He was standing on a well-lit stage that was raised several feet above the level of the banquet hall. The room was vast, and a crowd milled aimlessly about within the elegant confines of the space. Only a portion of those closest to the stage appeared to be looking up at Kestrel, he was glad to see as he blinked in the light.
“This way, sir,” a man’s voice said beside him, and he turned to see a ramp that led down to the floor. Kestrel stepped down the ramp without incident, and found Tewks already waiting for him.
“Nicely done,” the boy said without conviction, standing on his tip toes to try to see through the crowd.
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you. It’s such an honor to have an eastern nobleman here among us,” a human man stepped up to Kestrel, and held his hand out to shake.
Kestrel grasped the man’s hand. “I’m Stelten, Count of Grey Fjord,” the man introduced himself. He spoke with the same accent as all the others in the north, and he spoke in the elvish language flawlessly, albeit with the same accent.
Kestrel remembered the story the false Moorin had told him, that her father was a human nobleman who had married an elven noble lady and moved to the Northern Forest. Her title had been Countess of Grey Fjord.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Kestrel said warmly, feeling exhilarated by the extraordinary introduction that seemed to confirm the potential existence of a real Moorin, an elven lady of mixed racial heritage.
“Come along Kestrel, we have places to go,” Tewks stepped in between them and yanked hard on Kestrel, throwing him off-balance and pulling him away from the Count.
“He’s a good guy, but he’s not the first guy you want to be seen with,” Tewks spoke under his breath as he dragged Kestrel through the crowd. “Let’s go find Lord Ripken and let him introduce you to the right people.”
Kestrel held his protest unspoken. He would listen to Tewks advice for the moment, but he would remember the man who might be father to the woman Kestrel sought to meet, to rescue, to save – even, he admitted to himself, to lose – his heart to.
An anonymous hand reached out from the crowd, a slender, feminine hand; it briefly brushed across the exposed tattoo on his chest, then withdrew as Kestrel walked by, not even sure who the hand belonged to. Tewks pushed through another knot of gossiping members of the court, and another anonymous hand similarly pawed at him
The majority of people in the banquet hall were pureblood elves, Kestrel observed. But many showed some degree of human heritage. Kestrel in fact did not stick out as the most extraordinarily partly human person there; several men were as bulky as he was, relatively speaking, and there were women who wore low cut gowns, which showed off the exotic shadows of cleavage in the middle of their chests, something that no elven maiden contemplated.
The people of the Northern Forest wore gold jewelry – great quantities of gold. Kestrel thought about the Eastern Forest, where jade and amber vied as the most popular ornamentation. It was another of the differences that left him bemused.
It was a swirling, intoxicating experience for Kestrel, and after several moments, he failed to even note the hands of the emboldened women whose fingers fleetingly drew along his chest as he concentrated on trying to keep up with Tewks while fitting through the narrow openings the boy found and used in the crowd.
“My lord,” Tewks said suddenly, screeching to a halt, “I’ve fetched your guest, my lord.”
The boy was talking to Ripken, Kestrel saw, while Targus stood discreetly nearby.
“Welcome, my savior and honored guest!” Ripken held his hand up, palm outward, at face level. Having seen the gesture, and having done it with Winne, Kestrel hesitated only a second before pressing his hand soundly against the elven nobleman’s.
“Everyone, I must tell the story of the most extraordinary journey I have ever taken, thanks to this young man,” Ripken placed his hand on Kestrel’s bare shoulder in a fatherly way.
“I haven’t told anyone yet, because I didn’t want the story to spread before we got to the banquet crowd,” he turned and spoke to Kestrel. “This story is so much better than the usual party small talk.
“We were traveling together in a running pack, cutting through the robber’s forest at night, just last night,” Ripken began. There were a half dozen in the circle listening to the nobleman. “Kestrel had joined us late, so we hadn’t been introduced at all.
“And the robbers set upon us. Viciously, I might add. They weren’t going by the usual rules of the game, just robbing and taking hostages. They meant to kill most or all of us, I’m sure, when Kestrel called in a rescue squad that chased all the robbers away!
“Who do you think his squad of doughty warriors were?” Ripken asked.
“Who, Ripken, go on and tell us,” one of the men urged, as the others remained silent.
“Imps! They were imps!” Ripken threw the words out.
After a moment of silence, one of the men asked. “What’s the punch line?”
“That’s the thing! There is no punch line. Kestrel here has a direct line to the imps. Small. Blue. Float in the air. Disappear in the blink of an eye. Imps – just like the children’s tales say!” Ripken said emphatically.
All eyes turned to look at Kestrel curiously, just as a loud gong rang.
“Ladies, gentlemen, guests and friends,” a herald’s voice was barely audible over the dying murmurs of the crowd.
“Please move forward to the seating areas. Please take your assigned seats,” the herald shouted.
“I must finish this story after dinner. Come see me,” Ripken called. “I need to head up to the front – it will be a crush to get there from here,” he turned and began to press his way into the crowd.
The members of his circle continued to look at Kestrel. “So what’s the joke? What happened? Were there really even any robbers?” a woman in the circle asked.
“There were really robbers,” Kestrel spoke slowly. “The imps did come and help fight them,” he added.
“Not a great orator, are you?” asked one of the men who had spoken before. He appeared to be of mixed ancestry, with a heavier build than most of the elves.
“I have an accent different from yours,” Kestrel acknowledged.
“Accent? We have no accent. But you talk like you’ve got a mouthful of mush. You’re certainly full of stories,” the man insulted Kestrel, as most of the rest of the group turned to go to the tables.
“You may not think you have an accent, but I think you have no manners either,” Kestrel said loudly.
The man stared at him, and one of his acquaintances stopped his departure, turned, and looked at the man and at Kestrel.
“Are you going to take that from him?” the second man asked.
The space around the confrontation seemed to suddenly open up. People who had been milling towards the dinner tables stopped their movement, and instead formed a circle around Kestrel and the other man.
“Get on your knees and ask for forgiveness, or you’ll be sorry,” Kestrel’s antagonist snarled. He snapped his fingers, and two other men who were nearby pushed through the crowd to join the first two. Each of them pulled knives from hiding places within their clothes
“Get on your knees! Get on your knees, or call your precious imps! What are you going to do to save yourself?” the angry man asked.
“Lucretia, come,” Kestrel said quietly, glad he had left the knife so close to the banquet hall. He held up his hand over his head, and caught the knife as it flew directly to him.
The circle around the confrontation gasped, then murmured, then grew silent. The two men with knives grew pale-faced, while the leader of the fight stared in amazement.
“Put your knives away, or my knife will be in your heart in a second,” Kestrel told them. He crouched low, in a fighter’s stance. He wasn’t sure how the situation in the elegant ballroom had turned into such a deadly affair so quickly, and he didn’t know what the etiquette or laws were regarding his response to the weapons th
at had been pulled against him, but he wasn’t going to let a bully intimidate him.
“How many men can you fight in a knife fight at once?” the other man asked. He snapped his fingers twice more, and four more men in the circle facing him, almost a quarter of all those in the front ranks, pulled knives out as well.
“It’s not fair! It’s not right!” Kestrel shouted in anger. He had been told that no weapons were allowed in the banquet hall, and now he was facing six of them at close quarters. He had come to the court without any malice or intentions to battle anyone; he wanted to have a simple, peaceful visit as he searched for Moorin, and to be so mistreated, so unnecessarily, enraged him.
“You’re a cheater and a bully!” Kestrel suddenly felt no restraint, and he shouted. “People like you shouldn’t be allowed to come to an event like this!” Kestrel pointed his finger at the man, singling him out.
And then he felt the gut-wrenching initiation of the hidden energy within him. His hand suddenly glowed brightly, and a brilliant ball of energy burst out. It emerged inches beyond Kestrel’s pointed finger, and then splintered into multiple pencil-thin streams of energy. Each stream bent and gyrated and headed to one of the men with the knives, as well as to the man who had started the confrontation along with his first malevolent companion.
The moment the light touched the men it lifted them from the floor and hurled them at high speed, in a fraction of a second, above the top of the crowd and out the door of the building.
The glow left Kestrel’s hand, as he stared at it in astonishment, while all around him there was a moment of absolute silence. And then screams and shouts erupted in a confusion of men and women telling each other what they had seen, while Kestrel stood alone.
Suddenly Tewks appeared. He darted into the wide open space that had grown around Kestrel. “Come with me my lord,” he uttered, then grabbed Kestrel’s hand and went running into the crowd, jerking Kestrel suddenly and pulling him away from the center of attention. The people in their path, those who had seen what had happened, went scrambling out of the way of the incredible being who ran towards them, and so Tewks and Kestrel made considerable progress into the crowd quickly, before Tewks began evasive maneuvers, cutting sharply to his left, and working further forward.
“Give me your knife,” he said to Kestrel.
“What?” the befuddled elf asked.
“You’re not supposed to have weapons. Give me your knife,” Tewks explained as they continued to run, bouncing off of people and moving swiftly forward.
Kestrel handed the weapon to the boy. “Be careful with how you handle it. It’ll return to me if I call it again,” he warned.
“I’ll be careful. You go up there,” the boy pointed to the front of the room. “You’re supposed to sit at a table with a blue table cloth. Deny everything,” the boy hissed. He released his hold on Kestrel and disappeared into the crowd, taking the incriminating evidence with him.
Shaken, Kestrel pressed forward, and began to weave among tables, past people who were already seated, as he looked for a table with a blue cloth. There were hundreds of tables, and he despaired of finding his until his attention was drawn by a figure that suddenly stood up twenty yards away from him and began to wave at him. It was the girl from the lifts at his tower, the one named Lucretia, and she was standing at a table with a blue cloth!
Kestrel veered over towards her and quickly sat down in the empty seat next to her, as she took her chair. He closed his eyes, glad for the one small accomplishment, but sure that the end of his saga at the banquet was nowhere near.
“This is the one I was telling you about, this is the boy who wanted to get fresh on the lifts at the tower,” Lucretia said, speaking to a pair of women who sat on her other side. “And that was before he practically undressed himself in public with his robe hung open,” she seemed to purr the words, and Kestrel only moaned and threw his head back, his face pointed up to the ceiling.
“There seems to have been something rather dramatic in the back of the hall,” one of Lucretia’s acquaintances spoke. Kestrel opened his eyes and looked at the girl. “Do you know what it was about?” she asked him.
“Of course he doesn’t,” Lucretia spoke up. “My poor boy was sitting right here with me when it happened.
“What is your name, by the way,” she asked, “my foreign morsel?”
“My name is Kestrel,” he answered.
A waiter arrived at their table and began to hand out small bowls of soup, serving the ladies first. The whole table was women, he realized with a start, as he observed the waiter carry out more bowls of soup and deliver them, rows of bowls wobbling as they balanced precariously on his arms.
The table was very close to the front; they were just one row away from the long head table that was on a raised dais, at the end of the room. There was a vast sea of tables stretching in the opposite direction, the direction that Kestrel had wandered in through, without realizing it in the midst of his astonishment and confusion.
He had released the power that Kai had given him, released it once again without knowing how. The result had been a spectacular success in his small battlefield, but the reaction of the witnesses and the location of the display were a guarantee that there would be consequences for what he had done. And yet here was this strange, disturbing woman suddenly providing him with a short-term haven from the storm. Her alibi that he had been up at the front of the room could prove to be invaluable.
Kestrel turned to smile at Lucretia, and as he did, he saw that Ripken was sitting up at the head table, not far from the center, where Kestrel assumed the greatest power was situated. He was seated next to an older woman on his left, and an attractive young woman on his right.
“Is he important?” Kestrel asked Lucretia in a low voice, indicating Ripken.
Lucretia put her soup spoon down and looked up. “Well, he’s only the Keeper of the Purse for the crown prince, now isn’t he?” she asked with a mischievous smile. “Of course he’s important!”
Kestrel started to eat his soup. It was a hickory nut and mushroom soup, one that tasted just like a soup from back home in the Eastern Forest, and for the first time that day, Kestrel thought that perhaps there was some kinship between the two nations of elves after all.
He sat in silence as the next stage of the meal was served, watching jugglers who walked among the tables providing entertainment. Despite the entertainment, the atmosphere in the hall was not festive, and Kestrel failed to understand what was dampening the spirits of the attendees.
As the third course was served, he observed the man he had fought with, if the brief skirmish could be called a fight, arrive at a table not far away and take his seat, without any of the members of his entourage. “Do you know who he is?” Kestrel murmured to Lucretia.
“Him? He’s the one?” she asked, implying that she knew exactly why he was asking.
Kestrel nodded affirmation.
“You do like to live life on the edge, don’t you?” Lucretia asked. “I like a man who’s like that.”
“What do you mean?” Kestrel asked. “About him, I mean?” he clarified.
Lucretia smirked at him. “That’s Exmoor. He owned three of the gold mines in the north.”
“There’re gold mines here?” Kestrel asked, surprised. He’d not heard anything about such an industry among the northern elves.
“About thirty years ago a prospector discovered gold in the northern mountains, up where the summer is short and winter is long,” Lucretia explained. “Now we have five big gold mines up there that send wealth down to the world. He owns three of the five mines, and he’s probably planning how to bully his way into owning the other two.
“That’s why there’s so much gold jewelry in the palace,” she explained, holding up her own gold necklace. “That’s why the king has so much money he can build incredible structures like the towers, with their windmills and lifts. It’s why there’s so much trade between the Northern Forest and North Harbor�
�s humans now; we used to be much more secluded, but since the gold came along there’s money and trade for everyone. And robbers and corruption too,” she added.
“But all the money doesn’t do the king any good right now,” Lucretia said softly, and for the first time her voice truly caught Kestrel’s attention, as he heard the genuine emotion that made the girl’s voice quaver.
“Why not? What can’t he buy?” Kestrel asked.
“He can’t buy life for his daughter,” Lucretia answered.
“See your friend, Ripken, up there?” she asked Kestrel. He nodded.
“Next to him is the princess, Aurelia. And next to her is the king, Winche. His queen, Reese, is next to him, and beyond her is York, the crown prince. Tell me what you see,” she ordered Kestrel.
He looked the family over. The king and queen were mature, healthy looking elves. They held themselves with a regal posture, and appeared to be in good health. The crown prince appeared to be several years older that Kestrel himself, and a buoyant if dissolute spirit; Kestrel wasn’t sure the man’s appearance provided confidence that he would be a steady, mature king.
But the princess, sitting next to her father, appeared to be a generation beyond her parents – much older. Kestrel would have named her as the mother of the king, instead of his daughter. She was frail, gray. Kestrel knew that he had noted her as an elderly woman when he had seen her sitting next to Ripken earlier; though it was impossible, she seemed even older now, just a few minutes later.
“The princess is the daughter of the king?” he asked to confirm.
“That’s how it works,” Lucretia answered tartly.
“What has happened?”
“Several weeks ago, when the comet appeared in the sky, the princess was a lovely young lady, younger than the crown prince. She and I were good friends, who danced and gossiped and shopped together. She is just a year older than me,” Lucretia explained. “And then this illness struck, one that we didn’t even recognize at first.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 04 - A Foreign Heart Page 22
