Alaric and Lucien exchanged a brief look across the hall.
Then Alaric started toward them, and Lucien followed a step behind, looking a good deal less interested in making acquaintances.
Owen watched them come. He knew the history between their families as well as anyone in the room, but he had never exchanged a single word with either of them. He was curious how this was going to go.
So, apparently, was everyone else. The nobles nearest them had lowered their voices. A pair of young men by the nearest pillar stopped talking halfway through a sentence and became very interested in their glasses. A girl who had been laughing a moment ago was now carefully looking at the musicians, with her head tilted just enough to hear.
Alaric reached them first and bowed to Julian. "Your Highness."
"Lord Alaric," Julian said, inclining his head.
Then Alaric turned to Owen. Up close, he was taller than he had looked beneath the doors, with a calm face and an unhurried way of speaking.
"Lord Owen Ferrers," he said. "Alaric de Clare."
Owen had heard the herald, but he returned the courtesy all the same. "Lord Alaric."
"I’ve met your brother a few times at gatherings like this one," Alaric said. "Are you here in his place?"
"He was invited too. He’s occupied with an assignment."
"Then I hope it goes well for him. Give him my regards."
"I will."
That was all. Alaric didn’t mention their fathers, or the campaign, or anything else that might have given the watching nobles something to talk about. Owen found that he respected him for it.
Lucien bowed to Julian next, perfectly correctly. "Your Highness."
Then his eyes moved on. They passed over Owen, rested for a moment on the silver crest on his coat, slid across Clara and Elise, and returned to Julian, as though the place where Owen stood was simply empty. He didn’t say a word to him.
Owen noticed. It would have been hard not to. Lucien carried himself like someone who had already measured everyone in the room and decided where each of them belonged, and he had plainly decided that Edmund Ferrers’ younger son wasn’t worth the trouble of a greeting.
Arrogant, Owen thought.
He didn’t say anything about it. He had no intention of demanding courtesy from a stranger in the middle of someone else’s ball.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clara glance at Elise. Elise’s mouth tightened very slightly. Neither of them said a word.
Alaric’s eyes went to his brother for a moment. Whatever he thought of it, he didn’t correct him. He simply turned back to Julian.
"Please give the Princess our thanks for the invitation, Your Highness."
"I’ll tell her."
Alaric nodded to Owen once more. "Lord Owen."
Then he moved off into the crowd, and Lucien went with him.
Around them, the conversations slowly picked up again. The two young men by the pillar remembered what they had been talking about. The girl stopped studying the musicians.
"That went better than some people were hoping," Julian said quietly.
"They were hoping for a fight?"
"A few of them." Julian looked out over the room. "You’ve disappointed half the hall."
"I’ll try to be more disappointing later."
That earned him the smallest smile Owen had seen yet.
The gathering settled back into its usual rhythm. Then another announcement carried from the entrance.
"Lady Beatrice Arundel, of House Arundel."
Heads turned again, though with far less tension this time. A young woman in a silver-grey gown stepped inside, a year or so older than Owen, tall and composed. She acknowledged the guests nearest the doors with an easy nod.
Owen knew the name at once. House Arundel was the third of the Empire’s Grand Ducal Great Families, alongside his own and the de Clares. Where Ferrers had the sword and de Clare the axe, Arundel was known for the longbow.
It wasn’t long before Beatrice made her way over. She curtsied to Julian.
"Your Highness. I see you’ve escaped your sister."
"Only temporarily."
Beatrice turned to Owen with frank interest. "And you must be the Ferrers everyone has been staring at. Beatrice Arundel."
"Owen Ferrers." He bowed. "I didn’t realize I was that obvious."
"You walked in with a crest on your chest and the de Clares walked in twenty minutes later. You were never going to be anything else tonight." She smiled. "Is this your first time in the capital?"
"It is."
"And what have you done with it so far? Most people spend their first visit never leaving the palace district."
"I went to the market by the old bridge," Owen said. "Ate too much. Looked around the Hunters’ Guild."
Beatrice looked genuinely surprised, then pleased. "Good. Then you’ve seen more of the city than half the people in this room." She glanced at the crest again. "A swordsman, of course."
"Of course."
"You sword families spend your whole lives trying to get close to things," she said. "We spend ours making sure we never have to."
"And when something gets close anyway?"
"Then someone was careless," Beatrice said. "Or something was very fast."
"I’d still rather see what I’m hitting."
"So would I," she said. "From three hundred paces."
Owen laughed. She clearly had opinions and no hesitation about sharing them, but there was nothing sharp in it. If she cared at all about what had just happened with the de Clares, she didn’t show it, and Owen found her easy company because of that.
They were still talking when someone called his name.
"Owen!"
He turned and saw William Mowbray coming toward him through the crowd.
It took Owen a moment to match him to the young man he had last seen in the forest. William was dressed in formal dark green and bronze, his hair neatly combed. He looked like the heir of a ducal house. He did not look like someone who had spent a day tracking a Giant Boar through mud.
Owen felt his face break into a grin. A familiar face was a relief after an hour of strangers.
"William."
William clasped his hand. "So you came to the capital without your brother. Who’s supposed to keep you out of trouble?"
"Gareth’s on an assignment," Owen said. "That doesn’t seem to have stopped you from enjoying yourself."
"Nothing stops me from enjoying myself." William grinned. "He’s going to want to hear everything about tonight, you know. Every detail."
"How have you been since I left?"
"Buried. My father found something for me to do every single day of the break." William sighed heavily. "I think he was afraid I might accidentally rest."
"So you escaped to a royal ball."
"It’s the one place he can’t object to." William looked him over. "And you? Recovered?"
"Mostly."
William didn’t push it. He turned and bowed properly to Julian. "Your Highness."
"Lord William," Julian said.
Owen introduced Clara and Elise, and William greeted them both warmly. Then he waved over two people he had evidently been talking to before he spotted Owen.
"Come and meet these two," he said. "Lord Dorian Calder. Lady Helena Bellamy."
Dorian Calder was broad through the chest and shoulders, a little older than Owen, with a cheerful face and a handshake like a vise. Helena Bellamy was a year or so older than Owen as well, dark-haired and straight-backed, with the steady look of someone who preferred to watch before she spoke.
"Calder," Owen said. "The war-hammer house."
"Guilty," Dorian said. "And Helena’s family make shields, so you’re surrounded by sensible people for once." He looked Owen up and down with open interest. "You’re Gareth’s brother? Does he still train before dawn? He used to make the rest of us look lazy."
"He does," Owen said. "And he’s always expected me to take my swordsmanship seriously. I wasn’t really given a choice."
"I’d expect nothing less from a Ferrers." Dorian rolled his shoulders. "Swords always seem like so much work to me. All that angle and timing. With a hammer, you don’t have to be clever. You just have to be there when it lands."
"Which is why you never land it," William said.
"I land it plenty."
"On the ground."
"Reach is what matters," William told Owen, ignoring Dorian’s protest. "If he can’t get to you, it doesn’t matter how hard he swings."
"And if he gets past your point," Owen said, "a spear is a very long stick."
"That’s what I keep telling him," Dorian said.
"The sword sits in the middle," Owen went on. "You two argue about reach and weight, and it gets it from both sides."
"That’s because swords are a compromise," Dorian said.
"They’re a balance."
"A compromise."
Helena had been listening with her arms folded. Now she unfolded them.
"You do realize," she said dryly, "that you’ve turned an imperial ball into a training yard."
Clara laughed out loud.
"For what it’s worth," Helena added, "you’re all wrong. Reach, weight, balance, none of it matters if you can’t stop the other person getting through to you. You three spend all your time deciding how to hit something. You might spend a little of it deciding how not to be hit."
"Spoken like a Bellamy," Dorian said.
"Spoken like someone who has watched you get hit," Helena said.
"It was inevitable," Elise said, "the moment William arrived."
"I’m wounded," William said.
"You’re not. That’s Helena’s point."
Owen laughed along with the rest of them.
"The dancing will start soon," William said, glancing toward the musicians. "Properly, I mean."
Clara lit up at once. Elise only frowned toward the stage.
"If they play the same pieces as two years ago, I’m sitting down," she said.
"Dancing is harder work than anyone admits," Dorian said. "Everyone’s watching to see whether a Great Family heir can manage it. Nobody watches anyone else trip."
"So you’ll be hiding by the cakes again?" Helena asked.
"Strategically positioned," Dorian said, with dignity.