Chapter 5: The Long Table

Year Three. Ysmera was twenty-nine, and Aldous had grown comfortable.

He sat in the regent's chair at the right hand of the throne.

He wore a ring on every finger and a velvet doublet the color of wine.

The great feast of midsummer filled the Ember Hall with three hundred guests, and he had arranged every seat himself.

He had seated Mirelle at the royal table.

She wore a gray silk dress he must have paid for, and she sat with her eyes on her plate while the ladies murmured.

"The princess's nurse," Aldous told the lords near him, loudly enough for everyone to hear. "A true friend to this house."

Laughter ran along the table.

Everyone knew what Mirelle was to him.

Nobody said it.

He was the man who gave out the river toll seals, and those seals fed half the nobles in the room.

Ysmera sat at the center of the high table in her iron crown, cutting her meat.

"You are quiet tonight, wife," Aldous called across Mirelle's head.

"I am enjoying the soup."

More laughter.

On his knee sat a three-year-old girl in a white dress, with red-gold curls and wide amber eyes.

Elowen.

She had the Dunmorrow chin and her grandmother's frown, and Ysmera had noticed that and had refused to think about it.

The girl pulled at Aldous's collar.

"Papa, look," she said, and held up a sweet.

"Clever girl."

She did not look at her mother.

Ysmera had learned not to wait for it.

Aldous tapped his goblet with his knife, and the hall quieted.

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