Forest Mage. Robin Hobb

us inhibit you. Enjoy the wedding feast.’

      ‘Please do,’ my host echoed. I glanced at him but could not read his face.

      ‘Your serving staff is far too generous,’ I ventured again. ‘He has brought me much more than I requested.’ Then, fearing that I would sound ungracious, I added, ‘But I am sure he meant well.’ I picked up my knife and fork. I glanced at my parents. My mother was attempting to smile as if nothing were amiss or unusual. She cut a tiny bite from her portion of meat and ate it.

      I speared one of the dumplings swimming in gravy. I put it in my mouth. Ambrosia. The inner dumpling was fine-grained and tender, the outer layer softened with the savoury broth. I could taste finely-chopped celery, mellowed onion and a careful measure of bayleaf simmered with the thick meatiness of the gravy. Never before had I been so aware of the sensations of eating. It wasn’t just the aroma or flavour. It was the sweet briny ham versus the way the spicy pâté contrasted with the tender bread beneath it. The croissant had been made with butter, and the layers of the light pastry were delicate as snowflakes on my tongue. The chicken had been grain fed and well bled before it had been carefully roasted in a smoky fire to both flavour it and preserve the moistness of the flesh. The rye bread was delightfully chewy. I washed it down with wine, and a servant brought me more. I ate.

      I ate as I had never eaten before. I lost awareness of the people beside me and of the festivity that swirled around me. I gave no thought to what my father might be thinking or my mother feeling. I did not worry that Carsina might chance by and be aghast at my appetite. I simply ate, and the intense pleasure of that exquisite meal after my long fast has never left me. I was a man caught up in a profoundly carnal pleasure. I felt a deep satisfaction at replenishing my reserves and I gave no thought to anything else. I cannot even say how long it took me to consume both platters, or if there was any conversation around me. At some point, Lord and Lady Poronte passed some pleasantry with my parents and then drifted away to socialize with their other guests. I scarcely noticed. I was a soul consumed with the simple and absolute pleasure of eating.

      Only when both platters were empty did I glide back into awareness of my surroundings. My father sat in stony silence. My mother was smiling and making vapid small talk in a hopeless effort to preserve the image of a couple having a conversation. My belly now strained against my belt. Embarrassment battled with a strong urge to rise and seek out the sweets table. Despite what I had consumed, I was still aware of the scent of warm vanilla sugar hanging in the air, and the fragrance of tart strawberries packed into sweet little pastries.

      ‘Have you quite finished, Nevare?’ My father asked the question so softly that someone else might have thought him a kind man.

      ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ I said contritely.

      ‘It’s called gluttony,’ he callously replied. He had excellent control over his features. As he spoke so quietly to me, his eyes roved around the room. He nodded to someone he saw there. He smiled as he said, ‘I have never been so ashamed of you. Do you hate your brother? Do you seek to humiliate me? What motivates you, Nevare? Do you think to avoid your military duty? You will not. One way or another, I’ll see you serve your fate.’ He turned his head, waved at another acquaintance. ‘I warn you. If you will not maintain your body and your dignity and earn a commission at the Academy and win a noble lady as your wife, why then you can go as a common foot soldier. But go you shall, boy. Go you shall.’

      Only my mother and I could hear the venom in his questions. Her eyes were very wide and her face pale. I suddenly realized that she feared my father, and that right now her fear was extreme. He flicked a glance at her. ‘Excuse yourself, my lady, and flee this scene if it distresses you. I give you permission.’

      With an apologetic look to me, she did. Her eyes were anxious, but she put a bright smile on her face, rose, and gave us a tiny wave of farewell as if she regretted having to leave us for a time. Then she fled across the room and out of the hall.

      I glued a smile on my lips and cursed my own creeping fear of him. ‘I spoke the truth to you, Father. I told the servant to bring me a small serving of meat and bread. Once that quantity had arrived, and Lady Poronte had witnessed it, what was I to do? Waste the abundance they shared with us? Claim the food did not suit me and turn it away? The servant placed me in a bad position. I made the best of it that I could. Tell me. What should I have done?’

      ‘If you had served yourself a simple meal, instead of waiting to be attended like an old noble’s heir son, none of this would have happened.’

      ‘And if I had been born with prescience, that is precisely what I would have done,’ I retorted tightly. Where, I wondered in the shocked silence that followed my words, had that retort come from?

      Astonishment that I would stand up to him jolted my father’s smile off his face. I was tempted to believe that I had seen a brief flash of respect in his eyes before he narrowed them at me. He took a short sharp breath as if to speak, and then snorted it out in disdain. ‘This is not the place nor the time, but I promise you, I will have a reckoning with you over this. For the rest of the day, say little and eat nothing. That isn’t a request, Nevare. It’s an order. Do you understand me?’

      I thought of a dozen things I could say. But that was after I had given him a tight nod, and he had pushed his chair back and left me. The two large empty platters on the table rebuked me. There was a swallow of wine left in my glass. I reflected bitterly that he had said nothing about drinking and took it down.

      By the time evening arrived and I again mounted to the top of the carriage for the journey home, I was more sodden with brandy than a well-soaked fruitcake. But that, of course, was civilized and acceptable behaviour for a soldier son. No one ever rebuked me for that.

       SIX

       A Day of Letters

      I did my best to be invisible during the following days of festivities at my home. It was not easy. I had to be present at the dinners, and with a house full of guests, it was difficult to avoid socializing completely. Most unpleasant of all for me was that the Grenalters had been invited to stay with us. Carsina and my sister Yaril snubbed me at every opportunity. If by chance I entered a room they were in, they would immediately sweep disdainfully from it. It maddened me with frustration, the more so in that never once did they enter a room and allow me the chance to vacate it as soon as I saw them. I told myself it was juvenile to long for the chance to show Carsina just how uninterested I was in her, but in my heart I burned to hurt her pride as she had injured mine. I contented myself with making savagely accurate accounts of all my interactions with her in my soldier-son journal.

      Rosse and Cecile had departed on their wedding trip. They intended to travel downriver to Old Thares, where my uncle would host a reception for them. Cecile had two aunts and three uncles in the capital, so Rosse would be exhibited and inspected for several weeks before they returned home to settle into the rooms prepared for the new couple. I pitied them, having to begin a new life under my father’s roof. My father, I was sure, would grant them little privacy and even less autonomy.

      My father and I were at war now. He was courteous to me while houseguests were present, but once they all had departed, he made his displeasure clear. That evening, just as the house should have been peaceful, he verbally flogged me with all my shortcomings as a son, never giving me an opportunity to reply. After a time, from some depth I didn’t know I possessed, I found an icy calm and refused to give him any response. When he angrily dismissed me, I went directly to my room and to bed and spent most of that night staring up at the darkened ceiling and seething. He sought to bring me to heel like a whipped puppy. He cared for nothing I might say in my defence. Fine. Then he would hear absolutely nothing from me.

      After that, our conflict was conducted in silence. I avoided my father’s company. When my mother sought conversation with me I spoke about the Academy, my teachers and friends and my uncle’s