He heaved himself up and submitted to Joriam’s pitcher of rinse water, then dried himself with towels warmed by the fire. His bath was fine enough—more luxurious than he’d had for most of his life. He did not need whatever it was the Pargunese woman thought better.

Though the evening began quietly enough eating supper with Garris, after supper he had to decide where the Kostandanyan princess and her retinue should be housed, and that meant conferences with half a dozen servitors. Twice the steward brought him demands from Countess Settik and once from the count, who wanted his horse moved to a different stall and all the Pargunese mounts fed only the oats carried on the Pargunese pack horses. Kieri called in the Master of Horse.

“We just put those oats in the bins—I can scoop out the top layer, but—”

“Put some oats in a separate barrel for the beasts and tell him those were his oats,” Kieri said. “Sprinkle a little salt on them, and the horses won’t know the difference. Neither will he.”

By then it was time to make his way upstairs and inspect the guest suite for the Kostandanyan princess—he’d decided to put her as far from the Pargunese as possible—and then he slipped out for a few minutes into the rose garden, now lushly perfumed with both the roses and night-blooming flowers. He sat on his favorite bench and breathed in the mingled scents, sweet and spicy, trying to regain the sense of peace and confidence his elven tutor insisted he needed to connect most powerfully with the taig.

In the near-dark, with the water gurgling and splashing as it ran through the garden, he relaxed slowly, touching first the garden’s taig and then that to which it was connected. Outside the palace enclosure, just across the way, the trees on the margin of the King’s Grove … and then, as his taig-sense expanded, the King’s Grove itself, every tree distinct in its identity, its history … He sank slowly into a trance, now more familiar than the first time it happened, touching and being touched by the trees and through them other trees and all that “tree” meant—past, present, future, from the root-clutched rock below to the creatures that lived on and or visited it. He roused only when the clamor of another arrival in the palace courtyard broke through the reverie.

He took a last stroll around the paths in the garden and went up to his own rooms, not risking confrontation with another group of angry foreigners. His Squires could tell him what the Kostandanyan girl was like.

Shortly, the steward came to tell him that the Kostandanyan princess, by name Ganlin, seemed to have been injured on the way—she limped at least—and might be too fatigued to attend a banquet the next night. Kieri considered the likelihood that Count and Countess Settik would be angered by delay—probably, but he was not inclined to coddle them—and reset the date.