It had another kind of mood to it, a different... It had another kind of mood to it, a different character entirely
It also had, among all those women from Corte and Chiara and Asoli and the handful from Ygrath, one woman named Dianora, from CertandoFrom Barbadian-ruled Certando
Or so everyone in the palace thought
It had almost started a war, Dianora remembered
In the days after her brother left home, sixteen-year-old Dianora di Tigana, daughter of a sculptor who had died in the war, and of a mother who had scarcely spoken since that day, resolved that she would point her own life towards the killing of the Tyrant on Chiara
Hardening herself, the way she heard that men in battle were forced to do, the way her father must have tried to do by the Deisa, she had begun preparing to leave her mother in the hollow, echoing house that had once been a place crowded with joyWhere the Prince of Tigana had walked in their courtyard, an arm flung about her father's shoulders, discussing and praising the works in progress there
Dianora could remember
Entering the Audience Chamber she checked and approved her reflection in the
chanel 5 ladies handbag au wall of gold-plated mirrors on the far side of the room, then her eyes sought, instinctively, those of d'Eymon of Ygrath, the ChancellorThe second most powerful man in the court
He was, predictably, already looking towards Solores and herself, his glance precisely as bleak as it always wasIt was a look that had bothered Dianora when first she cameShe'd thought d'Eymon had taken a dislike to her, or, worse, that he somehow suspected herIt wasn't long before she realized that he disliked and suspected virtually every person who entered this palaceEveryone received the same glacial, appraising scrutinyIt had been exactly so, she gathered, in Ygrath as wellD'Eymon's loyalty to Brandin was fanatical and unwavering, and so was his zeal in protecting his King
Over the years Dianora had developed a respect, grudging at first, and then less so, for the grim YgrathenShe counted it as one of her own triumphs that he seemed to trust her nowFor years now, in fact, or she would never have been allowed to spend a night in Brandin's bed while he slept
A triumph of deception, she
buy chloe paddington handbag thought, with an irony whose teeth were all directed inward against herself
D'Eymon made an economical circling motion with his head and then repeated the gesture for SoloresIt was what they had expected: they were to mingle and converseNeither of them was to take the chair set beside the Island ThroneThey did sometimes, and so had the beautiful, unlamented Chloese before her surprising, untimely death, but Brandin was quite punctilious when guests from Ygrath were among themAt such times the seat beside him stood pointedly emptyFor Dorotea, his Queen
Brandin had not yet entered the room of course, but Dianora saw Rhun, the slack-limbed balding Fool shamble towards one of the servers carrying wineRhun, clumsy, grievously retarded, was clad sumptuously in gold and white, and so Dianora knew that Brandin would be as wellIt was an integral part of the complex relationship of the Sorcerer Kings of Ygrath and their chosen Fools
For centuries in Ygrath the Fool had served as shadow and projection for the KingHe was dressed like his monarch, ate next to him at public
vintage rolex watch functions, was there when honors were conferred or judgment passedAnd every King's chosen Fool was someone visibly, sometimes painfully afflicted or malformedRhun's walk was sluggish, his features twisted and deformed, his hands dangled at awkward angles in repose, his speech was badly slurredHe recognized people in the court, but not invariably, and not always in the manner one might expect, which sometimes carried a messageA message from the King
That part, Dianora didn't entirely comprehend, and doubted she ever wouldShe knew that Rhun's dim, limited mind was mostly under his own control but she also knew that that was not completely soThere was sorcery at work in this: the subtle magic of Ygrath
This much she understood: that in addition to serving, very graphically, to remind their King of his mortality and his own limitations, the Fools of Ygrath, dressed exactly like their lord, could sometimes also serve as a voice, an external conduit, for the thoughts and emotions of the King
Which meant that one could not always be sure whether Rhun's words and actions, slurred
new cartier watches or awkward as they might be, were his own, or an important revelation of Brandin's moodAnd that could be treacherous ground for the unwary
Right now Rhun seemed smiling and content, bobbing and bowing jerkily at every second person he encountered, his golden cap slipping off every timeHe would laugh though, as he bent to pick it up and set it again on his thinning hairEvery so often an overanxious courtier, seeking to curry favor in any way he could, would hastily stoop to pick up the fallen cap and present it to the FoolRhun would laugh at that too
Dianora had to admit that he made her uneasy, though she tried to hide that beneath the real pity she felt for his afflictions and his increasingly evident yearsBut the core truth for her was that Rhun was intimately tied to Brandin's magic, he was an extension of it, a tool, and Brandin's magic was the source of all her loss and fear
So over the years she had become adroit at avoiding situations where she might find herself alone with the Fool; his guileless eyes, unnervingly similar to Brandin's, gave her genuine
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