Blood Shaper

Book 5: Chapter 18

A walkway made of mother of pearl framed with a border of shaped seashells led to a dais upon which sat a deep purple throne that looked like it was made of shaped coral. Two banners sat behind the throne, one with the sigil of the queen’s House and the other bearing the symbol of the Seramist Isles. Tapestries that displayed scene of Alahna’s might and important battles that led to the unification of the Isles into one nation hung on the walls on each side of the audience chamber, and below them stood the courtiers and supplicants eager for the queen’s attention. To each side of the throne were small fenced off seating areas reserved for members of the queen’s court or those she was showing favor to. From those seats Prince Carlile caught Kay’s eye and gave him a small nod.

Kay stepped forward as the criers voice faded away, with Eleniah on his heels and the Blood Guard a distance behind her, on alert but not being disrespectful. The walkway of expensive tiles had an interesting texture beneath his boots, and part of him wondered how the price of mother of pearl compared to Earth, because even his limited knowledge of the material told him that this short display of wealth had to costs tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, on his original planet. He stopped a careful distance away from Queen Alahna, both of them within the other’s striking range but far enough that if one of them started to attack the other had time to respond.

As one would expect, Eleniah’s cousin looked like her. Queen Alahna was an elven woman who looked to be slightly taller than Kay’s own six feet. Her skin was tanned from the sun like Eleniah’s although not as dark, like coffee with three creams instead of one. Her hair was lighter, more brown than black, and her eyes were the same color as her son’s a sea green that reminded Kay of pictures of tropical lagoons. The queen was slightly thinner than her cousin, and has less muscle making her look delicate and airy, but the sheer force of presence and power radiating of her dispelled any thoughts of fragility. She wore draping diaphanous cloths that looked like silks fashioned into a fusion of a beauty queen’s dress and a toga. A gleaming platinum circlet with a single black pearl set in the center graced her brow and both the gem and the crown glinted in the faintly shifting enchanted lights that shone from overhead.

She sat with her back straight slightly pulled away form the back of her throne, with her arms laid across the armrests and her hands gripping at the ends of them. She wasn’t relaxed as she looked Kay over in turn, but she wasn’t tense either, balancing on that edge that made her look poised and regal. There was no hint of her thoughts as Kay’s eyes met hers, and then the brief moment they had to inspect each other ended as the demands of courtesy became paramount. They both nodded to each other, neither bowing and showing themselves subservient, though Kay’s deep nod was slightly lower than Alahna’s, a gesture of respect from a guest to their host.

“Greetings to Avalon from the Seramist Isles. Thank you, King Kay for accepting my sudden invitation.”

“Greetings in return to the Seramist Isles from Avalon,” Kay replied, keeping to the etiquette he’d been taught where monarchs were refereed to as the country they ruled. It wasn’t practiced everywhere but they did follow the custom here in the Isles during formal events. “It is most kind of you to acknowledge Avalon in such a way so soon into my rule.”

She flicked her hand, dismissing the idea. “Let the bureaucrats of the older nations who run things while their lieges gallivant or train fret over the ‘propriety’ of acknowledging the validity of such a young nation. Any nation built by a Class Line Progenitor is going to be worth recognizing, and even beyond that, you’ve been taught by and are being supported by my own cousin. Not every relative I have is worth noting in this regard, but Eleniah has had many years to practice her ability to find the exceptional among the mediocre and is incredibly adept at it.”

Eleniah bowed once in response without saying anything and Kay caught a flicker of emotion cross Queen Alahna’s face, breaking her impassive mask for the briefest of moments.

“While we have much to discuss,” She continued, “Sadly it is impossible to perfectly predict the time of one’s travel and there is still business for me to handle. Additionally I now very well what it is like to wish to rest and decompress after a long journey by ship. I will have you escorted to your quarters where you may rest freely, and we can meet on the morrow.”

“Of course. I look forward to speaking with you in detail.” The shared another nod and Kay turned to leave, his guards trailing him.

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Eleniah paused for just a moment to stare up at her cousin. Alahna looked back at her, her head tilted to one side. A second passed of them both just looking, and then Eleniah nodded once, somewhat curtly, and turned to leave. They all stepped out of the audience hall and followed a servant who led them to a wing of the palace reserved for high ranking guests. The rest of their delegation had already arrived along with their luggage and Kay took a few minutes to check in on everyone and scope out the room chosen for him. It was lavishly decorated and reminded him of a high quality beach resort mixed with pictures of an old-timey bedroom from someplace like Versailles. The bed was comfortable enough, which he checked after his guards had swept the room for dangers and any possible bugs, not that there was any way to positively identify any spy devices as easily as back on Earth.

Kay laid on the bed for a while, just using the opportunity to relax. A little less than an hour later, Eleniah walked in and sat down next to his legs. “Alahna’s worried.”

“Huh?” Kay tilted his head up to see her, a little groggy from the nap he was about to fall into getting interrupted.

“This problem, the eldritch thing, whatever it is, it has her worried.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Tricks and plans and schemes she can hide from me and lie to me about, but its because she doesn’t care about them. It’s a means to an end that she accepts is necessary but she’d rather be in a fight than working behind the scenes if she had a choice. Her queenly mask of not showing her emotions can fool a lot of people, but I’ve known her since she was a little hellion who threw herself at every monster she saw, I know when she’s worried about something.”

Kay thought back to the formal meeting in the throne room and wondered how much of the worry Eleniah saw in Alahna was about the problem he’d been called here for and how much of it was about Eleniah herself. Situations that involved you were so much easier to overlook than looking in with an outside perspective, and Kay wouldn’t be surprised at all if Alahna was worried about how Eleniah would act during their reunion. From Eleniah’s stories, she was a semi-parental figure to her younger cousin, who had eventually driven the older woman she looked up to out of her inner circle and then out of the country. If it had been Kay he certainly would be regretting any choices made that would have led to that end, and he’d be nervous about what reactions he would get when he finally saw her again.

“Alright,” He said instead of anything he’d just thought as he decided it was better to just wait until tomorrow and see what happened. “We are here to help but there’s nothing we can do to help until she tells us the specifics.”

She looked annoyed as she scowled. “Yeah, but I don’t like it.”

“Well she’s your family and you care about her and your hometown, I’d be unhappy if I were in your shoes.”

She grunted without saying anything, looking into the distance. She shook herself and finally looked at Kay. “There’s food, didn’t want you sleeping through it.”

“Oh, thanks.”

They gathered with a few of the higher ranking members of Kay’s delegation and had a nice meal. It was mostly seafood, as would be expected from an island nation, and several of them were dishes Kay had never heard of. There were the standards, like tuna, crab, and shrimp, but also other crustaceans and fish that were unlike anything Kay had ever eaten. Creatures with long lobster-like bodies but with hammer shaped appendages that tasted a little less rich than lobster but had much more meat, fish that looked like and apparently acted like torpedoes, ramming their enemies and exploding, that were hard to harvest and tasted spicy and zingy, and even massive, bony, shrimp-like animals where the edible part was the long flat tail. It was all very tasty, and Kay lamented the lack of easy shipping of foodstuffs. There was magic that could mimic flash freezing technology and make fresh food last longer, but you needed dedicated Ice Mages to travel with the cargo the entire way, which kept the transportation costs high. Getting access to this tasty new seafood once home would be a stretch, and really only worth it for special occasions. It made more sense to him why medieval nobles used every opportunity they could to celebrate something and hold a feast in order to break out the best and most expensive foods.

He also wondered that they lacked any form of raw fish cuisine such as sushi or poke. He didn’t know anything about the culinary history of either dish, or series of dishes, he wasn’t sure which was the best way to describe them, but he knew that at least a handful of island and ocean adjacent cultures had developed some form of eating raw fish, and to find nothing like that here was surprising. He asked Eleniah about it while they ate, but the idea of eating fish raw was as weird to her as it would have been to someone from England before World War One, odd and probably unhygienic. Kay briefly wondered how she would react if he tried to feed her steak tartare. In the end he internally vowed to try and find sushi or the closest thing available some time during his life here. He was one of those young Americans who’d fallen in love with the food in college and he really craved it.

At the end of the meal everyone went to bed. There was nothing really to discuss since there had been no meetings and no progress made at working out any treaties or trade deals. Kay tried chatting with Eleniah before he slept, but she was still distracted worrying about her cousin being worried, so he left her alone and went to bed.

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