This voice scared me to death. My reaction did not go unnoticed when I turned my head back, looking in the direction where I felt that incorporeal voice coming into my thoughts. Henry seemed to know well what had happened.
"Do not let him disturb you... he's coming!" Henry pointed to the entrance of the hall.
Emperor Marco was coming into the parlor, wearing a more elegant version of his usual outfit. He wore cream pants with a long white coat, full of inlays and embroidery, and a crown that was a white ring around his head.
He came hand in hand with a very eye catching boy with caramel eyes and very alive and black hair that resembled fluffy clouds.
The ceremonialist announced them with a pompous bow.
"Your Majesty, the twelfth ruler of the Gionardi dynasty, the great emperor Marco and his son, the great prince Isaac."
I felt my jaw drop. The boy, if he were of the same race as me, would be at least twelve years old. However, he was being announced as the son of a Jomon, which said he should be at least ten times older than that. But Marco did not seem old enough to have a child of that age. He himself barely seemed to be twenty-three or twenty-four in comparison with my kind.
The atmosphere around the guests suddenly became tense. They all made their solemn obeisances to the emperor and his son and turned their attention to Henry. Marco, who obviously should have felt this tension, thanks to his powers, did the 'delicacy' of ignoring it.
He walked quietly among the guests, encouraging Isaac to talk and interact with everyone, nonetheless, always maintaining his egocentric posture. When he finally approached Henry and me, with a smile full of teeth and a completely regulated excitement, that is, a perfect shameless face, he said:
"You must not know MY son Isaac yet…" he said with an insistent and cruel look at Henry. I realized from his tone of voice that he should be trying to do some kind of childish teasing. The grip on Henry's hand tightened, as if he were trying to restrain himself. "Even though you lived in the palace, you spent all your time locked up feeling sorry for yourself and did not get to know him, did you?"
I still did not quite understand how the energy exchanges between the relics worked, but I knew Henry was completely furious at the time. He squeezed my hand even harder, as if expecting me to hold him. The heat radiating from him was becoming almost palpable all around us, like the wall of heat that the fire forms when it begins to heat up.
Some of the closest people backed away, others stood, apprehensive, and everyone stopped talking to watch us. I looked at Isaac, quietly standing beside his father, and he looked at Henry with curiosity and timidity. He looked as pampered as Marco, but at least he was not trying to offend us. Then Marco looked at me:
"And I see that the savage is looking good today…"
I predicted the movement before it happened, and I went ahead. Henry had insinuated himself dangerously to Marcus, and he still held out his fist, furious, but I threw myself between them and Henry was forced to stop. Keeping myself as haughty as I could get, without lowering my head, giving in my posture, or diverting his penetrating gaze, I replied to Marco, with a decorated sentence I had learned earlier.
"Thank you for the compliment, Your Majesty!" And knowing that only he and Henry would understand, since probably no one else there spoke my language in that place, I supplemented: "I'd give you one compliment too, but I know I can not lie in your presence."
Then I finally gave him a gentle bow, and turned around pulling Henry away.
I sat him down on an elegant couch and reached for a glass of wine for him. Henry practically turned it in one gulp, so I went back for more. He was still radiating a lot of heat, and he was shaking with rage. The other guests murmured with each other, and made submissive expressions whenever Marco approached.
"He will enjoy every moment of the night to torment me... I know he will", said Henry casually, following Marco with half-closed eyes, as if calculating his next move.
"Do not care about him... he's an insensitive jerk!" I commented. I still did not understand how much hatred Henry felt for Marco, but it must have been really painful.
"You should also ignore it. He's listening to our conversation now, even if it does not look like it... he does not like people expressing their negative opinions against him, even though it's the truth…"
I figured Henry was talking to Marco, not me. Henry lifted his head and fixed his gaze on the direction he was. For a moment I thought he was still staring at Marco, but his gaze was actually directed at Isaac, who was very well behaved alongside his father, almost a miniature of opulence.
"Why…" I started without knowing what or how to ask exactly what I really wanted to know "…the Boy, does he bother you too?"
"What?" Henry seemed lost with my question: "Isaac?" and looked at the boy again "No, no... no…not at all"
But Henry was looking at the boy, as if trying to recognize something. And it stayed like this for a long time, until he finally managed to calm down. When the clock struck the fourteenth hour of the day, Marco left Isaac in the hall, and went out to prepare for the New Year festival. The party would last until the fifteenth in the evening, when the sunrise finally sets the start of the new year. As even the hour and minute duration was different, the night lasted almost the amount of time that lasted an entire day in Sátie. It would be exhausting.
Marco was to spend that time on a throne by the side of the great fountain in the garden, greeting, one by one, all the representatives of all the planets and quadrants that were part of the imperial alliance that had appeared for the occasion.
"He grew up so fast, didn't he?" Cásira said to Henry, coming up beside us after a long time. I looked at her closely for the first time tonight. She was indeed a woman of breathtaking curves. She looked like a mermaid with her long wine colored dress that would look incredibly well-behaved with her long sleeves, were it not for the phenomenal neckline that descended to the navel and the crevice in her skirt displaying one of her long legs. I think I really started to feel like a little child next to her.
Henry looked at her, distracted, and asked in confusion:
"Excuse me?"
"Isaac…" she smiled, looking at the boy sitting alone in an armchair swinging his feet, which did not even touch the ground.
"Ah... yes…" Henry confirmed vaguely looking back at the boy. I did not understand why Cássira was coming to speak from Isaac to Henry. Maybe she was just looking for a subject to start a conversation.
"You should go talk to him, I'm sure he's waiting", she insisted.
"Do you think he... knows?" Henry asked without looking away from the boy.
I was getting more and more confused and felt excluded. What were they talking about?
"I think the only person in this room who does not know is Alesia", said Cásira, turning to me, as if I had let my curiosity show, "but Isaac, he certainly knows that he is your son."