the high table, they drew nearer to Palatyne, who stood in front of King Merofyn recounting the battle for Rolencia. He broke off mid-sentence, seeing them.
The noble scholar bowed low with an elegant sweep of his hand. 'My king.'
Piro felt a tug on her skirt and realised she had been staring at the frail old man who had toppled her father's kingdom and brought them such misery. He wasn't at all what she expected, not arrogant, if anything he looked tired and cranky.
Another tug on her skirt. She flushed and bowed her head, hands by her sides in the Rolencian manner, no fancy flourishes.
'Dunstany,' a thin voice spoke. 'Like a black cat, you've returned unharmed.'
The noble scholar lifted his head and so did Piro.
Dunstany shrugged. 'You know what they say, a cat always lands on its feet.'
'But you've been doing that for ninety-four years now.' The old man's eyes blazed. 'How do you do it?'
'A by-product of Affinity, my king.' From his tone, Piro could tell they'd had this conversation before. 'Affinity affects different people in different ways.'
The king sat back with a grimace. Used to being acknowledged by visiting nobles, Piro felt excluded but also relieved, because she could stand back and observe.
Dunstany turned to Palatyne with the barest of nods. 'Overlord.'
'Duke Palatyne,' he corrected, touching a large, official crest on his chest which rested amidst her family's royal emblems. Every time Piro saw the pendants, her stomach lurched as she was reminded of how her mother and father had died. How had Lence died? Would she ever know? He'd been so much larger than life, he and Byren. She could not imagine anything quenching the fire in them.
'You.' Palatyne tugged Piro forwards.
She lifted her chin determined not to let the grand palace, and its even grander people, overwhelm her.
'And this, King Merofyn, is my gift to your beautiful daughter, a Rolencian nobleman's child for her very own seven-year slave.'
Piro glanced to Palatyne, surprised by his easy lie. Then she recalled she wasn't supposed to understand Merofynian.
She let her gaze meet King Merofyn's. This was the man who had assassinated her mother's young brother to steal the crown, relying on his cousinship to legitimise his claim.
Her old nurse had always said you were born with the face the gods gave you, but you ended up with the face you deserved. If this was so, then King Merofyn had been a mean-spirited, angry man and now she thought she also read fear in his frail body. He sat on the great golden throne, behind the royal table, dwarfed by his mantle of office with its gleaming chains and seals.
Originally, she had put him high on her list of people who needed killing. But, since overhearing Palatyne's plan to poison him and now, seeing him in person, she pitied the king.
Next to him sat Isolt Merofyn Kingsdaughter. Her eyebrows had been plucked completely and her face powdered so that she was very pale. Kohl elongated her tilted black eyes and her mouth had been painted a glistening red, like a furled rose bud. With her high forehead and her hair pulled back under a circlet of silver, she looked like a perfect sculpture, not a living, breathing girl half a year older than Piro.
'You do me great honour, Overlord Pal…' Isolt corrected herself, 'I mean Duke Palatyne.'
Piro felt a little kick of delight. If she was not mistaken, Isolt's slip had been deliberate, to remind Palatyne of his origins beyond the Divide. Piro studied Isolt. Was this kingsdaughter a kindred spirit?
No, she couldn't be, not when she held her honour so lightly.
Palatyne's jaw clenched, but he said only, 'The Lady Seela is at your service, Isolt.' No title for her.
'Seela? That is a Merofynian name. Does she speak Merofynian?'
'No. Rolencian only,' Palatyne said. 'These Rolencians imitate their betters but do not have the scholarship to learn another language. How many can you speak, Isolt Kingsdaughter?'
This was a clumsy attempt at flattery and Piro thought Isolt agreed with her, because her answer was barely civil.
'As many as I need to.' She added in only slightly accented Rolencian, 'Come stand behind my chair, lady Seela.'
Palatyne gave Piro a nudge and she climbed the step onto the dais, going around the table.
Isolt did not meet Piro's eyes or acknowledge her and Piro realised that, as a slave, she was invisible, yet right behind the throne. Dunstany was right, she could go anywhere in the palace and all she had to say was that she was on Isolt Kingsdaughter's business for the guards to let her pass.
While Palatyne went on to boast of his success, Dunstany took his seat at the end of the high table. Between the Power-worker and the king were eleven nobles — men and women who had risen to power with the king, Piro suspected, usurping the nobles loyal to her mother's family. This was surprising, as she would have expected the noble scholar to have wormed his way closer into the king's inner circle of advisers.
Palatyne came around to sit on the king's left hand. On his side were three young nobles she recognised from the voyage, and the Utlander. Here was another layer of new allegiances. Clearly, there was a struggle for power between the older nobles who supported King Merofyn and the ambitious young ones who were eager for power at Palatyne's side. And what did Dunstany do?
She glanced his way, catching him watching her.
He sat back and waited. He was a survivor.
During the long meal Piro wriggled her toes in her fancy new shoes, while she observed the nobility and royalty of Merofynia. Now that she was bored, her stomach rumbled and she wished she had eaten earlier.
The king, his daughter and Palatyne all had their own food tasters. They ate nothing that their tasters did not. If this was an elegant high court, then she was glad she had grown up in Rolenhold where King Rolen did not worry about poison and sometimes wandered into the kitchen to help himself to a slab of leftover apple pie.
Sorrow stung Piro's eyes, but grief served no purpose. Revenge was better. She almost laughed. Here she stood, inside the palace, within a body's length of the men who had orchestrated the downfall of her father's kingdom, and no one knew who she was.
Dunstany thought she was spying for him, but she had her own plans.
Fyn studied the sky, hoping for clouds to obscure the betraying multitude of stars.
'No such luck.' Bantam said, voicing his thoughts. 'Under starlight the ship stands out like a cockroach on a silver plate!'
Fyn turned back to the approaching Utlanders. 'They're — '
'Closer still,' Bantam agreed. 'They'll be on us by midnight.'
Fyn swallowed. To die out here, when Byren needed him… 'We're tacking across the wind. Can't we ride before it like we were doing?'
Bantam grinned. 'We'll make a sailor of you yet. We're tacking because the cap'n's changed course. We're heading towards the Skirling Stones.'
He drew Fyn with him to a better vantage point and gestured by way of explanation.
When Fyn stared in the direction he'd indicated, he was able to make out jagged black rocks, jutting out of the sea. 'What good's that? They'll just follow us.'
'Into the Skirling Stones? Into a maelstrom of seething water, reefs of razor-sharp rocks and whirlpools?' Bantam mocked. 'No one in their right mind would venture into the Skirling Stones.'
Fyn just stared at him. Why hadn't anyone warned him sea-hounds were mad?
'You think we're crazy, don't you, little monk? And we would be, if the cap'n hadn't done this before. He's a true artist, able to feel his way through channels, against tides and over reefs. He knows his way through the Skirling Stones.'
'Why? Why go there in the first place?'
'We're sea-hounds, boy. Ostron Isle pays a bounty for every Utland raider we destroy. But it's hard to catch them unawares on the open sea.' He tilted his head. 'Back home where I grew up, there were spiders big as sparrows. They'd build a trap by digging into the soil and disguise it with bits of twig and bark, so that it looked like a bit of ordinary ground. When an unwary beetle came by, they'd dart out and snatch it. That's a bit like the cap'n's plans. No one expects attack from within the Skirling Stones.'
'That's clever.' Fyn began to hope. 'How many times have you done this?'
