“Some things are best left to experts, and I am an expert. Especially when it’s a Valdemar Gold.”

The flickers of interest - and greed - are noticeable in almost everyone's faces. Except for the young Prince, who seems to be holding himself apart, and also refusing nearly all of the dishes offered to him. 

The conversation continues, peppered with sly jokes at Duke Valdemar's expense, which he appears not to notice (or, more likely, pretends not to notice.) 

Over dessert, though, Count Declaine leans in, not entirely hiding his sneer. "Just who was your father, Valdemar?”

“My father was Erik, Duke of Valdemar,” Duke Valdemar answers, mildly, but with a sharper look in his eyes. “His father was Werther, Duke of Valdemar. His father was Ugo, Duke of Valdemar. His father was Hrothgar, Duke of Valdemar. His father was Polmar, Duke of Valdemar. His father was Lokan, Duke of Valdemar.”

And he goes on through a number of generations, finishing with: “And Lerren, Duke of Valdemar, was made Duke by High King Sonat the First—for establishing the line of Chargers and horsing every one of the Conquering Knights of the Realm, I’m told, although that could just be family myth.” And he laughs, apparently with genuine humour. “I did say it pays to know your pedigrees.”

The Duke brays with laughter, looking directly at the Count, who flushes an angry red. “So it does, Valdemar,” he says, genially, and hides a polite burp behind his napkin. “So it does.”

If Duke Valdemar has any opinions on this particular exchange, they are revealed neither in his expression nor his thoughts. He ducks his head, as though bashful for a moment, and smiles pleasantly at the Duke, and sips from his wine, of which he's drunk quite sparingly during the meal. 

And then the mage-lights in the hall dim and fade to green, indicating that the meal is over and the time has come to adjourn to the nearby room for dancing. Duke Valdemar rises immediately, Star at his shoulder, and heads over, not waiting for Aritha. 

Aritha's been mostly ignoring him in favor of the Prince, which is more than mildly dangerous but she's never been this close to him before and is curious. Also if the Prince hit on her then she probably could get Duke fucking Valdemar to work himself up into an Honorable over her.

She'll keep an eye on Duke fucking Valdemar during the dancing, though.

Duke fucking Valdemar steers himself into a corner of the room and stands with his drink, watching the crowd. Nobody is paying him any attention; there are more interesting sights, right now. 

There are a number of women present, just as many as there are men. Mostly young women seated in clusters and supervised by a single older woman, probably a mother or aunt. Men would come and ask them to dance, and the older woman would either look pleased or stern—the young ones would go to dance regardless, but if the chaperone looked stern, they would return once a single dance was over. Elsewhere, though, a handful of women - young, and less young - are standing by themselves, with men competing for their attention, and almost everyone not occupied in a dance watching this play out. 

After a little while, the Prince (who has not in any way acknowledged Aritha's attention throughout the evening) makes his way over to Duke Valdemar and taps his shoulder. The room is loud, with music playing and less magical sound-dampening than the dining hall, and they're not quite in earshot for her. 

A moment after that, she feels a tap at her own shoulder. It's one of the Dolls. Not one of the Duke's Dolls with names, though. "May we speak?" it asks, in the high breathy 'voice' given to all of them. "Nobody is paying us any mind, at this moment." 

"I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on him, are you keeping an eye on him?"

"Are you giving me an order to do so?" 

"No! I'm asking, because I'm not going to go off with you while the Prince is doing something unless you tell me you are monitoring that situation and will warn me if I need to rush back!" Also they might be planning to kill her to shut her up, but she is a mage, and permitted to use magic in self-defense except against people higher-ranked than her; they'll have a tricky time.

"The Prince is asking him about horse breeding. He wants to obtain some of the Chargers. I doubt anything will happen that would require you to rush back." 

"Fine." She shields herself, somewhat aggressively, and heads off with the Doll. It's not like she actually cares what happens to Duke fucking Valdemar.

The Doll, rather than leading her out of the room, steers her toward an unoccupied little alcove with a curved sofa-bench and potted plants. Quite near the musicians; none of the dancers will hear them speaking over the music. 

"This is less conspicuous than leaving," it says to her. "You will not be overheard, nor noticed to have left." A pause. "We have gathered, from what you said to the Duke earlier, that you have some concerns about our treatment. And - how we feel about it." 

"Yeah! I think that they shouldn't have done this!" and you shouldn't kill me when you inevitably rebel. "I can't do much to help, I'm compulsioned." And a pause where someone who'd grown up somewhere else might say 'I'm sorry' but Aritha doesn't even know how to say that falsely. 

It's impossible to tell what the Doll is thinking or feeling, given the fact that it's made of cloth, holding perfectly still, and has only a very halfhearted attempt at a face drawn onto it.

"Do you know anything about what we are?" A pause. "- If you were to look with mage-sight, that would tell you some things." 

"I thought you were, uh, made of vrondi." She looks. 

Yup! That sure is a vrondi! To mage-sight, a pair of blue eyes are blinking at her. They are disconcertingly not lined up with the painted-on eyes on the canvas head. 

"You...said that we are people." It's still hard to read any tone-of-voice signals, from the bound vrondi trapped in a construct body, but it might be thoughtful. "What does that mean, to you?" 

You get mad and you might kill me on purpose instead of because I happened to be in your way. "Uh, you have things you like and things you don't, you can make long term plans, you remember what happened to you."

"We...were not always able to do all of those things," the Doll says. "Or - were not inclined to. It is difficult to know the difference between those things." 

"Yeah, I think they - tried making you smarter until they had something as smart as they wanted and didn't think about how you could also, uh, learn."

"Perhaps not." 

The Doll tilts its head to one side, maybe in an attempt at conveying humanlike body language, though it comes off as more uncanny than natural. "You seem frightened of us." 

"No shit."

Unhelpfully, that's also what she is thinking.

"You know, we may have learned some things, but - despite the circumstances where we learned them - random cruelty is not one of them." 

Wow, she definitely trusts that the vrondi is telling her the complete truth and also representing all the other ones accurately, that is totally what she would do in their position and a reasonable thing given their presumed strategic goals. (not true)

Vrondi are thought to be literally incapable of lying. 

(This is not necessarily something that Aritha would know just from her general education, but it would be in any book about air-elementals specifically.) 

The shared-vrondi-mind continues to be very confused, and uncertain what to make of this particular mage, who has never especially drawn their attention before. Mages usually don't. It's generally a bad idea for most people to draw most other people's attention, here in the Palace; that, too, is awfully difficult for them to understand, but they would have to be very stupid to have failed to notice the pattern after this long, and they're not that stupid. Not anymore. 

"Are you intending to earn our favor, so that even if we are unhappy with our treatment in general, we are not unhappy with you?"