Castes Book 1: The Prestige

by Ivan Turner

  Chapter X

  On the upper east side of Manhattan, along the riverfront, there stood a row of mansions that were unequaled anywhere in the country. It wasn’t so much their size that made them stand out as it was their construction, their relationship to each other, their land, and their spectacular view of the bay. In the late eighteenth century, an elf name Morris Van Michaels had come in and claimed all of the land. He had commissioned the foundations for the houses and then died before any of them could be built. With no inheritors to make arrangements, the land had remained undeveloped for almost fifty years. Then an elf named Lillian Van Michel claimed kinship with the deceased Van Michaels and was able to take over. Lillian, already almost two hundred years old at the time, lived until the mid twentieth century. In that time, she saw the raising of seventeen houses individually designed by seventeen different human architects. She then took each design and magically altered it, putting in an elf flavor. When the human builders came in to start work, they needed a team of wizards to fuse the wood and metal in order to meet the specifications. When they were complete, all seventeen of them, they created a magnificent sprawling community that hugged the giant city of New York like a scarf.

  One of these mansions had been purchased by the Van Holland family in 1977. The purpose of this acquisition was to give Kalvin Van Holland’s eldest daughter, Evelyn, and her new husband a place to live. The Van Holland mansion was the third along the row. It sat on four acres of land. There was a driving range, a stable, a hedge maze, and a tiny pier where there was moored Luke Van Deign’s sailing yacht. Luke, of course, was the young elf who had married Evelyn Van Holland. The inside of the mansion was too incredible to describe. When built by Lillian Van Michel, it had been dubbed Nova because of its power and radiance, but the name was far older than that. There was a room in the house that was indefinitely infused with elf healing magic. A person could go into the bare room, lay him or herself out on the tiled floor, and simply wait while the magic repaired his or her body. Luke had used it once after a particularly invasive surgery, but had thereafter declared it off limits to everyone. He said the magic inside was much stronger than its purpose alluded.

  Despite the luxury and extravagance, Evelyn Van Deign did not love her home. At least, she did not love it in its entirety. Childless, she and Luke kept to a modest five rooms in the house, including the master bathroom they shared. They had few servants, just enough to maintain the house and the grounds. Evelyn refused to eat anything in her own home that she or Luke did not cook themselves. Luke had grown up with a personal chef, but had soon learned to accept his wife’s insistence on this. She did most of the cooking when they were home. On those frequent nights when she was out, Luke was either with her or would order in a pizza. He took a perverse pleasure in watching the delivery people try to find their way up to the front door. Tonight, though, he was already in the kitchen and making dinner by the time Evelyn got home.  She was later than normal, the day having been a busy one.  Whatever he was cooking smelled so good that she forgot that she was in for the fight of her life.  Of all the people she had probably pissed off by what she had done today, Luke was the only one she cared about.

  "That you, Ev?" he called cheerfully from the kitchen.

  "It's me," she called back, trying to match his tone.  She didn't like it.  There was no way he hadn't heard about her meeting with Owen Keefe and the offer she had made him.  If he hadn’t seen the television interview, then one of his coworkers had.

  Taking off her shoes, Evelyn padded into the kitchen on bare feet.  She loved to walk barefoot inside the house.  She could feel its magic in her toes.  Luke was still dressed in his suit.  The jacket was gone and the tie was gone.  His sleeves were rolled up.  He had put on an apron.  It was funny to see him in an apron.  They didn't make them for elves because elves generally had servants who did the cooking and cleaning.  As a result, even the largest apron was generally too small on an elf.  It made him look like a French maid.  Evelyn giggled despite the tension.

  He had two pots going on the stove.  One was a big boiler, probably filled with pasta.  Luke loved pasta.  She made it for him almost every night.  The other one was the skillet.  It was covered, which meant he was softening up some sauteed ginger root.  Ginger was one of those things that humans used as flavoring, dwarves detested, and elves ate whole.  Now that she saw the pot, Evelyn could detect its odor in the myriad other odors throughout the kitchen.  There was something in the oven, but she didn't know what.

  "How was your day, dear?" he asked with only the faintest hint of a challenge in his voice.

  Taking a breath, Evelyn went to the cabinet and pulled out a tall thin flute.  She set it on the table before going to the refrigerator and grabbing the bottle of guava juice.  As she filled the glass right to the top she looked at him smiling.

  "It was a good day, Luke.  It was one of those days where I feel that I really made a difference."

  "I won't argue that," he answered as he opened the oven and leaned inside.  Now she could smell the duck.

  "And yours?"

  "The same as always," he answered.

  He pulled the top off of the skillet and a heavenly aroma floated out.  No one could sautee ginger root the way that Luke could.  And he was so sexy when he cooked.  Evelyn never tired of watching him go from pot to oven to pot to pot.  Sometimes he'd chop vegetables or season a piece of meat.  Whatever it was he was doing, it was sexy.  She was pretty sure it had something to do with such a modern and powerful elf getting his hands dirty in the kitchen.  Luke was tall and handsome.  He was, by far, the most handsome elf she had ever met.  There was just a little bit of brown in his blonde hair.  That made him mysterious.  His nose didn't have the usual elf hook to it.  She was sure that there was some human in his ancestry but to vocalize that would have been a grievous impropriety.  That she found it alluring made it even worse.  Taking a sip of her juice, Evelyn just watched him.

  "Do you want to set the table?" he asked.

  Placing her flute on the table, she went to the cabinet.  She took out two large dinner plates and two smaller plates.  Setting them aside, she took out two bowls.  In a stack, she brought them over to the table and began constructing place settings.  For a few moments, all that could be heard in the kitchen was the rattling of porcelain and the bubbling of the boiling pasta.  As she set the silverware, Evelyn remained silent.  Luke had made it clear that he was up to date on what she had done during the day.  That, in her mind, absolved her of all responsibility regarding disclosure.

  Before she knew it, there was food on the plates, Luke dishing it out in his usual meticulous fashion.  There was duck on the dinner plates, surrounded by carrots and celery and covered in sauce.  On the smaller plate was ginger root, sauteed to perfection, and sitting by itself.  In the bowls was spaghetti, Luke's heaped twice as high as Evelyn's.

  When they were seated and eating, he said, “You were pretty icy on the television.”

  “That reporter was pressing me. I don’t like to be pressed.”

  He flashed her a wicked smile.

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  He nodded, but kept on eating.

  “Will you tell me why?”

  Luke put his fork down and wiped his mouth on a napkin. He noticed that she hadn’t started on her dinner yet and looked at her disapprovingly.

  She obediently picked up her fork and speared a piece of the duck. When she put it in her mouth, she almost melted.

  “I don’t mind that you ended that dwarf’s career as a policeman,” Luke said. “Dwarves on the force bring down its credibility.”

  “I don’t agree,” Evelyn snuck in before he could continue.

  “At any rate, he and that woman are responsible for the death of a good elf.”

  She dropped her fork onto the plate. “Luke, that good elf was full of acid and on a murderous rampage.”

  “He
wasn’t killing elves.”

  “No,” she agreed in a huff. “He was killing dwarves. And he would have killed one more if Detective Anton hadn’t stopped him.”

  “You mean murdered him.”

  “I don’t mean that at all,” she snapped. “Are you going to tell me that you condone his behavior?”

  “Not the drugs,” Luke said. “Certainly not that.”

  “But killing dwarves is all right?”

  He looked her in the eye and said, “Ev, they’re animals.”

  Pushing her chair out, she stood. “Now, I’m angry with you.”

  Putting his fork down, he sighed heavily and stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Nothing I’m saying is coming out right. Please sit down.”

  “First explain it right.”

  Luke thought a moment, then nodded. “Our society is predicated on the notion that we elves occupy its highest tier and the dwarves occupy the lowest. Once that axiom is discarded, we have anarchy. Of course, Troy Van Walls shouldn’t have been running around downtown killing dwarves. But that doesn’t mean two humans and a dwarf had any right to get in his path. The Judiciary Board was designed for that sort of thing and they would have handled it.”

  “When, Luke? When would they have handled it? Van Walls had gone through three pubs already.”

  “Please sit,” he said. “Please.”

  Evelyn sat, feeling very much like a little girl. How had she been so confident and distinguished in front of Owen and Jessica only to be reduced to her most basic emotions here in front of her own husband? As much as she wanted that to be a rhetorical question, the answer was dancing around in front of her, mocking her. It is easy to act superior when you believe you are superior. She didn’t want to feel that way, but years of elf upbringing had done their work.

  “Thank you,” Luke said.

  She would not look at him. Luke was a sweet elf and a good husband, but he was a lawyer and a powerful sorcerer. He never intentionally made her feel inferior, but sometimes it was just there. Evelyn hated him when he was like this. She hated that he was a typical racist elf who would rather see the dwarves in chains than in uniforms. Even more, though, she hated that she could relate to him on that dark level.

  “I won’t stop, Luke. You know that.”

  “You never do,” he sighed. “But you should bear in mind that, this time, you’re trying to protect more than a stretch of forest land. The enemies you make here will target your career.”

  “And where will you stand when they do?”

  Standing up, he came around the table and lifted her to her feet. Looking her in the eye, he told her, “Ev, you are my wife. I love you and I will always stand by you.”

  Relieved, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He smelled of ginger. After that, she forgot about what she had done that day and she forgot about what he had said. They finished their dinner, cleaned up after themselves, and spent an evening with only each other.