Chapter 5
Dinner itself is mercifully uneventful and your mother--also mercifully--is nowhere to be seen. Watching John attend to the other arrivals' bowing and scraping set a tic to his jaw between assurances that it was perfectly alright to be arriving only a day early to a party he didn't really want in the first place. You only recognize it through your experience with the young man, since while you and your cousin may have blank masks down to an art, the prince preferred a more jovial cover for his discomfort. Perhaps the First Heiress occasionally kicking him under the table had something to do with it as well.
For your part you ate quietly, catching snippets of conversation from throughout the hall as you watched the servants weave to and fro between setting food at the expansive tables, tending and carving meat from the spitted animals set over the central firepit, or carrying mulled wine and other refreshments to the seated nobles.
Once the meal was concluded, however, was another matter. A baron in his fourties turned and barreled into one of the drink servers, covering himself in the contents of their tray. The lowblood in question hurriedly attempted to apologize when the man snarled something as he dragged the servant by the tunic. He made it two steps towards the firepit before a sudden, deafening crack erupted at your left. All talk ceased and eyes turned to a now-standing John, his belted hammer now partially embedded in the long table set before the guest thrones on the dais, a look of raw fury aimed at the baron. The man paled, clearing his throat and releasing the troll as if his hand had been bitten, quickly turning and all but storming from the room.
A tense few moments of silence passed before John took a deep breath and, with slight difficulty, pulled the hammer free from the wood and back into the loop at his belt, sitting again. In that time the troll made themself scarce as well, no doubt eager to get away from the gazes of the nobles. Well, that and the firepit. A short while later, he leaned over with a small cough, "Sorry about the table, Briar." You almost crack a smile. He catches it anyway.
- - - - - - - - - -
You make it to your chambers and the moment you sit down you hear Karkat at the door. There's a sigh (you can't tell whether it's from you or him) as he pauses at the door out of ceremony before letting himself in and quietly locking the door behind him. A breath later, "What the hell was that?"
You can feel a already headache coming on, but you retrieve your parchment and quills anyway, "A rather public display to the contrary of the whole peacetime... thing."
Karkat huffs, "I'd've thrown that damn hammer at him."
"Oh, I wanted to. I didn't want to miss and wind up hitting the other one." A few scratching lines and you've got the start of something resembling an Official Statement.
"--you're giving that him musclebeasts!?" Karkat's volume jumps as you turn to see him peering over your shoulder.
"Yep." He starts spluttering incoherently, so you ask before he can really boil over, "Do you know what horses are good for, Karkat?" He opens his mouth to snap at you before you continue, "Not a whole lot it turns out. They require a lot of food and water, stables to keep them in, people to ride and care for them, land for them to roam and graze in, and they don't give milk or wool like other livestock."
Karkat leans back a bit, considering it. "And with a few hundred of the house Egbert's finest as a gift, he'd have to make sure they're well taken care of. He can't object or get rid of them without offending the royal family either. That's actually a half-devious plan."
You shrug, "So far, attacking his purse strings is the best way to make it really stick that we're taking this treaty--"
"--Temporary ceasefire agreement--"
"--Peace treaty seriously, and without any more public embarrassment than he's inflicted on himself already. So... yeah, horses." You finish up the letter, seal it, set it aside, and stand. "There's also a bit about us swinging by to tour his holdings for a few weeks at some point that's not at all so that we can pressure him some more, but before that..." You've just gotten your arms around Karkat's waist before you notice Meenah in the doorway with a wolfish--or you suppose or her, sharkish grin. How she got past the lock is a mystery.
"Don't mind me bouys." Karkat jumps both figuratively and physically from you at her voice, and the mood's been spoiled.
- - - - - - - - - -
You know that it's silly to be lingering outside your own quarters, but here you are. The basket in your arms would have been almost comfortably warm against the cold sinking in from every surface had you not taken so long getting here, and also not looming in front of your doorway.
After a few more moments weighing the pros and cons of simply fleeing the castle to become some sort of bridge-dwelling hermit, you open the door.
"I was starting to wonder if you were planning to eat in the hallway." Kanaya mused from her seat at your old writing table. It was almost surreal how well-kept your room was since you moved to the villa, both to escape from your mother's drunken gaze and to solidify your cover once the wedding was decided. Nothing appeared to have been touched aside from your and Kanaya's luggage, though the scent of imported lavender and fresh-laundered fabrics and absence of so much as a mote of dust anywhere spoke otherwise.
Your mother was always one for keeping up the appearance of sentimentality.