Jenred smiled as Ashkeyana craned over the neck of her horse to look around at her family's ancestral home. After the ship had deposited the royal party in Narville, Jenred and Edara had allowed her to ride a horse rather than a pony into Dorton. She could ride well enough now at eight, and it seemed a reasonable birthday present to provide her own horse for the visit. Edara was riding beside him, with Donovan and Dougal riding with their nursemaids behind the couple. The rest of their coterie was relatively small, for them. Some guards hired in Narville, a few upper servants, their personal stewards, squires and the like but they had not brought their full retinue's across the ocean from the Far East.
Jenred was wearing his normal riding gear, little more impressive than a normal knight's leathers, but the guards at the main gate bowed deeply.
"Your Majesties, welcome to Dorton."
Jenred cocked his head.
"How did...?"
The guard who spoke before grinned.
"Your Majesty, you are the only Bedwyr out of the halls with the eyes. Easy enough, really."
Jenred nodded slowly. His cinnamon eyes seemed to have their own light...A curious relic from bygone days only seen within House Bedwyr, but even there it was rare, usually skipping a generation.
As they rode up to the main gate, Jenred summoned a footman to help him dismount. The old wound in his right leg was bothering him, and it had been some years since he willingly subjected it to the stress of an unassisted dismount. Edara and Ashkeyana dismounted more easily, and joined him at the front door.
Jenred felt Edara hold his left hand, the one not occupied with his rather elaborate cane with the phoenix top, and she looked up at him searchingly. He had only been to this gate twice...Once when Damian had agreed to his proofs of nobility, but the other, earlier...
Jenred closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
The other, when he had tried to prove himself, only to have his father Gaharis set the guards on him and ship him off to the Far East half-dead.
But much had happened to the man since that day. He had been tortured in truth, seen wars, starvation, glory, grief, and lived far from here. He was no longer a young, powerless man, but a man of power and prestige in his late middle age.
His eyes opened, and he smiled reassuringly down at his tiny wife.
"Shall we?"
