My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: The Steward's Tray
At noon on the fourth day, an old man in a grey coat came to the pen carrying a covered tray.
He was bald and stooped, and he moved like someone who had carried trays all his life and expected to carry one to his grave.
Hinata looked up from the wash bucket.
"The pen isn't open for visitors," she said.
"Forgive me, Lady Koyama." The old man's voice cracked. "I am Ambrose Tull. I have been bringing this to the gate every noon for eight months."
He lifted the cover.
On the plate lay roast fowl, white bread and a little dish of honey.
"Nobody told me anyone ate that," said Hinata.
"Nobody eats it. I leave it, and the guards take it, and I come back the next day." He set the tray on the stones. "I was a boy of twelve when I first carried a tray for the young prince. It seemed wrong to stop."
Sumi, who had been dozing in a sunny patch, lifted his head.
The old man looked at him.
He stopped talking.
His whole face changed, and his tray hand began to shake, and he went down on both knees on the stones.
"Your Majesty," he whispered.
The panther's ears twitched.
He rose, padded over, and sniffed the old man's sleeve with polite interest.
Then he turned and sniffed the honey.
Ambrose let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob.
"He does not know me," he said. "Of course. He does not know himself in the day. But the eyes. Eight months, I have stood outside that pen and looked at those eyes."
"How did you know?"
"I held that boy's chin when he lost his first tooth." Ambrose wiped his face with his sleeve. "Forgive an old man. Are you the tamer?"
"I'm Hinata."
"You are the first person who has been kind to him since the Hunt."
Hinata sat down on the upturned bucket.
"Then you know what happened," she said. "He told me some of it. Tell me the rest."
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