the courtier said with a lisping accent of some country beyond England’s coast as he paused in front of Rand. “Next you’ll be playing drone to her queen bee, with her stinger in you instead of yours in her.” Rand glanced up from where he reclined on a bench in the great hall, making one of a group of six or seven knights and men-at-arms, old comrades who had cleared a place in the rushes to cast the bones. The man seemed familiar, though he could not place him. Had he seen him with Leon last year, or was he merely one of the hangers-on at the court? Whatever his position, the words spoken were sheer provocation, he thought. To rise to it before he discovered its cause would be ill done, though his blood simmered in his veins at the suggestive parlance. “If you speak of my doublet,” he drawled, “the color is gray.” “It appears blue to me.” It was, in fact, the soft gray-blue of a cloudy sky, and chosen for exactly the purpose the courtier proclaimed.
