A Fistful of Water: Chronicles of Marsdenfel #3

Year 533, New Calendar - II - part 2

I’ve been to a royal party before, one my cousin Aidan hosted and invited me to, a few years ago. That one had mainly featured royals and looked far, far different from this one.

There still aren’t any dwarves, of course—as a holdover from the old emperor, the castle’s full of spells that target dwarves specifically and make it unsafe for any to enter—but there are all sorts of other foreigners. Evonalé and Aidan stand by a snacks table, and he’s pointedly keeping her plate full. I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to mean that he wants her to put on some weight, or that she hasn’t been eating enough, though she never has been the type to starve herself when food was available. My sister and her faery husband mingle amidst the nobility who attend, and Uncle Aldrik seems to be watching for someone.

Even Head Matron Morgana is here, with her husband, Proctor. And Rees—her dress an indecent froth of lace—looks to be propositioning one of the few people here that I don’t recognize: a man with skin as dark as plain coffee and eyes a bright aqua I didn’t even know was possible. The pudgy pasty-skinned, dark-haired woman beside him has a baby on her hip, the child’s skin a creamy brown shade between hers and the man’s.

A boy who looks to be the baby’s sibling hands the man a beverage. The man thanks the boy with a nod and gestures at the party, as if encouraging him to enjoy himself—and I spot others that look to be the boy’s brothers, all younger than subadulthood.

So Rees is trying to get a man with a wife or longtime lover to change beds. Shameful of her.

Aunt Trelanna breaks away from us to go speak to Uncle Aldrik, but Tuelzi stays near me. I glance at her and gesture at the party. She avoids my gaze, scanning our surroundings, and taps the side of her head with a finger. Because that won’t look strange, maid me suddenly having a bodyguard.

“It’s all right,” I insist.

She shakes her head.

“Tuelzi.” I wait for her to look at me, then point at myself. “Maid. Commoner.” Maybe that’ll be enough for her to understand.

She raises her hands and says something in seafarthen, but I only understand Lallie said something you.

“What?”

“Lallie told her to shade you—shadow you, I suspect she means.” One of the boys with creamy brown skin and bright eyes, approaching age thirteen and subadulthood, offers us both white wine. His mountaineer has a light enough accent that I can’t identify it.

Tuelzi accepts both beverages, sips one, nods, then passes it off to me before downing the other in a gulp.

“You speak seafarthen?” I ask carefully, wondering who he is and how Uncle knows him, because I’ve never seen him before.

The pudgy dark-haired woman, who I assume is his mother, wears a lace choker on her neck.

I cough on the wine. That’s a slave collar.

“Among other languages,” the boy says lightly, and he follows my gaze. “Would you like to meet my parents? I could introduce you.”

I stare at the boy, whose mother is his father’s slave.

He raises his eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Your mother is a…” There’s no polite way to put it.

“Kept woman?” he asks mildly. “Well, yes. So was your grandmother, if memory serves.”

Fey, a prophetess and the mistress to Jarvis, the man who conquered the old emperor and married his daughter to become king. That wasn’t the same. “That’s…”