Heirs of the Blade Read Online Free PDF Page B

kind of introspection. Anything but. ‘I can’t see how this sort of building can have stood them much stead during the war,’ she remarked, to burn away the silence.
    ‘Oh, this is no castle, in that sense,’ Gramo admitted. ‘This is Prince Felipe’s new home, built after the loss of his family’s original seat of power. There is little enough change in the Commonweal, but this is a new . . . interpretation, shall I say, of their architecture. Mind you, I’m afraid their stone castles hardly fared better than this one would. Perhaps that’s the point.’
    There was a flurry of wings and a Dragonfly landed a few yards away, a lean man with high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, his hair a steely grey. As he approached them, he moved like a man in his prime, and nothing in his manner or stance suggested age. His clothing was in green and blue, a robe and under-robe as Gramo wore, but of far finer quality, being silk embroidered with gold. For a moment, Tynisa thought that this must, in fact, be the prince unexpectedly answering his own door.
    ‘Seneschal Lioste,’ Gramo named him. ‘You do me much honour with your presence.’
    ‘Ambassador,’ the seneschal replied, neither warmly nor coldly, but a simple statement of fact. His eyes flicked to Tynisa questioningly.
    ‘Ah, well.’ Gramo gestured vaguely in her direction, ‘we have a visitor from the Lowlands, as you may guess. She is sent by Master Stenwold Maker, who visited with the prince so recently.’ The full year that had passed did not make a dent in that ‘recent’, Tynisa guessed. ‘Tynisa Maker is here to pay her formal respects to the prince, or to his retinue during his absence.’
    Seneschal Lioste stared at her and said nothing.
    ‘Your prince, of course, welcomed Master Maker on his visit, as did the Monarch, since when your prince has taken a refreshingly open stance, of course, towards my homeland,’ Gramo went on, hands worrying at the cloth of his robe. The Dragonfly glanced at him, face carefully blank, and then his eyes returned to Tynisa.
    ‘Mistress Maker is here at his behest – Master Maker’s, that is – formal greetings from the Lowlands . . . in this new, this day and age . . .’ Gramo faltered to a stop.
    ‘Prince Felipe has yet to return,’ the seneschal said, and Tynisa decoded his expression at last. Here was a man faced with something that he had no idea what to do with.
    ‘Mistress Maker was hoping to be admitted to the castle,’ Gramo tried gamely. ‘Master Maker, when he was here, was summoned, of course . . .’
    ‘Master Maker had brought home one of the Monarch’s subjects,’ the Seneschal reminded him, apparently seizing on something that he at last understood. It was plain that, however progressive the prince himself might be, in his absence his staff fell back on what they knew. ‘My prince shall return to Suon Ren shortly. Perhaps the Spider-kinden shall be sent for in due course.’ He was meticulously polite in words, manner and expression, but Tynisa could almost see the panic leaking out at the edges. The idea of allowing a stranger, a foreigner, into Felipe’s home behind his master’s back was obviously more than the seneschal could countenance.
    Descending back towards the embassy, Gramo was full of apologies, defending the natural reticence of the Dragonflies, assuring her that the prince himself would send for her eventually. ‘You must get used to the slower pace, is all it is,’ he explained. ‘One does not rush, here.’
    Gramo prepared her a room at the embassy, which mostly involved hooking up a hammock-like affair for her to sleep in. Her new chamber was dominated by a solid Collegium desk, the sort that a well-to-do academic would write his memoirs on. She was willing to bet it had seen no use in ten years, and there was no chair.
    They ate later, still no word having come from the castle. Gramo prepared a meal of beans and roots and other vegetables, his choice of spices too