The delegates wore baggy woolen trousers and blouses, felt caps, and slippers whose toes turned up in points. Martous and Protas had long triangular gares of cloth-of-gold appliqued vertically on their sleeves and trouser legs; those of the other men were plain. The wool was bleached white, but it was clear that First Atara's society didn't set great store on flamboyant personal decoration.

Garric preferred simplicity to the styles of the great cities of the kingdom, Valles and Erdin on Sandrakkan or even Carcosa which now was merely the capital of the unimportant island of Haft. It'd been the royal capital during the Old Kingdom, and it remained a pretentious place despite its glory being a thousand years in the past.

Garric grinned at Lord Martous: a balding little fellow, a homely man from a rustic place who was incensed that he and the boy on whom his status depended weren't being treated with greater deference. That implied that pretentiousness was one of the strongest human impulses.

"Come along, Basto, come along," called Lord Martous to the aide struggling with the bundle. Then on a rising note, "No, don't you-"

The latter comment was to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles and a man to whom Garric's safety was more important than it was to Garric himself. Attaper, a stocky, powerful man in his forties, ignored the protest just as he ignored all other attempts to tell him how to do his job. He plucked the package from the aide's hands and unwrapped it while the aide came aboard and Martous spluttered in frustration.

"I'm sorry you had to scramble up like a monkey, Prince Protas," Garric said, smiling at the boy to put him at his ease. Protas was obviously nervous and uncertain, afraid to say or do the wrong thing in what he knew were important circumstances. "I'd expected to meet you-and your father, of course-on land in a few hours."

"King Cervoran is dead, sir," Protas said with careful formality. He forced himself to look straight at Garric as he spoke, but then he swallowed hard.