Unsure of what to do next, his nerves were quieted by a miracle taking place in the empty centre of the table square. Parts of the floor were disappearing.
With a muted, grinding sound, five sections of the tiled surface descended into darkness. A marvel, he thought, though none of his neighbours or anyone else in the room seemed to take notice. After some time, the grinding started up again and the sections reappeared, but not unburdened. The four corner sections now bore tables laden with plates, and these plates were piled high with food. The centre section had an even greater cargo, for it held men and women, eight in all, dressed in Palace livery. Eight expressionless faces appeared first, then eight sets of stiff shoulders, then the whole, elegant length of them until they could step off the platform and busy themselves with distributing the feast.
“One of Andarack’s toys,” a voice to his right said, and Garet turned in his chair to face the King.
“It is amazing,” Garet said, and added hastily, “Your Majesty.”
“Lord Andarack is simply full of amazing, isn’t he? These trap doors and their gears, automatic gate closers, that lifter at the Falls, and of course, those very interesting spark containers.”
“And the silkstone suit,” Garet added. He had meant to ask Andarack about the suit, as Dorict had requested, but he would have to wait until after dinner, as the distance between them was beyond mannerly speech.
“Ah yes,” the King replied, “the suit was indeed amazing,” and turned to speak to the lady of the Thirteenth Ward, Kaela, on his right.
Garet smiled at the server who brought his plate. In return, he received no indication of his existence. Frowning, he examined his food. It was pickled vegetable and fish, though for some reason it had been arranged to look like a bird flapping its wings. Mis-decorated or not, it was delicious, and he finished it with a speed that probably broke all the rules of decorum.
“Don’t they feed you in the Hall, Bane?” asked the older man to his left.
Garet swallowed quickly and said, “They do, but not so well as this.” He remembered that Salick said this man was from the Thirteenth Ward, but not a Lord, so he added, “Sir.”
“Gost,” the man said and extended a hand.
Garet took it. “Garet,” he said, and the man smiled.
“I know who you are, Bane. Your heroics during the recent . . . troubles were relayed to us by Mandarack before he died. Yes, many sang your praises then, but I wonder why you are here now.”
Garet wasn’t quite sure what to say. Branet had been very clear about not discussing Banehall business, but he had also said he should speak when spoken to. Gost had spoken to him and now waited for an answer to his almost-question.
“As a lowly Green Sash, I merely follow orders; I don’t question them, sir.”
Gost laughed. “Well said, well said! Forgive my intrusion, Green. Perhaps I should not have pried since I am here only by ‘orders’ as well.”
“How so, sir?”
Gost took a drink of the wine a server placed in front of him. “Ah, good stuff this, Ninth Ward, I think. They’ll soon take over the Eighth Ward’s primacy in the vineyards. Now, why am I here? This dinner is to celebrate my nephew’s production of an heir, to put it bluntly. I am here by courtesy, as is Kaela.”
Garet said the safest thing he could think of. “Congratulations sir, to your family and your Ward.”
“Thank you, Bane. Heaven has blessed our Ward in many ways recently.”
Gost then turned to speak to the woman on his left, a Ward Lord named Braxa, signaling their conversation was at an end.
Garet was then allowed to eat in peace through three more plates. Each dish was more delicious and more ornate than the last, and he slowed at each course until his pace more closely matched the others. The moving platforms groaned again, and he groaned with them. All this rich food was gurgling in his stomach, but he dared not refuse anything. Looking over to where Salick sat, he saw her shared discomfort. Of all the guests, only Dasanat the Chief of the Mechanicals ignored the growing piles of delicacies before her, picking at whatever plate was nearest while she stared off into the distance. Servers hovered around her, but she was impervious to their distress.
Garet sighed and forced down another mouthful. Dorict would have been a better choice, he thought. At least he had more capacity.
At last the final plate of sweet pastries from the Tenth Ward had been consumed, and hot drinks distributed. The King turned back to Garet and chuckled.
“A serious test of one’s stomach, eh Bane? Don’t worry if you are overwhelmed. Most of us at this table trained for it, just as you train in the Hall. It’s true! We start off in childhood with large breakfasts and move on to enormous lunches until we are old enough and fit enough to handle a formal dinner!”
“Your Majesty is in high spirits tonight,” the woman on his right, Kaela, said. “Is this the Midland boy I have heard so much about?”
She extended a hand, and Garet rushed to stand and bow before taking it. Trax leaned back to allow the contact.
“And who has been telling you about him, fair Kaela?” he asked when Garet resumed his seat. “Your devoted husband, Kirel, or your most able uncle-in-law, Gost?”
“Proablably both, your Majesty. After all, the lad is famous in the story tellers’ tales, though I expected him to be older and perhaps not so small.”
Garet smiled, feeling the burden of his reputation squeeze him smaller still.
Trax laughed.
“Oh, size is not an issue with this one! He’s a young man who fights with his head as well as—what was it you used to attack Draneck that night in my chambers, a fire poker?”
“Yes, your Majesty, though it was your Butler who was the hero that night,” Garet said, wishing one of Andarack’s amazing machines would open beneath his feet and carry him to the Banehall.
“Didn’t you also injure that horrible Banemaster, oh, what was he called?” Kaela said. Her delicate condition took none of the malice from her tone.
“Adrix,” Garet replied. He had lamed the ex-Hallmaster, with one throw of a stone that shattered his knee. If he hadn’t, Adrix would have killed Mandarack, so Garet had made the choice to cripple one to save another.
“Old stories now, my dear Kaela,” Trax said, and pointedly turned back to Garet.
“Speaking of old stories, I read a funny one the other day. It was in an ancient scroll of Palace proceedings. What was it now? Ah, I remember! You must know, Bane, that the people of the Wards once lived in different areas of the Ar river valley, until the beasts came and drove them all together. Along with their cows and cots, they brought different ways of measuring things. It was very confusing! What would be a yard in the Sixth Ward would be three-quarters of a yard in the Eighth. A pound to the King would be three ounces to the Traders, and so on around the whole circle of the new city. And of course none could agree as to whose weights and measures would be the standard in Shirath. Trade within the city was chaotic, but no Ward would give way to another on the matter. When harangued about this in court one time too many, our first king, Shirat, yelled at his Chief of Guards to close his eyes and walk out fifty paces into the Palace Plaza, which was just a dirt field then, I suppose, and bring back the first person he saw when he opened them again.”
At a wave from Trax, a server hurried over and refilled his wine glass. The king took a sip before continuing.
“Well the guard did as he was told and returned with a cursing, spitting woman of the Tenth Ward who wanted nothing more that to get back to her vegetable stall. At Shirat’s command, every part of her was measured and weighed. The distance from her heel to hip became the standard yard. The length of her little finger became the inch. Her weight divided by a hundred, for Shirat claimed she struck the Chief of Guards a hundred times during the process, became the pound, and all other measures followed.”
Garet pondered this. “What about the gallon and quart?”
Trax smiled. A handsome man, still young, he knew how to be charming.
And he expected it to work, Garet knew.
Trax stroked his chin in apparent thought.
“Those came from the weight of different volumes of water in pounds, I believe.”
Garet shook his head. “Then what about the league, surely she wasn’t long enough to measure that?”
Trax took another sip. A buzz of conversation surrounded them, but to Garet, it seemed Trax was focused only on him.
“Some say it was a multiplication of the yard, but the version I read says that King Shirat so liked her spirit he offered to marry her then and there, his own wife being claw-killed. The terrified woman bolted from the court, and the league was measured from the King’s throne to the point where the guards finally caught up with her.”
Garet laughed, almost against his will, then caught Hallmaster Branet’s disapproving look. He covered up his coughing with a gulp of wine.
“Your Majesty is well read in the history of the city,” Garet said, when he could speak again.
He wondered why Trax was being such a delightful host. In Salick’s oft-stated opinion, Trax was first and foremost a manipulator of others, getting what he wanted with a mix of flattery and threat, but what could he possibly want from Garet? His usefulness to the King should have ended months ago when the Caller Demon was killed and harmony restored between the Hall and the Palace.
“Well read? Oh, that’s Barick’s doing. I’m afraid he found the duties of Palace Butler too stressful, having to kill Duelist assassins and such, so I created a new position, King’s Historian. He’s writing a complete history of Shirath, a huge undertaking he claims, as I’m sure you would agree. As a matter of fact, you might be able to aid him in this important task.”
Ah
, Garet thought,
here comes the hook to catch the unwary fish
. He must swim carefully if he didn’t want to get caught up in a dangerous game of politics. The last one had almost killed both him and Salick.
“The Banehall is always happy to assist the Palace, your Majesty, but in what way?”
“Oh, researching Bane history, I believe. The Palace keeps its own records; the Wards maintain theirs separately, and of course the Banehall does as well. Can’t have a complete history without all of them, can we?”
Faced with such logic, Garet decided the only thing he could do was squirm out of a definite answer.
“I’m afraid Master Branet will have to agree to sharing the Hall’s records, and to my own participation.”
Trax waved Garet’s concerns away with one manicured hand.
“Oh, he has already agreed. That’s why I asked him to bring you here tonight, so that I could propose it to you. I take it, then, that you will do this, for the city?”
Garet felt the hook digging in and saw no way to shake it out. He took another sip of wine and glanced over at Salick. The look she was giving Trax should have set him on fire.
“Salick looks well tonight,” Trax said. “If you can look well and so obviously wish others ill. Hmm, on second thought I’m not sure that’s possible. Poor Salick, we will never be friends, I fear. Well, Bane. What do you say?”
He slapped Garet on the back.
It was to Garet’s credit that neither his dinner nor a heartfelt sigh escaped him.
“I am at your Majesty’s—and your ex-Butler’s—service.”
“Excellent!” said Trax. “I’m sure Barick will soon be in touch with you.”
He pushed back his chair and stood. The rest of the group hastily, and in some cases unsteadily, joined him. The temple priest on Dasanat’s right shook the Mechanincal to get her attention. She jumped up and frowned at her surroundings, not quite remembering where she was.
Trax waved his hands.
“I thank you for coming to celebrate the future heir of the Thirteenth Ward, warmly and maternally protected by the fair Kaela who was so fortunately seated beside me,” he said.
He paused while the company made polite applause in the Shirath way of slapping the back of one hand with the fingers of the other.
“Thankfully there is no need for a Council meeting this night, though perhaps the Hallmaster might linger for a few words. Goodnight and may Heaven shield you all!”
The stewards led the other guests out with great efficiency, leaving Garet and Salick waiting in the antechamber for Branet. Garet frowned. He had found no chance to talk to Lord Andarack about the silkstone suit.
“What did he want?” Salick asked when they were alone. Her eyes pinned Garet as if they were the tines of her trident.
“Trax? How do you know he wanted anything?”
“That trick Lysere did with the tokens. You were maneuvered into sitting beside him. Didn’t you see? That was her own place she gave you!”
“No, I didn’t see that,” Garet admitted. He went over the event and found nothing to support her accusation. Lysere had seemed perfectly honest and friendly.
“Well,” Salick said, folding her arms across her chest. “Perhaps you were thinking of something else at the time.”
Garet frowned. It was true. He had found Lysere . . . distracting. Had the young woman used that against him so that she could switch the tokens?
He reddened at the thought.