Closer to the Heart Read Free Page A

Herald by itself brought along a basic level of respect.
    :Or perhaps,:
Rolan said gently into her mind,
:They’ve been paying attention on the rare occasions when you speak up, and have learned that when you do say something, it’s worth listening to.:
    :Or both,:
she replied, successfully keeping herself from blushing. She wondered if her father had gotten this sort of encouragement from Rolan when
he
first became King’s Own.
    It had been a long day, and she was just as glad that there was not an official Court dinner tonight. Kyril had made it quite plain that he intended to dine in his quarters with his family, which meant that only about half the members of the Court who were in residence would take dinner in the Great Hall. Those would be the members of the Court who had no residences of their own. The rest would return to their own fine town-houses here on the Hill for dinner, and possibly to entertain or be entertained. There could be music, informal dancing, and gaming. That meant she was free to have dinner with Mags, and they would probably do so with the instructors at the Collegium. The King only had Court dinners about once a week, although the Crown Prince and Princess, Sedric and Lydia, presided at Court dinners roughly three times as often. Lydia had told Amily that they did so in order to take the burden off Kyril, who frankly loathed the long dinnerseven more than he disliked tedious Council sessions. She couldn’t blame him. The Great Hall was huge, people had to talk so loudly in order to be heard that everything was a babble, and even with the best will in the world, not every dish arrived at the tables better than lukewarm. It had occurred to her, more than once lately, that Kyril was looking . . . older. Not
old,
but older. The office was wearing on him.
    While Father is actually looking younger.
No longer having to juggle the dual duties of King’s Spy and King’s Own, now that he had completely recovered from what could only be described as “returning from the dead,” Amily’s father Herald Nikolas seemed to her to be reveling in the chance to get away from the Court and
do
things.
    I certainly can’t blame him.
    On the other hand, these Council sessions were a unique opportunity for her to learn a great deal about the individual members of the Council. As long as she remained quiet, they tended to treat her as part of the furniture. It wasn’t that they
ignored
her, it was more that they were used to her father, who had a very powerful Gift of Mindspeech, and could tender his advice to Kyril silently. They probably assumed she was doing the same, and it suited both her and the King to allow them to continue with that impression. Thus far she hadn’t uttered so much as a single word during Council sessions that would make any of the members think she was challenging them, or even observing them with any attitude other than respect for their age and experience.
    Which, of course, she
was . . .
but she was also weighing everything they said against what she knew were their own personal agendas and interests. Cynical perhaps, but Amily was a realist, and she had been observing these selfsame personages for years at the behest of her father, back when she was nothing more than quiet, unremarkable Amily, Herald Nikolas’s crippled daughter, of no consequence whatsoever.Yes, they were all experienced. But they were also seasoned politicians and courtiers, and all of them had left defeated rivals in their wake. Now, they wouldn’t be on the Council if the King and the Heralds didn’t think they would keep the welfare of the Kingdom foremost in their minds. But there was no doubt that the continued accumulation of wealth and power lurked in the background whenever they came to a decision. As long as there was no conflict between these two motivations, Amily held her tongue. But she was always on the watch for a moment when the