Once settled in her room, Hanlin of Pargun seemed—compared to others—to be the perfect guest. She asked for little, praised what she was offered, and made her formal bow to Kieri along with the other foreign ambassadors at a reception that evening. Close up, she had remnants of beauty, her ice-blue eyes not at all dulled by age. The lines of her face suggested someone who laughed easily, and indeed she had a merry twinkle in her eye as she was introduced and the herald stumbled over her Pargunese title.

“It would be a delight to my old age,” she said, in the brief seconds allowed each guest, “to see peace between our lands. I am only an old woman—” Patently false, Kieri knew. “—but I have seen faults on both sides, begging your pardon.”

“War brings anger, and anger brings ill judgment,” Kieri said. What a clever man the king of Pargun was, to send an old woman as his envoy of peace! He smiled at her. “I have no delight in war, though I am good at it.” Offer and warning.

“Indeed you are,” she said, smiling up at him. “May peace bless both our houses.” Then she turned, and the long train of her Pargunese dress rustled along behind her.

Kirgan Marrakai scowled at her, being young and rash, Kieri noted, but most others remained coolly polite. Kieri’s elven grandmother spoke to Hanlin of Pargun, but Kieri could not hear their brief conversation. He hoped his grandmother would tell him later.

The talk he could hear concerned the coming ceremony or—annoyingly—his marriage prospects. On the edge of his hearing, quickly hushed if he neared, were speculations about what he might like, which style of beauty, which accomplishments. He noticed that every Sier had brought along a daughter or granddaughter or niece, and he wondered about the young elven woman at his grandmother’s side.

He sought out the Kirgan Marrakai, with whom he could talk horses at least, but that young man was all too obviously interested in the young women. They did talk horse breeding, and the kirgan had ideas about which strains of Lyonyan horses the Marrakai blood would nick with, but his eyes kept straying to one girl after another. “I’m boring you,” Kieri said at last.

Kirgan Marrakai turned red. “No—no, my lord king, not at all. I’m sorry—I just haven’t seen—”

Kieri laughed. “At your age, I was the same. Tomorrow there will be dancing, and you can meet them there—or I can introduce you.”

The kirgan shook his head. “No, my lord, please! I am not here to—to prance about with foreign women—”

“That’s what your father said, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when else will you have the chance? You’re a well-bred, mannerly young man; you won’t do anything stupid. Have your fun—meet them, talk to them. They know as well as you that it’s not serious.”

“But I’m supposed to be Mikeli’s envoy—”

“And you are, and I’ve accepted you as such. Now go enchant some of my younger subjects and keep them from making sheep’s eyes at me.”