Feasts and Feats
On the ascent to spent her daily private moments with the small growing plants of the ruined ballroom, Ser Glorie pauses. The winding stair reaches from the depths to the heights of the spire; there is a subtle texture to the walls, from the base of the column to a point some fraction of the way up, where they give way to smooth-finished white.
Ser Glorie pauses at the division where the texture ends; unsheathes a knife, and contributes to its slowly ascending watermark of days, in the form of one small, new tally mark.
She does not keep count of them entire; only a rolling tally of the year.
When she descends, she taps on the door of the Fool's chambers, and murmurs when suspicious eyes peer around the barely-opened door, "It's another year, bar three days, jester."
The Fool closes the door.
In quiet secret, seldom-woken food providers are set to spinning seldom-seen delicacies. Ser Glorie carefully airs out and checks for moth-bite an ancient uniform of deep and shimmering blue, with its parade trimmings and gleaming decorations.
"Your Highness," Glorie greets her on the morning, tall and crisp. "It's the joyous anniversary — we celebrate your birth."
"Is it?" the princess says blankly, seeming lost for a few seconds in contemplation of the endless tide of self-similar days; but then her eyes refocus on Ser Glorie, and take in her neatness and pride, and she smiles nonetheless.
Their breakfast is a banquet; which is to say, not the same bread rolls, comforable few fillings, and mild tea as other days. Small savoury loaves of proteins woven, aerated, laced with flavour-juices, baked; glistening, flaking pastries; crunching, crumbling wafers; mousses and pastes. The princess stares at it with a distant, disjointed wonder, as if only slowly remembering this form of pleasure.
"Marry, naunt, lest you experience an appetite, the knight is going to flex," the Fool says, cheerily needle-tipped, but watches every second as Glorie steps through the age-old forms of a formal combat display, aeons-honed skills as comfortable as breathing.
"Highness," she says softly, afterward, taking the knee before the royal person when she is flushed and exerted. "I gave everything, long ago; but as always, I reaffirm to you my sword, my life, my duty."
The princess runs a knuckle gently along the line of Glorie's jaw, raises her chin a fraction with it; and Glorie dares, with the familiarity of their court's smallness and great age, to dip her head and place a courtly brush of lips to it.
"Oooh," the Fool says, loud and sarcastic and bored. "Harlot," and Glorie ignores her.
The princess, instead of doing likewise, crooks an imperious finger. "Fool," she commands, "genuflect likewise," and the Fool pauses long enough for insolence before slouching over and dropping into a mockingly sloppy imitation of Glorie's supplication beside her.
"Ser Glorie, give her your hand to kiss," the princess says, like cold glass.
"Highness," Glorie protests. "The Fool is not beneath me."
"Only if her Highness commanded it, eh?" the Fool says, licks her lips and leers.
"Highness—"
"Fool," the princess says, laced with command, and that's the end to it. Glorie drops her eyes and holds her hand out, meek; the Fool theatrically considers it from all angles, then nips the fleshy side of Glorie's index finger with neat white teeth.
"Marry, naunt," she says, light and acid, rising; and Glorie swiftly snags her hand, bends over it, and presses a breath-light courtly kiss to her knuckle.
The Fool makes a clicking sound in the back of her throat, puts her palm on Glorie's forehead, and gives her a little shove.
"Marry, your birthday again?" she says to the princess, darkly furious now. "I'm afraid I got you nothing," as if the feast weren't her own work, as if it isn't always, as if they don't all know that; and carelessly snags a pastry to shove into her mouth on her way out of the door.