Kate Elliott - An earthly crown

They halted equidistant between the steps and the group of elderly men marked with the heavy chains and pentangles of the town's stewards. There was silence. Nadine waited.

A young man stood on the steps, utterly and obviously foreign by his purple and green striped overtunic and huge, belled trousers of cloth of gold, by the odd sculpting of his dark beard and mustache, and by the white turban that concealed his hair. He lifted one manicured hand. An older man, less flamboyantly dressed, stood one step lower; he coughed, preparing to speak. Both their gazes stopped briefly on the two women and flicked away again as quickly, dismissing them.

After a moment the older man addressed Feodor Grekov in rough, but serviceable, Rhuian. "I am Syrannus, bond servant to the Most Honorable Jiroannes Arthebathes, ambassador from His Imperial Majesty, Honor of the People, Great King of All Vidiya, may his name be sung for a thousand years. We place ourselves and the rest of our party in your hands, sir, as you are to be our escort to the court of the Bakhtiian."

Feodor looked at Nadine and shrugged. Nadine sighed and urged her mount two paces forward. "I am Nadine Orzhekov. I am the leader of the party that will escort the Most Honorable-" She let the syllables roll off her tongue. "-Jiroannes Arthebathes and his-ah-retinue to the camp of Bakhtiian."

"But-" sputtered Syrannus. For an instant he looked like a man trapped by starving wild animals. Basille's elders whispered among themselves.

"You lead my escort?" said the ambassador suddenly, curt and doubting. "A woman? Perhaps one of these men will verify this outrageous assertion." He waved toward Grekov and Yermolov.

"Since they don't speak Rhuian, they can't." Nadine grinned, enjoying his indignation.

"You are the only one in your party who speaks Rhuian?" demanded the ambassador. "That is absurd."

"Not the only one," conceded Nadine. "This woman, Terese Soerensen, speaks not only Rhuian but Taor and, I believe, a few words of Vidyan as well."

At this unfortunate juncture, especially given the appalled looks on the faces of Jiroannes Arthebathes and his servant Syrannus, Tess started to laugh.

"David," said Marco, "you will come sit through this banquet with me. I refuse to endure hours of rancid food and city elders sucking up to Charles and Bakhtiian all by myself.''

"Maggie is going," said David.

"Maggie," said Maggie tartly, "is serving an official function. I'm going to be the wine pourer for His Nibs and Attila the Hun."

David groaned. "Are you for me or against me? You're no help."

But there was nothing for it. He could see by the look on Marco's face, and by the light in Maggie's eyes as she laughed silently at him, that he was doomed to sit through the state dinner and audience that the barons and elders of the town of Abala Port were holding for the man who had conquered them, Ilyakoria Bakhtiian, and the prince who was his chosen guest.

"As long as I don't have to act as food taster," he muttered, "although with that army in this town, I don't think I'd try to poison anyone."

"You wouldn't try to poison anyone anyway," said Maggie. She rummaged through her carry bag and drew out a clean tunic and the only skirt she possessed. She went on talking as she changed, letting her old clothes drop into a heap on the slatted floor of their tiny inn room. "Owen Zerentous has asked permission to hold an impromptu performance at the end of the banquet, or after the formal audience. Evidently the city elders have some cases they need tried, some people accused of crimes, that they're going to bring before Bakhtiian."

"Trial by personal whim?" asked Marco.

"You said yourself he was educated at the university in Jeds," retorted Maggie. "He must have some concept of justice. Damn it! Where'd that brassiere go?" She upended the contents of her bag onto her cot. David, from his cot, hooked a dark toe through the brassiere strap and hoisted the garment up into the air. "Where'd you find that?" she demanded.

"On the floor, where most of your clothes eventually come to rest."

She snatched it from him with a mock growl and put it on, then a linen shirt, and then her tunic and skirt. The room was crowded in part because it was small, but mostly because neither Maggie nor David could bring themselves to sleep on the straw-filled mattress that served as the room's bed. They had set up their traveling cots instead, one on each side; a tiny aisle led to the door, where Marco stood with his arms folded, surveying the mess.

"Shall we go? It can't smell any worse there than it does here."

"Just because we're over the stables," said Maggie with a laugh. "And where are you sleeping, may I ask?"

"You may not."

"Marco! You're frightening me."

That teased the shadow of a grin from him. David sighed and rose, pulling his sketchpad out of his carry bag. He brushed two flealike bugs off his sleeve and five earwigs off the sketchpad, and ran his other hand along the ends of his hair and through his name braids. "I'm just sure they're crawling all over me. It can't be worse in the town hall."

But it was. It was rank. Marco didn't seem to notice that it was only a thin layer of fresh rushes that covered the floor; that underneath lay a mat of ancient straw and other, happily nameless substances, which had created a kind of fetid loam. It squished. Incense burned in racks along the walls, set up between the windows, and lanterns were set at intervals along the tables. Rank and cloying at the same time. Quite a feat, David thought, to produce two such opposite effects in one chamber.

Charles walked in front of them, together with Bakhtiian. David hung back with Marco, who waited in his turn for the actors. But in the end, the actors sat at a side table and David and Marco ended up on the dais, at the very end of the long beamed table-which was actually three tables shoved together-which seated the guests of honor. The actors were in fine form, being boisterous in an engaging fashion, and the city elders were disgustingly obsequious.

"Have you noticed," said Marco in a whisper, "how Bakhtiian has picked out two boys, there, to eat with him, to share the food from his plate? Honoring them, because they're both sons of important men in town. But it also ensures that no one attempts to poison him."

David hadn't noticed. There was a clump of something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and he was trying to scrape it off. The food thrust in front of him looked unappetizing in the extreme, except for the bread. He didn't trust the water, and the wine had a vinegary-flavor. If this was the best Abala Port could do, then it must not be a very wealthy town.

"I think this is real gold leaf on this plate," said Marco, poking at it with his knife. A laugh burst up from the actors' table, and Marco looked up at once, caught Diana's eye, and smiled winningly at her.

"How has Tess managed to endure these conditions for four years?" David demanded of his plate. "This is appalling."

"Maybe she's as much of a slob as Maggie and you are. Maybe she doesn't care."

"She isn't a slob. Or at least, she wasn't."

"What? As an eleven-year-old in Jeds? But wait." Marco eased his attention back from Diana and propped his chin on one hand to regard David with interest. "You weren't in Jeds then. How could you know? Oho!"

David cursed under his breath. Trust Marco to know him well enough to read him.

"You're blushing under that attractive black complexion of yours, David my boy," said Marco in his most annoyingly superior manner. "Out with it."

"Damn it. Listen. If you breathe a word of this to Charles, I'll have your head. And then where will you be with handsome young actresses?" He leaned forward and peered down the table toward Charles, but Charles was deep in conversation with an old man in a pale blue gown trimmed with silver fur who wore a ring on each finger and a heavy bronze medallion on the end of a gold necklace. Charles's own finery paled in comparison-his signet ring and the chain of office draped down over a painted silk tunic-and the barbarian king looked positively spartan, dressed without any ornamentation at all except the embroidery that ran down the sleeves of his simple red shirt. He wore his curved sword; no one else in the room bore a weapon except his own personal guards: ten at the door and two standing behind him on the dais.