The Royal Thief

Chapter Five: Galatea

Figuring out what to wear was a problem, because I only had plain, dark-colored tunics and leggings. In the end, I borrowed a light blue tunic from Cara and brushed my hair and hoped it would do.

I could tell the moment I entered the Noble Hall that it wouldn't.

Quickly, I jerked back out of the huge room. My brief glance had showed me a golden hall full of lords and ladies in flimsy satin and silk, the men wearing ornamental daggers at their belts and the women with their hair plaited and coiled. Leaning against the cool wall, I closed my eyes and cursed Joshua under my breath. 

He told me to be inconspicuous, but didn't warn me I would be the only one wearing normal clothes in a sea of gilded peacocks. Idiot. Or jerk. It occurred to me that he might have done it on purpose, as payback.

I tilted my head forward into my hands. I could feel tears burning in the corner of my eyes, and that made me angry. Long days and nights of training I could deal with. Constant taunting and sneers from nobles I endured easily. Joshua's intense dislike of my destiny as a thief barely fazed me. But I hated being humiliated.

Furiously, I rubbed my tears away. Already I was brainstorming a long, long list of names to call Joshua the next time I saw him. Jerk didn't begin to cover it. I smiled a little, harshly, anticipating the thrill of revenge when I dragged him onto the court again. 

"Excuse me?"

I snapped my head up and saw a women two or three years older than me. How long had she been standing there?

She tilted her head and her deep red hair, the color of lava cooling to hard stone, swung around in a liquid curtain. Regarding me with deep-set eyes, she asked, "Are you having a problem?"

Surely she could see exactly what my problem was, which made me suspect she had asked in a taunting way. However, it was hard to tell. No emotion showed clearly in her strange, dark eyes, and her accented voice was hard to interpret.

"No," I answered coolly. Turning, I stepped into the hall. I could hear the nobles talking, and I could locate clearly the wave of chatter that sprung up when I entered. Raising my head high, I put one foot in front of the other and strode down the long aisle between the banquet tables, letting it roll of me like water. I was drawing stares but I pretended not to notice. If I couldn't enter inconspicuously, I would enter dramatically. I would not hide or try to sneak in. I probably could, but I wouldn't. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I recognized several ladies who were attendants of the princess tittering to each other. Another older man raised an eyebrow, looking at my slightly wrinkled tunic and course leggings. I kept my eyes straight ahead, on the table on the dais at the front of the Hall.

Lord Ornon sat in the throne-like seat that the king would have occupied had he been there, and Princess Magali sat to his right. To his left was a thin, dark-haired man with shrewd eyes who I had never seen before. His suit of dark blue velvet was at odds with the summery fabrics around him, and he wore a black cloak pinned at his shoulder in the style of Englescroft nobility. He watched me closely as I made my way confidently down the aisle. Sam, sitting on the other side of Magali, eyed me with amusement. I looked back at him, surprised he was at the head table. The king didn't usually invite his son up there because his queen, who was not Sam's mother, didn't like him.

Joshua stood up from his seat with the high-ranking officers with burning eyes. He was clearly furious as he pointed from me to the empty seat at his table. Great. It looked like I would spend the meal being glared at by an angry captain.

It was, as I had suspected it would be, long and tedious. There were many courses, and I had to endure Joshua's glares and the idle, idiotic chatter of the nobility. By the time we reached the fourth course I had given up all pretenses of joining the conversation and was instead thinking up ways to corner Joshua alone and force him to tell me why exactly I had to attend this in the first place.