“I’m not skinny,” I growl.
“Slender, then,” he says, with a casual shrug, as a servant lays his plate before him.
He didn’t have to tell me. He’s been staring at them the whole time.
Lunch is roast beef, still steaming, roasted vegetables, and boiled potatoes that taste like onion and spices when I pop one of the little cubes in my mouth.
I’m not going to starve myself to make a point. Arguing with this arrogant bastard is hungry work.
After a moment I realize he’s watching me eat and force myself to slow down.
“Better than MREs, yes?”
“Yes, I’ll give you that. Not that you deserve the credit. One of your slaves cooked it.”
“This again? They’re not slaves.”
I look around. “Yeah, can they quit this job?”
“This isn’t a job, it’s an honor. Their ancestors have served my family since…” he trails off. “Never mind. Don’t belittle my people with your ignorant assessment of their well-being. They are perfectly content.”
“Yeah, the house slaves get treated better, is that it?”
“You are beginning to test my patience.”
“Good. Spending your whole life pampered and fussed over has clearly given you a fat head, my prince.”
He slams his fist on the table, and the plates and cups jump.
“Enough.”
I look down at my plate and saw at my meat, my chest fluttering. I pushed it a little too far that time.
“You think because I have some fine things, my life is easy.”
I take a deep breath. “I just see a country full of captive people with someone commanding their every step.”
I pop a slice of beef in my mouth and take time to chew it slowly, savoring the flavors, and swallow before I speak again.
“Only, who commands you?”
“No one.”
“Exactly my point.”
“That makes me no more free,” he says softly.
I stop chewing to look at him. He sets his knife and fork down and leans back in the chair, cocked to one side.
“Say I give you what you want. I step down right now, this instant. I go out and say, ‘You are all free,’ and then I leave. Then what?”
I shrug.
“Anarchy, that’s what. I am as locked into my role as my people are into theirs. You speak as if it is some easy thing, freedom. It comes with a heavy price. There are no easy choices in this world. I have made mine, as did my father and his father before him, stretching back to the time when my ancestors first came to this land.”
“That’s a very poetic way of dressing up your fear.”
He looks up. “What?”
“That’s why I’m here, right? I amuse you. You can’t find anybody in your little empire who will give it to you straight. Do you know how beatification works?”
He blinks. “The process of sainthood?”
“Yes, that’s right. When the process starts, the church calls in a guy to speak against the person’s qualifications as a saint. To argue that their miracles are not genuine, that they are not worthy, that God would not choose them to sit at his right hand.”
The prince sits up, eyeing me.
“That person is the devil’s advocate. It’s not just a figure of speech, it’s an actual position within the church. That’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it? You want to hear from somebody who isn’t afraid to lose a limb if you don’t like what they have to say.”
“You’re not afraid of me,” he observes.
“No, I’m not. You don’t scare me. I’ve met plenty of bullies in my time. I know one when I see one. You might have an army backing you up and you might have that suit you had on last night, but I’m not scared of you.”
“Why, because you’re an American citizen?”
“No, because bullies act out of a sense of weakness, not power. You don’t force the world to fit your warped expectations because you feel powerful. You force it to be the way you want because it scares you if it doesn’t bend to your will.”
The prince eyes me. “Finish your meat. Unless you wish to plead with me for the cow it came from.”
I look down and finish eating without saying anything else. I clean my plate, and I guess I’m a good girl because I get dessert, a tiny scoop of ricotta cheese drizzled with honey and served with tiny little anise cookies coated with dark chocolate.
“This is good,” I mutter, forgetting myself.
I flinch, expecting the prince to lay into me for speaking without his leave, but he just smiles. He’s skipping dessert.
When I finish eating, the food is carried away. I take a taste of the strange pale wine I’m offered and jerk back when it touches my tongue. It’s sweet as sugar water.
“That’s mead,” he says with a little shrug. “I take it you’ve never tasted it. Is it to your liking?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Honey wine.”
“I like it.”
“I’m surprised you’re not castigating me for oppressing the bees and appropriating the fruits of their labor.”
I stare at him for a moment.
Then he laughs, softly, as if the act is unfamiliar to him.