with this visit. She was fluent in Tassalik, and she seriously doubted that Prince Prekeptor spoke a word of Agarant. They were quite provincial in Tassali and clung to their dialect tenaciously. If a meeting were to take place between Prekeptor and one of Oruc's daughters. Patience would be an excellent interpreter.
And since Klea was an unlikely candidate and Rika could speak passable Tassalik, it was most likely that the chosen daughter was Lyra.
All this reasoning took place while Patience pulled on her silk chemise. She turned to face Angel then, and smiled. "I'm to be the interpreter between Prekeptor and Lyra, when they meet today so they can decide whether they detest each other so much it is worth causing an international quarrel to avoid being married."
Angel smiled. "It seems the most likely thing."
"Then I must dress to take part in an official meeting between future sovereigns. Would you call Nails and Calico to me?"
"I will," said Angel. But he stopped at the door.
"You must realize," he said, "that Prekeptor will know who you are."
It was a warning, and Patience understood very well that King Oruc was playing a dangerous game, putting her in the middle of a political situation so closely involved with royal succession. Especially with Father away.
Oruc must have planned this for some time, to have Father away on a trivial matter. Ordinarily, Lord Peace would have been at the heart of the negotiations over such a vital alliance.
Nails and Calico, her dressing maids, came in, trying to seem light and cheerful, when obviously they had been aroused from deep-and, in Calico's case, drunken- slumber. Patience selected her gown and wig and endured their ministrations as they turned her into a poppet.
"Called to the King," Nails kept saying. "What honor, for a daughter of a slave."
It was annoying to have her father called a slave over and over again, but she knew that Nails was not being malicious, merely stupid. And as Father always said, 'Never be angry when fools behave like fools'. Its better when fools identify themselves, Patience reminded herself.
It removes so much uncertainty.
When the women were finished, the sun was just coming up. She dismissed them and opened the small brass case that contained the diplomatic equipment Father and Angel had decided she was old enough to use discreetly.
For self-defense, a loop, of course. It was a long strand of incredibly strong plastic, so fine that it was almost invisible. It could cut through flesh with only a little pressure. It had knobs of plastic on both ends, so Patience could grasp it without slicing off her fingers.
And for attack, a glass pendant which contained a swarm of pinks, almost invisibly tiny insects that homed in on human eyes and in a matter of minutes would build honeycomb nests that always resulted in blindness within hours. If the eyes were not removed quickly, the pinks would bore through to the brain and cause chronic, permanent palsy. A vicious weapon, but Angel always said that a diplomat who is not prepared to kill had better be prepared to die. She tipped back her head and put drops in her eyes, of a liquid that would kill pinks on contact.
It would stay in her eyes for hours. As Father said, 'Never carry a weapon that can be used against you.'
As she prepared herself, she tried to figure out what King Oruc had in mind for her. There were other interpreters he could use. The choice of Patience was fraught with implications, especially if Prekeptor knew who she really was. There was no circumstance Patience could think of where anything would be helped by using her as interpreter; and she could think of dozens of things that might go wrong, to have the daughter of Lord Peace standing beside the daughter of King Oruc, when the heir to a powerful kingdom came to meet his possible wife.
Patience had been aware throughout her childhood that she was not an ordinary slave in the Heptarch's household.
One of the first lessons a child in King's Hill had to learn was to treat each slave according to the strictest protocols of rank. Whores and chamberslaves needed no more respect than dogs; ambassadors and ministers of state, like her father. Peace, were treated with as much honor as any lord except the Heptarch himself or the heads of the Fourteen Families.
But even among the children of the most noble of the King's slaves. Patience was given special treatment. Adults whispered when