Moonflower glanced up to meet the prince’s eyes. If she’d been in doubt about his implied compliment, his smile banished that doubt. She blushed and laughed at the same time, scooping the kitten up into her arms as she rose. “She’s—” She paused, because any compliment she paid the kitten now would sound like vanity. “Thank you,” she finished simply. “Um—eminence.” She blushed again, most becomingly.
“We are not at all formal tonight,” the prince assured her. He moved to the head of the chamber’s small table and knelt on the cushion there, opening a hand in invitation for Moonflower to join him. His bodyguard took a place against the wall, effacing himself with a practiced air. Leilis, with deliberate humor, took a precisely similar place on the other side of the room.
Servants—Birre and Kaerih—brought in the first dishes of the evening: rounds of soft bread with a delicate mousse of smoked fish on sea-green plates, and mussels in saffron broth in small black bowls. Bluefountain slipped in after them, carrying her kinsana. She gave Prince Tepres a thoughtful glance and knelt on the floor by the door with only the sketchiest bow. He returned a slight nod, looking amused and, beneath the amusement, faintly annoyed.
Bluefountain began a soft rippling melody that did not press itself on the attention, the sort that could spin out for a long time without ever really being noticed. Clearly she intended to stay for a while. An additional chaperone, and this one a respected keiso, would certainly ensure the unimpeachable respectability of the engagement. Wise of Mother, given the speed with which the prince seemed inclined to move in this courtship. He leaned closer to Moonflower and murmured something, gesturing toward the kitten, which was playing with a ribbon the girl had taken from her hair. She laughed and answered, “Oh, I’m sure Mother won’t mind—doesn’t everyone love kittens? What kind is she? I’ve never seen one like her.”
“There are few of this breed in Lonne,” agreed the prince. “They’re called Pinenne Clouds, but they’re rare even in Pinenne, I believe. My mother brought them with her. This one is a Cloud silver, the rarest color in the breed.”
“All the way from Pinenne!” Moonflower marveled.
Well, it was a little marvelous, Leilis acknowledged privately. Pinenne was a town of the northern border. If a devotee of the late queen, one would say that Pinenne lay on the border between Lirionne and Enescedd. But if not an admirer of the queen, one might say just as accurately that Pinenne lay on the border with Kalches. Certainly the town had a reputation for more than pretty cats. But young Moonflower didn’t seem to know anything of this.
“And a kitten from your mother’s home,” the girl was saying. “How kind of you to bring so special a gift. I have very little to remind me of my own mother. But I will think of her now, as well as your mother, when I see this kitten.”
“Ah.” Prince Tepres lifted a hand to prevent the kitten stealing mussels out of the broth, then absently stroked the little animal. “Your mother has also gone beyond? I am sorry. I did not know.”
Moonflower glanced down. “When I was eight. I am fortunate to remember her well.”
“That… may be harder,” said the prince in a low voice. “To remember clearly what one has lost.” His own mother, of course, had died when he was much younger.
“But not so hard, after the first grief, as having no memories to hold in the mind and the heart,” Moonflower said gently, and moved a hand to touch his in uncalculated sympathy. “It must be a comfort to you, that you still have your father, at least.” Her grief for her own father, still immediate, was very clear in her soft voice.
Realization had dawned: The prince saw that this was why the girl had become a keiso. Yet he could hardly proclaim his delight at this outcome. He said instead, “You loved your father? Then I’m sorry for your loss.”
Something in the prince’s tone drew Moonflower’s attention. She said after a moment, “You don’t love your father? Or, no… you aren’t certain of his love for you? I’m so sorry.”
“My father is the Dragon of Lirionne, first,” Prince Tepres answered, a little too quickly, as though this was an idea he had spent his life rehearsing. “Of course, he must be so. And he’s had poor fortune with his sons…”
“Poor fortune” was not the term Leilis would have used to describe the brutal sequence of treachery, suspicion, trap and betrayal, and counterbetrayal that had led, in the last few years, to the executions of the Dragon’s three older legitimate sons. For as little acquaintance as the two had, the conversation had become remarkably intimate. And with no noticeable effort. What a keiso the girl would make! Leilis thought the prince himself was surprised. She pretended very hard she wasn’t present, since undoubtedly Prince Tepres would have preferred she not be. Near her, his bodyguard was echoing her I’m-not-here invisible attitude.