anyway, all goblins look the same to you humans. It will all go off perfectly, no one will suspect a thing. Master Quidd has already obtained garments appropriate for the occasion. You will be accompanied by Egrassa. And the other six lads, as a guard of honor.”
“I’m sorry, but any child could see through your plan! I don’t look like a nobleman, I don’t look like a duke, and no matter what you say, a single question about heraldry, and the truth will be obvious! I swear by Sagot, this will be a disaster! We’d do better to risk breaking into the house! I repeat, goblin, we have absolutely no chance.”
“Not only do we have no chance, we have no choice, either,” the goblin sighed. “Or do you have some other duke in mind?”
“I do,” Eel said unexpectedly.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
“You can’t be a duke!” Kli-Kli objected after a pause. “You’re a Garrakian! And Ganet Shagor isn’t!”
“I can help with that,” Miralissa put in. “Applying a different likeness is hard, but it’s worth trying, and after all, Eel really does look more like a nobleman. What do you say, Eel?”
“I think I can play the role of a nobleman successfully, my lady,” the Garrakian said dispassionately.
I gave a sigh of relief and nodded gratefully.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Harold,” Kli-Kli said with a menacing frown. “You’ll still have to go to the reception.”
“Kli-Kli is right,” Miralissa confirmed. “You’re the only one who can sense where they are hiding the Key.”
“But Lady Miralissa, you said you could sense that the Key was in Ranneng.”
“I can tell that it is in Ranneng, but only you can point out the precise spot.”
I sighed. “During a reception, servants wait outside for their masters.”
“Yes, and that’s why you will not be a servant.” The goblin’s blue eyes glowed in triumph. I was afraid even to ask what brilliant ideas the fool had gotten into his little green head this time.
When he realized that I wasn’t going to ask who he wanted to turn me into now, Kli-Kli said: “We’ll make you a dralan.”
“Kli-Kli, all the high-society people will have steam coming out of their ears if he has a dralan with him.”
It’s no secret that those who once used to root about in the mud and now bear a noble title are not much liked by those who inherited their titles from their noble forebears.
“That will only make everything all the more amusing.” The little green fool will do anything for the sake of amusement.
“What do we have to do at the reception?” I asked, bowing to the inevitable.
“Drink sparkling wine, eat pheasants, and make intelligent conversation about the weather.”
“Not that, Kli-Kli! What do we really have to do?”
“You have to try to find out where Pargaid is hiding the Key. Don’t worry, Miralissa says that as soon as you’re close enough, you’ll feel your connection with it.”
Well, if Miralissa says so.… But I’m afraid the dark elfess is wrong this time. Why didn’t I feel the Key when we had it?
“I just have to find out where it is?”
“Yes. I don’t think you’ll be able to take it with so many people around,” the elfess said.
Well … I’d pulled off trickier jobs than that in my young days, and I’ll manage to steal this thing one way or another.
“There is one other little problem, Tresh Miralissa. Paleface could come back at any moment, and he knows what I look like. Did Lamplighter manage to find out anything about where Rolio went off to?”
“The assassin left the city in great haste along the southwestern highway. We must hope that he will not come back in time for the reception.”
“You will have to take the risk, thief.”
I wish you could take it, Milord Alistan. This is an absolutely wild adventure! If you ask me, it would be easier to take the manor house by storm.
The next day I was simply unbearable, and I made Kli-Kli regret his brilliant idea of turning me into a dralan. But Miralissa and the goblin completely disregarded my argument that a commoner who had only recently been promoted to high society didn’t need to learn all this stuff.
I never realized that being a nobleman was so complicated. Only someone with noble blood flowing in his veins could possibly keep all those absolutely stupid and unnecessary things in his head.
I learned the correct way to pick up a wineglass, bow, behave at table, pay compliments, maintain a significant silence, challenge someone to a duel, and to discuss eternal philosophical themes, horses, hunting with falcons, military parades, jousts, heraldry, and all sorts of other trash that has no place in the daily life of a self- respecting master thief. By the end of the day the excessive load of superfluous knowledge had given me a splitting headache.
Duke Shagor’s coat of arms happened to be a hedgehog on a field of purple, and the effort of trying to make sure I wouldn’t make an absolute fool of myself turned me as prickly as an entire herd of my noble lord Eel’s heraldic beasts. By the end of it all, the mere sight of Kli-Kli was enough to set me hissing and spitting like an angry tomcat, but even so he and Alistan kept hammering the knowledge into my head—it turned out that every dralan had to know all the ancestors of the lord who had granted him his noble title.
A family tree is no joke, I can tell you. Remembering who married who, when, how, what for, and how many little children they had, and then who married who, when, how, what for, and so on to infinity …
Eventually I got Eel’s new relations totally confused and I mixed up his grandaunt, the most benign Duchess de Laranden, with the second cousin of his grandnephew by his sixth half sister, who was married to the uncle of his mother’s twelfth sister via the father-grandmother-grandfather line. Kli-Kli spat in annoyance and said I was hopeless if I couldn’t remember such a simple little thing and stomped off to the kitchen, leaving Arnkh and Lamplighter, who had been splitting their sides with laughter while I suffered the torment of my training, to make fun of me.
“If I had that many relatives, I’d run away from home!” Arnkh gasped through his laughter.
“You did run away,” Mumr reminded the man from the Border Kingdom.
That set Arnkh laughing even louder, and he almost spilled a mug of beer on his chain mail as he wiped away his tears.
An hour before we had to leave I suddenly got the shakes and started walking from one corner of the inn to the other, like a garrinch in a cage. I had the feeling that we were tempting fate with all our subterfuges and all this was not going to end well. “I swear by Sagot, we’re going to run into big trouble,” I thought. “And all thanks to Kli- Kli, may the orcs catch him!”
“Marmot,” I said to the Wild Heart who was training his ling, Invincible, “did you see where the jester got to?”
“Take a look in your room; I think he was doing something in there.”
Well, of course the considerate goblin was preparing my costume for the reception. I still hadn’t seen my gala outfit. Kli-Kli had refused point-blank to show it to me, obviously out of concern for the state of my nerves. All the other characters in the masquerade had already been given their new clothes: green vestments for the Wild Hearts, with a gray hedgehog on a purple field sewn on the chest; Eel was decked out in a very expensive noble’s outfit with a tall starched collar and wide, dark brown sleeves; and Egrassa had already changed into a blue and yellow tunic embroidered with a black moon—the symbol of his house.
I found Kli-Kli frantically trying to shoo a fly away from his bowl of cherries.
He looked so ridiculous I couldn’t help asking, “Don’t you ever get tired of playing the fool?”
“That’s my job, Harold,” the goblin sighed. “If I didn’t play the fool, I’d still be at home, in Zagraba, studying to be a shaman.”
“You don’t regret it, do you?” I asked, taking a handful of cherries.
“Not really … Everything that happens is for the best. And anyway, if I wasn’t here, who would protect you?”
“Me? Are you telling me that
