Dessert and Dirty Deeds
Company has made the princess scrupulous about mealtimes, regardless how absent she is behind her eyes. Ser Glorie arrives a little late; the tower-keeper's bodyguard finishes and politely excuses themself soon after she sits.
The Fool is absent, but this has not been unusual during their visitors' time in the spire.
Glorie is finishing her bread and broth when the jester finally arrives; but instead of sitting to eat, she puts hands on Glorie's back, tracing the muscles of her shoulders. The tower-keeper spares them only a sideways glance, even as the Fool leans her chin over Glorie's shoulder.
"Aught you wanted?" the knight says peaceably.
The Fool leans weight on the hands splayed across her back, and say, in a tone of comfortable, familiar amusement, as if doing no more than unscandalously sharing a privately significant joke in company: "My dog hath no nose."
Glorie manages, she thinks, not to flinch. Keeps her eyes on her bowl, not glancing to the proncess or to the absence of her suspect counterpart. She clears her throat a little.
"Really?" she says, casual as she can, and hoping inaudible to the princess. "Marry, Fool, dost require assistance investigating its faculty of scent?"
"Kind of thee," the Fool mumurs, and slinks exitward.
"Your pardon," Glorie says, louder and sweeter, nodding to the uninterested tower-keeper. The princess, in contrast, turns attention on her, regally expressionless, but gaze flicking from knight to Fool to knight to Fool, some inscrutable calculation apparent within her mind.
Glorie flees as smartly as she dares.
"The blackguard descends the staircase to the tower root," the Fool hisses to her, outside of earshot of the dining hall. "Down to the power-hearts and chambers of command, where they have no business. Now will you do something?"
"I am doing," Glorie says, with strained patience. "As for you—" and she pounces with ruthless hands, untucking the Fool's shirt, disarranging her hair and generally rumpling her, pinching cheeks to pinkness. "Wait some time and go back, put about the idea I've retired to attend my composure, keep eyes on the tower-keeper."
The Fool, gnawing her lip savagely, growls assent.
"I commend your vigilance," Glorie adds earnestly, and the Fool pulls a terrible face.
There is some terribly polite conversation occurring when the Fool re-enters the dining chamber, tousled, dropping into Glorie's vacated seat. Abandoned and forgotten beside the knight's meal is a small cuplike bowl of gelatinous pudding; the Fool drags a fingertip through it and laciviously sucks it clean.
"Marry," she purrs, "hoping that everyone's dessert was to satisfaction—" and nearly fumbles, halfway through picking up a spoon, at the unaccustomed sharp spark in the princess's eye.
