80: KINGKILLER
(Teraeth’s story)
The vané man pulled a small wagon led by two large, gentle-looking lizards up to the front doors of the palace. “Delivery.” He motioned back to the wagon, which contained several large barrels.
“Not your normal time, is it?” The guard frowned.
The deliveryman shrugged. “They’ve been changing up all the schedules. I don’t question it. I just bring it over.” He handed the guard a set of papers.
The guard looked them over. “This all seems in order. We’ll need to open the barrels to check.”
The deliveryman pulled out a crowbar, clearly expecting that command. “Sure enough.”
It took a few moments to open each barrel and confirm the contents: wine. Each time, the soldier dipped a crystal and inspected the result, checking for additives, poisons, or alterations. Satisfied that the barrels contained exactly what was promised, they tapped the lids back down again.
“We’ll take it from here.” The guard did something with an amulet around his neck, and several large insects—not actual insects but magical constructs made to look like insects—ambled forward. “Unload that into the secure storeroom. Be careful. Do not spill the barrels.” The automatons went to work while the guard signed the paperwork and handed it back.
“A pleasure as always,” the deliveryman said as he drove away.
The insects made a discreet single-file line as they carried the barrels into the palace. None of the normal guests and staff coming and going paid any attention to them.
The guards went back to their jobs.
The constructs dropped off the barrels, shut and locked the secure door, and went back to their normal posts.
One of the lids on a barrel pushed up and off. Teraeth carefully unfolded himself and climbed out. He dragged a sealed waxed cloth package with him, which included clothes, jewelry, and a wine goblet.
Hiding in the food was a time-honored way of sneaking into any castle, but no one did it with barrels of ale or wine for the obvious reason: they’d drown. Even a voramer would drown—they worked best underwater, not under alcohol. And so the security on such barrels mostly centered around making sure the contents weren’t poisoned or contaminated, not making sure no one had crammed themselves into the bottom.
Teraeth hadn’t drowned, not because he was half-voramer, but because a certain Joratese woman knew a terribly convenient glyph for air. He created a small mage-light no brighter than a small candle and set it on a nearby shelf. The storeroom was one of many in the castle, large and cool and dark, filled to the brim with barrels and rows upon rows of all manner of alcohol, but also bins of vegetables, herbs, and dried fruits, which might be needed on any given night.
He tapped three times on the lid of another barrel before prying open the lid. A few seconds later, Janel raised her hands to the edge and lifted herself up and out. She was as naked as he, wine dripping from her body and the sealed waxed package that contained her clothing. As soon as she was free from the barrel, he tapped the lids back on both barrels and used a quick cleanup spell to eliminate the wine they’d spilled. No doubt the next person to come open these barrels would be filing a strongly worded complaint with the vintner about their fill levels.
Of course, that didn’t do a thing about the new drops of wine they were dripping from themselves with every second. The single mage-light limned Janel’s body with a diffuse golden glow. He didn’t even pretend he wasn’t staring.
She noticed, paused, and returned the favor, eyes lingering like touches across his skin. Then Janel looked around.
“How well hidden are the rows in the back?” Janel began walking among the wine racks and stacked boxes.
Teraeth watched her for a moment and then cleaned up the wine from himself and the floor and grabbed that single mage-light from its resting place. By the time he caught up with her, she’d created her own light, which she tucked to the side as she pushed a large wooden box back a foot or so from the crate it sat atop, forming a chair. She hopped up onto the ledge and sat down. In the mage-glow, she looked like a statue of a goddess. There was no mistaking her intent.
Teraeth looked back toward the door. In the dim light, an open door would be like the dawning of a new day. Anyone entering would need time for their eyes to adjust. More than enough time to spin an illusion to hide themselves.
This wasn’t exactly the smartest thing he’d ever done, although it was still miles above the stupidest, which was and hopefully always would be “March into the Manol with a full army in the middle of summer.”
He felt a sense of desperate need for her, a yearning he found wasn’t mysterious at all. She must have been thinking along similar lines, because as soon as he reached her—
Kihrin cleared his throat.
Thurvishar stopped. “Oh. Right. I suppose you wouldn’t want to hear this, would you? And to be honest, it’s quite a bit more graphic than the descriptions with your parents, so I’m perfectly happy to skip it.”
“Is it now?” Kihrin raised an eyebrow. “May I see those?”
“No destroying pages,” Thurvishar chided.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” As Thurvishar handed over the pages, Kihrin looked them over briefly, nodding to himself. Then he rolled the pages into a tube and tucked them into his agolé. “I’ll just keep this for later, why don’t I? You don’t really need them for your chronicle, anyway. Just a lot of unnecessary description.”
“Kihrin—”
He raised a hand to forestall any further complaints. “Let me have this, Thurvishar.”
“Fine,” Thurvishar said. “Saves me from having to read it out loud.”
When Teraeth and Janel finished, they both dressed in the finery they’d brought with them. Teraeth wove their illusions. The wonderful thing about most vané is how rarely they wore talismans or any kind of defense against phantasms. Most vané wanted to be fooled, wanted to revel in a thousand impossible sights. For those who didn’t—a few special guards—they had real court clothing for them both, including makeup and wigs.
Once they were cleaned and properly disguised, he no longer worried about who might come into the storeroom. It would hardly be the first time a pair of vané had slipped away for rough sex against the wine racks.
Teraeth winked at her and pretended to be drunk. He didn’t stagger. Vané never staggered, drunk or otherwise. They lingered beautifully, glassy-eyed and elegant.
“How do I look?” she asked, straightening her clothes.
He smoothed her hair. “Freshly fucked.” Teraeth sniffed the air near her. “Which is entirely appropriate. It’s been a long time since I’ve been here—”
“Wait, you’ve been here before?”
“My mother brought me here once. Everyone gave me the sort of delighted neglect vané always give our children. We have no idea what to do with them except to dress them up in cute outfits and suggest they come back in thirty years.” Teraeth’s impression then had been a never-ending swirling dance of sybaritic grandeur and intoxicating dissipation. The court was more popular with the Kirpis vané than the Manol vané, but sooner or later, every vané danced on these hallowed floors for the pleasure of their king. “Anyway, my point is that we’ll blend. Let’s go visit the party.”
“How do you know there’s a party?”
He took her arm. “There’s always a party. But don’t worry, I’ve never heard of the king actually attending.”
“Oh good, because I’d hate for this whole thing to be spoiled because he simply recognized us.”
“Not a problem. Just act like a stupid, drunk teenage girl instead of your normal state of being an inferno somehow trapped in a human body. He’ll never recognize you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You do realize we’re only twenty. Technically speaking, we were stupid teenagers last year.”
“Then this shouldn’t be that hard.”
The main ballroom was every bit as wondrous as one might expect. Janel probably wasn’t faking the look of awe that came over her face. The entire room was heavily enchanted, but since this had been a Manol palace long before the Kirpis moved in, almost none of it came in the form of illusions. Rather, the walls had been shaped into a thousand fantastical forms—trees and flowers and every kind of jungle denizen. Fireflies flitted about providing light. Still more lights were woven into the carved surfaces. The floor itself was mirror smooth, so one might become a bit dizzy if not careful.
Teraeth saw Queen Miyane first, laughing delightedly at some joke or witty barb cast for her amusement. Miyane was young by vané standards and, like her late sister, was half-Manol and half-Kirpis, products of the short-lived fad of symbolically uniting the two nations after the disastrous civil war. That was probably why the two sisters had caught the eyes of the royal family in the first place.
She seemed to be enjoying the party. And King Kelanis had given her Kihrin’s star tears.
Janel had clearly noticed too. “Oh, that—”
“Shhh,” he told her. “Ignore that for the moment. We’ll deal with it later.” He began wandering about the room with Janel at his side, pretending he knew people who didn’t want to admit they didn’t remember him.
He heard applause and felt Janel stiffen next to him. He turned his head, dreading and knowing exactly what he was going to see.
King Kelanis had decided to attend the party after all.