The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part two

So we arrived at the Inn with Silkhands looking a vision, Queynt appearing no less fanciful than he had done at dawn, and Jinian and me, the followers, dirty and sweaty and caring not who cared. Someone must have been watching for Jinian’s arrival, for the King, a lean, elegant man, with a curly red beard and eyes that gleamed with intelligence and humor, appeared as we were having our things taken to the rooms we had hired. He came to the place Silkhands stood and called her by Jinian’s name, offering his hand and smiling. When she disabused him of the mistaken identity and introduced him to Jinian, his face changed no one whit though his eyes did. I saw a flicker of disappointment there, and Jinian saw it as well. She made her courtesies in a well-schooled manner, however, and her voice was all anyone could have wished, soft and pleasant, without the whine of weariness or rancor at the mistaken recognition.

“I greet you, King Kelver,” she said. “Many kind things have been said on your behalf, and though I do not merit your courtesies, I thank you for them.”

He bowed, perhaps a little surprised at her calm and poise. She was not at all girlish, as I have remarked heretofore. I myself sometimes found it surprising.

“I greet you, Jinian. If you have received any courtesies on my behalf, then be assured they were given freely and in pursuance of continued friendship between your people and my own.” It was delicately put, and I found myself liking the man. He was telling her that he had not presumed to buy her, that he had only tendered an offer of friendship and the final decision was still hers. Jinian smiled at him, and I saw his eyes lighten. She has a wonderful smile.

Queynt bustled in. “Ah, well then, ladies, young sir, so all friends are met, are they? Good, good. One does not like to stand upon ceremony at the end of a long ride when dust and the day conspire to rob one of whatever youth and spirits one may have hoarded long ago in the dawnwhen the skin cries for the waters of the bath and the throat yearns for the marvelous unguents of the vintner’s art. Ah, sir, forgive these weary travelers for the moment, and I who have come with them this lengthy way, until we are refreshed and cleansed sufficient to be a credit to the honorable company which you so kindly bestow upon us…” And Queynt bowed us away from the King, who stood with mouth open to watch this aberration lead us to the stairs and whip us upward with the lash of his tongue. “Go now, Peter, to the room at the head of the stairs where a bath will soon be brought, and you, ladies, to the second room where a bath even now awaits, and these lack-a-daisy pawns swift as flitchhawks rise, rise with your burdens that my young friends be not inconvenienced at the lack of any essential garment or lotion or soothing medication which might be contained therein. Ah, when all is sweet again, and pure as the waters of the Waenbain which plunge in eternal silver from the heights, then let us return to this good King Kelver to partake with him of those viands his generosity and foresight cannot but have prepared.”

This last faded into silence, and I risked a glance over the banister at that same King to find him with mouth still open but with a laughing look around the eyes. Well then, he was not offended.

I had scarce got into the room before hearing a quiet tap-tap at the door behind me which, when I opened it a crack, disclosed Chance in the get-up of a cook looking for all the world like a major servitor of some proud Demesne. He slipped into the room before I could greet him, stopped my mouth with his fingers, and hissed, “Who is this fellow with you? This clown? Where did you get him?”

I explained that I had not got him, that rather Queynt had got me; that, thus far, the man had done us no harm.