Delivegu was a reminder of it. She spotted him conversing with the party from the Prios Mines. How he had gotten in and what those men thought he was she had no idea, but in a strange way she was glad to have him near at hand. Eyes that lit with smiles when she made contact with them were misleading. She could sense the same eyes go malevolent when she was not looking. She could tell when conversation was amiable, and when the whispered words where unkind to her. She noted small things to examine further later. Senator Saden, while haranguing the woman beside him about something, avoided making eye contact with the newly enriched land speculator from Alyth. The man who passed beside him might have uttered something, but Saden did not acknowledge him until the two were some distance apart. Then he looked back and exchanged a knowing glance. Some petty treachery in the works between them? Likely. She would have Rhrenna look into it later.

Corinn's eyes drifted away from Saden to settle on a young man who stood at the far side of the courtyard, nearly atop the staircase that led to the lower terraces. He was flanked by several men with the firm-jawed look of trained guards. The man's reddish-blond hair was tousled as if an older brother had just mussed it up, yet his face-which Corinn sensed to be handsome even at a distance-took in the crowd with a confident composure.

"Who is that?" Corinn asked, gesturing with her chin.

Her maid answered that this was King Grae of Aushenia. The woman continued to explain that he would have been announced more formally, but he had arrived just a few hours earlier and asked to be in attendance this evening, even if just to watch the court from the-

"I know," she said. "Summon him." She glanced at the priest, smiling. "I'm sure the Vadayan will offer his seat to foreign royalty."

As she sat watching the messenger sent by the maid make his way through the crowd, Corinn wondered why she had done that. The words just came out of her mouth. She had claimed indifference to Grae to Rhrenna earlier; now she called him to her after a glance. The Meinish woman would find ways to poke fun at her for this, she was sure. It was done now, so she sat straight backed and waited, making a point of not watching the messenger interact with the king.

And just like that, before she knew it, a maid announced the monarch with a whisper in her ear. Corinn looked down the steps leading up to the dais and there he was, head bowed. His turbulent hair sported no crown, but that was a reasonable deference here in the heart of the empire. It wasn't that he really looked like Igguldan had, years before when Corinn first met him, but the sight of Grae came bearing more import than she had expected. First love, she thought. That's what it was. Foolishness. So thinking, she cursed herself for asking him over. What emotions would show on her face if she thought of such things here, with all the court's eyes on her? But she could do nothing now but go forward, composed.

The Aushenian straightened. Tall then. His shoulders broad and his form slim beneath them. He wore the loose-fitting shirt his nation favored, open at the collar, partially revealing the lean muscle beneath his coppery chest hairs. "Your Majesty," he said, smiling. "I am honored. I did not wish to disturb you, only to watch this wonderful occasion from the fringes."

Ah, that Aushenian accent. She had heard it often over the years, but it still had a strange effect on her. Its bold tones and clipped edges had poetry in their very nature. She felt her cheeks threatening to flush, but quelled it. "It wouldn't do to have a king sit among the merchant class. There are so few kings of note these days. I couldn't help but ask you to sit beside me. Please do."

"I'm honored." He pressed his lips to the rings of her proffered hand and then took the seat recently vacated by the priest. Grae's face was dangerously reminiscent of Igguldan's, though of slightly more masculine cut, just a little bit heavier in the jaw and bolder in the cheekbones. Even his freckles contributed, as if they had been splashed there playfully, intentionally. He was handsome. Corinn admitted Rhrenna was right about that.

He passed a few moments spouting the usual expressions of respect, and then sat grinning at the gathering before them. "Your Majesty," he said, "I'm ever amazed at the spectacle that is an Acacian banquet. The food alone is amazing. The music entrancing. The guests both dignified and courteous. The women are the most beautiful I've yet discovered in the world."

"Have you made a thorough survey of beauty in the world?"

"I have traveled, and I have eyes."

Certainly you do, Corinn thought. The kind of blue eyes that adolescent girls swoon over. "Detail your findings for me, then."

Grae laughed and moved to dismiss the subject with a motion of his fingers.

"No, I mean it, sir. Tell me."

She held him to the point until he began an awkward description of the empire's races and descriptions of their women's qualities. He fumbled at first, but picking up on Corinn's projected good humor he soon made a game of it. Halfway through his discourse, Corinn joked that he seemed to have found beauty everywhere he looked. He did not dispute it, but by the end he circled back to where he had begun. He concluded that Acacian beauty is superior because it contained so much of the world within it. "All the virtues of the races, none of the flaws. Your beauty, my queen, is that of the center point of the world."

Corinn's brow wrinkled with skepticism. "Indeed." She took a wineglass offered her by a servant. Grae did the same. "Where's your brother?" she asked. "I heard you two travel together frequently."

"We do," Grae said, "but he's off studying agricultural techniques on the Mainland. He likes to be industrious, my little brother."

"I know the type. You were close to him when you were young?"

They were, Grae agreed. At Corinn's prompting, he told her several tales of their youth, hiding in the far north of Aushenia. Such a wild country, he made it seem, though that might have been because he still imagined it with a frightened child's eyes. She could picture those mountains and thick forests and white bears and snowstorms and swarms of insects as thick as flocks of migrating birds.

"We could not hide forever, though," Grae said. "So I did eventually come back into the world. Only it was a world in which my father and older brother no longer lived. It was a world in which my nation was overrun with foreigners, carved up, a playground for the Numrek. Dire times. Better that they are behind us now."

"You didn't fight for my brother, did you?"

"For Aliver?" Grae looked uneasy, but then regained his composure and answered with what appeared to be simple honesty. "No, I didn't, but I would have. Proudly, I would have. When he was massing to press his battle against Maeander in Talay, I was fighting for the life of my nation. I fought the remnants of the Numrek still on my soil, and I expelled the Mein and closed the Gradthic Gap. It was bloody, and… Well, I would argue that Aliver and I were fighting common enemies, even if we did not do so together."

Corinn did not comment on the later statement. "Tell me, when you say that you fought, what does that mean exactly? I mean, I fought Hanish himself, right here in Acacia, but that doesn't mean I actually drew his blood with my own blade. My sister does that sort of thing, not me. But you, when you fight, do you fight yourself, or do you instruct others to fight in your name?"

"My sword is no virgin blade," Grae said. Corinn noted a flare of arrogance held back. "I never sent men into battle. I led them into battle. I will not brag to you, Your Majesty. That would be unseemly. But I invite you to ask others of my character. I think you will find my reputation is sound."