The clothes that had been brought were a little too loose, a fact which Burks cleverly hid by making them even looser, rather than trying to tighten anything. Tor got a nod at least, and if it wasn’t approving as to his looks, at least the servant didn’t tell him to play sick and not go to the dinner at all.
In fact the man kind of pushed him out of the little room a few moments after the last lace was tied, and everything double checked rapidly. While he’d been busy in the kitchen, people had been arriving and mingling it seemed. Well, he’d feel bad about missing all that, but… no.
He just couldn’t be bothered to.
Tor had to turn the shield off to eat, but made sure that he had a poison detector to hand, a real one that wouldn’t make anything blow up. He had that one too, and his flight gear on him ready to go if he needed it. All of this Tor kept hidden, wearing it all on cords around his neck.
This time he found himself only a little ways down the table from the King and Queen, Rolph directly across from him and Connie to his right. Next to him sat Ambassador Mutta, who smiled hugely when she saw him sit down next to her.
“Aha! I knew you must be someone important! Are you related to the King and Queen then? Or an official of some sort? Or… are you really the court jester? That’s an important position isn’t it? Making people laugh is one of the great gifts a being can have after all.” It was said so sweetly and with such innocence that Connie had to cover a laugh. Not a royal twitter or polite covering of a fake laugh, but a genuine one that caught the attention of people down the table a good ways.
“Oh! Or are you her lover? I know that the royalty here engages in a system of much looser relationships than what I’m used to, it was in my briefing packet.”
That got everyone’s attention indeed, and not in a good way. The King glared at the Ambassador, but Rolph snickered a little.
Tor just answered honestly.
“No, nothing nearly so fun or interesting. I just got kind of left off some lists, so their sitting me up here so everyone can see that I’m not out of favor or something like that. As for the rest, yeah, their rules are different than what I grew up with too. Don’t let it worry you too much though, you aren’t obligated to actually have sex with anyone if you don’t want to, though once they find out you’re a single woman, I don’t doubt that the offers will come. You’re far too exotic to ignore. Really, we should probably get the Queen to handle all the proposals for you, just so you don’t end up overwhelmed with men trying to marry you or something. Don’t you think Connie?” He added the last in a whisper.
The Queen smiled and nodded, then spoke in full tone so that the entire top of the table could hear.
“Indeed. Any man seeking Ambassador Mutta’s hand in marriage should come to me directly, as proxy for her own mother, at least while she’s in our kingdom. Don’t worry ambassador, I won’t agree to anything without your say so. This will just keep the wolves off you for a few days.”
Tor hoped they weren’t being too obvious, but he’d had such a hard time figuring out her gender that saying it out like that might help the word get around, stopping some embarrassing suggestions. Rolph blushed brightly and looked down at his plate. So he got it at least.
The first course was a small bowl of nearly clear broth. Almost as one, about half the table checked the food for poison using detectors, so Tor did too, then he waved his over the ambassador’s bowl, which was also fine.
Then he coached her not to eat until after he did. He leaned into her slightly, not touching her at all, but just close enough so that his words weren’t shouted to the whole table.
“Checking for poison, then it kind of goes down the table, we each take a single bite, with the people most likely to be poisoned at the far end. I don’t get how it’s supposed to work myself, hence the poison detectors.”
She pointed at the copper rectangle sitting next to his knife on the right hand side.
“Do they work? The Queen said you were poisoned once?”
He nodded.
“Both. I just forgot to use mine, which was insanely stupid of me. I was alone and felt comfortable, and well, where I was raised no one ever does anything like that. Very rural. Near the middle of a forest actually.”
That led to talk about her country, Afrak, which like Noram was the entire continent.
“I’m not actually a real Ambassador. We don’t really have that position strictly speaking, but the … leader decided that it was worth investigating the floating river here. We could move water to the great desert, but the one here takes sea water, desalinates it, and moves it hundreds of miles without any perceivable extra energy cost! If we could work out something like that we could achieve our dream of recovering that land. It used to be a mighty forest, thousands of years ago. We have the workers to do the needed planting and tending to get it started, even the seeds ready, but water has been the problem for the last thousand years.”
Her hands gestured in the air expressively as she told him about the plan. It sounded good to him. Take useless land and make it green again. They could feed millions off of it, not that they needed the extra food production, their population being very stable, but it was always nice to know that you had the capacity she let him know. It made sense. Really good sense in fact.
All of this had to be learned slowly, because they were interrupted by food coming. Really, you couldn’t tell that anything had happened in the kitchens at all, the flow of good food was normal for the palace, which meant perfect. But with each course everyone stopped and first checked their food for poisons then took their first bite in turn. They were good at it, so it only took about a minute each time, almost like a choreographed dance or something.
The only problems that Tor could see was that the Afrak needed at least three, maybe four rivers like the falcon for what they wanted to do, and each of them would have to cover at least a thousand miles or more if it had to go around a mountain, which they almost certainly would. That and drainage on the way out.
“Sure, the desert will take most of the water, but if you don’t spread it out you might as well be making a lake or small sea there. An interesting project maybe, but not exactly what you’re going for I don’t think. Earth moving equipment will be needed to create irrigation and canals for that. We have some, but right now their designed for doing relatively small scale work on sewers and doing things like building foundations. That could be changed for this I think.” Tor took a bite of roast beef. He was only eating about a third of each course, which Mutta copied easily. Looking down the table he saw that Varley was doing about the same.
The idea was interesting, and certainly doable, making the rivers to get the water into place at least. He was careful not to mention any of that though, because he knew nothing about Afrak. Mutta seemed fun and colorful, but for all he knew she was the one nice person in her whole land. That could be why they chose to send her after all. Best foot forward and all that. He’d never heard of aggression with them, but what he didn’t know about world politics could fill volumes. Still, if he didn’t have anything else to do he could probably get it all ready for them in about two weeks. Call it a month and he wouldn’t even have to push very hard.
Sure, he’d promised Ellen Ward a wall, but that would take a few days at most. The gear for was sitting in his chests, which had been moved into a closet here. If he had to make it again for some reason it would take longer, but not that much. A day, no more than that. Of course he doubted that the palace staff really wanted to make off with his luggage particularly. Even the one filled with gold would be a silly to abscond with since he’d take exception to it. Now if they only took a few bags of gold out, especially from the bottom, he’d probably never miss them at all.
The hand pies went over well, he thought. The kitchen served them up topped with very chilled sweetened cream that was somehow light and frothy. It wasn’t quiet the fluff he’d had before though, but it was very good. The pies were still slightly warm even.
After the meal there was something a little different than the last time he’d been at something like this, in that the King and Queen “retired” to a sitting room near the back of the hall, a space that was cozy only by comparison to the outer room, which was simply huge. The chamber in back was identical in look, polished wood trim, all dark hard wood for the walls and fixtures. The floor was all polished stone, but nearly black in color. If he looked hard Tor could just see veins of different colors in the black expanse. Green, blue and red, all so dark they nearly vanished into the surrounding inky expanse.
What went on in the back room wasn’t lounging it seemed, but high level deals of various types. To his, and probably almost everyone else’s, surprise, Tor was requested to come with them. Rolph was too and Karina started to walk in as well as if expected, only to have the Queen send her off with a smile. Tor shrugged. He really didn’t care if the girl knew what went on. Then again, someone had to stay and represent the King out front while they did
