"I did." Because it was true, I smiled at her. "Very much so."

I turned away to see the Dauphine Sidonie regarding me with a considering look. In the charmed illumination of the faery-lights strung from the apple trees, she looked very pretty. At thirteen years of age, one could see the face of the woman she would become beginning to emerge from the face of the girl she was. Tonight it held an unwonted softness instead of her customary hauteur.

Filled with goodwill, I accorded her the sweeping bow I had given Alais earlier. "Cousin, I bid you good eve!"

"Thank you." Sidonie's lips twitched. She cocked her head in a manner that reminded me of Phèdre, continuing to consider me. What thoughts passed behind her dark Cruithne eyes, I could not begin to fathom. "You know," she said at length. "You're not so bad when you smile, Imriel."

"My thanks, your highness," I said wryly.

If she had been older, I would have sworn her expression was one of suppressed laughter; then it passed, and Sidonie inclined her head to me, raising it with an imperious tilt of her chin. "You're very welcome, I'm sure."

No matter what their age, women are a mystery.

Chapter Sixteen

After the fête in the apple orchard, I found it easier to be pleasant at Court, relinquishing some of my aloofness. Sidonie's observation, irritating as it was, held a measure of truth. Once I allowed myself to relax and smile, I found a number of people were willing to smile back at me. I even made some friends among them.

There were always young gentry at Court. While their elders vied for influence or status, the younger folk played at love. For most D'Angelines, courtship prior to marriage was a long, drawn-out affair. It began at an early age and continued for years. Save for the scions of ruling sovereigns—and betimes sovereign dues in their own provinces—childhood betrothals were rare. And since Queen Ysandre had thus far refused see her daughters betrothed young for political gain, it set the fashion for the realm. Families of the Great Houses brought their children to the City to begin the Game of Courtship.

It was not a game in which I took part. It began in earnest around the age of sixteen; before that, youthful flirting—the sort of games Katherine and Roshana taught me in the meadow—was accorded little or no weight. At fifteen, I was exempt.

Still, because I was often at Court, I was around it. And because I was a Prince of the Blood, I was not wholly exempt. Even Sidonie, at thirteen, had her would-be suitors. They trod carefully, fearful of the Queen's ire, but one could see them seeking to curry favor that she might be kindly disposed to them in the future.

It didn't work very well.

Those nobles, I avoided. To my surprise, I had to own that Raul L'Envers y Aragon was not one of them. He was pleasant and attentive to her, but in a respectful fashion. Once I got past, to some degree, my dislike of his mother, I found him quite tolerable. He was quiet and thoughtful, with a shrewd sense of humor that surfaced on occasion. If he was laying the groundwork to court Sidonie on his brother's behalf, it was with surpassing discretion; and if his interest was in Alais, it was nowhere evident.

"Why did your mother bring you to Court?" I asked him bluntly one day.

Raul looked at me with surprise in his brown eyes. "To learn my heritage," he said in his softly accented D'Angeline. "Why else?"

"To effect a betrothal," I said.

"Oh." Surprise turned to amusement. "You speak of rumors." He shook his head. "D'Angelines are a funny people. If my brother Serafin wishes to make a bid for the throne of Aragonia, he will marry an Aragonian girl of high standing, not another D'Angeline."

"What about you?" I asked.

We were in the Salon of Eisheth's Harp. Raul glanced around. "I like it here," he said. "I would consider it."

"Alais?" I pressed.

"She's a little girl!" He laughed, spreading his hands. "I have no designs on the throne, any throne. I am like my mother. I like beautiful things. Some things are that simple, your highness."

"Not in my experience," I said.

It could be, though. Raul spoke truly; most of the young nobles flirting and courting did so with exuberance, playing the game for pleasure's sake, reveling in their own youth and beauty, and the multitude of choices available to them. It would not end once they wed, but it would change. To marry or take a formal consort was to establish a household. One might take lovers, afterward, or dally with Naamah's Servants—indeed, most did—but marriage would fix the domestic framework of one's life.

I found it hard to imagine.

When I did try, it was Montrève I thought of. I could envision myself wed to someone like Katherine Friote, a country girl of good family, presiding over the manor; and yet. I could not envision Katherine at Court, where I was beginning to feel a certain sense of belonging.

For one thing, Mavros Shahrizai had returned to winter there. At seventeen, he was beginning to play the Game of Courtship to the hilt, and he cut a dangerous swathe. Still, I was glad to see him, and we resumed our uneasy friendship.

But there were others, too, I began to think of as friends; those whom I found to be good-hearted and decent. Bertran de Trevalion, who was another cousin; his grandmother, Lyonette, had been my father's sister. They used to call her the Lioness of Azzalle. He was a tall young lord with an earnest, open gaze, only a half a year older than I. He was also the heir to the duchy of Trevalion, and knew somewhat about contending with treason in his family lineage. And there were Colette and Julien Trente, whose father, Lord Amaury, had served as Commander of the Queen's Guard and led the expedition to rescue me; and Marguerite Grosmaine, whose mother was the Secretary of the Presence.

They were not boon companions, but they were easy ones. In the countryside, autumn was a time of hard labor, spent putting up the summer's harvest, salting and smoking and preparing for winter. At Montrève, I would have worked alongside Charles and the others, lending a hand in the Siovalese tradition. Here in the City, the peers merely played at such things. Hunting in particular was a popular autumn sport, and it was over the course of several hunting parties that I found myself falling in with the same young people.

Owing to their backgrounds, they knew a bit of my history; unlike my Shahrizai kin, they did not press me on the dark and painful aspects of it.

They were more interested in the adventures.

I hadn't given thought to the fact that it made me exotic in their eyes. Colette and Julien had grown up with the story: How I had deceived Lord Amaury Trente in the harbor at Tyre, bribing a street lad to take my place, while I stowed away on Phèdre and Joscelin's ship. I winced to hear of his fury at the deception, but they found it amusing; a parent's foible.

"You did it out of love!" Colette exclaimed. "He shouldn't have been that mad, should he? Tell us about Meroe and the oliphaunts."

So I did. I told them about our voyage down the mighty NaharRiver, and the crocodile temple of the god Sebek. I told them about the terrible desert crossing, and the splendor of Meroe, where Queen Zanadakhete granted us passage across Jebe-Barkal. I told them about the strangeness of Saba, a realm forgotten by time, where the soldiers wore armor of worn bronze older than Terre d'Ange itself.

Some parts, I kept to myself. I did not think they would marvel at Kaneka's village of Debeho, which was a collection of mud huts. It was special to me, a haven of happiness and kindness, but I did not think these fine young D'Angeline lords and ladies would understand. And I did not tell them about the day Joscelin and I caught the giant fish, which was special to me for other reasons.

But I told them other stories, and the women gazed at me with wide-eyed awe while the men looked envious. They knew the stories, of course; nearly everyone does. Thelesis de Mornay set a portion of them to verse before she died, and her onetime apprentice Gilles Lamiz, who was named the Queen's Poet after her, has crafted many others. Still, Jebe-Barkal was little more than a distant rumor to most D'Angelines, and it was different to hear such things from someone who could say, Oh yes, I was there.

They wanted to hear tales of Phèdre and Joscelin, too. Owing to their exploits, it had become somewhat of a fashion among the young gentry to be enamored of one or both of them. At first it set me on edge to hear it, but I grew accustomed to it. In truth, it probably did me some good. It was romantic fancy, nothing more, and I came to accept this.

So I told them those stories, too; not Daršanga, but the others. How Phèdre coerced the Pharoah of Menekhet into aiding us, how we rowed an entire night across the Lake of Tears, how Joscelin fought single-handedly against the army of Saba.

That one set Colette Trente to sighing. "Is it true he's never taken a lover other than her?" she asked, gazing wistfully at Joscelin. "Man or woman? Never?"

I shrugged. "Insofar as I know."

"He's a Cassiline Brother," Marguerite reminded her. "He broke all his vows for Lady Phèdre, and now he's bound not to love anyone else, so long as he lives."

They sighed in unison at the terrible, wonderful romance of it.

"Lucky him," Bertran said.

"Lucky her," Julien added.

It made me laugh. I told Joscelin about it later for the sheer amusement of seeing his blank stare in response.

"Name of Elua!" he said. "Why me?"

We were sparring in the inner courtyard, and I paused to look at him. Phèdre once said that Joscelin was as careless of his beauty as a spendthrift of his coin, and it was true. It was more than true. Whatever else a childhood spent in the Cassiline Brotherhood did to him, it rendered him almost wholly insensible of his own appearance.

"Because," I said gravely, "you are a figure of great and terrible romance."

Joscelin rolled his eyes. "And you are spending overmuch time in the company of foolish young women."

I grinned at him. "Even foolish young women are right sometimes."

Thus passed a pleasant autumn, sliding into winter; and I found myself a different person than I had been a year ago. It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one's own identity. I did not think mine could change more than it had, from a goat herding ward of the Sanctuary to a barbarian's slave to a Prince of the Blood.

And yet it did.

It was only a year ago that I had been an undersized stripling, shrinking under the news of my mother's disappearance, brooding over Maslin of Lombelon, despising the Queen's Court. Now I was becoming someone new; someone tall for his age and strong with it, able to engage in light banter with friends, envied for his fine spotted horse, his rhinoceros-hide belt, and the stories that accompanied it.

I liked it.

I liked it enough that I forgot, sometimes, it was only a portion of the truth. And then Mavros would catch my eye in the Hall of Games, and smile his knowing smile, and I would remember. Or I would see Phèdre with Lady Nicola… That happened, once.

It was at a small salon gathering in the L'Envers quarters at the Palace. I knew Joscelin would not be in attendance. And I shouldn't have gone; I didn't intend to go, but I was with Bertran de Trevalion, and he had a mind to coax Raul to join us in the Hall of Games. Because we were who we were, the footman manning the door of the L'Envers quarters admitted us without question.

In truth, it was nothing. A handful of guests lounged on couches in the salon, conversing. And Phèdre was there, kneeling gracefully beside a couch; abeyante, they call the pose in the Night Court, except that her head was leant against the Lady Nicola's knee, and I could see Nicola's hand entwined in Phèdre's hair in a caress that was not quite a caress.

"Imri?"

I was already backing away as Phèdre rose, leaving Bertran to make our apologies. Gilot, who was attending me that evening, caught up to me in the hallway outside, putting his hand on my shoulder.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine!" I shook him off. "Elua's Balls, stop being such a nursemaid!"

"Fine," he said dryly. "Stop being such a child." I rounded on him with a glare, clenching my fists. Unimpressed, Gilot crossed his arms. "Well?"

I sighed, unclenching my fists. "It's just… never mind."

"You know, Imri, it's no concern of yours," he said. "They are all adults, and they have the right to enjoy one another's company without you having tantrums over it." He shrugged at my expression. "What? I'm not stupid, you know. Why does it bother you so?"

"I don't know," I murmured.

"Well, Raul's escorting the Dauphine and the young princess to the theatre," Bertran said cheerfully, emerging into the hallway. "So we're on our own. Why the sudden dash, Imriel? Do you need the privy?"

"He needs to get bedded, is what he needs," Gilot said. "Right and properly bedded."

"Gilot!" I Hushed.

"What?" He eyed me. "It would do you a world of good, if you ask me."

"There's a thought!" Bertran fingered the purse at his belt with a rueful expression. "My father's allowance doesn't stretch far enough to cover the Night Court, not unless I have a lucky night in the Hall. But mayhap if we pooled our monies on Imriel's behalf… You've not turned sixteen yet, have you? Well, we could go to Night's Doorstep—"

"No!" I cut him off, feeling my face grow warmer. "No Night's Doorstep, no bedding."

There wasn't; not that night, nor any other. We returned to the Hall of Games, where Bertran lost a portion of his father's allowance at dice, and I mulled over Gilot's words.