the royal dinner
emiliano does something very dumb and very very brave
(sliiight warning for horror in this one... i kept it pretty vague/not at all graphic but if u don’t like implied torture of children maybe skip this one)
~
“Hey, Emil – I think I've figured out why I keep seeing that man.”
Emiliano nodded absently, drawing a pristine polishing cloth along the length of his scabbard. Dust and dirt had been caught in the engraved details, but no blood. He hadn't seen a battle in a long time. No doubt his skills were getting rusty. Maybe he could-
Corin nudged him impatiently, practically bouncing on the spot. “Don't you want to know why?”
“Hm?”
“He's following you around,” Corin said, finally seating himself at the dining table. Emiliano stood to attention behind his chair. As a lowly bodyguard, he was not allowed to sit with the royal family. He had to eat his meals later, once Corin was asleep for the night.
“That's cool,” Emiliano said, not really listening, too busy watching the back doors with a slight frown. Rosa was nearly always late, but it was pretty rare for Atropa to delay like this. Artemio slouched against the wall behind Atropa's chair, reading through some ledger or other, smoke curling up from his lips. Emiliano coughed loudly, pointedly, but Artemio didn't seem to hear.
Emiliano scowled. Dinner with the royal family was about as interesting and engaging as dishwater. He wiped his scabbard down again, his thoughts jumping ahead to his own dinner later – he'd finally have Fallon to himself for the first time since the beginning of the jamboree. Celebrations in the Court were highly class-segregated, and Fallon had been invited to so many parties that he'd been unable to refuse without jeopardising his status. So Emiliano had been left alone most nights.
Now, though, the main religious celebrations were over and Fallon had a night off. Emiliano had a special evening planned – he'd poured his savings into the fancy bottle of wine that now lay cooling under his bed – and all he had to do now was make it through this boring royal chore first.
Artemio ground out his cigarette under his heel, his curious gaze rising from his ledger to fix on Corin for a moment.
“And,” Corin was saying, “sometimes I think he must be using magic or something because no one else can see him, and-”
The door creaked open. Atropa emerged, wiping his hands clean with a lacy handkerchief. With a gracious nod to Artemio, he took his place at the head of the table.
“Your mother won't be joining us tonight,” he said, waving for the servers waiting at the edges of the room. “We'll eat without her.”
Corin glanced over at something in the corner of the room, then back over at Atropa. His enthusiasm visibly died away, replaced by a quiet, obedient look. With a short nod, Corin spread a napkin on his lap and waited while the servers brought the food to the table.
At first, Emiliano had been dumbstruck at the differences between royal dinner and bog-standard civilian dinner. Corin was a good-natured boy, no doubt about that, but sometimes Emiliano wondered how he would fare if – gods forbid – he actually had to serve his own food some day, or clean his own bedroom without someone waiting on him hand and foot. And that was Emiliano's cousin. How could their upbringings have been so different?
“Tell me what you learned today, Corin,” Atropa said softly, taking up his cutlery. Although not technically of royal blood, he was perfectly at ease surrounded by servants. “Adreanas tells me you're making great progress with your genealogy lessons.”
Corin nodded. “Yes, father,” he said earnestly, without meeting Atropa's eyes. “I'm drawing a family tree with what I've learned. You never told me that grandfather Zaer was related to Verveine Redsand. Does that mean we're related to Queen Xandra?”
Atropa nodded, tucking his pale pink hair behind his ear. “Yes, though very distantly. It's not worth thinking about; you see, Verveine Redsand fathered a lot of children during his time as Commander Rezann's plague general, he is ancestor to half of northern Sornieth. But through his connection with the Commander and the wealth he earned, our trading company was able to get off the ground. Verveine's third daughter, Kyras, was the first to start trading under an official-”
Emiliano zoned out for a while. Atropa was a deeply boring person, all too fond of breaking into long, dull lectures about the minutiae of running a trading company. Just two more hours, Emiliano promised himself, tucking his polishing cloth into his jacket pocket.
Atropa continued to drone on.
“It's interesting, is it not, that your non-royal side boasts a far more distinguished bloodline,” he said. “We have been a fixture in Sornieth for hundreds of years, and the founder of this kingdom – may the gods rest his soul – was born a nobody from a clan that has since been destroyed.” He smiled, self-satisfied. “Not to discount the achievements of King Serraden, but his lineage is really nothing special.”
Emiliano's hands curled into fists. He bit his tongue. Two more hours...
Corin nodded, too young to really question his father's teachings. But then the boy paused, fork-in mid air, and cast a shocked glance at the empty corner of the room. He flinched a little, his gaze flashing between Atropa and the corner of the room. The torches lining the walls guttered for a few moments, under some imperceptible breeze.
Suddenly, Artemio swore. He lowered his balance sheet, beckoning to Atropa.
“We have a problem, my lord,” Artemio said. “I've triple-checked this and it seems like we are missing a hundred and twenty thousand gems from that latest transaction – I must have balanced it wrong, perhaps. Either that or we have a thief in our ranks.”
Corin frowned a little, put out. Business talk was all too common at the dinner table.
“I see,” Atropa said, casting an expert eye over the balance sheet. “Well, let me fetch my own records, we'll have to sort this one out.” He spread Artemio's sheet over the tablecloth, pushing aside his plate. “You, servant,” he said, glancing up at Emiliano. “Fetch a folder from my quarters. The red one, please, it should have last week's date on the cover.”
Emiliano felt like snapping at him that he was not a servant, but honestly this was as good an excuse as any to take a well-needed beak from the incredibly boring dinner table conversation. He ducked his head in assent and made for the door. Atropa and Artemio were deep in discussion about their latest transaction, no longer paying any attention to the room at large or poor Corin.
Emiliano strode down the corridor towards Atropa's quarters. It was, of course, as lacy and purple as everything else belonging to Atropa. Didn't the man ever get tired of such a restrictive colour scheme? Emiliano shut the door in his wake and glanced around the neat room.
There, on the desk, was a stack of folders. Emiliano sorted through them, stifling a yawn. The red folder with last week's date was on top of the pile, unfortunately. He'd been hoping that it would be hard to find, so that he could avoid having to stand through dinner conversation.
He took the folder and opened it up, but his curiosity died instantly at the sight of the rows and rows of numbers all cramped together in a hugely complicated grid. It meant nothing to him, but he did have it in himself to be thoroughly impressed by the sheer quantities of treasure and gems being dealt with her. With a sigh he snapped the folder shut and turned to go.
A faint, cold breeze stirred his hair, catching his attention. Shoving the folder under his arm for safekeeping he turned, frowning. Atropa's window was closed. But there was a draft pushing through the lifeless air, carrying with it a bitter, acrid smell that Emiliano thought he knew from somewhere, but he couldn't remember where...
Atropa's bookshelf – crammed with more folders and ledgers – was out of place. Pushed away from the wall, leaving a dim crack through which the breeze came. A secret entrance.
Emiliano couldn't help it. Even though the secret passageway no doubt led somewhere boring like the royal water closet, he had to check it out. Visions of a hidden vault stuffed with gems danced before his eyes. If the loss of hundred and twenty thousand gems wasn't worth raising the alarm about, then the loss of far less would barely be noticed...
He pulled the bookshelf further away from the wall, widening the entrance, and slipped inside. It was dark and dusty, that strange, almost acidic smell lingering in pockets along the narrow corridor. At some point, he started to hold his breath.
There was a light at the end of the winding corridor. Eyes narrowed against the sudden brightness, Emiliano emerged into perhaps the worst room he had ever seen in his life.
It had a low ceiling, like a dungeon, and the arrow-slit windows were free from glass or shutters. More bookshelves lined the walls, but these ones didn't contain any books, only a collection of large glass jars filled with murky fluid. In the centre was a couple of metal tables, some still grungy with variously-coloured blood, metal and leather restraints at each corner. Emiliano stepped back, automatically, and something crunched under his foot.
He looked down, then threw himself backwards with a yelp of horror. The floor was messy, covered with brightly coloured shards. It was as if someone had smashed a potter's workshop on the floor, but these weren't bits of ceramic. They were egg shells.
Emiliano would have fled, but a faint glow on one of the bookshelves caught his attention. Sitting innocuously between a pair of massive bell-shaped jars was a whole shadow egg, its glowing patches throbbing faintly. Some kind of metal instrument had been pushed into the shell, like a thermometer or something, and deep purple fluid had welled up around the puncture site. The pulse of light from the egg was uncomfortably irregular, like a failing heartbeat.
The egg was clearly important to someone – it was being studied – and its absence would be noticed. Emiliano turned to go, knowing well that he would never bring himself to leave without the egg.
So he held his breath, turned back around, and edged out into the room again. Fragile, discarded egg shells cracked underfoot. He tried not to notice. As he approached the shelves, he found he could make out shapes lying motionless in the fluid, a collection of things with skinny tails wrapped around their bodies and tiny, delicate hands pressed up against the glass. He almost expected them to start moving, but they were eerily still.
Bile rose into his mouth. He took a quick breath, bracing himself, trying not to see any more of the wet specimens than he already had, and reached for the egg. It was a foot across, awkward to hold, but comfortingly warm. He took the metal instrument and carefully withdrew it from the contents of the egg, spilling more purple fluid over his hands. The cracks on the egg's surface widened at the disturbance and his heart almost stopped – he could escape with an egg, but not with an infant – but the thing did not stir. The pulsing glow seemed to strengthen once the cruelly hooked end of the metal instrument was gone, but maybe that was just Emiliano's wishful thinking.
“Nothing to it,” he mumbled to himself, wiping away more embryonic fluid. Hugging it to his chest, he turned and practically ran from the room.
Back in Atropa's bedroom, he found the discarded folder on the floor by the bookshelf door. It was time for some quick thinking.
Five minutes later, he emerged back into the dining room, his jacket scrubbed clean and the requested folder in his hands.
“There you are,” Atropa said boredly, beckoning to him. “Put it there. Now, Artemio, we'll check the balance from yesterday – these are my vault details...”
Trying very hard not to be sick, Emiliano nodded and quickly relocated himself to his customary position behind Corin's chair. The dinner passed in a nightmarish haze as he struggled to keep a neutral expression on his face. How long before Atropa knew exactly who had taken the egg? If Emiliano was lucky, he had until that evening. If he was unlucky...
Finally, the dinner was over. Corin was still chatting on about the invisible man, but Emiliano couldn't even pretend to be interested this time. He accompanied Corin to his bedroom, stammered out a distracted goodnight and shut the door in his wake.
Once he was certain he was unobserved, he darted away from Corin's room, back towards the corridor leading away from the dining room. He almost bumped into Rosa's own bodyguard, Myra, who was passing by. Gasping out a quick apology he continued on.
The corridor looked the same as it had earlier. He walked down it, trying to act casual, and paused by a fussy little end-table. A large ornate vase stood on it. Emiliano peered inside. The egg was still there. His heart pounding, he grabbed the vase and shoved the rim against the wall – gently – until it cracked.
“Oh dear,” he said loudly, picking up the vase. “Oh no – what a shame...”
A servant just rounding the end of the corridor frowned at him.
“It's broken,” Emiliano said, indicating the vase helplessly. “I'll take this away to be repaired.”
“Fine,” the servant said, “as long as you take credit for it I don't give a shit what you do.”
“That's the spirit,” Emiliano said weakly, wrapping his arms protectively around the vase. He carried it out of the royal suites, loudly explaining to every servant he came across that he was simply taking it away to be repaired. Nobody stopped him. Hardly daring to believe it, he picked up the pace until he was just short of breaking into a jog.
Fifteen minutes later he was knocking hard on Iriangi's front door with an elbow, unable to open it up himself. He still shared a home with his mother.
She opened the door and frowned for a moment, eyeing the vase. “Emilio, what-”
“Hi, mum!” he said brightly, breathless. “Hi, sorry – I've got to run, Fallon's expecting me-”
“Did you break that?” she said, a warning tone creeping into her voice as she stood aside to allow him entry.
“Yes, but it's fine, it's just... it's a present for Fallon. He won't mind. Excuse me...” Emiliano darted into his bedroom, setting down the vase for a moment while he flattened himself to the floor to extract his precious bottle of wine from its ice box. He jammed it under his arm, grabbed the vase again, then escaped before Iriangi could question him any further.
He had to shout at Fallon's front door, unable to knock with his arms so occupied. Fallon answered after only a moment, a tiny frown on his face.
“You said you'd be here half an hour ago,” he said, beckoning. “Did Prince Cosimo keep you waiting?”
“Um. Shut the door, Fallon.”
Fallon did so, eyebrows raised. There was a small table in the centre of his living quarters, already set for dinner. There were wine glasses and roses. Emiliano would have given anything for it to be a normal date night.
“What's with the vase?” Fallon said.
Emiliano set it down on the ground, then extracted the bottle of wine. Turning away, he fumbled for the corkscrew on the table. Behind him, Fallon peered into the vase.
“Uh, Emiliano...”
Emiliano poured himself a brimming glass of wine and drank desperately. After a few deep, steadying breaths, he glanced around to see Fallon holding the damaged shadow egg at arm's length, his expression bewildered.
“Um, wow, Emilio,” he said, “I've never – uh, this is a lot to take in – maybe we should have discussed beforehand if we wanted to have ch-”
“No,” Emiliano gasped. “No, that's not it.” There was something in his tone of voice that made Fallon lower the egg and stare at him.
“What's wrong?” Fallon said, noticing for the first time that Emiliano was breathless and shaking.
So Emiliano told him the full story. It all came out in a rush – his misguided curiosity, his inability to leave an innocent egg behind in some filthy torture chamber, the dead things preserved in glass jars. By the time he was finished speaking, Fallon was gaping at him in horror.
“What – what'll we do?” he said quietly. “He'll know who took it, Emilio, this isn't good.”
“I know, I know – that's why I brought it here. We can keep it secret here.”
Fallon nodded silently. “Okay... but... what then? What will we do with it?”
Emiliano stared at the egg, comforted by its tiny pulsing glow. The wine had steadied his nerves somewhat, and for the first time in what felt like forever he could actually think. Atropa would be on the lookout for an egg. The best way to thwart him would be to ensure that there was no egg to be found.
“Well,” Emiliano said, “hatch it, I guess?”