“No, if that’s acceptable to you.”
“Lord Grammayre will,” Helen pointed out.
“...Pardon?”
“Did Kaylin forget to tell you? I see that she did. The Hawklord will be joining us for dinner.”
Dragon eyes and Aerian eyes both drilled into the side of Kaylin’s averted face. Which was probably redder than it had to be. The big advantage to being Leontine, in Kaylin’s opinion, was that humiliation or embarrassment wasn’t instantly trumpeted to everyone with working eyes by the color of fur.
“When were you going to mention this?” Moran snapped, in her annoyed-sergeant voice.
“She wasn’t, if she could get away with it,” Bellusdeo replied. Kaylin still hadn’t groped her way toward a coherent reply she thought Moran could live with.
“Why did you invite the Hawklord?” Moran demanded. Demand was going to be her mode of conversation for at least the next few minutes.
“I didn’t. He invited himself.”
Moran’s eyes narrowed.
“She isn’t lying,” Helen told the Aerian in a very mild voice.
Moran accepted this. She probably wouldn’t have accepted it as easily coming from Kaylin, and Kaylin tried not to resent it. “How did he find out about your dinner?”
“I’ve been wondering that, as well. I certainly didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone at the office.” But people at the office had also been guests in her home, inasmuch as she’d ever had guests. She considered Teela and Tain. “It’s political.”
Moran’s expression saidno kidding, but more emphatically. “So you’re having dinner with the Emperor and the Hawklord.” She shook her head.
“You could join us.”
“Not a chance. If I could actually fly, I’d spend the evening in training exercises, just to make sure there was no possibility of overlap.” She exhaled, and some of the tension left her shoulders. It had lodged pretty deeply in her face, though.
“The Emperor would be coming to dinner regardless of where you were living,” Helen told the Aerian. Kaylin was perversely happy to see that she wasn’t the only person whose private thoughts were addressed out loud. “The Hawklord would therefore invite himself to dinner, again regardless of your residence. It is the Emperor he wishes to—informally, off-Records—engage. Your presence may indeed be causing difficulty for the Hawklord, but it is not causing difficulty for Kaylin. Or for me.
“Kaylin, however, now needs to take a bath. I will accompany her,” she added. “She will need to dress. I will remind her of the etiquette required when entertaining guests of note.”
“How do you know etiquette?”
“My last tenant was alive when the Dragon Emperor ruled,” Helen replied. “And in his fashion, he was impeccably polite and considerate.”
“Meaning I’m not.”
“You are very considerate,” Helen told her gently. “When you are aware of the need for consideration. And you have had several lessons with Lord Diarmat.”
This caused smoke to billow out of Bellusdeo’s nostrils, mostly because she was keeping her mouth shut. Mention of Diarmat did nothing helpful for the color of her eyes.
“Will Maggaron aid you in dressing, or may I?” Helen asked the Dragon.
“I don’t need help with my dress. I’m not going to wear court clothing to the dinner table. If I were in a slightly worse mood, I wouldn’t wear anything. At all.”
Moran’s eyes widened.
Kaylin’s closed. “I think the Arkon is also coming for dinner.”
“Lannagaros—”
“You told him, the last time we talked, that you wanted him to come. He hates leaving his library for anything less than an all-out battle, but I think he’ll be here, because you wanted him to be here.”
“You think I’m being unfair.”