The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [54]
After only some seven or eight delays for last-minute exchanges and adjustments of clothing or decoration, Cazaril herded them all downstairs to join Teidez and his little entourage of rank, consisting of dy Sanda, the Baocian captain who had guarded their journey, and his chief sergeant at arms, the latter pair in their best livery, all with jewel-hilted swords. Swishing and clinking, they followed the royal page who was sent to guide them to Orico’s throne room.
They paused briefly in the antechamber, where they formed up in proper order under the whispered instructions from the castle warder. Doors swung wide, sweet horns sounded, and the warder announced in stentorian breaths, “The Royse Teidez dy Chalion! The Royesse Iselle dy Chalion! Ser dy Sanda—” and on down the pack in strict order of rank, ending with “Lady Betriz dy Ferrej, Castillar Lupe dy Cazaril, Sera Nan dy Vrit!”
Betriz glanced up sideways at Cazaril, her brown eyes suddenly merry, and murmured under her breath, “Lupe? Your first name is Lupe?”
Cazaril considered himself excused from attempting to reply by their situation—just as well, as it would doubtless have come out thoroughly garbled. The room was thronged with courtiers and ladies, glittering and rustling, the air thick with perfume, incense, and excitement. In this crowd, he realized, his garments were modest and unobtrusive—in his austere brown and black, he’d have looked a crow among peacocks. Even the walls were dressed in red brocade.
On a raised dais at the end of the room, sheltered by a red brocade canopy fringed with gold braid, Roya Orico and his royina were seated on gilded chairs, side by side. Orico was looking much better this evening, washed up and in clean clothes, even with a dash of color in his puffy cheeks; very nearly kingly beneath his gold circlet crown, after a stodgy middle-aged fashion. Royina Sara was elegantly dressed in matching scarlet robes and sat very upright, almost prim, in her seat. Now in her mid-thirties, her earlier prettiness was fading and worn. Her expression was a little wooden, and Cazaril wondered how mixed her feelings must be at this royal reception. In her long infertility, she had failed her chief duty to the royacy of Chalion—if the failure was hers. Even when Cazaril had been on the fringes of court years ago, it was whispered that Orico had never got a bastard, though at the time this lack was attributed to an excessive loyalty to his marriage bed. Teidez’s elevation was also the royal couple’s public acknowledgment of a most private despair.
Teidez and Iselle advanced to the dais in turn. They exchanged fraternal kisses of welcome upon the hands with the roya and royina, though the full formal kisses of submission upon forehead, hands, and feet were not required of them tonight. Each member of their entourage was also granted the boon of kneeling and kissing the royal hands. Sara’s was chill as wax, beneath Cazaril’s respectful lips.
Cazaril stood behind Iselle and braced his back to endure, as the royal siblings prepared to receive a long line of courtiers, none of whom could be insulted by being left out or denied a personal introduction or touch. Cazaril’s breath stopped in his throat as he recognized the first and foremost pair of men to advance.
The March dy Jironal was dressed in the full court robes of the general of the holy military order of the Son, in layers of brown, orange, and yellow. Dy Jironal was not much changed from when Cazaril had last seen him three years ago, when Cazaril had accepted the keys of Gotorget and the trust of its command from his hand in his field tent. He was still spare, graying, cool of eye, tense with energy, likely to forget to smile. The broad sword belt that crossed his chest was thick