The Proper Form of Address

Chapter 6

Bennet de Grammell was having the most thoroughly ordinary of days. There was a line of advisors out his door waiting to meet with him, and none of them had said anything the least bit interesting. Bennet dispensed with neighborly skirmishes over snow panthers and a shipment of ice that had gone missing and two villages with competing claims to "Prettiest Village on the Sunrise Side of the Mountain."

And then Roger walked in and bowed low, nose brushing at his thigh, and said, "Begging your pardon, Excellence."

The advisor Bennet had been speaking to suppressed a sigh of disgust, but Bennet said, "No pardon necessary, Roger. What is it?"

"There is...an unusual man requesting an audience."

"Begging your pardon, Excellence," said the advisor, "but there is a line, Excellence." The advisor bowed low to apologize for speaking out of turn.

Bennet agreed with him, though. "Yes. Add him to the line."

"Begging your pardon, Excellence," said Roger, with another low bow, "but he isn't in a state to wait."

"Why not?" asked Bennet. "He's a man, you say, so he isn't in labor. Is he mortally wounded?"

"Pneumonia, Excellence, I would say. And possibly frostbite."

"What?" said Bennet, surprised. "And yet he's here seeking an audience with his king?"

"Begging your pardon, Excellence, but he claims you are not his king."

Bennet was startled into laughter. The advisor, after a moment, joined him. "Does he now? Who does he claim I am? Send him off to the hospital, Roger, and be done with it."

"Begging your pardon, Excellence, I would be ever so happy to do that, except that his story seemed extraordinary enough to bring to you. He's quite...determined."

"You say he has pneumonia. He's no doubt fever-touched. Get him to see a doctor—"

"He claims he's the only Prince of Jadenvale, Excellence. Begging your pardon."

Bennet stared at Roger, who looked extraordinarily uncertain about what he had just said. As uncertain as Bennet abruptly felt. "He claims he's what?"

Roger made a helpless little gesture, bowed low, and said, clearly at a loss for anything else to say, "Begging your pardon, Excellence."

Bennet regarded Roger.

Then the advisor said, "As you say, Excellence, begging your pardon, but no doubt he is just—"

"Just a second," Bennet said, and stood, which provoked a flurry of anxious bows on the part of everyone else in the room. "Bring me to the Prince," he told Roger.

Roger nodded and swept out of the room. Bennet followed him, walking at a brisk enough pace to let his dark blue cape fly out behind him in the dramatic gesture he had learned as an anxious twelve-year-old, suddenly and abruptly king.

The outer antechamber Roger led him to was crowded with advisors and petitioners, all of them lined evenly up against the walls. In the middle of the room was a man with a diadem of gold-and-silver set into a thicket of damp, curling dark hair. He was wearing a bedraggled fur hanging off one of his shoulders, much too big for him, and no gloves. His hands were red and raw and painful-looking. And he had no boots on, just a pair of silly scuffed shoes that Bennet would barely have worn in his bedroom, never mind outside.

To the side of this man and a bit behind him was a small, slight woman, also in a much-too-big fur, with spiky purple hair that was drooping on her head. She looked exhausted, but she looked in much better shape than the man, whose color was artificially flushed and whose dark eyes were a glittering bright that Bennet had seen before. Roger was right, it was definitely pneumonia.