Casket of Souls

my salon, Tolin,” added Alaya. “I’ve since been to his theater and really, it’s as good as anything I’ve seen in the Street of Lights. The plays are quite original.”
    Tolin bowed to them. “Perhaps I shall try it one night, then.” But he sounded less than enthusiastic.
    The ship skimmed across the harbor to a secluded cove on the seaward side of a wooded island just beyond the outer moles. Sailors rowed them ashore and Elani led the company up to a pretty wooden pavilion that stood in a clearing just above the shingle. Its ornately carved posts and railings were weathered silver with age and decked with flower garlands. While the servants prepared the midday meal and the older courtiers settled down to gamble and gossip, Elani, her ladies and sisters, and the younger nobles wandered the trails that wound through the woods to various vantage points overlooking the sea.
    Seregil found himself revising his view of Elani. She’d been bored at Alaya’s salon until the talk had turned to hunting and bows, and had been cheerful and friendly at the lists. This island was clearly a special place for her, and she seemed much more her age as she held her youngest sister, Princess Leali, by the hand and led the party to gulls’ nests that covered the ground on the leeward side to see the fuzzy grey-and-white chicks, and on to a shadowed glade whererare pink and white saphis flowers bloomed, the frilled, slipper-shaped blossoms swaying gently on their long stalks. There was a pond, as well, stocked with huge, precious gold-and-white-striped fish that rose greedily to eat the crumbs the girls scattered for them.
    Duke Reltheus occupied a favored place at her side. He made her laugh, and she occasionally took his arm. Seregil and Alec, however, found themselves at the back of the pack among the lesser courtiers.
    “Her Highness certainly seems fond of the duke,” Alec remarked to Earl Stenmir.
    “She’s fonder of the father than the son, they say,” Tolin murmured, keeping his voice down. Then, without much warmth, “And you seem to have made quite an impression in a very short time, Lord Alec.”
    “I don’t know about that.”
    “Oh, but you have. Wouldn’t you say so, Lord Seregil?” Stenmir insisted with a somewhat nasty grin.
    “They’re both archers,” Seregil said with a shrug.
    Neither answer seemed to satisfy the count. “Of course, you’re some relation to the princess, aren’t you, Lord Seregil? Odd that we haven’t seen more of you at court. Is it true that you’re in trade?”
    “I amuse myself with a few investments now and then,” Seregil replied with an easy smile, not rising to the bait of what was clearly intended as an insult.
    “And with Lord Alec,” a young countess said with a laugh.
    “A lucky thing for our friend Reltheus,” Duke Solis, a friendlier sort, noted, nudging Alec good-naturedly with his elbow. “He wouldn’t welcome any competition for a certain person’s hand.” He shot a meaningful look in Reltheus’s direction that no one missed.
    “Do you think his hopes are well founded?” asked Seregil.
    “I hear the son has caught the queen’s eye in the field,” Earl Stenmir sniffed. “And the princess royal is said to have been taken with Danos during a hunt. The young man is pleasant enough, but the father is quite the social climber, don’t you think?”
    “I am honored to call the duke my friend,” Seregil repliedstiffly, recognizing a gossip trap. “I will thank you to keep such insulting opinions to yourself, my lord.”
    Stenmir was clearly taken aback, given Seregil’s lower social rank. “I was merely making an observation.” With that he walked quickly to the head of the line and struck up a conversation with a marquis. The others who’d been walking with them moved away, as well, and that was the end of conversation for a while.
    “You drew a little blood there,” Alec whispered in Aurënfaie.
    Seregil chuckled. “At least it drove them off,” he replied in the same. “Tiresome lot. But I think we’ve both made a name for ourselves among them.” He nodded at Tolin, now walking with Elani. Reltheus had fallen back and was laughing with a portly duke. “I expect a bit of bad-mouthing is going on—in the most veiled way, of course. ‘I had no idea Lord Seregil was in
trade
.’ ‘My, but that lover of his is
very
young, don’t you think?’ ‘I’m surprised the queen hasn’t kept him at court. Isn’t