The formalities, ceremonial exchange, gifts presented and received with appropriate appreciation, genealogies recited for the record, toasts offered to health and prosperity and the enduring friendship between nations went past.
As usual, beneath each courtesy ran the current of calculation, the constant assessment of leverage and liability that defined all interactions between houses of power.
Then, finally, it ended with the excuse of the Princess's need for air and the Crown Prince's volunteered escort. The permission granted with the Emperor's eyes watching nothing and seeing everything.
The garden was older than the palace, a remnant of some pre-imperial estate that had survived the construction of walls and the imposition of order. Its paths winding with the illogic of organic growth rather than the geometry of court design.
