Servants brought in new dishes, increasingly elaborate. Leilis suspected neither the prince nor Moonflower really noticed the food. They fed tidbits to the kitten, which finally curled, purring, onto a corner of the prince’s overrobe, and fell into a replete slumber. They did not discuss their fathers, but Moonflower told Prince Tepres a bit about her mother, and coaxed him to respond with small details he remembered about his—from a faint crease across Jeres Geliadde’s forehead, Leilis thought this was unusual. Moonflower told the prince stories of her seven sisters, and he told her a few from his childhood about his seven brothers, including the brothers who had rebelled against the king their father and been executed for it—and, from the look in the bodyguard’s eye, this was strikingly unusual.
Moonflower listened with flatteringly close attention and heard possibly more than the prince had meant to tell her. “You were closest to Prince Rette, of all of your brothers, weren’t you?”
“I was,” agreed Prince Tepres, glancing down. “He was only eight years older than I—not that eight years is so little, but from the time I could walk, he was patient with a younger brother tagging at his heels. He seemed to me everything a prince should be: brave and strong, quick of tongue and hand. Good at everything. I idolized him, I suppose.”
“Why—” Moonflower began, and stopped.
The prince lifted his eyes to hers, searching for—what? Leilis wondered. Signs of pity, of hidden condemnation, of fear? What would a highborn girl of the Laodd court think about Prince Rette, about the older two princes whom he had followed into treachery and then death? What did Prince Tepres fear to find in Moonflower’s eyes?
Whatever that might be, he didn’t seem to find it. After a moment, he relaxed a little. “My brother—” he began, and halted. “I—you have to understand—” He stopped again. Finally he said, “My left-hand brothers are all much older than I am, you know. You did know that? They all hold high places in my father’s court—well, not Mieredd, but he’s never been interested in politics or power or anything to do with court, only in ships and sailing. But my father… You understand, kings don’t share power easily. My mother—” He stopped abruptly. Then he began again. “They—I mean, Gerenes and Tivodd and Rette—they were never… um.”
Leilis guessed that the prince was trying to explain, without condemning either his father or his brothers, that the king had never allowed his right-hand sons the authority that was their due and that they had bitterly resented their father’s tight-held rein. This was fairly common knowledge in certain circles, but nothing that anybody would be comfortable putting into words. Moonflower obviously didn’t understand anything he was trying to say, but her attention to Prince Tepres was close and sympathetic.
“Gerenes and Tivodd were both high-tempered. Hard-mouthed on a tight-held bit, as they say. Impatient…”
And neither one half as clever as he’d thought himself, as Leilis recalled. A bad combination, arrogance and folly. A combination that had led to the downfall of plenty of young lords. And young keiso, for that matter.
Moonflower, probably still not following much of the prince’s meaning, nevertheless made a sympathetic sound.
“But Rette… I’ve never understood why he…”
“I’m sorry,” Moonflower said softly, responding to the pain in the prince’s tone however little she understood.
“Neither did my father, I think,” Prince Tepres added. Hidden behind the flatness of his tone was deep feeling, but clearly nothing he intended to volunteer. Grief for his brother and rage at his father, Leilis guessed, and neither emotion safe to express. Shock at the events of the summer, still not wholly accepted; resentment of the brother, for embroiling himself in that last disastrous plot; both terror and pride at becoming his father’s heir? Leilis wondered if the prince himself had ever recognized, ever let himself untangle, all the wild knots that must have been created in his heart this past summer.
“Couldn’t your father just, just, I don’t know, have… just sent him away, or—”
“No,” Prince Tepres said, with finality.
Moonflower was silent for a moment. Then she said, “How simple my father’s death seems! We all grieved for him, we still grieve for him, but… it’s not a complicated grief. Except… Poor Enelle felt so awful for being the first one to understand that some of us would have to be sold into contracts. Nothing any of us could say could make her really feel that it wasn’t any fault of hers, even though she really knows that it wasn’t.”