Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

In a daze, Kel allowed himself to be guided by Bensimon toward one of the three tall chairs grouped in the middle of the table. The Queen was on Kel’s left; on his right, a pretty girl about his own age, wearing pale-yellow silk, her dark-blond hair in tightly curled ringlets.

Kel shot a look at Bensimon, almost of panic: Why had they sat him next to another child? An adult might have ignored him, but the blond girl was already looking at him with a lively curiosity that indicated she knew Prince Conor fairly well.

Bensimon raised an eyebrow and was gone, taking a place just behind the King’s chair. The blond girl leaned across her plate to whisper to Kel.

“I heard you were sick,” she said. “I didn’t expect you’d be here.”

It was a lifeline. Kel caught at it. “The King insisted,” he said, in a low voice. Hopefully that was how the Prince referred to his father? Kel knew Bensimon had said that the talisman would make him sound like the Prince as well as look like him, but surely it could not change the words he said. He chose them carefully, thinking as he did so of all the times he and Cas had played at being highborn adventurers, how they had modeled their speech on that of the nobles who they’d read of in books. “I was offered no choice.”

The blond girl tossed her curls. “You are ill,” she said. “Usually you would have made a fuss about coming, or be joking about it at least.”

Kel put that away in the back of his mind. The Prince was someone who had no trouble kicking up a temper, and liked to make jokes. So they had that in common. It was useful information.

“Antonetta.” The woman seated opposite them spoke under her breath, her eyes on the blond girl. “Do sit up straight.”

Antonetta. So that was the girl’s name, and the woman must be her mother. She was very beautiful, with coils of fair hair and a great deal of pale bosom swelling over the bodice of a raw-silk dress the same color as her daughter’s. Her attention rested on Antonetta only for a moment, though, before she was engaged in conversation with a black-bearded man with clever eyebrows.

“Who’s that man?” Kel muttered to Antonetta, who was now sitting rigidly upright. “The one flirting with your mother?”

It was a bit of a daring thing to say, but Antonetta grinned—as if she expected this sort of comment from Conor Aurelian. “You don’t recognize him?” she said incredulously. She was folding her napkin on her lap; Kel mimicked her movements. “That’s Senex Petro d’Ustini, one of the ambassadors from Sarthe. Next to him is Sena Anessa Toderino.”

Of course. Kel should have recognized them immediately: a man and a woman, both in Sarthian dark-blue. Senex Petro’s sapphire earring glittered against his olive skin, while Sena Anessa had a great deal of hair piled in knots on her head and a long, patrician nose.

Farther down the table sat another boy around Kel’s age. He looked Shenzan, with straight black hair and a mischievous face. He winked at Kel, who liked him immediately, though he knew the wink was meant not for him, but for Prince Conor.

“I see Joss is trying to get your attention,” said Antonetta, making a face at the boy. It wasn’t an unfriendly face, more a teasing one. “He’s probably miserable having to sit next to Artal Gremont.”

Antonetta must mean the heavyset, thick-necked man on Joss’s left. His hair was chopped short, as if he were a soldier, and he wore the armband of a gladiator, which looked a little ridiculous over the damask silk of his tunic. Kel had heard his name before. Though he was a noble, he amused himself battling some of Castellane’s most famous fighters in the Arena. Everyone—save Gremont, perhaps, who was in line to inherit the tea and coffee Charter—knew the games were rigged in his favor.

“Lady Alleyne,” said Senex d’Ustini to Antonetta’s mother. “Your gown is truly magnificent, and is that not Sarthian sontoso embroidery upon the cuffs? You are, indeed, a walking endorsement for the glories of the silk trade.”

Lady Alleyne? House Alleyne held the silk Charter. Which meant Antonetta, who was currently playing with her fork, stood to inherit the richest of all the Charters. Kel felt a little sick to his stomach.

“Silk has other uses besides fashion,” Antonetta interjected. “The Ashkar use it in bandages and thread. One can make sails from it, and in Shenzhou it is used instead of paper to write upon.”

Sena Anessa chuckled. “Very clever, Demoselle Antonetta—”

“Too clever,” said Artal Gremont. “No one likes a clever girl. Do they, Montfaucon?”

Montfaucon was apparently the man sitting across from him. He was spectacularly dressed in pink velvet and silver braid, his skin a dark, rich brown. “Gremont,” he began, sounding irritable, but did not finish his sentence, for the food had arrived.

And what food it was. Not the mush and stews they served in the Orfelinat, but roast capons with white cabbage, ducks stuffed with curried plums, herb and cheese tarts, whole grilled fish dressed with oil and lemon, and Sarthian dishes like pork basted with rosewater on a bed of noodles.

You may eat as much as you like as long as you do not make yourself sick, Bensimon had said.

Kel went to work. He was hungry half the time anyway, and he was starved right now, having emptied his stomach on Jolivet’s boots. He tried to copy what the others were doing with his cutlery, but hands were faster than knives and forks. When he sank his fingers into a slice of cheese and sage tart, he saw Bensimon glare at him.

Antonetta, he noted, was not eating, but was looking down at her food with a furious expression. The glamorous Montfaucon winked in her direction. “When beauty and wisdom can be married together, that is the ideal, but in the usual course of events the Gods gift one or the other. I do think our Antonetta might be one of the lucky exceptions.”

“One cannot have everything, or the Gods would come to envy mortals,” said another man, this one with cold eyes. He had narrow features and light-olive skin, and reminded Kel of illustrations in his schoolbooks of Castellani nobles going back hundreds of years. “Is that not what happened to the Callatians? They built their towers too close to heaven, challenged the Gods with their accomplishments, and for it their Empire was destroyed?”

“A dark view, Roverge,” said a kind-looking older man. He was pallid, like someone who spent a lot of time indoors. “Empires tend toward entropy, you know. It is difficult to grasp so much power. Or so I was taught in the schoolroom long ago.” He smiled at Kel. “Have you not been taught the same, Prince?”

Everyone turned to look pleasantly at Kel, who nearly gagged on a mouthful of tart. Wildly, he imagined what would happen the moment they realized he wasn’t the Crown Prince. He’d be surrounded by the Castelguard. They’d drag him from the Palace and toss him over the walls, where he’d roll down the mountain until he splashed into the ocean and was eaten by a crocodile.

“But Sieur Cazalet,” said Antonetta, “are you not the master of all the wealth in Castellane? And is not wealth also power?”

Cazalet. Kel knew the name: The Cazalet Charter was banking, and gold crown coins were sometimes called cazalets on the street.