As the meal progressed, Ager noticed that some of the Twenty House nobles were glancing at him and whispering comments to one another. The queen noticed it as well. She gently tapped the table with a knife and immediately got everyone’s attention.
“I notice, Duke Amptra, that you and your accomplices are whispering between yourselves. Is it something we should know about?”
The duke, an overweight man who suffered from gout and, Ager would bet, a few varieties of pox, looked in surprise at the queen. He was not used to being addressed like a schoolboy, and the word “accomplices” suggested the matter was something decidedly underhanded.
“Your Majesty, merely small talk, chitchat, asides of no consequence…” His voice trailed off and his double chin wobbled.
His son leaped into the breach. “Your Majesty, we were merely discussing the splendid uniforms of your Royal Guards.”
“Really?” She took time to survey the uniforms herself. “I notice nothing different about them, my Lord Galen; as far as I can tell, they are the same uniform worn by the guards in my father’s time.”
Galen swallowed hard. “True, but it is often the way with everyday things that suddenly you will notice their special… umm… qualities?” He ended his statement as a question, and knew it was a mistake.
“Qualities,” the queen said, carefully chewing over the word. “Such as?”
“The color, your Majesty,” Galen said quickly.
“Like the sea that surrounds Kendra,” his father added.
“Ah, the color.” The queen nodded.
Then, satisfied that a lesson had been taught, she turned to the visiting prince from Aman to ask a question when another voice, sniggering, said: “And their shape!”
There was the sound of muffled laughter. Usharna’s head snapped up, and her angry gaze returned to the representatives from the Twenty Houses. She noticed that Duke Holo Amptra and his son looked hideously embarrassed. Next to them, Minan Protas, who had only recently succeeded to his family’s dukedom, was desperately trying to swallow a giggle.
“Duke Protas, you are referring to something in particular?” Usharna asked, her voice so cold that Berayma and Orkid, sitting on either side of her, edged away.
Protas was counted a bluff, arrogant fool even among his own kind. He pointed to Ager, who was standing as erect as possible and looking straight ahead at an invisible point on the opposite wall, and said: “Not something, Your Majesty, but someone.” No longer able to contain his mirth, Protas broke out in a strangled guffaw.
No laughter joined the duke’s. The queen silently waited for him to finish. Finally, Protas realized no one else was enjoying the joke and brought himself up with a wheeze.
“Duke Protas, how old are you?” Usharna asked solicitously.
“How old, your Majesty? Let me see. I would be over forty. Yes, I would own to that.” He smiled at the queen.
“Shall we say forty-five?”
Protas considered the number for a moment and nodded. “Close enough.”
“Then you would have been thirty when the Slaver War ended.”
Everyone watched Protas do the math in his head. After a long pause he nodded again. “Yes, your Majesty, that’s about right.”
“With what regiment did you fight?”
Where there was silence before, there was now a dread and expectant hush.
“Umm, no regiment, your Majesty. I had onerous duties to perform under my father, the late duke.”
“Tending the vineyards in your estates in Chandra?”
“My father’s estates, your Majesty. Well, mine now, of course—”
“So while men of Kendra such as Captain Parmer over there risked their lives in ridding Grenda Lear of the vile curse of slavery, you watched grapes grow?”
Protas blinked and the color drained from his face. Even he realized his patriotism and manliness had just been brought publicly into question by his queen. He felt the mixed emotions of shame and rage. He opened his mouth to curse the woman, but something in the look of the crookback Captain Parmer—who now stared at him directly—and the restraining hand of Duke Amptra on his arm, told him to leave well enough alone. He had been ambushed. In shock, he settled back in his seat and bowed his head.
Usharna turned again to Prince Sendarus and, as if on cue, everyone else resumed their conversations as well.
Ager, staring straight ahead again, could not help swelling his chest just that extra bit further, filling up his blue guard’s uniform, and almost forgetting he was a crookback at all.
Sendarus had watched the public humiliation of one of the kingdom’s premier nobles with amazement. His own father, the first among equals among the Amanite aristocracy, would never have dared even to attempt such a thing. In Aman, kings could still be challenged to combat for a personal slight. Apparently, things were different here in Kendra. He wondered whether or not that was a good thing.
When it was all over, Usharna had turned to him and asked if he enjoyed hunting. For an instant, Sendarus thought she was alluding to her humiliation of the duke, but he gathered his senses in time to reply: “In the mountains around Pila, your Majesty, I often hunt the great bear. I have two heads hanging from the walls of my father’s meeting hall.”
Usharna was impressed. She realized she had underestimated the strength and skill of this young man. In many ways, in his build, in his manner of speech, and in his readiness to smile, he reminded her of Olio. She decided she liked him. “Did you know that many years ago, in the time of your grandfather, Aman sent several great bear to Kendra. We released them in the woods of the Ebrius Ridge just north of here, and now hunt them ourselves. They provide a greater challenge than the boar and wild dog my ancestors used to hunt.”
“We could go on a hunt tomorrow!” Areava said excitedly, her brown eyes sparkling.
Sendarus greeted the idea enthusiastically. The queen agreed, and promised she would arrange a party to accompany them.
“Your Majesty, do you think it wise to let them hunt at this time of the year?” Orkid asked, clearly concerned. “The great bear is most dangerous at the end of summer when the males are fighting for a sow.”
“But it is also the most exciting time to hunt the beast!” Areava countered.
The queen nodded. “Indeed, and I wish I had the strength to come with you. If you are so concerned, Orkid, you can pull yourself away from your duties for a day and accompany them. I know you used to enjoy the sport as much as me.”
“I will gladly go with them,” Orkid conceded. “But I should warn the prince that hunting the great bear here is different from hunting it back home. In Aman, the beast has learned to retreat into the heights when harried, but here they have learned to use the woods to keep themselves hidden. They enjoy ambushing unwary hunters and travelers, and have acquired a taste for horse meat.”
“The greater the challenge, the greater the victory,” Sendarus said without conceit.
“Ah, the courage of youth,” Usharna said. “But Orkid is right, this is a dangerous time of the year for hunting the bear. I will send some of the guards with you.”
“What a magnificent woman!” Amemun said for the third time in an hour.
Orkid, riding by his side, smiled to himself and nodded. There were some things he despised about Kendra and its suzerainty over his homeland, but Usharna made up for almost all of it. Twenty years ago, when he had been Sendarus’ age and the younger brother of Aman’s new king, he had been sent to Kendra as part of his home’s tribute. More hostage than guest, he had hated everything about the city then, but he worked hard—and according to the plan he and Marin had worked out together—to place himself in a position of trust with the kingdom’s new ruler. Back then, Usharna was not only a sole child but a woman, and her ascension to the throne had not been a sure thing. The fact that her father had himself passed on to her the Keys of Power, and the fact that in Kendra’s dim past it had been ruled by another queen, gave her the opportunity to prove herself. And prove herself she did. And Orkid had helped her, first as a minor court official and then as chancellor. But, brutally honest with himself, he knew she would have flourished with or without his assistance. She had the ability to choose good men and women for positions of power, either on her executive council or as leaders of the various organizations tied to her, such as the church, the merchant guilds and the theurgia. Regrettably, she had been less fortunate with her husbands.