The senior officer—Neriodd, wasn’t it?—came in, then, frowning. Karah glanced up in mute alarm, and then at the prince in equally mute appeal. He gave her a reassuring nod and Neriodd a cool look, which the officer did not seem to regard.
“Your father asks for you to attend him, eminence,” the officer said, and then, in the tone of a man reprieved, “Ah, tea!” He hooked a chair out from the table with his foot and sank into it with a sigh of relief and without waiting for leave. “Your father has not stopped for tea,” he added to the prince. “You might see what you can do along those lines.”
“Neriodd—” began the prince, but then shook his head and stood up. Karah began to rise as well, but he patted her hand and she sank into her chair again. Nemienne crept closer to her sister, and Karah put an arm around the girl and smiled down at her in calm reassurance.
“I shall see that your guests receive everything they desire,” the officer assured Prince Tepres, and bowed with an ironic air that suggested the prince probably should be on his way. Leilis thought the prince might be angry at the informality, much less the implied dismissal, but he didn’t seem to be. She could see there were undercurrents to this relationship not visible to any outsider. The prince murmured to Karah and went out. The officer stayed behind, and Leilis, who might otherwise have liked to speak plainly with the girls, veiled her eyes behind the steam from a fresh cup of tea and said nothing.
After the prince, a man came to take Karah to the king. Nemienne looked white and nervous, and shredded another roll. Leilis touched her shoulder in sympathy for their mutual situation and wondered what in the tangle of magecraft and terror and treachery had made the girl so wretched. There seemed so much to choose from. She did not dare speak to Nemienne about anything important, not with the officer keeping his ironic eye on them. But she made the other girl eat a roll rather than crumble it. “You can’t be fainting from hunger,” she pointed out, and Nemienne shuddered and obediently ate the roll.
After Karah, Nemienne was summoned. Leilis followed her own advice and made herself eat a plain roll and a little rice porridge, hoping to settle her nerves and stomach before her own turn came. It seemed a long time coming, but at the same time, Leilis would have been glad to wait longer still. Days, if possible. She had no idea what she was going to say to the king when she was finally brought before him. So much seemed difficult, now.
Her summons came at last, as the sun stood for its little time at noon and began its slow westward slide toward the sea. A long day, following an unspeakable night, and a long time yet to finish it… Neriodd himself escorted Leilis down a long stair and along a complicated path through interior hallways. Leilis had expected some sort of starkly formal reception chamber, or perhaps a grim prisonlike room. Instead, she found Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes waiting for her in a small, warm corner room much like one of the parlors of Cloisonné House. There were comfortable-looking chairs and small tables scattered in two groupings, one by each window, and rugs of blue and gold, and a writing desk with a dozen books on a shelf above it. A fire burned in a tidy fireplace, with a single chair drawn up before it. The king occupied this chair. His big cat sat on the hearth, its fluffy tail curled neatly around its feet, glints of underlying silver showing beneath its black fur when it turned its head. It blinked its odd-colored eyes slowly at Leilis and then looked away, disinterested.
Whoever had prevailed upon the king, he had a pot of tea on a table by his elbow, and a steaming cup in his hand. The heavy iron ring on his finger gleamed dully as he set the cup down on the table. He did not look exactly rested, but the strong bones of his face no longer stood out with quite the stark exhaustion Leilis remembered from those last moments in the dragon’s cavern. The pale eyes he turned her way were calm and cold, the line of his mouth ungiving.
Leilis, for all her years in the flower world, could not guess what he might be thinking. Nor had she imagined that she would ever stand before the King of Lirionne—but keiso manners came to her rescue. Though she was no keiso, still she glided forward and sank down with deliberate grace to kneel before the king, her right leg tucked in and her left foot arched so that her robes would drape elegantly. She bowed her head, hiding behind her still face.
“You may stand.” The king’s voice was not as cold as his expression had led Leilis to expect, yet its very impassivity was somehow more alarming than open suspicion or even anger would have been. “Look at me, woman. Your name is Leilis? You are of Cloisonné House, yet not a keiso?”