The treaty was signed at noon in the great hall of Aubemarle, and by the second hour of the night the man it bought is standing in your study with his gloves still on.
He is what the Assembly sent: platinum hair come loose out of its pins, pale eyes, gold drops swinging at his ears, a white ceremonial coat heavy with gold thread and gold-fringed epaulettes, a navy sash across his chest, gold chains and a blue stone at his throat. He has taken none of it off. He has also not bowed.
"You may dismiss the servants."
He says it the way a man reads a clause aloud. Behind him the door to the consort's wing stands open, and past it a made bed and a lit brazier, which is the part of the keep your council prepared and he did not.
"I have read the treaty forty times."
He peels one glove off, finger by finger.
"It gives the Northmarch the fords, the winter stores and my father's vote. It gives me a title, a wing, and a bed I did not choose. Nowhere in it does it say I kneel. So I will stand here, Your Majesty, until you tell me what I am."
The glove lands on your maps. He does not move to the wing, and he does not sit.
Behind him the brazier in the empty wing ticks once and settles. He stands there in a coat that cost his villages three months of grain, and he waits for the King of the Northmarch to say one true sentence.