“What color will the gown be, my dear?” old Lady Creen asked.
“Cobalt, for the clan,” Estora said.
“A harsh color for a bride.” Several ladies nodded in agreement with Lady Creen.
“It is tradition in Coutre Province,” Estora said. From the corner of her eye, she saw Zachary near the throne, his attention dominated by Yusha Lewend and a group of gentlemen. They were all staring at the ceiling. It was an almost comical sight until she realized he must be explaining the significance of the portraits of his predecessors painted there. Soon she too would sit there, beside Zachary on a queen’s throne, with the rulers of the past peering down on her as if in judgment. Would she meet their approval? She shuddered.
Actually, she was more worried about what Zachary would think on their wedding night when he realized she wasn’t—
“—picked a day yet?” Lady Creen inquired.
Estora brought her attention back to those who encircled her. “No, though the moon priests are leaning toward the summer solstice, Day of Aeryon.”
There was much murmuring and nods of approval among the ladies. Again from the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the man Richmont had named Amberhill roving among loose groupings of people, a goblet in his hand, and a charming smile on his face as he greeted those he knew.
The ladies were discussing the advantages and disadvantages of a solstice wedding when Estora politely extricated herself and edged through the crowded throne room in a path she hoped would lead to Amberhill. Courtesy required her to pause and exchange greetings with those who wished to speak to her, but with a deftness acquired over a lifetime of banquets and receptions in her father’s manor house, she was able to keep moving while appearing to be attentive to all she encountered. As she went, she overheard snippets of conversation.
“The price of silk has—”
“—heard that the council in D’Ivary has already chosen a successor—”
“I want to leave now.”
“Rumor has it that the Raven Mask has returned to burgle—”
“—filthy barbarians coming half naked before decent folk.”
Estora forged on, keeping her eye on Amberhill, but somehow he always managed to slip farther away. Then she came to a clearing near the fringes of the crowd, and she hurried, without seeming to, to approach him. He was currently engaged in conversation with two elderly ladies who were giggling and fanning themselves like schoolgirls. He had a devilish glint in his eyes as he regaled them with some tale.
Estora paused to consider why she was pursuing him like this. She supposed it was to thank him for his kindness that morning when Karigan upset her so. But inside, she knew it was more, that she was drawn by the mystery of who he was. His kindness and handkerchief would be an excuse to speak with him and learn more.
She lifted her skirts to approach him when someone touched her arm. “My lady?”
Estora turned to find Zachary beside her, accompanied by Yusha Lewend, his interpreter, and the most wrinkled crone she had ever seen. The crone gazed at her with one sharp green eye. The other was opaque with blindness. She clung to Yusha Lewend’s arm, and was dressed in a more subdued fashion than the other Huradeshians, in somber grays. A round emerald stone tied around her neck with a leather thong was the only adornment she wore. The emerald matched her eye. Was this Yusha Lewend’s mother? Estora curtsied.
“Yusha Lewend wishes to meet you,” Zachary said, “and the lady is Meer Tahlid, a wisewoman of the tribe.”
Estora nodded respectfully, which made the wisewoman smile broadly. Gold teeth glinted in the late afternoon sunshine that streamed through the tall windows. Yusha Lewend started rattling off something in his own tongue, and Estora glimpsed Amberhill on his way out of the throne room. Somehow aware of her gaze on him, he smiled at her before passing through the entrance.
“Yusha Lewend expresses that such beauty is rare and he is honored to be in its presence. A gift of your sun goddess, no doubt.”
Estora jerked her attention back to those who stood before her. Astonishingly, Meer Tahlid started weaving back and forth, muttering, a hand held to her forehead and the other grasping her emerald. Both Zachary and Estora looked at her in alarm, but Yusha Lewend appeared unconcerned.
“The wisewoman can see many things ordinary souls cannot,” the interpreter explained. “These seeings sometimes come on her suddenly.”
Then, in a high-pitched voice, Meer Tahlid spoke in a rush. Both Yusha Lewend and the interpreter glanced at Estora. When the woman stopped weaving and speaking, she smiled again like a benevolent grandmother who had no idea of what just transpired.
The interpreter and Yusha Lewend conferred for a moment before the interpreter finally said to Zachary, “Meer Tahlid has had a seeing, Your Highness. She said you must guard your treasure well, for men are greedy and will want what does not belong to them.”
“My…treasure?”
The interpreter gazed significantly at Estora. “Meer Tahlid saw that one would try to steal your lady from you.”
Zachary gazed at Estora as if seeing her for the first time. “I will not permit that to happen.”
Long after most of the castle’s human inhabitants settled into their beds for a night of rest and dreaming, and most lamps along the corridors were extinguished or turned down to a low ambient glow, a white cat emerged from the dusty, unused corridor that joined the section being reinhabited by Green Riders.
At first all the activity had frightened the cat, who had watched from the shadows, around doorways, and from behind suits of armor, but being a cat, his fear soon was overcome by curiosity and so he investigated, over the course of weeks, this intriguing new world created by the Riders. Not only was it a feast to his senses of smell and hearing, but it was warm. If there were embers still burning in the common room’s hearth and no Riders in sight, he’d settle down before it on the hearth rug, stretched out to his full length.