Kerentanam relinquished the higher seat, the more esteemed seat, to his darling wife, with a smile and without objection. He saw no slight there, or he saw no value in contesting it. That would have been the general in him, refusing to fight a battle in which the victory would bear fruits too small, too few, too sour. Just as well of course that he respect his host's wishes, and the lady's status in his heart and home.

	But on that other gesture—the feast thus prepared, or unprepared, as it were—he chewed, he chewed with a tightening clench in his teeth like they struggled to saw through a tendon or a strip of gristle. Soon enough he tasted salt and iron gushing from the inside of his cheek. In a phrase, Kerentanam could not discern whether he was being insulted. This priest. This pale, boneless creature, another grub eating this rotten stump of a peace summit from the inside out. He had to have planned this: having Kerentanam, the inevitable, ascendant Kerentanam, choose between his favorite of two humiliations. Fumble about the fire and the spit with clumsy hands, by a warlord's natural dearth of domestic graces; or take his meat the way the dogs take it, thrown to the dirt a glistening bloody slab. The chiefs of the Rhaeads [i]almost[/i] stood again, sooner a rude guest than the punchline to a joke as ill-conceived as this.

	And he had to sit there and smile like an imbecile in unawares. "How quaint!" said Kerentanam, even, as he drew his dagger and gave considerable thought to how he might begin skewering the slivers of flesh. It looked like this, true enough, at the end of his spear, squirming and pulsating with every twist of the point. But of the spear no more finesse was expected than aiming, generally, at the heart, and striking fast and true as a punishing storm. How did the servants get the meat so tantalizing before it was brought to the hall? It glistened not with blood but with juice, oil, butter; its vapors were thin white snakes crawling up from the plate, still alive and dancing although the beast had been slaughtered hours before. The ends were perfectly charred under these servants' custody, the fat rendered to the hue of gold which melts betwixt the teeth, while the core of the cut remained succulent. Was their lord to achieve all this with but a wood flame and a frying pan, when his men knew him to burn ashcakes on their coals?

	It was just as well that he was distracted with his abasement; in his peripherals Kerentanam slid glances at the cripple in charcoal rags, resisting the temptation to gawk at the tattoos and scars and pox marks, but waiting to see who he would address first, too; into what topic he would first dip his forked tongue. It seemed certain enough, from the invitation and the seating arrangements, that Aedþel would address the lovely Arlanna first, and though it bubbled his blood, Kerentanam had to accept that. He would play the role assigned to him—for now.