It seemed very strange to have someone waiting on me while I washed, and stranger still to have someone supervise my dressing. Charim insisted on straightening the seams on my jerkin and seeing the oversized sleeves on my new best shirt hung to their fullest and most annoying length. My hair had regrown long enough to have snarls in it and these he tugged quickly and painfully out. To a boy accustomed to dressing himself, the primping and inspection seemed endless.
“Blood will tell,” said an awed voice from the entry. I turned to find Verity beholding me with a mixture of pain and amusement on his face.
“He’s the image of Chivalry at that age, is he not, my lord?” Charim sounded immensely pleased with himself.
“He is.” Verity paused to clear his throat. “No man can doubt who fathered you, Fitz. I wonder what my father was thinking when he told me to show you well? Shrewd he is called and shrewd he is; I wonder what he expects to gain. Ah, well.” He sighed. “That is his kind of kingship, and I leave it to him. Mine is simply to ask a foppish old man why he cannot keep his watchtowers properly manned. Come, boy. It’s time we went down.”
He turned and left without waiting for me. As I hastened after him Charim caught at my arm. “Three steps behind him and on his left. Remember.” And that is where I fell in behind him. As he moved down the hallway others of our entourage stepped out from their chambers and followed their prince. All were decked in their most elaborate finery to maximize this chance to be seen and envied outside of Buckkeep. The fullness of my sleeves was quite reasonable compared with what some were sporting. At least my shoes were not hung with tiny chiming bells or gently rattling amber beads.
Verity paused at the top of a stairway, and a hush fell over the folk gathered below. I looked out over the faces turned up to their prince and had time to read on them every emotion known to mankind. Some women simpered while others appeared to sneer. Some young men struck poses that displayed their clothes; others, dressed more simply, straightened as if to be on guard. I read envy and love, disdain, fear, and on a few faces, hatred. But Verity gave none of them more than a passing glance before he descended. The crowd parted before us to reveal Lord Kelvar himself waiting to conduct us into the dining hall.
Kelvar was not what I expected. Verity had called him foppish, but what I saw was a rapidly aging man, thin and harried, who wore his extravagant clothes as if they were armor against time. His graying hair was pulled back in a thin tail as if he were still a man-at-arms, and he walked with that peculiar gait of the very good swordsman.
I saw him as Chade had taught me to see folk, and thought I understood him well enough even before we were seated. But it was after we had taken our places at table (and mine, to my surprise, was not so far down from the high folk) that I got my deepest glance into the man’s soul. And this not by any act of his, but in the bearing of his lady as she arrived to join us.
I doubt if Kelvar’s Lady Grace was much more than a hand of years older than I, and she was decked out like a magpie’s nest. Never had I seen accoutrements before that spoke so garishly of expense and so little of taste. She took her seat in a flurry of flourishes and gestures that reminded me of a courting bird. Her scent rolled over me like a wave, and it, too, smelled of coin more than flowers. She had brought a little dog with her, a feist that was all silky hair and big eyes. She cooed over him as she settled him on her lap, and the little beast cuddled against her and set his chin on the edge of the table. And all the time her eyes were on Prince Verity, trying to see if he marked her and was impressed. For my part, I watched Kelvar watch her perform her flirtations for the Prince, and I thought to myself, There is more than half our problems with keeping the watchtowers manned.