“You don’t have to use a title when it’s just the two of us, Kestrel. Great goddess, you saved my life. Just call me Ripken,” the man said. “So why aren’t you sure?”
“I thought I was on a mission,” Kestrel paused considering what to tell the nobleman. His story would sound unbelievable he knew, but it was all real. And Ripken had already experienced the imps and the spring, so Kestrel would have some credibility.
“You remember the healing spring?” Kestrel asked.
“How could I forget it?” Ripken said dryly.
“The first time I went to the spring, I went because Kere sent me,” Kestrel said, watching Ripken’s eyebrows rise. “And she told me there was a girl, a mixed race girl, like me, who I would have to rescue, and I thought she might be from the Northern Forest. So,” Kestrel decided to skip everything else for the present story, “I was on my way here, but along the way I rescued a girl, and now I don’t know if I still need to come here to make a rescue or not. This journey may be purposeless, but I decided to come anyway, just to be sure.”
“Lord Ripken,” a man’s voice called, “it’s so good to see you back, right on time. I trust your journey was smooth?”
A man walked up to them, intercepting them from a crosswalk, and the man pressed palms with Ripken, then looked at Kestrel.
“Targus, this is Kestrel. Kestrel, this is Targus, my right hand man,” Ripken made introductions.
“I owe Kestrel a huge favor, and I’ve invited him to stay at the palace as my guest,” Ripken explained to Targus. “Would you take him to the sunrise tower, and procure a suite of rooms for him?
Make sure he has everything he needs, a set of clothes for court, etc., and arrange for him to join us for dinner tonight,” Ripken instructed. “I need to go make a few arrangements before we meet.”
“Certainly, my lord,” Targus replied. “Follow me please,” he said to Kestrel.
“See you tonight,” Ripken called as they parted ways.
“Do you have a title?” Targus asked Kestrel.
“Yes,” Kestrel answered reluctantly, embarrassed by the thought that he might have to try to match titles with the nobility and royalty of the Northern Forest, “I’m the Warden of the Marches,” he said.
Targus was looking at him silently, and Kestrel realized that his accent had struck again. He repeated his title slowly. “I come from the Eastern Forest,” he added.
“How extraordinary,” Targus seemed to understand. “Have you ever visited before?”
“Other lands, but not here, not Kirevee,” Kestrel answered.
“You’re in for a treat, Lord Kestrel,” Targus said enthusiastically. “You’ll have a great time in the tower, the dinner tonight will be smashing, and then there are the contests tomorrow for the day of celebration! Your timing is impeccable.
“So what favor did you do for my lord?” Targus asked as they reached the entrance to one of the towers. The stalk of the building was of considerable girth, as big around as Creata’s town house in Graylee, Kestrel thought to himself.
“We were running together in the forest last night with a group of other elves, and we were attacked by some robbers,” Kestrel answered. “Fortunately we fought our way free and we all escaped safely.” He was being modest again; he didn’t want to have to tell stories that most elves weren’t going to believe.
They stopped at a desk, Where Targus asked for a suite for a guest. “No, not that one,” he rejected the first offering as Kestrel watched. “Give us a large one, on the east side, so he can see the sun rise.”
The servant behind the counter gave Targus a key, and Targus motioned to Kestrel to follow. They circled around behind a wall behind the servant’s desk, and Kestrel heard a continual creaking noise, and then he saw the strangest thing he had ever seen in a building: a very wide half tube extended up to the ceiling above, and down into the floor below. The Tube was about a yard wide, and a continuous rope netting was rising from the floor and climbing up to disappear into the hole in the ceiling. Every few seconds a wooden platter would appear, tied into the netting.
There were four such tubes set into the wall. Two were rising and two were falling.
“Never seen anything like this before, have you?” Targus grinned. “It’s something special we use for the towers, so people can ride up and down without having to climb a thousand steps. Here, watch,” he said.
Targus stepped over to an upward moving tube, and watched it. As soon as a wooden platter appeared, he reached out, grabbed hold of the rope netting, and stepped onto the platter.
“Come on!” he exclaimed to Kestrel as he rose, and disappeared out of sight.
Kestrel stood in astonishment, looking upward, boggled by the notion of riding such a contraption upward.
“Is this your first time?” a voice asked behind him, and he turned to see a girl about his own age standing behind him.
“Here, come with me,” she took command of the situation. She grabbed Kestrel’s hand and dragged him to the other upward tube. With their hands together, she watched, then reached out and grasped the netting, locking one of Kestrel’s hands into the woven ropes with her own.
“Now step on,” she commanded, as the wooden platter appeared, and she stepped on.
The netting was pulling Kestrel upward, and he instinctively lifted his foot and placed it next to hers, then felt himself being lifted off the ground.
“Get all the way on now, quickly,” the girl urged him, grabbing him to pull him into a cozy hug against herself as they rose and passed through the hole in the ceiling.
“How far do you go?” she asked him, her face just inches from his.
He studied her closely in the dim light. Each floor they passed through had a single lantern burning, and the shadows fell and rose along her face as they passed each new level. Her face was interesting. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was attractive, in a way that spoke of strength and character. She had dark eyes, dark eyebrows, and a widows peak that was prominent.
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask,” he replied.
“What did you say?” the girl asked.
“Kestrel! Lord Kestrel! Here’s your floor!” Targus was calling and grabbed at Kestrel pulling him unexpectedly away from the girl, who stared at him as she disappeared through the ceiling.
“Well, what do you think of that?” Targus asked.
“It’s incredible! I’ve never seen anything like it! How does it work?” Kestrel asked.
“Windmills,” Targus answered as he started walking down the hallway. “They have them up on the roof, and the wind seems to blow almost all the time up that high.
“And when it doesn’t, they can take horses down into a chamber beneath the tower and make the lifts work, though they run much slower with the horses,” he explained. He stopped at a door and used the key to unlock it.
The hall way they left was dim, and the room they entered was dark. Kestrel dropped all his weapons and packs on the floor by the door, while Targus used a flint on the table to light a candle that lay there.
“”Here are your rooms,” he explained, and walked through the entry hall to a sitting room with several chairs, and a wide window with a doorway built in. “Here is your balcony,” he motioned towards the door. “Over there is your bedroom and bath,” he pointed, “and over here,” he motioned to the other door, “is your guest room, if someone like your friend from the lift wants to spend the night.”
“Do you have anything,” Targus hesitated, “formal to wear to the dinner tonight?”
“These are the best clothes I have,” Kestrel replied, motioning to the clothes he wore, dirty and scuffed and torn from weeks of mountain travel and roadway battles.
“I’ll have a set of robes delivered. They’ll be a little old-fashioned, but we don’t have time to measure you and tailor the pieces, and besides, the robes will be back in fashion in another year or two anyway,” Targus seemed to think out loud.
“You go clean yourse
lf up. The robes will be delivered in an hour, and you should be down in the lobby in two hours; I’ll send someone to pick you up and deliver you to the banquet tonight, and he’ll meet you in the lobby. I must go now, ta,” Targus laid the room key down on the table by the door where the candle and flint had laid, and then was gone.
The man seemed to take most of the energy out of the room with him when he left, and Kestrel breathed a sigh of relief. He felt a desperate need to relax, to take a deep breath and exhale. He opened the door to the balcony and walked out to stand on a long, narrow shelf with a railing, from which he had an extraordinary view out over the eastern portion of the city, which was a maze of twinkling lights, and then the countryside beyond, a vast dark gulf that stretched to where it seamlessly blended with the sky. Stars were present in the emptiness that stretched from the horizon all the way overhead, and now, as the evening passed, the comet was absent, giving Kestrel relief from questions about whether it truly was a harbinger of evil events to come.
Kestrel went back into the room and went into the bathroom, where he was happy to see a large bathtub. He wondered momentarily if the windmills were responsible for lifting the water into the tower, then decided it didn’t matter, as he turned on the water and pulled off his boots, to relax and contemplate.
He’d dealt with humans in the north and in the south; he’d dealt with gnomes and imps and sprites, with Albununs and Parstoles even. Yet dealing with members of his own elven race here in the northern forest felt as though it were contact with another race as completely foreign as any of the others.
He sank into the tub and closed his eyes to soak and relax until he heard a sound out in the suite. Sure that it was the delivery of his robe for the evening banquet, Kestrel began to scrub himself clean, then hopped out of the tub. He wasn’t sure what robes would consist of in Kirevee; he strode out and found a pile of green material on the table. As he lifted and shook the material out, he grew worried that he had a problem. There was nothing about the material that made him think any one piece was supposed to be worn any one way.
For the next half hour Kestrel tried arranging the cloth in different ways, and finally settled on one that seemed to offer the most coverage with the smoothest appearance, which he hoped was the proper way to judge the wearing of robes. He deliberated on whether to wear weapons, but was at a loss to know the etiquette of banquets in the Northern Forest, so he compromised be wearing only his knife. Even if it were his only weapon, he would still have a special advantage if he needed it with Lucretia, he consoled himself.
Next he went down the hall to the lifts, and watched the downward lift for several seconds, trying to learn the timing of the platforms. As he looked up at the top of the lift tube on his floor, he watched a pair of boots descend, attached to legs, covered by a skirt that turned out to be the same forward elf maid who had shown him how to ride the platform upward. She smiled at him as she descended, then stepped off gracefully and stood next to him.
“Shall we have another lesson?” she practically purred the question, and Kestrel felt almost fearful, as though he was a mouse being toyed with by a cat.
“Here,” she grabbed his hand again, watched the descending netting, then grabbed at the weave with their joined hands, and stepped forward, placing her foot upon the platform while it was still above her knee level, and stepping aboard, then she gave Kestrel a hearty tug that brought him on next to her, as she circled her arm around his waist.
“You’re not pure elf are you?” she asked. “Both a foreigner and a mixed race – so very alluring,” she told him. “Not to mention a highly regarded guest of the palace, staying in a suite on the nicest floor in the building.”
Kestrel suddenly thought about the many floors, and realized he had no idea of which was his, or how to tell it from the others. “What floor am I on?” he asked.
“Eleven, a very lucky number,” the girl told him. “The numbers are painted on the inside of the tubes.”
He looked to the side and saw the number six pass by.
“Are you going to the banquet?” the girl asked.
“I am,” he paused awkwardly. “Are you going to the banquet too?”
“Yes I am,” she answered as they reached the ground floor. She gave him a gentle shove to force him off the platform, then jumped off after him.
“Do you know your way?” she asked, still holding his hand.
Kestrel felt trapped. The girl was frighteningly forward, and he was at a loss for how to politely proceed. He didn’t want to immediately upset the only person he’d met in the palace grounds. “I’m supposed to wait for a guide,” he answered.
“Very good,” she said as she released his hand. “I’ll see you there. If we don’t meet, ask around for Lucretia, and we’ll get together.”
Kestrel grinned at last. “Is your name Lucretia?” he asked.
“Do you think I’d tell you to ask for someone else?” she asked with a momentary flash of asperity. “Yes it is.”
“My knife is named Lucretia,” he told her with a smile.
“How appropriate. I can be sharp and cutting too, as you may find out,” the girl told him, then left the lobby and disappeared into the darkness outside the tower.
Kestrel let out a deep breath as she disappeared, and he heard a muffled laugh behind him. He turned to see the servant who waited at the lobby desk. “I try to avoid eye contact with that one,” he told Kestrel with a grin, “and if I see her coming in advance, sometimes I duck down to hide.”
Kestrel grinned in sympathy, then turned at the sound of someone at the door.
In through the door came a very short, young elf. The boy appeared to be in his early teen years at best. He had a wide grin as he looked at Kestrel. “Whoa! I’ve never seen anyone wear a robe like that before! Is that the style where you come from?
“I’m Tewks; Targus sent me to take you to the banquet,” the boy seemed to have no lack of personality, Kestrel could tell.
“I’ve never worn a robe before. I don’t know how it’s supposed to look,” Kestrel told him.
The boy looked at him, with his head slightly cocked. “They told me you had an accent; I had no idea though. What did you say?” he asked in a weary tone.
Kestrel snorted. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, “how to wear this.”
“Here, let me adjust it,” the boy walked up to Kestrel and pulled out the pins on the shoulders without asking permission. The garment immediately dropped, sliding down to Kestrel’s waist.
“Well hello, what do we have here?” the boy asked, looking at his ship tattoo and handprint scar.
“Just put the robe on,” Kestrel snapped, caught unprepared for the revelation.
“The idea with the robe is to show some skin,” the boy explained. “You only drape it over one shoulder, and flash a little chest on the other side. It wouldn’t matter with most men which side they flashed, but you’ve got some variety to offer. Which side do you want to show – the boat or the hand?” he asked.
“I’ll show the boat,” Kestrel answered. Trying to explain the hand print of a goddess would be too much like boasting, and he didn’t want to have to struggle through any long explanations, not at a time when he had so much trouble being understood.
Tewks immediately pulled the cloth up over his left shoulder and pinned it in place, then made other adjustments. He stopped after a minute of fussing and stepped back to apprise his work.
“It looks good on you. With that tattoo it really makes the point that the robe is the right thing to wear. I think you’re wrong to not show off the girl’s hand print – that’s going to be an invitation to have every drunk woman want to match her hand to the print, and you shouldn’t be shy about that kind of opportunity to strike up conversation – especially those kinds, you know what I mean?” the boy was clearly much younger than Kestrel, but he was just as clearly much more worldly.
“How long have you lived in the palace?” Kestrel asked the question in
his new, careful, slow speaking manner.
“I was born and raised here,” Tewks answered matter-of-factly. “My mother is a maid and my father works in the stables. I’ve been working at the court since I was four,” he proudly boasted.
“I believe it,” Kestrel muttered, as he tugged at the low draping of his robe, where it felt like his flesh was exposed nearly down to his hip.
“Leave it be!” Tewks’s hand flashed out and lightly slapped Kestrel’s away. “Now, let’s get going. And you’ll need to leave the knife behind; no weapons are permitted in the banquet, not when the entire royal family is going to be there.”
Kestrel stood still, considering the matter of his knife. He wanted a weapon. He had memories of the court reception in Estone, when he had needed weapons to fight for his life. There was a solution, he decided. “Go on,” he told Tewks, “I’ll leave it outside the banquet.”
With a shrug the boy exited the lobby, and Kestrel followed him out into the dark palace grounds. They each used their elven vision to see the paths through the garden grounds, and Tewks led Kestrel to a nearby hall, a tall building lit with extravagant amounts of light. The building had columns shaped like tree trunks, and guards at the doors.
Kestrel stopped at a bed of flowering shrubs, and stuck Lucretia deep inside the limbs of the bush, then followed behind Tewks. “A guest of Lord Ripken,” Tewks announced Kestrel to the guards, who turned to an attendant with a sheaf of papers in his hand.
“Lord Kestrel, of the Eastern Forest?” the attendant asked.
Kestrel nodded.
“This way please,” the attendant pointed Kestrel to an attractive young elf maiden in a demure white gown, who led him and Tewks through a narrow interior hall and up a set of stairs to a doorway. “Wait until they call your name,” she whispered to Kestrel, then disappeared back down the steps.
Kestrel looked at Tewks in confusion, but the boy waved his hand dismissively.
“His lordship, Kestrel, Warden of the Marches, of the Eastern Forest,” a loud male voice ponderously boomed out an introduction to Kestrel, catching him by surprise. Tewks reached past him to press the door open, then shoved Kestrel out into the bright space beyond. “Be dignified, don’t wave!” Tewks hissed, as Kestrel awkwardly moved through the doorway.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 04 - A Foreign Heart Page 21