A hush fell over the assembled mall elves. Arthur touched his right fist to his chest and inclined his head in a regal salute. “My heart rejoices to see you well again, Keeper. I thank you for your timely intervention. I very much regret you were injured for my sake.”
His words carried the weight of ritual. Diana felt her cheeks begin to heat and sternly told herself to get a grip. Keepers didn’t do liege lord stuff—totally independent contractors. She didn’t do liege lord stuff. The blood rising into her cheeks ignored her. Nothing to do but blame the color on the fire and make the best of things. “Hey, no big.” Her shrug was as nonchalant as the circumstances and the lingering effects of her headache allowed. “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”
“Then I thank you for your willingness to do the job.” His gesture included Claire in his gratitude. “We all thank you.”
On cue, the elves began to whoop, then one of them flipped on a boom box and the first track off The Melvin’s Hostile Ambient Takeover ripped through the remaining silent spaces.
“Oh, yeah, that’s appealing. If they really wanted to thank us, they could find something that sounded like music,” Claire muttered.
Diana snorted. “Too old to appreciate the good stuff?”
“I’ll let you know when I hear some.”
“People who only listen to the CBC have no grounds for criticism.”
“I’m sure you’re both hungry,” Arthur interjected smoothly, his voice sliding through the ambient noise. One hand indicated the bucket of chicken. “I’d be honored if you’d join me.”
“We’d be pleased to eat with you,” Claire said while Diana swallowed an inconvenient mouthful of saliva cased by the rising scent of eleven different herbs and spices deep fried to an extra crispy goodness. “But as we mentioned before, we can only eat the food we brought with us.”
“I understand.” He sank down into his chair—a gold brocade wingback; the legs having very likely gone to fuel an earlier fire—and waved the two Keepers into the space on his right, empty but for two cushions, their packs, and a saucer.
“Sam couldn’t wait.” Claire kicked off her sandals, crossed her ankles, and descended gracefully. “I fed him while you were out.”
Diana dropped and sprawled, one hand digging in her pack for food before her butt hit the cushion. “I figured. I also figured a full stomach was the only thing keeping his fuzzy head out of the chicken.”
“It’s not actually chicken.” Both Keepers turned to stare at the cat. Backlit by the fire, his fur looked more red than orange. “I’m not even sure it’s some kind of bird.”
As one, the Keepers turned to stare at Arthur who shrugged and pulled out a wing that was just a little too large and folded one too many times. “It tastes like chicken.”
“What doesn’t?” Diana muttered, biting into her tuna salad sandwich. Chewed. Swallowed. Scraped her tongue against her teeth. “Oops. My bad.”
Claire flicked a coral-colored fingernail through her chicken-flavored carrot sticks and sighed. “Try to be more careful.” She offered one to Sam who turned up his nose at it.
“I don’t care what it tastes like,” he sneered, “it’s still a carrot.”
On the other side of the fire, bodies leaped and twirled, flames burnishing hair, and skin, and jewelry. The more elfin the dancer, the wilder the dance although even Jo, whose ears had barely begun to point, moved with both grace and abandon to the pounding music. It wasn’t the kind of dancing Diana was used to, that was for sure.
“Your face wears an interesting expression. What are you thinking?”
Her attention drawn back across the fire, Diana glanced up to find both Arthur and Kris watching her. The guard captain had settled a little forward of the Immortal King’s left hand in order to see around the edge of his chair. “Interesting?” she asked, trying to figure it out from the inside. There were, after all, a limited number of ways two eyes, a nose, and a mouth could combine.
“Speculative.”
“Okay.” It seemed to have something to do with eyebrows. “I was just thinking how much these guys would have livened up one of my high school dances. You know, the kind where the DJ’s playing a dance mix from when he was in school so the music’s all at least three years old and almost no one’s dancing and the jocks stand with the jocks and the geeks stand with the geeks and someone always shows up drunk and pukes in the hall and half the kids who think they’re taking ecstasy are really taking baby aspirin and actually…” She frowned. “…so are the other half because that’s why the ’rents force me to attend these things in the first place and the one guy who’s out on the dance floor grooving to the beat is being made fun of by the other guys. The air is heavy with angst and hormones and there’s enough hair spray in the girl’s can to open a new hole in the ozone layer.”
“It sounds…”
“Like major suckage,” Kris supplied when Arthur seemed stuck for a word.
He nodded. “Indeed. And you think my people could help?”
Diana took another look. Feet planted, Will undulated hips and arms and scarlet braid in time to the music. “They sure couldn’t hurt.”
“But in your world, my people would have no reason to dance.”
Street kids, CSA kids…
“Sure they would.” She answered Arthur, but her eyes locked on Kris. “Dance to escape. Dance to forget. Dance to lose yourself in the way your body works; it’s the one thing in your life a bunch of overworked bureaucrats can’t control.”
Kris made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sigh. Not exactly agreeing but not dismissing the observation out of hand.
Arthur glanced from one to the other and then back at the dancers, nodding thoughtfully. “Here, they dance to celebrate
