The whirring engines echoed in the shaded canopy, shivered the deck, and quivered in his bare toes, peeking over new sandals cut from a luxuriantly soft, midnight blue fur. When the ottoman tassels tickled the backs of his knees, Conrad's shifting scrunch on the velour coaxed an awkward laugh from Lucien and Loren.
Loren had changed. While the capacious brown garb provided by their hosts dwarfed Conrad,
making him look like a ghostly bedouin, with sleeves so wide, he could hide a dozen scimitars in both and still have room for a laptop, Loren's robes fit her like a sleek second skin, making her look like a well-fed, recently wild animal.
Loren wore everything well. Even when Conrad had been attracted to Loren, he had envied her easy grace, good looks, and the bland charm by which she befriended others, for while it wasn't the respect his height and muscles had earned him, it wasn't grudged, but freely given. And even while she had been god knows where, and he had been reliably here, not only knocking Vemulus down but sitting on him, the others crowded Loren's side of the table. Yes, they followed a seating arrangement, but it wouldn't be hard to switch sides. Conrad kept telling himself to do it, but couldn't bring himself to his feet. Circling around would acknowledge her strength and his weakness--not that he didn't feel weak; he felt so feeble, he was almost giddy.
He rubbed his exhausted eyes. For days, he had slept uneasily in a houda, stewing in the kariks' rancid smell and shuddering in the constant, lowing grumble that shook the whole houda, waking him in fitful starts from unpleasant dreams of flying leafback through storms of fairies and ravens. And having argued that the Prince of Gaona was worthy of a royal palanquin, his last night's rest, borne aloft on the musclebound shoulders of stumblebum porters, was the worst night he could remember.
Compared to a houda, a palanquin, or a fairy leaf, the Royal Barge was a perfect platform. Moreover, it would be an amazing flagship on any world, not because its decks were swabbed so bright, the sheen reflected his weary scowl, and not because the crew were so meticulously dressed
that their impeccably trimmed uniforms seemed more like Hollywood costumes, but because the gigantic craft chugged miles above Alsantia, its filament-wings fluttering faster than a hummingbird,
and providing such a perfectly stable platform, that if he wished, he could step away from the feast, glance over the prow, and survey the Ephremian army massed outside Teriana, their river fleet anchored dangerously near, or the Alsantian invaders, now playing the role of the besieged,
having mounted their defenses inside the forest city's ramparts.
But he liked his current view much better. It was a freeing realization, to gaze upon Loren and recognize that his infatuation for Isola was only the curious resemblance of the two girls, not only that both were blonde and stood just as high as his top rib, but their pert noses, the wide cut of their cheekbones, and the bluish tint of their pale white faces, like cream under a glaring light. If anyone else had noticed, no one called attention to it now, as they chatted away in the middle of their followers, not only as if they had always been the best of friends, but seeming to delight in sharing Conrad's crush.
While Conrad knew they could care less, he seethed across the table, as much from their innate popularity as from
While ottomans are made for taking a load off and bearing leg weight, and these ottomans were particularly substantial, their velvety plush enveloping a soft but grinding filling that absorbed the ache of Conrad's travels even as they held firm against his weary legs, when the doughty raccoon lumbered beside Conrad, and climbed onto the neighboring hassock, the cushiony stuff groaned, and the fabric snapped so loud it sounded like it cracked.
"You're not eating." Despite not bothering to get to know Conrad at all, Jgorga was entitled to this familiar tone, having saved Conrad more than once, sometimes twice in one day. While gratitude muddied by resentment wasn't friendship, Conrad couldn't imagine doing without the talking raccoon in Alsantia. Having been turned into a worm, plucked from an apple, then changed back at the feet of heckling monsters who expected him to chase magical aircraft, he hightailed from his captors, even managing to outrun werewolves for a terrifying minute, and just when he was bout to be shredded into a messy meal and picked from fangs, Jgorga hoisted him into a tree, and led him along the arboreal road, the branch to branch path in the titanic trees of the Luskveld.
While Conrad owed Jgorga his life and freedom, he couldn't look the animal in the eye. No matter how much more civil Jgorga was than he was, the raccoon looked like a wild animal. "Conrad?"
"Sorry, Jgorga. I was just thinking."
"How unlike you, Conrad." Having followed the arc of Conrad's staring eyes, Jgorga broke into a sly snicker. "Humans. Raccoons don't confound the appreciation of pretty girls with thinking. We know they're two different things."
"You're so smart." Conrad's sarcastic tone said the raccoon was anything but clever.
Jgorga sighed. "Tell me that wasn't the meal." Smiling servants in flashing gold raiment had just cleared away dishes so bone-white, it was like they had been licked clean of their breads, savory dips, and oily spreads. While some food artist had taken painstaking effort in thinly slicing and artfully layering fruit into trees, sphinxes, dragons, and unicorns, these delicious monsters had been devoured in moments.
"Kiera said I was squandering my appetite, and the best was yet to come. I guess that was the appetizer?" While Berangere's friend was among the shortest in the room, Conrad was surprised to learn she was nearly ten years older. The antsy Ephremian gripped the edge of her ottoman in both hands, as if about to bolt away or jump into battle.
"Good." The raccoon sank into his seat in an attitude of blissful relaxation. "I heard Ephremians were big eaters. But where do they put it all?" When the raccoon's face wrinkled in bemusement, Conrad chuckled, then stifled it at Jgorga's irritated glance.
"Yes," Conrad hastened to say. "They're very skinny."
"No, no, no." Jgorga snorted. "I mean literally--where do they put it on this ship? This isn't a jumbo jet, Conrad. However majestic this enchanted platform, it's only a big flying carpet compared to Earth airplanes, and this is a multi course feast."
"You're exaggerating. It's bigger than some ships in the harbor."
"Even so."
"Doesn't it work like a Zalgyne?"
"Of course. You're missing my point."
Conrad rolled his eyes, sighed, and slouched to the other side of his chair, away from Jgorga.
"What's the matter with you?"
"I'm hungry," said Conrad, in a plaintive tone.
"Is that all?"
Well, no, that wasn't all; while my main problem, thought Conrad, is the insufferable, overbearing bully on my left, I'm starved in more ways than one, even in the midst of plenty. Everyone gives me what I don't want.
After two nights of fitful sleep, he was starved for a good night's rest.
At a feast of bizarre delicacies, he was starved for normal food.
Without television, he was starved for stimulation. Even the majestic view was leveled by their altitude, and so unbearably uniform that he would have thought it bland, if he could stomach their great height for more than twenty seconds at a time.
Worst of all, Conrad might have been reserved a place of honor next to the King and Queen, but he was starved for attention, or rather, the right kind of attention, which is to say, not the domineering raccoon that was always, lamentably, by his side. Each time his life was saved by the spiteful brute, he valued that life a little less, until his ego seemed to peel away, layer by layer, until the others' eyes simply skipped over his place, not just his place-setting at the table, but his place in the universe. He had slipped from the foreground to the backdrop; even when on display, it wasn't as an actor or doer, but as a topic for comment only--he might as well be an apple in a fruit bowl, or a coffee table book.
He was starved for friendship, having realized that those he thought were friends--Aito, Lucien, and even Chiyo--only tolerated him, or played to him like an actor testing lines on a wall. He might as well have been a cardboard standee, or something even more insubstantial; the sad dynamic of his questionable friendship with Jgorga was that of a shadowboxer to a shadow.
But mostly, Conrad was starved for food. While he had eaten his share of cult food in The Mansion of the Shining Prince, the Elderliches' loose dollars and change had also stuck to his fingers,
so that he could slip off to the convenience store down the street for burgers, pizza, hot dogs, fries, and milkshakes. If the Elderliches were testing his moral fiber, he had failed; but if they were quizzing his thieving instincts, he had passed with flying colors. Given that no one caught on, he was certain that nothing had tested him but his appetite, the cruel taskmaster that sent him down to the mansion kitchen
to beg for seconds or between-meal snacks.
But these strange sauces and dips? This spread, which didn't even pretend to be butter? The strange, syrupy drink, tasting vaguely of lemonade, and nearly made him gag as it slid down slow as nectar? Had he been invited to a meal or an experiment? Was he served appetizers or curiosities? Was this a dinner table, or a laboratory of vaguely edible oddities?
As his ravenous friends emptied their plates and bowls with gusto, he had tried to take part, but his half-hearted stabs came back dry. Friends, he thought bitterly--it was too easy to think and say, when they were more like adopted siblings than friends you chose and earned. He was stuck with snooty Berangere and timid Michel before he could choose his own friends.
With his head slumped on his right shoulder, it not only cut off his view of Jgorga to his left and his fair weather friends across the table, but fixed his attention on the dining room door, and Merrick, seated on his right.
The little lord's friendly face was smeared with streaks of crushed fruit and bean from the sauces, dips, and appetizers. While he had tried to clown with Conrad, the older boy only made noncommittal noises, sipped his gaggy drink, and didn't even try to suppress his sour expression.
Merrick was a funny kid, but he wasn't in the mood for amusement.
Having had entirely too much adventure, Conrad was ready for this forced recreation to be over,
whether he went to his cramped cult bedroom or the royal castle at the end of this fairy tale.
What was so great about being a prince anyway? Being a princess hadn't improved Berangere.
The bookish girl seemed no less preoccupied than usual, and she always had something on her mind. If slow to share her perspective, you could pick at that shyness with probing questions, and with only a little effort, find she had opinions about everything. As they were always the right opinions, Berangere was a bore, and moreover, you always had the feeling that she was holding back, even when she was spilling the beans. Even as Chiyo teased Berangere into divulging how her reunion with her parents had gone, she stood there, a half-can of unspilled beans, smiling her shy little smile, and making a show of fending off their questions for about a minute, before giving them scoop. From the chatter that reached his ears, it seemed that rather than the big, messy display of feeling and sentiment you would expect in a Hallmark movie, the Ephremian King and Queen had summoned Berangere to a private audience, made her wait an icy eon, then greeted her with cold cordiality. It was a cold scoop to wait for, more sludge than beans. Berangere never could tell a story. She always raced to get to the point.
Not as fast as Merrick had spilled his beans into his pants, though. In helping the little lord with that crisis, Conrad had earned Merrick's good will. This was the most troublesome development yet.
Conrad had always been number one. Why had he wiped the little lord's pants? He had no interest in being friends with an 8 year old. Merrick's dapper little droning didn't stop even when Conrad feigned a nap. And there was nothing in kindness for Conrad either, when people seemed more inclined to bend over backwards if they hated and feared him a little. Perhaps because there was nothing to an act of kindness, it had been easy to do?
Conrad's next hunger pang was announced, like a gong clash, by an audible gurgle that tornadoed to a groan. As exhaustion wallowed over him, he again slumped in his chair. Why was it so dark? As the air trickled, too slow, back in his nostrils, sandals clamored on the wooden deck, the gruff brush of raccoon paws hoisted him to a sitting position, and cold hands laid on his chilled-hot forehead.
"Step back! Give him air!" The raccoon's bullying breath smelled both pungent and sweet, like fresh fish flaking under a fork. Whiskers tickled his cheek and ear. "It's just a faint. He'll be okay."
"I didn't faint." What he intended as an indignant shout squeaked out piteously, like a feeble meow. He giggled in giddy self-mockery as he clasped the armrests in shaking hands. Now that I'm blind and weak as a kitten, he thought, there are two cat princes aboard. "I blacked out." His warm, black sight was a dizzy, fluid feeling that frightened him to his squeezy, queasy belly, as if his stomach was as dark and jellied as his blacked-out eyeballs. "Help me stand," he whispered to Jgorga, but it was another hand that clasped his and pulled him to his feet, where he swayed, praying he wouldn't collapse in front of Loren and Isola.
"He's so light." It was Lucien. The younger boy held up his other side. "What are you feeding him, Jgorga?"
"Feeding him? He's not my pet, and not my horse."
"What was the last thing you ate, Conrad."
"An apple." The realization washed over him. His last mouthful was as a worm--that flaky, sweet bite of apple--and he had subsisted on fear since then. "Jgorga, I'm starved." His voice sounded hollow to his own ears, as if he was about to collapse from the inside out, having been consumed by an inner flame.
"Bring the prince food!"
At the raccoon's roar, the world shimmied back in focus. A table waiter banged through the serving doors, help up his hand, beamed a far too friendly smile which seemed to cleave his head top from bottom, and chattered Ephremian gibberish much too rapid and salty to be more than half reassurance--the other half friendly rebuke--then plunged back in the raucous, clattering galley.
"It's on the way," said Jgorga. "So's your mother, Lucien. I've got him."
When Lucien left his side, Jgorga took Conrad's weight on his furry shoulder. Due to the difference in height of these living props, Conrad pitched right, and as he found his footing, he saw who stepped in to brace his left side: Prince Oji, who had found his human form again somewhere in Alsantia. Taking him gently under his arms, the cat prince lowered Conrad back in his seat.
Conrad's stomach persisted in its resentful grumble as he took in the silent and slow procession of lords. While they were decked out in golden robes and topheavy headdresses shaped like griffins, dragons, locusts, and lions, none of them thought to bring in a single platter of food. When the Ephremian captain announced Lucien's mother, The Architect Adjia, and escorted her to her seat, a murmur ran through the seated lords.
Having slid, furry drop by furry drop, down the back of his seat, until he had slumped a hair under Conrad's sullen pour into the mold of his own chair, Jgorga suddenly brightened, clawed his way upright, then leaned in toward Conrad by scrambling against the armrests. "They're coming."
When Jgorga flung himself out of his seat, snatched Conrad respectfully upright in his chair, then dragged him to his feet, Conrad's vision washed gray, then steadied, until two soldiers, in armor enameled bright red and polished to a gleam. dashed in, dropped to their knees, and slid another yard alongside the dining table by means of their momentum, clashing cymbals as they fluttered by. The brassy clatter hammered not only Conrad's ears, but his eyes, so crossed were his wires, then short-circuited noise-blind and sight-deaf by hunger and the crash of brass. Having slid to the other end of the table, these warrior women leaped to their feet, turned to the doors, and held a reverent bow.
After the cymbal smashers came tall, square-jawed drummers, their slabbed shoulders and forearms double-wrapped with thick muscle, and their large canvas box drums not only drummed, but hummed, buzzed, and thrummed, depending how hard they struck the skin with their drumsticks. Whereas the cymbals were tolerable with his hungry eyes closed, the drums battered at Conrad's eyes and ears, until he sank back into his seat.
When Jgorga again wrapped his fist in Conrad's collar, the young prince drooped from the muscular raccoon's paw, his feet scraping the floor back and forth as he dangled, eyes rolling back,
then flashing forward at the strum of strings, a slashing, fiery chord that made him remember who he was, where he was, and how unhappy he was at being who he was where he was. Finding his footing and batting aside Jgorga's indignant grip, Conrad leaned as far as he could, and though he felt the eyes of everyone in the room, grabbed a hunk of the once warm and fragrant bread, now cool and already starting to stale, dipped it into the frothy dip until his fingertips touched the beany surface, and, feeling his gradual recoil back to his seat reel their eyes even closer, raised his hand to his mouth with the mechanical deliberation of a crane. He munched deeply, relishing the toothsome squish of the spread, a salty, savory dollop of beans, olive oil and likely a whole clove of garlic, a mouthful he held in a comical pause as everyone dropped to their knees, leaving Conrad the only one standing, aside from eight husky Ephremians bearing aloft their King and Queen on wooden thrones, mounted on poles like palanquins.
While their thrones were carved in a similar style and dressed with the Ephremian banner--a golden ram on a red ridge under a silver starburst--her throne was a graven cricket, its joined wings making the high back of her seat, while his was a ram's head, its curling horns the armrests for his wizened hands.
"Please rise." The voice was amused but not affectionate, full of sparks but cold as ice. "And please eat, Prince Conrad. At last, you deign to enjoy our hospitality."
Caught with his bite half-swallowed, some still mashed in his mouth, and the rest sliding down,
Conrad choked it back, and cleared his throat with an embarrassingly loud cough. As Aito and Lucien's titter sparked a ripple of laughter spreading even to the guards, Conrad's shamefaced thank you was engulfed in a wave of mirth.
The hulking brutes knelt with an eerie, feline grace, resting the wooden thrones with a faint, gentle clack on the deck. No sooner had the wooden ram and cricket alighted than the king and queen disembarked, and strolled around the table to greet their guests, who rose to their feet, milling an even louder wave of chatter, as if the procession had only added this welcoming spirit, and never interrupted their casual conversation in the first place.
"How are you, Conrad?" He turned to Berangere with a bewildered scowl. They were the first words the snooty bookworm had spoken to him since leaving Earth.
"I've been better. I'm ready to be done with all this nonsense."
"They're interesting, aren't they?"
Conrad realized he hadn't yet taken his eyes off of the King and Queen, although his attention was mainly directed toward their ornamental thrones.
"Your parents?"
"No. Well, yes, they're my parents." The forceful little laugh wet her eyes. "I meant the thrones. My mother told me about them just a few minutes ago. The ram is Galius, and the cricket is Kurulqa. Surprisingly, they're siblings."
"I see the family resemblance."
"Maybe there is one, as they're carved by two different artists, a century apart. So their resemblance is part of the myth, not from one artist's style."
"Berangere, you watch too much Doctor Who. And you talk too much. Some things don't need to be explained, especially when I don't care." When Conrad sighed and slouched in his seat, his spine sweat stuck through his sheer robe to the chair. "If you want to bring me into the light, tell me why we're here."
"You mean in Alsantia?" Alsantia had burned Berangere deep, not only patches of red sunburn brushing her cheekbones, but the weathered crease of her brow, as if her face had stuck in its penetrating frown, the look of concentration he knew well from razzing Berangere for it, clucking her chin whenever her furrowed little forehead plumbed the depths of a new book. Had her thirst for knowledge consumed her at last, or had she only brought a depth of attention to her reading of this strange world?
"I'm not asking for a recap. Why are we on this airship? I mean, we could have had dinner in camp. I saw the Ephremian mess hall, or rather I smelled it, having followed its scent. Everything there looks and smells great." He paused. "While I haven't had a bite to eat since we fell into your murderous little world, none of this fancy stuff looks tempting at all."
"Conrad! You're going to starve! No wonder you fainted."
"I didn't faint!" he snapped. "I only blacked out. Athletes black out in workouts all the time without passing out, you know."
"If I agree it was manly, will you eat something?"
"Answer my question."
"I did."
"No. You answered with a question, then snowed me with misdirection. I really want to know--why did your parents bring us up here?"
"For dinner, Conrad."
"Again, why not down there?"
"It's scenic. Pretty. Why do people eat in skyscraper restaurants?" She had an exasperated tone. "Conrad, do you think they plan to throw us over the side?"
"Not only wouldn't I put that past anybody in Alsantia, but it would be a merciful way to send us off." Conrad lifted his head, glowering into her permanent scowl. "They did it to impress us. To remind us who's boss."
"So what? That's how kings and queens act."
"So your parents are intimidating because kings and queens are pompous by nature."
She glared back at Conrad, then circled around the table to plop next to Loren and Isola.
"You're rude, Conrad," grumbled Jgorga.
"Do you ever not eavesdrop?"
"Rude, but not wrong. All this ostentation is way too showy, and serves little purpose, aside from putting us on the other side of the flash and bang."
"Lords and ladies." The king's gentle, confident baritone not only hushed the room, it chased down the rogue whispers and stamped them out to perfect silence. "And my weary prince of Gaona. Remember our fallen comrades and allies, as well as those still fighting below to free Teriana." When he beckoned to the table, two soldiers hastened to fill the cups with a bright violet drink, so purple it was nearly blue. Taking a goblet up in his hands, he favored them with a smile that might have seemed saintly, were it not entirely too contented. "Join me now."
While the drink's odd color might have once inspired caution in Conrad, his sopping, beany mouthful had left his mouth bone dry, and as he tipped his cup back, draining it to a trickle, his eyes slanted in the relief of quenching his thirst, until he heard drizzling, splashing, and cheering, opened his eyes, and saw that everyone, the other children included, had dumped their first drinks on the floor, and were now receiving refills.
Upturning his cup to let the last drop join the wine running in the deck's grooves, Conrad slowly lifted his furiously blushing face, scanned the dining table, and found no one had seen his faux pas, so blithely had the toast segued back to small talk, until his eyes locked with the Queen of Ephremia, who leveled an amused but imperious smile, her twinkling eyes looking down her long nose and uplifted chin. When her absurdly scaled chin and nose, in a look of utter condescension and resentful but dutiful charity, dipped down into a genial conversation with Isola, Conrad sunk into his seat.
He first thought the table waiters must be shield-bearers, so capacious were their enormous plates. One swooped beside Conrad, bowing with averted eyes as the entree clacked down, shuddering the table, so laden it was with fruits, roasted vegetables, and hanks of some grilled slab sauced with still-bubbling gravy flecked with berries, cracked peppercorn, and herbs.
So long as he didn't eat, Conrad could defy this nightmare world. But when Alsantia submitted such a sweet-smelling, savory sacrifice, his suppressed hunger swamped up with the taste of bile, and his shaking, sloppy fingers fumbled with the strange, two-pronged knife and the spoon-shaped utensil with a serrated hole the Ephremians used deftly as both fork and spoon. Prying a thick rib from the beefy pile, he seized it in searing fingertips, and sucked the scalding sauce, smothering meat so succulent, it disintegrated like a dandelion, sunk into his stomach with great rapidity, and fed the fires of his appetite until they raged even hotter.
In the way a great writer becomes one with his story, a football hero becomes the football, or a famous surgeon sees neither himself nor his patient in the meticulous cuts, sutures, and stitches, Conrad was this brute hank of meat, and in that moment would have bashed whatever beast wanted a bite with the bone.
When the engines' whir and chug was jarred by the crackle of lightning, booming thunder shook the deck, shivered the shuttered windows, and rattled Conrad in his chair, bringing him back to himself and reality. Not only had he gnawed the rib to the bone, his mouth was buried in the soft marrow crumbling from one end. Setting it down, he chewed a slice of blood-orange fruit idly, then nervously,
when the second bolt flickered so near it cast a blue shadow over the feast.
"Are we going into that?" When all eyes turned, Conrad realized he had voiced this aloud.
"Captain."
At the king's gesture, the barge captain pushed away from the table and bowed to his monarch.
"Please," said the queen. "He's still eating."
"It's too rich for me, your majesties," said the Captain. "Shall we land?"
"No," she said.
"No?" The king's face trembled with incredulity before subsiding into its placid, unruffled demeanor.
"With this wonder, we need not be at the mercy of the elements. Take us higher, Captain."
"Higher?"
"Over the clouds."
"This is as high as we've taken her, your majesty" said the Captain.
"Do you mean we've already reached our limit?"
"No, your majesty. I mean, I don't know."
"This prototype was made to my specifications, and never tested," said the king. "Unlike our Zalgynes, dear, I intended the Barge only for recreation."
"The cricket finds its own perspective."
"And the ram plows ahead." He sighed. "Very well. Take us up."
For a flickering instant, with his eyes rolled skyward, the Captain looked like one who prayed to heaven above. Then he bowed his head, sunk to one knee, and strode away briskly, setting a fine example of military quick step.
"Captain," At the king's grumble, the Captain turned on his heel, and bowed his head. "My compliments on your hospitality. The food is exquisite, and the procession was delightful. Send in the entertainment."
Next course? Having crammed in food until only puddled sauce dotted his plate, which he now mopped up with a butt of bread, Conrad couldn't imagine where to put the next course. And entertainment? He could care less, with all the big shots putting on a show.
Bowing with a stiff smile, the Captain backed out of the room. Less than a minute later, brightly garbed people funneled in, hefting instruments of winding brass, or carved wood run with glittering strings. Half were human, and the others dwarves. As the lightning flashed on their twisty metal tubes
and glinted on the chords, the huge ceiling fan whirled enormous wooden blades, larger than moose horns, so that as the Royal Barge ascended up and up, the air escaping through the windows was replaced by wind gusting in, drawn down by the enchanted fan.
This airy efflorescence lent an eerie timbre to the music, stretching both brass and woodwinds to hollow strains and bottoming out the strings and percussion into odd knocking noises, emptied of all gravity. Conrad couldn't take his eyes from the frustrated performers as they wrestled with their instruments to wring the expected, straightforward notes from tubes, reeds, and strings embroiled by incessantly voiding and replenishing air. In the strobing, flickering lightning, this inside-out sonata seemed some profane, backmasked ceremony, taking Conrad's negativity to a new high, like a photographic negative that transposed not only dark and light, but wrong and right.
Like a snapshot, this moment summed up all that was off in Alsantia. Since arriving, Conrad had been unable to adapt due to a fervid desire to reverse the mad order of things, and find the common sense of his own world. From here on in, he would follow whatever was getting somewhere, light or dark.
"What's wrong with my ears?" Hearing Jgorga's voice rolled ribbon thin and reedy by the fluttering air, Conrad broke out laughing. "Do I really sound like this?"
"You sound like Gumby, Jgorga." When Conrad squeaked too, Jgorga joined in the shrill, nervous laughter.
"Stop it, stop it, I can't breathe," panted the raccoon, his squeal higher than a Powerpuff Girl.
As the surrounding chatter reached this high pitch, only the King and Queen of Ephremia seemed immune, their booming, imperious dignity setting such a contrast that the rest convulsed with laughter, for each proud declamation only seemed all the more pompous against a backdrop of gassy squeaks.
"This is a failed experiment, my dear," said the Queen.
"I'll seal the top deck."
"Then it will just be a big Zalgyne. Better to keep this theater of our amusements at a lower altitude."
A guard bowed low for the king's whisper, then departed. Within a few minutes, they settled toward the storm cloud, drifting, Conrad thought, lower than they should have dared.
As the music played, amusements proceeded apace: jugglers twirling knives and pins, then working in everything else at hand, such as uneaten fruit, lit candlesticks, and empty wine glasses;
fire-breathers spewing torch breath for yards, including one whose fountaining flames ignited his braided beard, which crackled, sparkled, and sputtered under his joyful grin, an audacious trick that completely hushed the audience, then set their squeaky applause aroar; dwarven mimes, pantomiming The Hare and the Unicorn, the Alsantean myth Berangere had geeked out over in Worlds class; and then, a play performed by Ephremian talking animals, of varieties he had not seen in Alsantia--serpents, otters, gazelles, and pygmy lions.
"The animals are different. And why so many dwarves? Aren't dwarves bad, Jgorga?" While Conrad's voice had dipped nearer his usual baritone, it still cracked and whistled, for while Conrad's growl occasionally collapsed into baby screech at fourteen, in the thinner air, he could scarcely get anything out without it leaking like a spurting balloon.
"Shush, Conrad." At Conrad's scowl, Jgorga said, "As our huge continent is full of variety, and Ephremia, is quite far from Alsantia, it has some of the same plants and trees, but much that is different. And Alsantia not only has no monopoly on dwarves, but dwarves are no worse than humans. Without dwarven work ethic and ingenuity, Ephremian science likely wouldn't have advanced nearly so far."
"What's their point, Jgorga?"
"The point?"
"They're leading up to something, Jgorga. I'm sure of it. Some dumb quest to a volcano, Hell, or worse."
"If so, you're not going. We're heading straight to Gaona." Worry flickered over the raccoon's face, and he looked toward the king and queen. "Your majesties."
"Jgorga, is it not?" asked the Queen.
"You have done us a service, good raccoon," said the King. "Forgive my not saying so before, but thank you for bringing back our daughter."
"You're welcome." The raccoon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I hope you will not think me rude, but before you tell us why you gathered us here, I must stress that the young prince and myself are due at Gaona. We've delayed long enough, and his mother and father--also a king and a queen, to whom I am much beholden, from upholding my friend's promises and deathbed wishes--may begin to doubt my word."
"I understand entirely." The king's voice was dry, but his eye twinkled bright. "Family is everything in Ephremia. And we will do everything in our power to bring you to Gaona." He leaned forward, propped his elbows on the armrests, and rested his head on his steepled hands. The chattering fell silent. "After."
"After?" blurted Conrad. "After what?"
"My prince." The queen's voice was calm and easy. "How can we trust to your safety with armies in the woods?"
"And a sphinx!" shouted Merrick.
"Jgorga's done alright so far." When Conrad rolled his head, it was less from exasperation than from his bloated, stretched stomach, crammed full of queasy delicacies, but there was a bit of eye roll too, which chased the false sympathy from the king and queen's faces, and was met by a cruel regard that stabbed toward Conrad, causing fear to swirl in his cramped guts. "Please, your majesties. I'm done with everything. And I mean everything. While you and Suvani raked humongous armies across a continent because you thought Ephremia or Alsantia better, I ran from everything until my evening in Teriana, where I never got the bed I was promised." He glared at Lucien and the Architect. "Jgorga says I'll be happy on Gaona, but I don't believe it. Not that I don't trust him, but I've never been happy here, your majesties. But if Gaona is an island, at least there, I only have to deal with Gaona, while in Ephremia, I'll still have to worry about Alsantia."
The queen laughed. "Whereas you could forget about us on an island."
Conrad shrugged and nodded. "Yeah, I could forget about everything on an island, I think." When she stared at Conrad with an indignant and contemptuous sneer, her sarcasm registered too late.
One by one, all eyes turned from Conrad, taking a sudden and downcast interest in fingernails, the polish of silverware, and the grain of the table.
"Who said we're taking you to Ephremia?" The king snorted. "As if we had time for that, when we have a war right here."
"Then where are you taking us?" Berangere's disbelieving tone was mirrored in the abrupt resumption of hushed chatter around the table.
"Who said we're taking you anywhere?" The king rose from his feet, thumped the table with his fist, then strode just behind Berangere.
As his brows knitted in a scowl, his jowls wobbled, and he stared down his daughter with the full, wilting force of a patronizing glare, Conrad couldn't help feeling sorry for Berangere. His ears were still ringing from the king's loud declamations on the virtues of family. As the king fumed over Berangere, his crown slipped from its lofty perch, sliding on angry sweat until it came to rest on the red furrows of his brow. "We brought you here to head our armies."
"What!" Conrad's roar split the room, and all heads turned. Now devoid of the cracks and squeaks of puberty, at first his deep indignation sounded like it had bellowed from another set of lungs.
When Conrad realized that his voice had shook the room, he went a bit too far, thumping the tabletop so fiercely that he only managed to conceal his painful flinch in another roar, this time raising his exclamation to a earsplitting volume that raised the roof. Wow, thought Conrad, kings must practice thumping things, because that hurt worse than anything since his night-time run from the werewolves.
"Not that you'll make any decisions," tittered the queen. "We're not expecting you to strategize or command, you understand. As our little figureheads, you'll inspire our forces to greater heroism."
"It's the least you can do," snickered the king, "after all that cowardly running."
"Running?" asked Lucien. "Your world is insane! What should we do? Tell them our side of things? Bake them a cake? Or do you really mean we should have stood our ground? Look at your daughter."
Berangere's broken arm still dangled on a sling. "Mother. Father. You really mean to do this?"
"Do you dare question my authority?" The king sniffed, turned to his wife, and muttered in a low, scornful tone. "We must call the Elderliches to account for her upbringing."
"I don't believe you. Am I just a political stake?" said Berangere.
"I object to the word just," said the queen indignantly, "unless you mean it was just to keep you a world away, with no thought of our own feelings, to better protect you from assassins. But I will not debase myself by lying to my daughter, even though she humiliates her own parents at a table set in her honor. Everything a king or queen does has political capital, Berangere. One day you will know this.
I cannot hold my own daughter on my lap for fear my people will think me weak or sentimental; I dare not show you special favors, lest my enemies see you as leverage against me or your father. I put you on Earth not only to protect you, but the realm. Need I go on?"
As Berangere blinked away tears, Conrad became heated. While he had never liked Berangere's booksmart posturing, he could not deny she had often taken pains to reach out to him, even today,
when hunger, exhaustion, and bad attitude had made him unfit company for anyone.
"We've seen their army."
Not only intimidated by the king and queen, but exhausted, Conrad didn't know where he found the strength to speak. While proud of his height and strength, Conrad had never felt himself to be more than a boy, and in Alsantia, felt himself more of a boy than ever.
"Your army is big and tricked out with gadgets, but the Alsantean army is so much bigger. Not only that, but they have more ships, and droves of those huge whatchacallits--"
"Kariks." The king's smooth answer said that he paid as much heed to Conrad as he would anyone else at the feast, and perhaps more, given the short, brusque treatment he had given Berangere.
"Yeah, those." Conrad struggled to continue. Only the momentum of delirious exhaustion
and the frenzy inspired by disbelief that Berangere's parents had picked them for figureheads brought him this far.
"You were saying?" The Queen was no longer smiling.
"You can't win!" When Conrad planted both hands on the table, and bellowed over stunned heads and glasses paused mid-sip, the monarchs recoiled in their thrones. As a rush of pride inflamed him, it felt like a second wind. "You must know that! There's just no way. Your army is amazing, but you can't see the end of theirs!"
"My poor prince," said the queen. "Had you studied, you would know the prophecy."
"Prophecy? You're sending us to our deaths for a prophecy?"
"Obviously not, if I believe in the prophecy. I'm sending you not into death, but into victory."
Jgorga frowned. "You think you're the Army of Right."
"Jgorga, do you know this crazy prophecy?"
"When Teriana's green groves turn black, / the army of might turns back; / when locusts fly children to war, / the army of right will soar."
"You know Ephremian?"
"That's raccoon. Our wizard, Kulora, spoke it, and the raccoons spread his prophecies throughout the lands." Jgorga turned to the king and queen. "So these flying machines--they were inspired by the prophecy?"
"Not in the slightest. They marked a collaboration between our peoples--not only humans, but the dwarves who emigrated to our land."
"Uh huh." Jgorga shook his head, and his tone was skeptical. "But 'fly children to war'--you can't say that's not inspired by the prophecy."
"Everything we do is for our people," sniffed the queen.
When Jgorga growled, the murmurs died in a hush, and the queen paled, clutching the carved forelegs of her locust throne until her knuckles whitened brighter than ivory, no doubt realizing that this well-mannered beast was still wild. As her lip crept up in a disbelieving snarl, her shoulders flared back, and her heels skittered in scooting an inch higher on her seat.
With his back up, and his fur bristling, Jgorga seemed more bear than raccoon. "Why don't you front your armies? The king and queen putting their skin in the game will inspire your people more than these frightened kits."
"My wife is not to be questioned." The king also gripped the arms of his throne. "Nor am I. Do not think us weak because we are kind."
"Kind?" When his growl reached a spine-shivering pitch, at once roaring low and humming high like a buzzsaw, Jgorga bunched low on the table, as if preparing to pouch. and the bearers slid short swords from their robes, stepped forward in a rank, then crouched before the thrones.
"Do not harm the beast," sniffed the Queen. "As we have declared our debt to him, by custom he deserves a boon."
"I'll give you a boon!" Jgorga roared, and snapped at the guards, but even his mighty muscles were buffeted by so many guards, and his teeth not so strong as Ephremian armor, from which his head recoiled with yelps of pain
As they dragged Jgorga below deck, Conrad sat stunned. Since arriving in Alsantia, Conrad had never been apart from Jgorga. Exhaustion peeled away from squirming, wide-awake terror, leaving Conrad angry, afraid, and so on edge that his teeth hurt from gritting and grinding. "Bring him back."
"While your pet will be restored to you, your highness, for now, he has proven himself unfit company."
"Bring him back!" When Conrad bellowed, clattered to his feet, and raced for the door, he was blocked by the guards. When he tried to squeeze through, they fended with their shields, and when he skirted around, they stepped faster, as if their armor was lighter than a tutu.
When this ineffectual scrabbling had circuited the table, so that Conrad was on the same side as the other children, Aito pushed away from the table and laid his hand on Conrad's shoulder. "Don't let them haul you off too, Conrad. Get a hold of yourself."
When another hand fell on his other shoulder, Conrad stiffened and half-turned, his cheeks flushing more at the sight of Chiyo than her touch.While the dwarven eye had changed her face,
her smile was the same. A smile she once had saved only for Conrad. It wasn't love that reddened Conrad, but shame, having not cared for Chiyo since The Mansion of the Shining Prince. Even if he still cared a little, she had seen him turned into a worm, and at much lower points since then, and even if his pride could survive being pitied by his girlfriend, said pride was dead on arrival in Alsantia, having been subjected to ogre abuse, a werewolf posse, and the worst of the brutes, that nasty human who had terrorized him for the better part of a day with a sword, and, on reflection, seemed an older, bitten-off version of Conrad: a bully who not only liked bullying, but had gone all in on bullying.
Whether Conrad would become a victim, a better bully, or a terrorist, the thought that he might die as anonymous as this killer whose name he no longer remembered, filled him with so much dread that he didn't know how to handle it.
Even if Chiyo still cared for him, ir could not fill his emptiness, for having been full of himself until now, and finding himself full of nothing, fear had overwhelmed Conrad. The taste of fear had drowned all thoughts of self, except those concerned with surviving and escaping. Love had become meaningless, as there was nothing left for anyone to love. As his empty eyes turned to Chiyo, she flinched, took her hand from his shoulder, and shrank behind Aito.
When her soft, kind eyes remained locked with his, he snapped, "what are you looking at?"
Chiyo didn't look away.
Conrad scowled, turned back to Aito, and grumbled a barely audible "sorry."
"Watch yourself, Conrad. We can't all watch out for you." Shifting his gaze now to the king and queen, Aito bowed his head, but while his eyes were downcast, his words pierced straight and true: "Daiko remembers, your majesty."
"Is that a threat?"
"Hardly, as I'm hardly a prince."
"Don't think I don't know who and what you are, Aito of Daiko." The king's smoothness belied his angry squint. "Not a prince, you say, and I say a shade worse than that. Leave if you will. I won't make that offer again."
"We'll stay," said Aito. When Chiyo stifled a groan, and glared at Aito, Conrad's lip curled in pained contempt, and his face fell, holding back anger too heavy to hold his head high. When he abruptly stormed for the doors, the guards' hands snapped on air as he ducked by, raced through the kitchen, then burst through doors to a darkening stairwell.
He was oddly reminded of running along the Luskveld high road. While there were no titanic trees, the Ephremians towered over him, and Conrad was a tall boy, accustomed to looking down on grown-ups and children alike; moreover, here there were other powerful titans: the arrogant king, the vain queen, the bookworm princess, and the unwitting Alsantian lordlings raised with him in The Mansion of the Shining Prince.
Not only was he not used to feeling small, he didn't like it at all. A born bully, Conrad liked to live larger than life and bigger than the best, but when he was only knee deep in the real world, he felt like he was floundering, and here in the sham world, he had never been not drowning. While he felt out of place on Earth, his jagged piece would not fit in anywhere in this puzzle world. Not just anywhere, everywhere. And on finally arriving at the center of things, the king and queen wanted him for a corner piece to send to the front line, where he would likely mesh with the final fringe, and glimpse the final puzzle, death.
His elbows pumped helter-skelter as he jumped down the short steps from one deck to the other,
where he jogged down the hall, gawking in each open doorway and banging on locked rooms. "Jgorga!"
When the guards doubled back, and barreled full steam toward Conrad, his jaw slacked, and he turned back, stamped up the stairwell, flung himself into the kitchen, brushed past startled kitchen help, and tipped stacked pots and pans to clatter on the floor.
When they burst in, Conrad was heaped in pots and pans. With the guards blocking the stairs, and the dining hall through the doors, Conrad was profoundly conscious of having run out of running space. As they stomped toward him, and his options dwindled away, his hot face was pricked by bitter tears of frustration and fury. When further flight was futile and stupid, and compliance meant death in an incomprehensible war, only the foolish choice felt like the sensible one. Conrad launched himself toward the guards.
He almost made it. Perhaps if not so underfed and winded, he would have, as Lucien and Aito had used this trick on him dozens of times. Hurling himself at the lead soldier's legs, he squirreled through, then, amazingly, kept on slipping under startled warriors, until he gasped, and lost momentum between the knees of the rear guard, a chunky warrior who simply tapped Conrad in the small of his back with his spear butt, then jammed down, pinning him with the sharpest of pains.
When he thrashed and kicked, they dragged him along deck, and when his ears blared with a hollering clamor, it wasn't until the echoes roared that he realized he was the one shouting. By the time he screamed himself hoarse, his ears were ringing.
When they shoved him through a doorway, he tumbled over a hot, smelly bundle on the rude cot pressed to the wall. The door was pulled shut with a violent click, and there was the fading stomp of boots.
The bundle grumbled. "Stupid monkeys. We should never have taught you how to talk. All you do with your tongues is get into trouble. Even stupid princes."
"Jgorga?" Conrad wiped his bloody lip. "You should talk! This is all your fault."
"No harm, no foul, as they say in your world."
"Are you kidding me? This is definitely harm, and most definitely foul, Jgorga."
"Why?" Still curled against the wall, Jgorga sounded far, far away. He almost sounded like he was sulking, but Conrad told himself the wood had muted the raccoon's voice. If his protector seemed to have shrank to half his size, the brig was dark, and the cot was heaped with blankets. "As if the kings of your world could be talked out of an idea, bad or good. Come tomorrow, you'll head an Ephremian phalanx."
"We don't have kings on Earth!"
"Of course you do, you idiot," Jgorga grumbled, bunched the end of the mattress, and pulled it over his head.
"And what if I don't want to lead a thorax?"
"Phalanx, Conrad. It's an army measurement. And the alternative is much worse than this cell."
"What alternative?" Conrad's stomach grew cold. "Jgorga, what about you?"
"Simmer down. Get some sleep."
"Jgorga, you're not going to be leading a phalanx. What about you? What alternative?"
The raccoon sighed. "As if they told me what they plan to do to me. Just forget about it."
"Forget about it?"
"I'm sorry, Conrad. I have no peace of mind to give. I'm a wreck myself. I hate being at the mercy of humans. Would you like to be at the mercy of humans, knowing them as you do?"
Perhaps it was hearing Jgorga say sorry, for the raccoon had never apologized for anything. When Conrad shuddered, and his cold stomach shrunk to an ice cube, he felt the seriousness of their situation. "We have to escape."
"From a sky barge." Jgorga barked a laugh, then bit it off just as fast. "Good one."
When the raccoon snuffled, rolled against the wall, and snored, Conrad scowled, and struck his muscular shoulder as hard as he could, but the raccoon did not budge. "I know you're faking it."
No matter how Conrad cried, begged, and pleaded, the raccoon was dead to the world, or at least to Conrad, and their six by nine sliver of it. As the evening dragged on, the blue night extinguished the sunlight trickling through the barred window.