Read Dragon Prince 02 - The Star Scroll for Free Online Page B

many mistresses as he pleased. But not now.
    She smiled at him. “Anticipation always enhances enjoyment, Lyell. Now, be a darling and find my green slippers, please? After all, you’re the one who kicked them under the bed the other night.”
    He kissed her shoulder and obeyed. Kiele locked Afina’s letter in her jewel box and replaced the key in a pocket of her underskirt. Lyell returned from the bedchamber just in time to see her smoothing her green stockings. He knelt beside her to slide on the velvet slippers.
    “If you don’t put your skirts down, I’ll forget Clutha even exists,” he said playfully.
    She deliberately hiked the gown a little higher. “Does he?”
    “Kiele!”
    But she glided smoothly from her chair and out of his reach, laughing as she placed the golden headpiece on her piled dark braids.
    Dinner in the banqueting hall was endless. Prince Clutha was full of plans for making this year’s Rialla more splendid than ever, and, Goddess knew, the cost of the last one had been such that Kiele had gone for half a year without a new gown. She was forced to listen in angry silence with a smile on her face as Lyell’s pride made him agree to schemes that would beggar him. Most entertainments were put on by the princes, with the burden falling on Rohan as usual, but the prizes for horse races and the spectacle of the last evening’s banquet were Lyell’s responsibility, with only nominal assistance from Clutha. Kiele promised herself that once Halian was Prince of Meadowlord with Moswen as his wife, this triennial penury would cease.
    Clutha had brought his Sunrunner with him, a frail and withered old man with very dark eyes that saw too much as far as Kiele was concerned. She knew that whenever he accompanied Clutha to Waes, Lady Andrade received detailed reports. When dinner was over, the old faradhi wheezed his way into the dining room, Clutha’s squire at his side. The young man gave Kiele a slight, elegant bow, his fine dark eyes flickering with disapproval of her almost-crown. She favored him with a lifted brow, wondering if his place on the social scale of nobility was low enough to allow her a calculated insult in return.
    Clutha glanced up from the written list of expenditures. “You’ve the look of the last sunlight about you, Tiel.”
    “Indeed, your grace, Riyan and I have just received word that Prince Ajit of Firon is dead. A seizure of the heart, it was.”
    Kiele made appropriate noises of shock and grief, but her mind raced. Ajit had no direct heir. She tried to recall the collateral branches of the Fironese royal house, and if she was allied with or related to any of them.
    Clutha gave a heavy sigh, shaking his bald head. “Unhappy news. Many times I’ve told him he should live life more easily, as befits men of our age.”
    Kiele coughed to hide a giggle, remembering that Ajit had planned to take yet another wife—his seventh—this year at the Rialla. Halian caught her eye and his lips twitched.
    “There’ll be one less wedding at Lastday this year,” he remarked.
    His father thundered, “You will mourn our royal cousin with respect, you insolent fool!”
    “I mean no disrespect,” Halian said contritely, but there was that in his eyes that told Kiele he wished the old man dead, burned, and out of his life. She lowered her gaze to her lap after casting a careful look of sympathy at him. Yes, he was ripe for the plucking, if Moswen was clever and played on his impatience with his father. Clutha behaved as if his son was still a lad of barely twenty winters, not a man nearly forty. Kiele would have to remember to tell Moswen the best approach to use. She would be a princess before autumn.
     
    News of Ajit’s death dampened Lyell’s ardor, for which Kiele was profoundly grateful. While he slept in the huge state bed, she returned to the dressing chamber and lit the candle on her desk. Its reflection in the mirror gave her enough reading light as she scanned the letter