Corinn did as instructed. Funny that a hairdressing servant at times commanded her in ways that generals and senators and soldiers never could.
'Makes you wonder what?' Corinn asked.
Rhrenna pressed her thin lips together. 'I don't know if we should credit it, but Sinper Ou sent a message saying he'd heard Mena had captured the last foulthing instead of killing it.'
It took Corinn a moment to answer. She waited for the hairdresser to finish the braid work around her forehead. It was painfully elaborate, but Corinn liked a certain amount of discomfort while at official functions. It kept her from relaxing, which was useful. 'Why would she do that?' she asked, once her head was her own again.
Rhrenna shrugged. 'I don't know. As I said, there's no reason to credit it. The people like to make up tales about your sister. Given the slightest opportunity, they embellish.'
Corinn snorted in agreement. 'Maeben on earth, she is.'
'Yes, well… I came to tell you that King Grae has just arrived.'
'Has he?'
'Surprise visit, apparently. He's asked to attend the banquet. Just as an observer, he says. He's content to stand to the side and watch.'
'Why has he come?'
'He didn't say. To show off his freckles, perhaps, and the dimple in his chin.' Rhrenna grinned. 'He's not hard to look at.'
Corinn did not recall. She had seen him a few times since she ascended to the throne but had been content to keep him at a distance. She did recall that he favored his brother Igguldan, and something about this had displeased her. 'He may attend,' she said, 'but keep him at a far table. Even a king should provide us fair warning of his arrival.'
'As you wish,' Rhrenna said, 'although I might need to wander over to the far tables myself.' Smiling, she nudged aside the servant who had just lifted Corinn's slim crown. She slipped it in place herself. Made of white gold shaped like delicately thorned branches, it had a ruby at the center that was so dark it appeared black. Acacian royals wore crowns on occasion, though they could just as easily demonstrate their rank with necklaces, earrings, or bracelets, even with garments of a style made only for them for centuries now. But Corinn had taken to this piece since the jeweler first presented it to her. There was a rough texture to the gold, and the stone itself seemed to hide secrets within its depths.
'There,' Rhrenna said, backing up and studying Corinn as if she had worked the transformation herself. 'You're cruel, Corinn. You'll have the men sweaty with lust and the women sick with envy. Most of them, at least. A few might go sick with lust as well.'
When Corinn arrived at the crowded outdoor courtyard in which the banquet was already in full swing, she remembered vaguely that she had once thrived on adolescent courtly intrigue. In her early teen years she had cared about nothing so much as the jockeying for status and favor among her peers. Handsome boys, rival girls, older men's lingering gazes and solicitous flattery; who bested whom on the training grounds; who wore the finest garments and how-it had all, for a time, been the very stuff of life. How foreign that girl was to Corinn now. How maddening that her father had let her live in that illusion for as long as he had.
Although what am I truly doing differently? the queen wondered, as she nodded and smiled and accepted the lips pressed to her hand. Again I walk through a maze of illusion, one of my own making. Perhaps some evening just like this one, some raving lunatic from the fringes will strike me down, just as befell my father. Much as befell Aliver. It's a fool's game, but what choice have I? Should I lock Aaden and myself up in the palace or in Calfa Ven? The latter was an appealing idea, but it would not do. Such a course was perhaps more dangerous anyway. No, she thought, better that I see where the snakes lie than that I find myself stepping on them. At least this way I can weed them out.
She moved through the gathered people with a cool detachment, guided by a bevy of maidens who flanked her as persistently as her Numrek guards. Unlike the taciturn guards-who, she noted, had grown more somber in recent weeks, almost as if they were displeased with their work-her maidens were all mirth. The court was a galaxy of many constellations. Corinn was master of them all, but before her floated representatives from around the empire-royal children, rich younger brothers and sisters, tribal princes and princesses-each the sun of some ally's heart, each surrounded by his or her own attendants. And through this patrolled the ambitious and the arrogant: senators and nobles, Agnates and landowners, shipbuilders and leaguemen, mistresses and lovers, guards and escorts. Sycophants all. Liars most. Some loved her, but these she suspected of their own sort of weakness.
Her mind only really engaged when she felt a need to calculate, study, observe particular others to see what they might betray in unguarded moments. She sat in the chair prepared for her, a throne on a dais, a low table laden with food in front of her, a few chairs on either side for the chosen ones fortunate enough to spend some of the evening near her.
As a Vadayan priest mumbled at her ear, Corinn took in the room. It sometimes surprised even her that her understanding of what was really going on around her was so at odds with the appearance of things. On the surface she sat above a party of people, sumptuously dressed, smiling and gay. Torches lit the place. They were sheathed in tall glass tubes that funneled the smoke up above the revelers and cast blue and red and green and yellow light, depending on the tint of the glass. Musicians lined the walls and the railings that hemmed the space, playing tunes that danced from one portion of the courtyard to another, like a chorus of birds at play. Everywhere there were smiling faces, laughter, conversation, flirtation; between them servants wove with food and drink liberally belched up from the kitchens. In one small area performers enticed the guests to dance. She spotted Aaden at play with his friends. They were like silver fish swimming amid the adults in some complicated game of tag. And above it all the night sky, mild and clear, stars twinkling into being as the sun slipped over the western horizon.
As if all of that were not enough, Corinn had woven a spell from The Song of Elenet, a small work of her own creation that would enchant a few hours before fading. It was a mild euphoria let loose in the air of the courtyard, circling unseen, just the thing to make the revelers feel themselves especially attractive, to make jokes sure to succeed, to make the light sparkle a bit brighter, and to make food and drink taste even better than it was. So it was another festive evening in Acacia; what could be more pleasant? It never took her long to spot the things slithering beneath the surface, parasites at work despite the evening's pleasures.
Delivegu was a reminder of it. She spotted him conversing with the party from the Prios Mines. How he had gotten in and what those men thought he was she had no idea, but in a strange way she was glad to have him near at hand. Eyes that lit with smiles when she made contact with them were misleading. She could sense the same eyes go malevolent when she was not looking. She could tell when conversation was amiable, and when the whispered words where unkind to her. She noted small things to examine further later. Senator Saden, while haranguing the woman beside him about something, avoided making eye contact with the newly enriched land speculator from Alyth. The man who passed beside him might have uttered something, but Saden did not acknowledge him until the two were some distance apart. Then he looked back and exchanged a knowing glance. Some petty treachery in the works between them? Likely. She would have Rhrenna look into it later.
Corinn's eyes drifted away from Saden to settle on a young man who stood at the far side of the courtyard, nearly atop the staircase that led to the lower terraces. He was flanked by several men with the firm-jawed look of trained guards. The man's reddish-blond hair was tousled as if an older brother had just mussed it up, yet his face-which Corinn sensed to be handsome even at a distance-took in the crowd with a confident composure.
'Who is that?' Corinn asked, gesturing with her chin.
Her maid answered that this was King Grae of Aushenia. The woman continued to explain that he would have been announced more formally, but he had arrived just a few hours earlier and asked to be in attendance this evening, even if just to watch the court from the-
'I know,' she said. 'Summon him.' She glanced at the priest, smiling. 'I'm sure the Vadayan will offer his seat to foreign royalty.'
As she sat watching the messenger sent by the maid make his way through the crowd, Corinn wondered why she had done that. The words just came out of her mouth. She had claimed indifference to Grae to Rhrenna earlier; now she called him to her after a glance. The Meinish woman would find ways to poke fun at her for this, she was sure. It was done now, so she sat straight backed and waited, making a point of not watching the messenger interact with the king.
