The King's Blood

by S. E. Zbasnik

  "And to the great General Marciano who has graced our table and lands with his presence."

  The General smiled weakly upon the others hoping this would be the end of it and began to raise his glass to his lips. A small cough, tuned to just the right frequency to overcome the loudest of cacophonies, paused his hand.

  "And to the grace of our Argur, without whom we would not be here to greet this day," the voice was clipped and strained, like staccato on a cello. Everyone turned to the man in the gold and ivory robe sitting pristinely between two large knights who never said a word to anyone.

  The Bishop took every opportunity to remind the world that he was here, he was speaking for a deity that could wipe them out with a single thought, and the Argur's Men Chorus could sure use new cummerbunds. If the army wished to demoralize a town hell bent on treason to the Empire, they'd simply send the man in ivory strolling calmly into town asking when they last tithed to keep their sorry asses out of damnation. Worked every time.

  The downside was that meant they had to travel with the Bishop, who made certain every knight under Marciano's command was being judged not just by their commanding officer but a man who had the ear of a god. The general was surprised there weren't more freak-outs, especially when the Bishop would sneak up behind someone and do that little cough of his.

  "Of course, and to Argur," the Baron said, trying to keep the momentum going.

  "Who said unto us, 'Take not more than you can give, but give not more than you can take. For the true blessed are those that can survive without assistance.'"

  "Um, yes. Do that," the Baron continued, his mind straining to think of a verse to respond with that didn't begin "Beans, Beans, the magical fruit."

  But the Bishop wasn't finished, having found a captive but not bound and bleeding audience he was going to milk it for all it was worth, "'For a man who relies upon magic is no man at all. And what is the kindness of a stranger, but the magic of the heart...'"

  Marciano sensed where this was heading and, as the priest took a breath, shouted out, "Yay, god," and took a drink.

  Everyone else, free from their religious bonds did the same while the Bishop glared upon the guest of honor, entire verses about screwing over your neighbor dying upon his lips. His two bodyguards looked down upon the man in the gold skullcap. "Drink, you lummoxes," he muttered as he put a small splash of sherry to pale lips.

  "Well, this has been quite a party, Baron," Marciano said, "I thank you tremendously as do my men." Visions of turning in to an actual warm bed for the night tempted the General away from the political dinner table.

  Tears of joy brimmed in the Baron's eyes, as he set down his cup, "Thank you, my Lord. And there is no better way to end this night than with a full tale from a set of traveling bards!" he said proudly.

  Argur take that man and drop him into something boiling, Marciano thought. The only thing more long winded than a bishop with a poor audience was a bard with a rich one. And he couldn't be silenced with no less than cutting his head off.

  The doors once again opened, and an entire troupe of people bounded in. One was older, his hair the dirty white of an Aravian snow, but that didn't stop him from being shirtless and strangely greased up like a pig about to be roasted. The second was a man, around the same age as Gian, with a perfectly sculpted beard. He reminded Marciano of some of the third or fourth sons of nobles who find themselves in the army: all nobility, no skill. This man was dressed in ancient armor, which was also missing the back of the cuirass and the greaves. Instead, someone painted a pair of pants and the back of the man grey and hoped no one would notice in an audience of real soldiers.

  Behind those two stepped a lad, a walking staff in his hands. His hair was jet black and solid as stone, as though someone dipped the entire head in paint, and he wore a strange string concoction across his face, tying a pair of wooden pointy ears overtop what must have been his real ones.

  The final form to cross through the door caught everyone by surprise, a woman with skin as black as night and those same wooden ears trussing up her nose like a chicken on Rest day. As everyone muttered amongst themselves about the curious sight of a Dunner here the players took their marks.

  In the brighter light of the (very expensive) chandelier Marciano could make out the distinct track marks of black paint, the same used on the boy's hair, all over the girl's face. She was as much a sandworm as he was an honorable guest. The general leaned back, settling in for what was looking to be a more interesting show than he first expected.

  The man in armor began, "Lords and Ladies, tonight we present for your pleasure the tale that has never been told. It was lost to the ages until we discovered it in the belly of a dragon. We give you Casamir and the Elves."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The damn ears Chase carved were digging into her head and making it almost impossible to hear a word as Bartrone hammed up his part as the great hero. She regretted ever agreeing to the Chancellor's plan in the first place.

  He'd had her going through the story, a strange tale of that mythical island of the elves that vanished into the sea, copying down any passages that would be easy for a set of historians to recite while they were about two minutes from passing out in excitement. She found Casamir duller than usual, Humphrey was clearly shoehorned in as he'd randomly appear after ten pages talking about being out in the woods and then vanish for another three chapters. The first elf, a drippy thing named Galdwin, fit the old descriptions of the elves. He was tall, fast, powerful, and dumber than a monastery under a vow of silence.

  Most of the tale seemed to be an amalgam of another better-known tale of Casamir fighting off a band of warlocks mixed with the time he supposedly got a golden banana for the gods that Humphrey then ate by mistake. But floating within were long forgotten islands of stories, things Ciara never heard of before. Talk of a mighty magical force contained within water, elves turned feral, and a half elf with skin like her own who didn't simper or fall at Casamir's feet. She confounded Ciara most of all.

  The girl tried to write the black elf out of the story but Medwin was insistent she be left in, even adding more lines of dialogue to what Ciara etched out. He also included long bits where Gladwin spoke of his family and his shortcomings to appeasing his father, a real crowd pleaser she was sure.

  The biggest changes were to Casamir himself. Where before he was his usual arrogant, patronizing self, the hero became harder, more likely to snap at his friend idiotically placing them in danger than laughing as he easily took down the evil warlocks with a single punch. The warlocks were also cut, but that saved up the major plot hole where the entire group was saved by giant slugs the wizard elf called upon to kill them all.

  Once the script was finished it was merely a matter of training the actors. The bastard Bartrone insisted he get the lead role. Ciara laughed to herself as she thought of him trying to proudly portray this anti-hero in an armored skirt. Their resident armor historian was insistent the piece was period precise, and not because he hated that arrogant bastard as well and wanted to see him twirling around in a metal dress.

  Oddly, Pajamas insisted on being Humphrey, a role that traditionally fell to men who were about as far from the withered and nearly hairless side as one could get without actually being a bear. But he gamely stripped down to his trousers and rubbed leftover lard all over his sagging chest.

  The elven roles proved to be the most tricky to cast. At first Kaltar offered to play the mage, but Medwin stepped in. He walked purposefully around their makeshift stage.22

  "No, no. Has no one here heard of Dupin?" he banged his walking stick upon the apple crate. He'd been carrying it ever since the news of the performance for the Baron came in.

  "Isn't that a soap salesman?"

  "That's Duponte."

  "Oh, I know, he sells them vegetables in cans."

  "No, that's Delmonte," he sighed knowing all too well when the conversation was slipping away, "the point is that sometimes the best hiding pl
ace is right out in the open."

  All the assembled eyes swiveled to Aldrin, who'd spent most of the practice mouthing lines to those who needed them. He waved meekly, cuddling deeper into his coat. The bonfire wasn't doing its job well these days.

  "Is, is that wise, Sir?" Kaltar asked the Chancellor with the sincerity of someone who'd just been told he should try dribbling honey in his ear to cure the coughs.

  "They won't expect we have anything to hide, if we do not hide anything," Medwin said calmly.

  Thus, Aldrin was drafted to play the part of the elf, with Kaltar insisting they paint his hair and maybe squish his face up or something. The final problem was Analia, the black female elf. Chase had been selected to don the dress, wear the ears and talk in a high, giggly voice. He actually didn't look too bad in the oversized disaster Ciara'd found in a discount bin and had to tuck in and let out in strange places.

  The higher cheekbones of the Bothers gave a more delicate look to their features while the longer hair helped finish off the illusion. No, the problem was in Chase's brain. He couldn't remember a single one of his lines. Even as the other players marched through a near flawless rehearsal, Chase was stumbling onto his cues, babbling about things that either happened pages ago or were supposed to happen at the end of the play. He also kept nervously grabbing his fake bosom and squeezing until the bag of sand broke and his chest fell lopsided.

  It was after the fifth time of having to yell, "No, you lightly kiss Casamir on the cheek, you don't slug him on the arm and say 'Good job!'" that Ciara finally snapped, yanked Chase off the stage and filled in for him.

  And of course, fate would decree that the production would go as smooth as the butter dripping into 'Humphrey's' butt crack. With her able to secretly cue her fellow players in the inevitable case of lines being flubbed and panic ensuing while standing next to them, even Bartrone was somewhat suggesting it might be best if the girl in the group play the girl in the play.

  Only Medwin was steadfast against it. He shook his head angrily no, that it was too dangerous to risk her. But he was out voted and out thought by the men who pointed out that he'd insisted they hide nothing. So the Chancellor relented, leaving his reader to fend for herself as he disappeared into his caravan muttering.

  The entire Order made the long cart ride to the castle along with the Swingin' Beards and a tall man carrying a large cloak who would not close his babbling mouth for ten seconds. Only Medwin and the meteorologist were left to guard the caravans.

  Servants dashed about the castle, trying to humor the whims and wishes of a pudgy man in last decades attire calling out contradictory orders. Ciara's palms started to itch, the familiar call of turning the cogs of a bustling castle life tugging on her. But she demurred to Bartrone, who insisted everyone call him Casamir the entire day to stay in character. He stepped in front of one of the hustling servants, nearly sending a tray of gold baubles normally hung for Soulday crashing across the marble.

  "My good man, would you be so kind as to show us where the entertainment is to prepare?"

  The boy looked around at the dozen in matching red robes and prayed they weren't part of some ironic stripping outreach program. "This way, Sirs," he said, failing to notice the girl hidden amongst their midst.

  "You'll have all the food we can bother to spare for the lot of you, a chamber pot in the back, and a handful of candles. No one's to leave until the Baron calls for you. Understood?"

  The historians tried to avoid the soul-crushing groan as they looked around the green room, so confining it was more like a green closet. It was lined with shelves stacked high with whatever random crap a Baron of new nobility thought he'd need to haul out one day to impress foreign dignitaries. The master of ancient armory poked a rusted pile of pikes, seeing if anything good would fall out.

  A few boxes were piled on the sides, covered with tarps to create makeshift chairs for the entertainment and a small tray of black bread and moldy cheese sagged on top. The Swinging Beards both rubbed their hands greedily and began to shovel as much of the food as they could into their pockets while the talking man babbled, "This is much nicer than I was expecting. When I had to play the Summer Solstice party for Lady Damarger, she stuck us all inside one of her middens and said if anyone came in we was to duck."

  Time crawled slowly inside the green room crammed with a lot of men poorly digesting the cheese. The only respite came when a servant or two needed to get a few extra place settings from a previous dynasty off the creaking shelves. Ciara tried to run the lines once more but her fellow players insisted they would do it on the night. Only Aldrin was nervous, chewing on the false beard Pajama's thought would aid in his disguise. It looked like he'd shoved half his face up a goat's bum.

  "You'll do fine," she broke her rule trying to comfort the boy.

  He stopped his masticating and looked up into her eyes, and she saw that same terror from a very long night spent laying on the frozen ground whispering into a bear pit. In all the planning, the contingency planning, the re-planning, the hearsing, and the rehearsing no one thought, hm maybe the boy who'd watched his entire family slaughtered in a castle's grand hall a month back might have some problems trying to perform in the middle of one.

  Ciara reached her hand out and grasped his shoulder. Squeezing it gently she said, "It'll be all right." A small part of her cried out that it was the same thing her father said to her before he vanished into the night. Her bravado was cracking under a steady stream of her own posttraumatic stress.

  A knock at the door and a head wearing a small crown carved from wood poked in, "You have fifteen minutes to get ready, the beard guys are up first." The head looked around at the sea of beards attached to men in crimson robes, "I mean the interesting beard guys." And then he vanished, leaving them all to their slowly deoxygenating tomb.

  "You heard him, it's makeup time people!" she tried to sound enthusiastic and wished that Medwin had come with. It was his plan after all.

  Chase and Chance took turns dipping their hands in the jar of black paint and coating Aldrin's hair in it while Pajama's stripped down and removed a few cans of lard off the shelves. No reason to waste their supplies when a local source could be borrowed. He'd return it once the play was over.

  A few of the others helped Bartrone into his armor, which needed to be tied along the back as tight as possible to give the illusion of muscles beneath. He reminded her of those hairnets some of the Lady's wore when they didn't want to bother dealing with bird crap, his fat bulging over the top of the tight string.

  Ciara extracted her wooden ears and began to tie them in place. The door opened and the bearded men entered, one limping while both rubbed their chins tenderly. Talkative man stood and slapped them both on the backs, "How'd it go?"

  One of the beards smiled wide, showing where he hid some of the abandoned appetizers for the party guests. The limping one reached into his pockets and extracted the apple that'd been in the roasting pig's mouth.

  "Excellent, and a good crowd? Inebriated beyond relief? Excellent, excellent," he muttered to himself and slipped on his black cloak, vanishing into the crumpling folds.

  "Break a leg," the man with the limp said, grinning to his partner as the talkative man vanished.

  Having finished with Aldrin, who looked less like a son of the house of Ostero and more a mad urchin who bathed his hair in mud, Chase took a big dab of paint and smeared it across Ciara's cheek.

  "What are you doing?" she hissed, falling back into the shelf at the unexpected touch.

  "Chancellor's orders. He said to paint you as black as the pri..."

  "The graduate student," Chance reminded his brother, "he's not a prince, he's a graduate student."

  "Right," Chase said evenly, "paint you as black as the graduate student's hair so you'd fit the part."

  Ciara bit her tongue at the absurdity of a blind man telling his subordinates to turn a black girl black and them obeying without a second thought. But, as she watched their prog
ress in the tiny mirror Pajama's kept on himself at all times, maybe it wasn't such a crazy plan after all. The paint settled in thick splotches drying and cracking, making it all the more evident she couldn't really be that color. It took hidden in plain sight to an incredibly awkward place.

  The door opened again and the talkative man entered, dragging his cloak behind him, as silent as the grave. But as soon as he crossed the threshold of the green closet, the mask slipped away. Grabbing Bartone's hand and shaking it vigorously he wished them all luck, "Have fun out there, and remember, if anyone starts throwing tomatoes, try and catch 'em. They make a great stew base."

  Steeling her nerves once more, Ciara held onto her elf ears and called to the others, "It's show time."

  "To the Empire!" rang out across the room full of men in very black, very familiar armor.

  The Historians all crowded around the servants' door, cracked open an inch, trying to get a sense for their coming audience. Some admired the lavish trappings draped around the Ladies necks, others the age of the marble statuary that had been cracked and tossed to the side. Aldrin caught one glimpse of the armor, three rings stamped upon the chest plate and fell back from the crowd, crashing into a prep table piled high with half licked dishes. He tried to crawl under it, but his ears kept catching on the edge.

  Terror replaced what stage fright Aldrin cultivated. At least when people talked about dying on stage they weren't literal. Usually. Now he had to walk in front of his sworn enemies and pretend to be some evil elf who something something and then another thing...his lines drained from a panicking mind.

  Visions of what all the Emperor's men would do to him wouldn't even take hold. All that burned a vast swath across his mind was that scream as he tumbled down the stairs after the Dark Knight saved and shoved his life. In his mind it was one of the Ladies crowded around the head table, screaming at her gown drenched in blood as his father's head rolled into her lap.