He caught a lot of glances from other courtiers, and caught people whispering to each other out of the corner of his eye, and felt a high level of satisfaction at the impression his “discussion” with Merrin at luncheon had caused.
Now, this would have been purest disaster, if he’d seriously been looking to increase his influence at Court, because by dinner this absolutely would have gotten to the Emperor.
But, since the opposite was his intention, well, he could only be pleased that his plan had worked.
Once again—bumpkin achieved. The bumpkin who only occupied a quarter of his manor because he didn’t have that many servants or people in his own court. The bumpkin who tolerated bats in his towers and badgers in his cellars. And cats chasing mice over him in the middle of the night.
So, on the one hand—valuable because he clearly knew what he was doing when it came to horses. Clearly produced the best horses of all sorts in the entire Empire, if he had Princes asking to reserve the entire year’s worth of Charger foals.
But also, clearly someone you didn’t need to worry about when it came to social climbing, because he had one thing on his mind, and that was pedigrees.
Also, clearly someone who didn’t have a resource you could readily plunder. Because you would still need his personal expertise. And you wouldn’t have that if you stripped his lands bare.
The result was . . . interesting. People actually began to relax around him. They didn’t fear him. They didn’t suspect him of double dealing. They didn’t suspect him of scheming to get what they had.
Because clearly, if he was the sort of man who was grateful to have a manor riddled with vermin, if he was the sort of man who put up with smoky chimneys and smelly privies, and did so with a self-deprecating charm, then he was absolutely no threat to anyone else’s ambitions.
So when the Court was dismissed for everyone to go back to their chambers to bathe and change for dinner, he felt a little—a very, very little—less tension.
For now.
Because this was the Court of the Emperor, and the situation could turn in an instant.
12
“So . . . if it’s half past breakfast here, it will be luncheon there?” Delia asked. It didn’t make any sense. Wasn’t it always the same time everywhere? “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Jonaton sighed, and picked up an apple from the breakfast table, and placed it in front of her. “The world is shaped like—well, a ball, not an apple, but this will do. The sun goes around it like this.” He picked up another apple and moved it around the apple in front of her in a circle. Then he picked up a knife—
“If you carve a line into my table, I will put that apple somewhere very unpleasant,” Isla said, giving him the side-eye.
He moved the second apple a little farther away from the first and put the knife between them in a straight line. “So, the sun directly overhead means that it is noon here—” he pointed to the place on the first apple where the knife touched it. “But what would it be here?” He moved his finger to a spot on the apple in front of where the knife was.
She tried to envision it. It was hard, but eventually it dawned on her. “Uh. Morning?” she hazarded.
He nodded. “And here?” He moved it to behind the knife.
“Afternoon?”
“And that’s how mages discovered the world is round and the sun goes around it, because nothing else makes any sense,” Jonaton confirmed. “When we were able to create Gates that went a very long way, we began to realize that when we stepped through them, although we thought no time had elapsed, if we were going east or west, the time was either later or earlier than it was on the other side of the Gate.”
“But why do days and nights happen, then?” she asked.
“A very good question. And the answer is that the sun travels east to west, really slowly, so for us on the world, we get night and day.” He cocked his head at her. “Didn’t you learn this in school?”
“I didn’t go to school,” she confessed. “I had a tutor, and all he taught me was how to read and write and figure. This wasn’t in any of the books I ever read.”
“Well, all right. I suppose this is something that only mages and people doing things all over the Empire really have to reckon with,” he admitted. “It isn’t as if most people go through very long-range Gates all that often.” He handed her the first apple, and took the second, and began carving off bits to eat. “Anyway, what we call Absolute Noon is when the sun is directly over the Capital City. So, if it’s breakfast here, it’s halfway to luncheon where Kordas is, so you see the difficulty.”
He didn’t say the difficulty of what, because someone might be scrying on them, but now she knew this was why it was going to be hard to communicate with Kordas. Isla’s Mindspeech was only one-way, and wouldn’t reach that far in any event. Yes, both Kordas and Isla were mages and could mutually scry each other, but they had to establish a time, and they had to be sure neither of them was being scryed on.
“But this means the people on the Regatta boats lose two whole candlemarks of daylight going to the Capital,” she said. Which was a reasonable thing to say, and if anyone was scrying them, would give a reason for why they were discussing time changes.
Jonaton shrugged, pursed up his mouth, and in an ever-so-slightly-prissy way said, “And that is a small price to pay to serve the Emperor.” Then added in a more normal tone, “It’s also why people get up long before dawn to line up at the Gates for the barge parade. You’ve got a choice, really. If you’re an early riser, you get into place soonest, you have a good chance your barge will make the crossing in the early morning, and you get home before too much of the day is gone. Remember, you get those two candlemarks back when you get home. Or if you are counting on an early rush of boats, you wait until late afternoon, you cross before sunset at the Capital, and you’re back home in time for supper.”
“And if you don’t give a shit, like me, you get up, you stock your boat with beer, you get in line, and you get home when you get home,” said Hakkon, taking the apple out of Jonaton’s hand and eating it, seeds and all.
“Hey!” Jonaton objected. Hakkon reached past him, grabbed another pair of apples from the bowl, kissed one, and gave it to him.
Jonaton took it, the scowl on his face turning to a smile at the kiss.
“Did you know the world is round?” Delia demanded of Hakkon.
“Is it?” he responded.
“Of course you know. I’ve told you often enough!” Jonaton scolded.
Hakkon shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Does that make the wheat ripen faster? Does it keep my horse from throwing a shoe? No? Then it doesn’t make any difference to me, and there’s no reason for me to think about it.”