“What day is it?” Kestrel asked.
“It’s still the day after the battle at the palace. You just killed the Viathins right before dawn this morning,” Picco told him. “And now you seem to be healing pretty well,” she touched his chest, where a faint line was the only remnant of one of his wounds.
“And Wren’s looking better too; she got pretty beat up in the battle,” Picco added.
“A good skirmish like that just makes me feel alive,” Wren said. “A little damage is an easy price to pay, especially when this spring can put us right back in fighting form.
“If you think you’re willing to make your hero’s return, we should head back to Graylee now,” Wren added.
Kestrel gently disengaged from Picco, then went over and nudged the imps. He recognized Odare and Killcen, but didn’t recognize the other five.
“Kestrel living friend!” Odare said happily as she awoke and looked up to see Kestrel above her. “We are most glad to see you looking healthy; you were a bloody mess when we brought you here. I am even happier to see you than I was to see the spring waters!” the imp said brightly, and Kestrel shared a grin with her.
The other imps arose, and Killcen led a trio over to Wren. “Warrior lady leader, are you ready to return?” he asked.
“We will have to take you back in two trips,” Odare told Kestrel and Picco.
“If we stand together, could you take us as one?” Kestrel asked.
He watched Wren’s small group disappear. “We can, if your lady friend will hold tightly to you,” Odare agreed.
Kestrel picked up his weapons and boots, as Picco came and wrapped her arms around him, holding to him tightly. “I feel so safe when you’re around Kestrel; you’ve saved my life so many times,” she said as she rested her head on his chest, wearing only his shirt, which he was thankful to see extended down to almost her knees, providing some appearance of modesty.
They arrived back in a room in the palace, one where Kestrel was heartened to see several of his friends gathered. Philip and Yulia sat close to one another at a table, their heads close together as they discussed something. Not far away, he saw Creata standing beside the newly arrived Wren, speaking to her with great animation, and Kestrel noted the smile upon her face as she listened to the sociable young nobleman.
Across the room, among several military leaders, Ferris was bent over a map, listening to Graylee rebels describe some tactical matter. Even Mills, the trainer from the armory where Kestrel had practiced arms so many times, was in the room, and raised a hand in salute to Kestrel as their eyes met. And above the whole mass, several imps and sprites gently floated.
“Would you take me to find clothes somewhere, Kestrel?” Picco asked, bringing his attention back to the girl who he realized he was still holding in his arms.
He looked down at her, and saw a surprising shadow of wariness in her eyes.
For you, little mouse, I will be an escort. I will not model any clothes for you, however,” he told her with a gentle smile, hoping to relieve whatever pain she seemed to be holding in. The girl had just seen her mother killed and had been held as a prisoner, then nearly killed by the Viathins, and he didn’t doubt that she was insecure.
Her dazzling smile was a welcome reward.
“Picco!” Creata called as he saw his sister for the first time, and rushed over to embrace her, taking her away from Kestrel. The two siblings held each other tight as they spoke softly for several minutes.
“Kestrel, we’ll be having a dinner here in the palace with our leaders to discuss the situation and our next moves. You’ll be able to join us, won’t you,” Philip came over to see Kestrel.
The elf looked over at Picco momentarily. “After I take Picco to find some clothes, I’ll be back. And there’s one thing you ought to do immediately,” he lifted a skin of water from his goods and handed it to Philip. “Make everyone – everyone, everyone, everyone – take a drink of this water. It will prevent them from falling under the spell of the Viathins. We ought to make everyone in the palace take a drink from this skin, and then everyone in the city.”
“Where shall we go?” he asked Picco.
“The shops along the promenade, of course,” she answered.
And so it was that just hours after a horrific battle, Kestrel found himself escorting a partially dressed Picco along the most fashionable road in Graylee, where Picco strolled without any appearance of self-consciousness. The promenade was sadly empty and forlorn in atmosphere, but several shops were open.
“Do you have any money, Kestrel?” Picco asked as they entered a shop.
“I do,” he answered as he checked the leather purse attached to his belt. It was a miracle the bag hadn’t been sliced open during his battle, he thought. “It should be enough,” he counted out several gold coins, and gave them to the girl.
“May I help you, milady Picco?” a serving girl asked, blithely ignoring her customer’s state of dress, her eye’s briefly flickering towards Kestrel’s ears, then politely shifting away.
“I need three outfits, one of them deep blue,” Picco said. “The blue needn’t be stylish, of course.”
“Of course, milady. I’m sorry,” the girl answered. “Please come this way,” she invited as she led Picco towards a wall filled with bolts of cloth.
“I need something already prepared, if possible. I’ll be traveling immediately,” Picco said. “If you only have one outfit and the blue one, that will do.”
“Please wait here and I’ll look in the back,” the sales girl gestured towards a table and a pair of chairs, then departed and disappeared through a door in the back.
“What traveling will you be doing?” Kestrel asked as they sat down.
“I’m going to go home, back to the estate, tonight,” Picco answered.
“Tonight?” Kestrel asked.
“Mother is waiting there,” Picco told him.
“But, I thought,” Kestrel paused, trying to express his question thoughtfully. “I thought when the soldiers came,” he let the words dangle awkwardly.
“She’s dead Kestrel, I know,” Picco confirmed. “But her spirit needs peace. I have to go back and purify her spirit and bury her. It’s already been a day.
“That’s why I need the blue dress, for mourning, you know,” she told Kestrel, not realizing that he wasn’t aware of Graylee culture’s customary use of blue to mourn the dead.
“Who’s taking you?” Kestrel asked.
“No one. I’m going on my own. You all are too busy – Creata’s got to help Philip take care of the city, and there’s a war they need you to fight,” Picco said. “And of course Margo is up north still.”
“Picco, you can’t go out on your own,” Kestrel protested. He reached over and took her hand in his, just as the sales girl appeared, with a blue dress draped over her arms.
“We have this available,” she told Picco. “Would you like to try it on?”
Picco gently removed her hand from Kestrel, stepped behind an unobtrusive screen where she looked over the top of the screen at Kestrel as she removed his shirt, the shrugged her way into the dress. “How does it look?” she asked both Kestrel and the sales girl as she stepped out.
“It needs some adjustments,” the girl began politely.
“There’s no time. I’ll take it. Do you have another gown, or perhaps an outfit suitable for travel?” Picco asked as she began to step behind the screen again, lifting the dress over her head again perhaps a split second too early, before she was adequately blocked from view, and making Kestrel blush while the sales girl left again, though he knew he had seen Picco undressed at the spring. He momentarily pondered the oddity of his altered perception of propriety, then dismissed the thought from his mind as too troublesome.
“Can you wait just a little while? Don’t you want to wait for Creata to be able to go with you?” Kestrel asked as soon as the sales girl was gone.
“Creata will be with me in spirit, but he’s going to be too busy
here, too tied down to go do what must be done for mother,” Picco answered.
“Will you wait long enough to see if I can go with you?” Kestrel asked, worried. He understood the powerful motive Picco felt to set her mother’s spirit at ease, but he didn’t trust there to be a safe road for a single girl, a pretty single girl, to travel in the war-troubled land.
“Kestrel, that’s sweet of you,” Picco smiled a sad smile at him as the sales lady arrived with a dark tan pair of pants and a jacket that matched. “But they need you here – you’re the heroic elf who has godlike powers.
“You’re the last person Philip can afford to lose right now; he needs you. I know the way; I’ll be alright on my own,” Picco spoke, her last words muffled as she pulled Kestrel’s shirt over her head again, then pulled the jacket over the top of that.
“Picco, please, just give me time to make sure I can go with you,” Kestrel repeated. “We’ll go back to the palace and I’ll talk to Philip and let him know of your plans. Maybe Creata will want to come with you after all,” Kestrel was pleading with the girl now.
“Kestrel, I know what we can do. If you’re that determined to come along, then you go see Philip right now at the palace. I’ll stay here and finish my shopping in the meantime. Then you can come back here, and we’ll leave from here to go to the estate,” Picco proposed. “That way we won’t waste any time.”
“Okay,” Kestrel agreed, standing up. “Promise you won’t go without me.”
“I promise I will not leave here to go to mother’s estate,” Picco agreed.
“I’ll hold you to that!” Kestrel smiled at the girl, relieved by her acquiescence. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he pledged, then left the shop and started jogging through the streets of Graylee on his way back to the palace.
“Stillwater, Stillwater, Stillwater,” he called as he moved past the few other people out and about, drawing startled glances at his elven ears and purple eyes.
“Lord Kestrel,” the imp replied as he appeared.
“Kestrel friend subject-of-strange stories,” Dewberry also arrived, “what have you been doing that has stirred such emotion among our people?
“Some of them say you are a god now, but I tell them ‘no, he is not a god, for I have rejected his frequent advances, and I would not be able to reject a god,’” his sprite friend told Kestrel, yet behind the jesting he sensed some real anxiety, a desire to understand something inexplicable.
“It is true that you have missed the opportunity to join the pantheon of those who enjoyed the ravishment of a demigod,” Kestrel laughed gently, reaching a hand up to hold Dewberry’s hand as she floated above him. He pulled her down to his eye level as they talked. “Now that I am a divinity I must be above the simple carnal lust that I feel for you.
“Though it will be hard, so hard, you temptress, you,” he grinned, then turned suddenly as he heard a shriek. It turned out to be a young boy, astonished at the sight of an elf, an imp, and a sprite hurrying through the city. A young mother, or perhaps a nanny, seized the boy’s hand and led him hurriedly away.
Kestrel and Stillwater grinned at one another.
“So tell me truly, Kestrel friend, what has caused all this talk?” Dewberry asked in an unusually mature-sounding tone.
And so Kestrel told her, as best he understood.
“So now you have command of the same powers as the gods?” Dewberry asked in awe when the recitation ended.
“Well, the truth is that I don’t have command. I don’t know how to command the power. Twice the power has been exercised, but it was not through a conscious effort or control on my part,” he admitted. “It is something that I think I will need time to explore.”
“Perhaps we could name him as the god of the imps,” Stillwater said gaily. “What do you think, my queen? The elves and humans and gnome have gods of their own – why shouldn’t we? He could be the god of the imps, and you could furnish a temple to him.”
“I do not believe that it would prudent for our people to choose such a god as this,” Dewberry replied as they reached the vicinity of the palace. “He would of course behave so favorably towards me that the rest of his flock would suffer.”
The unusual trio was admitted through the rubble of the palace gate without question, and Kestrel was directed to where Philip was holding a council, laying out the plans for his forces’ next step, after having so unexpectedly beaten Namber’s forces.
The course through the palace grounds was tricky, and it wasn’t until he arrived at the meeting house that Kestrel stopped, startled to discover where he was – at the house that Moorin, the false Moorin, had previously occupied, the building where he had hidden in the closet, and been tricked into believing that he was aiding a kidnapped elven beauty
After a moment’s hesitation, he entered the house, and found that he had walked into the briefing.
“Welcome Kestrel!” Creata spoke loudly as all eyes stared at him. “Thank the stones you’re back – Philip wasn’t going to let us eat dinner until you returned!”
Wren laughed easily as she sat on the arm of Creata’s chair Kestrel noticed, and the others in the room laughed as well.
“I came to find out what the situation is,” Kestrel began.
“Where is Picco?” Creata asked.
Kestrel walked over to him. “She is insistent on returning to the estate and putting your mother’s spirit at peace, immediately,” he informed the brother. “I told her I would go with her to make sure she got there safely.”
“Mother’s spirit is already at peace,” Creata said. “She was the gentlest woman I ever knew. She has already made her farewells to this world and moved on. She is going back to find peace for her own soul. But I know that Picco will find some peace within her own soul if she makes the trip.”
“Kestrel, we could stand to have you remain here in the city for a while,” one of the rebels spoke up, a man Kestrel didn’t recognize.
“Where is Namber?” Kestrel asked.
“He led his forces back to the ship they arrived on, and they sailed out of port,” another rebel said. “We don’t know where. We would find comfort knowing that you are here to fight with us if they try to renew the battle.”
“Let Kestrel go,” Philip said gently, sitting in a chair with Yulia by his side, and Ferris next to her. “He is going because he is a friend to Picco, and there is nothing Kestrel does better than be a friend. He’ll only need three days to get to the estate, and three days to get back, plus whatever time he spends down there.”
“It will take no time at all to return, thanks to the imps,” Kestrel corrected.
“Thank you Philip; I’m glad you understand,” he added.
“I think we will be safe here. Now that the city knows Namber has been beaten, the spirits of the city are rising rapidly,” the new prince said. “We will continue to administer the water you gave to us.
“Do you know that the bag always has more water in it, no matter how much other people drink?” he asked Kestrel in amazement.
“I know, and I’m glad you’ve found out. Keep using it, keeping making people drink from it until every single person in the city has had some,” Kestrel agreed.
“You can send an imp to find me if there’s an emergency,” he added, looking at Odare and Canyon, who floated above Wren. “Not that there’s much I could do in an emergency that you all couldn’t do yourselves.”
“I have a suggestion, and a request, a favor,” Kestrel looked directly at Philip.
“You have only to ask. No favor is too great after all that you have done for our people,” Philip said, while Yulia smiled at Kestrel.
“Send men, only men who have drank the water from the skin, to the residence of Poma, and kill all the Viathins you find there,” Kestrel urged as his suggestion.
“That is a simple, and prudent, piece of advice,” Philip said. “What favor can we do for you?”
“Free the elves. If there are any elves in the city held as
slaves, set them free, and let the imps carry them back to the Eastern Forest. I ask this as a personal favor,” he said as there was a ripple of motion and shushed discussions around the crowded room.
“In Hydrotaz we have agreed to establish an embassy and exchange ambassadors with the elves,” Yulia spoke up. “It is time that we acknowledge the value the elves bring as friends while the humans of Uniontown have proven to be enemies.”
Philip looked over at Yulia. “It will be done. We will set free every elf we find in the city, and offer to allow them to return to the Eastern Forest if they so desire.”
The room stirred again, and amidst the murmurs, Kestrel thought he detected approval.
“Thank you, my prince,” he said to Philip, and gave a bow of his head. “I’ll be going now, before it grows completely dark, so that I may collect Picco and we can be on our way.”
“Safe travels Kestrel,” Philip said. “We’ll look forward to seeing you return soon.”
And with a round of farewells, Kestrel was out of the house and on his way back to find Picco.
“So this Picco girl is the one you’ve settled on to be your latest lover to help soften the loss you feel because I am not yours?” Dewberry asked as they jogged through the reddening streets of the city, the setting sun behind them.
“Picco is not my lover,” Kestrel replied instantly.
“But she could be,” Stillwater spoke up.
Kestrel blushed. “Perhaps, but for now I am just offering her friendship and protection. Her heart is heavy, and she needs a friend.” He answered, then reflected silently. Picco was a very good friend, with a warm heart and a lively personality. She was beautiful, and a member of a noble family. And there was a spark between the two of them, he knew, something that could smolder and then burst into full flame under the right circumstances.
But she was Margo’s friend, and that somehow seemed to put her beyond the boundary of his pursuit. And, in his most lucid moments, he reminded himself that he was still an elf in the eyes of Graylee society, and a match between the daughter of such a patrician family and an elf would be beyond the pale. His current momentary status as a hero in Graylee was sure to fade over time, as it had in Estone, but his identity as an elf would never cease.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 04 - A Foreign Heart Page 11