The feast began because protocol demanded it, and protocol, unlike the people who served it, was indifferent to exhaustion, grief, and the profound longing to be somewhere else.
The carpets of the betrothal pavilion had been rearranged to accommodate low tables, and the tables had been laden with the same provisions that had been sent to mock the Esberian army—fresh bread, roasted lambs, dates stuffed with almonds and honey, pomegranates and figs and apricots, wheels of cheese sweating in the heat, clay amphorae of wine and silver ewers of cool water. It was a feast of reconciliation, a feast of celebration.
The Esberian lords ate with the desperate, controlled hunger of men who had been starving for weeks and were determined not to show it. The Jaludi lords ate with the careful moderation of hosts who did not wish to appear either gluttonous or condescending. The priests and the adjudicators, seated at opposite ends of the same table, engaged in a silent war of courteous mutual exclusion that was, in its way, more vicious than any exchange of swords. Nasir al-Jamil moved between them like a man carrying water in a sieve, translating pleasantries that were not pleasant and agreements that were not agreed.
At the high table, King Rydric and Sultan Seylim raised their cups to one another.
The king's cup contained wine—the same wine Seylim had sent to mock him, though this amphora had not been smashed. The Sultan's cup contained water, as it always did, though tonight it might as well have been vinegar for all the pleasure it gave him. The two rulers met each other's eyes across the gulf of their separate silences, and neither spoke of what had happened. They had won. The peace had held. Their children were bound, and the binding would save thousands of lives—had already begun saving them, even as the feast progressed and the guards relaxed and the army outside the pavilion began, cautiously, tentatively, to believe that it would not die on this barren hillside after all.
Rydric's hand was not steady on his cup. Seylim noticed. Seylim's hand was not steady either, and Rydric noticed that as well. They toasted peace anyway, because to do otherwise would have been to admit that peace had cost more than either of them had been prepared to pay.
At the far end of the high table, Princess Alianor sat beside Prince Zeid and ate nothing.
Her plate before her was heaped with delicacies—Umm Amin's finest work, the same dishes that had been sent down the road to mock the Esberian host, now offered in earnest as a gesture of union. Alianor did not touch them. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her veil drawn back just enough to reveal the hard line of her jaw, and she stared at the tablecloth as though it were a map of a battle she was still fighting.
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Beside her, Zeid drank water and could not breathe properly.
The bindings had been wound tighter than usual for the ceremony—Rafiq's doing, at Zeid's own insistence, because the silk coat was unforgiving and the eyes of two courts would be upon him. The pressure that had been a dull ache during the ceremony had become, in the hours since, a slow constriction that turned every breath into a negotiation. He could not eat. He could not drink more than a sip at a time. He could not lean back or stretch or do any of the things a man might do to ease the cage of his own ribs. He sat straight and still and calm, the performance unbroken, and he wondered if this was what drowning felt like before the water entered the lungs.
Neither of them spoke.
The feast roared on around them. Lords laughed too loudly, their relief coming out in gusts of wine-scented breath. Servants hurried between the tables, their sandals slapping on the carpets. Near the pavilion's entrance, a Jaludi poet had been engaged to recite verses in honour of the betrothal, and his voice rose and fell in the intricate cadences of the qasida, praising the wisdom of two rulers who had chosen peace over war, love over hatred, union over division.
Alianor's hand moved to her sleeve, once, and rested there.
Zeid saw it. He did not comment.
Then her hand withdrew, empty, and she reached instead for a cup of water. She did not drink. She held it before her, staring at the surface as though something might be written there, something she had not yet learned to read.
"They are toasting us," she said, very quietly, without looking at him.
"Yes."
"They do not know what they are toasting."
"No."
"I am not sure I know either."
Zeid turned his head slightly—not enough to draw attention, just enough to see the side of her face beyond the veil. The hard line of her jaw had not softened, but it had shifted, the way a sword shifts in its scabbard when the hand that holds it is no longer preparing to strike.
"Neither do I," he said. "But we are still alive, and so are they. Perhaps that is enough for one night."
Alianor said nothing. She raised the cup to her lips and drank.
It was not forgiveness. It was not acceptance. It was water, and she was thirsty, and that was all. But Zeid saw her drink, and something in his chest—something that had nothing to do with the bindings—loosened by the smallest of increments.
At the centre of the high table, Rydric and Seylim raised their cups a second time.
"To the peace," Rydric said, in his heavily accented Jaludi.
"To the peace," Seylim replied, in his careful, rounded Vestimarian.