Chapter 4: Table of Cold Soup

The Collector came to dinner without being asked.

He swept into the great hall at sunset with two guards behind him and his thin clerk beside him with a leather case.

"Council guest right," he said, to nobody in particular, and sat in the king's own chair.

The king was standing at the window with a bowl, and he did not move.

The staff who had been laying the table went still.

Nanami was at the far end, with a ledger open beside her stew.

She kept reading.

"Is this what you serve a guest?" Seleth asked, lifting the lid on the soup.

"It's what we have," said Gorund.

"It's cold."

"The cook says it was hot an hour ago, my lord."

"Then she has had an hour to learn better."

The Collector smiled around the hall.

"Two hundred and twelve mouths, and not one that earns its bread. I'd call it charity, but the king can't afford the word."

Somebody at the servants' table put down a spoon very quietly.

The old cook, a round grey-haired demon woman with burn scars up both arms, gripped the edge of the table.

"Beggar of Holloch," said Seleth, sipping the king's last cask of wine. "That is what they call him in the Thrones. They say it kindly."

The king said nothing at all.

His hand on the bowl was white across the knuckles.

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