The clothes in the wardrobe did not fit him; Sterren, Eighth Warlord had obviously been considerably larger than was Sterren, Ninth Warlord. Not that he had been anything like Alder or Dogal, but he surely had the advantage of a few inches over his great-nephew, both in height and circumference.
Even so, Sterren thought that he would do better to wear something from the wardrobe, belted up tight, than to try to get any more use out of his own tattered garments. He was to eat dinner with the king, at the High Table, and he had not a single tunic left that had neither patches nor major stains.
Furthermore, he saw that all his clothes were cut differently from the prevailing mode in Semma. The local style was looser, more flowing, but with more fancywork to it.
He picked out an elegant black silk tunic embroidered in gold, and a pair of black leather breeches, black seemed to be the predominant color in the collection, and he guessed it had something to do with the office he held. It seemed an appropriate color for a warlord.
Of course, it might just be that his great-uncle had liked the dramatic, or maybe he had a morbid streak, but in any case, black clothes might not look quite so oversized on him.
He would, he thought with a sigh, have to alter all the clothes, take them in to fit him.
No, he wouldn’t, he corrected himself, brightening up; he was an aristocrat now! He could find a servant to do that. The castle probably had a tailor somewhere.
He pulled the tunic over his head and looked in the flaking, yellowed mirror that hung in the back of the wardrobe.
He shuddered. The tunic almost reached his knees; he looked like a little boy.
He pulled on the breeches, then began adjusting belts and fabric.
By tucking in the top of the breeches and folding under the cuff on each leg, he was able to make them fit, though they were still rather baggy in spots. The tunic was less cooperative, but he finally contrived an arrangement of two belts, one under and one over, that pulled the hem up to a height he could live with. The embroidered sleeves he had to roll up.
He was studying his appearance critically when someone knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” he called, unthinkingly using Ethsharitic.
“What?” someone answered in Semmat. The voice was female, young and female.
“Sorry,” he called, switching to Semmat as he adjusted his belts. “Who is it?” “The Princess Lura, Lord Sterren,” Alder’s voice replied.
Sterren whirled around and stared at the door. A princess? He glanced down at himself.
He looked foolish, he knew, but he would have to face this soon enough. He pursed his lips and decided not to put off the inevitable. “Come in,” he called.
The door swung open and Sterren looked up to see who was there, but at first he saw no one. Then he let his gaze drop.
“Hello,” Princess Lura said, smiling up at him. “You look funny in those clothes; don’t you have any that fit?”
Sterren was not particularly fond of children, but Lura, whom he guessed to be no more than nine, at the most, had an irresistible grin.
Besides, she was a princess. He smiled back, and it was only slightly forced.
“No,” he said, “I’m afraid I don’t. The clothes I brought with me are all worn out.”
“Can’t you get new ones?” she demanded.
“I haven’t had time,” he explained.
“Oh, I guess not.” Her gaze dropped for a moment, and an awkward silence fell, to be quickly broken when she raised her eyes again and said, “I wanted to meet you. I never met anybody from Ethshar before.”
Sterren noticed that she pronounced “Ethshar” correctly, even when speaking Semmat, and nodded approvingly. “I can understand that,” he said. “I must seem... um... I must be like... I guess you haven’t.” His Semmat vocabulary had failed him again. He hastened to cover over his slip. “I never met a princess before.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said.
“Not even back in Ethshar?”
“Not even in Ethshar. There’s only one princess in all of Ethshar of the Spices, and I never met her.”
Actually, technically, there were no “princesses” at all, but Azrad VII’s sister, Imra the Unfortunate, was a reasonably close approximation. Sterren had no idea what her correct title would be in Semmat; in Ethsharitic she was simply Lady Imra.
“Oh, we have lots of princesses here!” Lura announced proudly. “There’s me, of course, and my sisters — Ashassa doesn’t live here any more, she’s in Kalithon with her husband Prince Tabar — but there’s Nissitha and Shirrin, still. And there’s my Aunt Sanda. That’s four of us, not counting Ashassa.”
Sterren nodded. “Four’s a good number, I guess,” he said, smiling foolishly.
Lura’s expression suddenly turned suspicious. “I’m not a baby, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to play along with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Sterren said, dropping the false smile, “I didn’t mean to... to do as if you were a baby. Um... how old are you?” He looked a little more closely at her face. He could not tell her age with any certainty, but he noticed a resemblance to her father, the king.
“Seven,” she said. “I’ll be eight in Icebound. The ninth of Icebound.”
“I was born on the eighth of Thaw, myself,” Sterren said.
Lura nodded and another awkward silence fell. The two of them stood there, looking at each other or glancing around the room, until Sterren, desperately, said, “So you just wanted to meet me because I’m from Ethshar?”
“Well, mostly. And you are the new warlord, so I guess you’re important. Everybody else wants to meet you, too, but they didn’t come up here, I did. My sister Shirrin was scared to, and Nissitha says she doesn’t have time for such foolishness, but she’s just trying to act grown-up. She’s twenty-one and not even betrothed yet, so I don’t know why she’s so proud of herself!”
Sterren nodded. Lura obviously loved to talk, another resemblance to her father, he thought. He wondered if he had finally found someone who would tell him everything he wanted to know about Semma Castle and its inhabitants; certainly, Lura wasn’t reticent.
On the other hand, how much would she actually know? Gossip about her sisters was one thing; a warlord’s duties were quite another.
“Are you really a warlord?” she asked, breaking his chain of thought.
“So they tell me,” he said.
“Have you killed a lot of people?”
Sterren shuddered. “I’ve never killed anyone,” he said, emphatically.
“Oh.” Lura was clearly disappointed by this revelation. She did not let that slow her for long, however.
“What’s it like in Ethshar?” she asked.
Involuntarily, Sterren glanced out the broad windows at the endless plains to the north. “Crowded,” he said. He pointed out the window. “Imagine,” he said, “that you were on the top of the tower at Westgate, looking east across the city. The eastern wall would be halfway to the... to where the sun comes up, and everything in between would be streets and shops and houses, all crowded inside the walls.” He didn’t know any word for “horizon,” and hoped Lura would understand what he meant.
Lura looked out the window and asked, “What about farms?”
“Outside the walls, never inside.”
She looked skeptical, and he saw no point in arguing about it. “You asked,” he said with a shrug.
She shrugged in reply. “You’re right,” she said, “I did. When are you coming downstairs? Everybody’s waiting to meet you.”
“They are?”
“Well, of course they are, silly! Come on, right now; I know Shirrin wants to meet you, especially.”
“She does?” Even when he remembered who Shirrin was — one of Lura’s sisters, and therefore a princess — Sterren could not imagine why she would particularly want to meet him.
“Yes, she does. Come on!”
