Inheritance by Simon Brown

bowls which they set on the table between the guests.
    The nobleman, Ager could now see from his long formal coat, was from Aman. Seated between his countryman, Orkid Gravespear, and the Princess Areava, Ager thought he was a pleasant-looking youth with a quick smile and an open face. He noticed that several of the guests, relatives of the royal family from the Twenty Houses and including Berayma’s cousin and friend Galen Amptra and his father the duke, were looking with some displeasure at the visitor and the easy familiarity he was showing toward Areava. The princess, for her part, seemed to enjoy the attention of the foreign prince, talking with him animatedly and occasionally even laughing softly, something Ager had never heard her do before.
    Perhaps she is just a good actress
, Ager thought. Kumul had told him that, unlike Berayma, Areava held a great antipathy toward the Twenty Houses; so, knowing their dislike of commoners, provincials of any class, and clerics, she might be paying special attention to the Amanite prince simply to irk them. If that was the case, it was working.
And good for you, Your Highness
, he thought.
Anything to put a burr under the seat of a nobleman
.
    As the meal progressed, Ager noticed that some of the Twenty House nobles were glancing at him and whispering comments to one another. The queen noticed it as well. She gently tapped the table with a knife and immediately got everyone’s attention.
    “I notice, Duke Amptra, that you and your accomplices are whispering between yourselves. Is it something we should know about?”
    The duke, an overweight man who suffered from gout and, Ager would bet, a few varieties of pox, looked in surprise at the queen. He was not used to being addressed like a schoolboy, and the word “accomplices” suggested the matter was something decidedly underhanded.
    “Your Majesty, merely small talk, chitchat, asides of no consequence…” His voice trailed off and his double chin wobbled.
    His son leaped into the breach. “Your Majesty, we were merely discussing the splendid uniforms of your Royal Guards.”
    “Really?” She took time to survey the uniforms herself. “I notice nothing different about them, my Lord Galen; as far as I can tell, they are the same uniform worn by the guards in my father’s time.”
    Galen swallowed hard. “True, but it is often the way with everyday things that suddenly you will notice their special… umm… qualities?” He ended his statement as a question, and knew it was a mistake.
    “Qualities,” the queen said, carefully chewing over the word. “Such as?”
    “The color, your Majesty,” Galen said quickly.
    “Like the sea that surrounds Kendra,” his father added.
    “Ah, the color.” The queen nodded.
    Then, satisfied that a lesson had been taught, she turned to the visiting prince from Aman to ask a question when another voice, sniggering, said: “And their shape!”
    There was the sound of muffled laughter. Usharna’s head snapped up, and her angry gaze returned to the representatives from the Twenty Houses. She noticed that Duke Holo Amptra and his son looked hideously embarrassed. Next to them, Minan Protas, who had only recently succeeded to his family’s dukedom, was desperately trying to swallow a giggle.
    “Duke Protas, you are referring to something in particular?” Usharna asked, her voice so cold that Berayma and Orkid, sitting on either side of her, edged away.
    Protas was counted a bluff, arrogant fool even among his own kind. He pointed to Ager, who was standing as erect as possible and looking straight ahead at an invisible point on the opposite wall, and said: “Not something, Your Majesty, but someone.” No longer able to contain his mirth, Protas broke out in a strangled guffaw.
    No laughter joined the duke’s. The queen silently waited for him to finish. Finally, Protas realized no one else was enjoying the joke and brought himself up with a wheeze.
    “Duke Protas, how old are