The Hidden Land by PAMELA DEAN Page B

as well swear it to you.”
    “You are not. Weren’t you listening? Edward, that’s me. This isn’t just a king’s oath. It’s personal.”
    “Uh,” said Patrick, noncommittally. “We better do something, they’re getting restless.”
    “Why don’t you kneel down and mumble at me?”
    “No, they have to hear the oath or it isn’t legal. Give me a minute. Okay.” Patrick knelt down again, and Ted took his hands. Patrick looked up at him. “This oath that I am about to swear,” he said in a whisper, “shall bind me only upon the business of the Secret Country, and only so long as thou art king thereof.”
    “It shall bind thee only under these conditions,” said Ted, remembering what this summer had almost made him forget, how satisfactory it could be to play with Patrick.

CHAPTER 7
    L AURA stood in a corner and wondered irritably how many banquet halls there were in High Castle. They had held the coronation in the same hall they had used for the Banquet of Midsummer’s Eve. This hall was not entirely as it should have been, but was at least in the right part of High Castle—the innermost, oldest building of gray stone that looked from the outside precisely as they had imagined it.
    The coronation feast, however, was being laid out in a rosy twin of the room where they had their everyday meals. As far as Laura could tell, it was in the outermost pink part of the castle, on the same side and with the same orientation as the Dragon Hall. She hated the pink marble far more than it deserved; it was the most obtrusive reminder of their dilemma. The prospect of suffering it all around her for an entire banquet was almost the last straw. If Laura had thought anyone would notice, she would have skipped the coronation feast and sulked. She was not sure whom she was angry at, but she was certainly put out. She had found the ceremony awesome. Even Ellen had made not one snide remark. Laura would have been happier if she had. It was not so bad to be left out of a ceremony that Ellen made snide remarks about.
    Laura pressed herself against the wall to let by two boys carrying a tray of fruit. Not only had she been left out of her own brother’s coronation, but Ellen had not returned after her part in it. People were already beginning to sit down, and no one had come to find Laura. Sitting through a formal feast with strange grown-ups would be worse than having been left out of the ceremony.
    Laura backed tighter against the wall to let by someone with a pile of napkins. A fold of tapestry landed on her head. Laura ducked frantically away from it, narrowly missed upsetting a tray of cheese and its bearer, and looked up. Sure enough, the tapestry hung crooked now, showing a bare space of gray wall. Laura got away from the evidence, taking the easiest route through the crowd. This put her too far from the doors. She began a course calculated to take her to the front of the hall but on the other side, and came face-to-face with someone in a page’s costume who seemed to know her.
    “My lady, the King requests your presence at his table at supper.”
    Laura, after one frozen moment in which “King” still meant the old man buried up on the hill, beamed wildly and followed the page.
    Ted, Ruth, and Benjamin were standing in a tight group beside the head table. Patrick and Ellen lurked around its outskirts, making loud remarks and being ignored.
    “What can he say to her with all these people around?” demanded Ellen.
    “I tell you I’ll not have it,” said Benjamin to Ted. His back was to Laura, but she had no trouble hearing him.
    “If you didn’t mean I could sit with anyone I wanted to, why did you say it?” said Ted.
    “Benjamin,” said Ruth, “I give you my word of honor—”
    “Those who kiss in public,” said Benjamin with deadly calm, “need no speech in private.”
    Laura’s page chose this moment, while both Ted and Ruth were gathering their indignation into speech, to say loudly, “My lord