Chapter 3 In Which We Meet the Obligatory Climate Protester
In Which We Meet the Obligatory Climate Protester
The Princeling led us to the table. Small three-legged stools clustered around the two long sides. At the head of the table stood a silver throne. He stopped beside it.
“Sit by me,” he said to Jeff. I looked at Jeff, not sure whether to follow, but someone grabbed my arm.
“You’ll sit with us,” Sahir said, his breath tickling my ear. I stiffened, but he pulled me toward the other end of the table, next to the Gray Knight. When I looked up, a crowd of people I’d never seen before had filled the empty chairs.
“It is an honor to dine at the Princeling’s table,” the Gray Knight said in my other ear, almost in warning. “Many supplicants will take a seat, if there are spaces.” She put a hand on my shoulder and guided me onto a stool. Then she slid my backpack from my shoulders before I could protest.
I had to crane my neck to look past Sahir at the Princeling and Jeff.
Jeff was already holding a wineglass in one hand and spearing a potato with the other.
I felt the bile rising in my throat and tried to say something, but the words caught.
If he got stuck here, he’d blame me, but I couldn’t insult our hosts by calling out to him.
I tried to signal to Jeff to put the fork down, but he didn’t notice at all.
“The Princeling has provided mortal fare,” the Gray Knight said, clearly following my panicked gaze to Jeff’s potato-filled plate. “Those potatoes are from a place called Idaho.”
When I looked back at my own plate it was full—of something that looked suspiciously like the grain bowl I had had at lunch. A gloop of saffron-colored mango chutney dripped off one of the lentil patties.
I frowned at the Gray Knight. “So the food is…” I didn’t want to say safe. “For human consumption?”
“You are a human,” she replied slowly, inclining her head. She sounded a bit insulted. “And the food is for your consumption.” Her hair fell forward over her face, a glittering silver curtain separating us. I winced.
“Your caution does you credit, Miri,” Sahir said, putting his hand over mine. His touch burned, and I noticed the cold bite in the air for the first time. I shivered.
He slid his hand up to my shoulder, clear eyes and a single dark curl waving its way down his broad brown cheekbone. He smiled warmly at me.
The Gray Knight ran her hand up my arm to my other shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “Eat,” she said, tilting her chin toward my plate.
Involuntarily, I glanced at Jeff. He caught my eye and waved his fork, flinging some sauce onto the table. The Princeling, grimacing, flicked his index finger and the sauce disappeared in a spray of green sparks.
I looked back at the Gray Knight, torn between concern and the ingrained desire to be a polite and unproblematic guest. “Is this from that grain bowl place below our building?”
She frowned. “I do not know what that means,” she said.
“Miri, it’s delicious,” Jeff shouted, ten decibels louder than anyone else. The entire table fell into an uneasy silence.
The Princeling raised a hand toward me, palm up. “The maiden is discomfited because she fears our food,” he said. “She is wise and just in her concern, but she will not be harmed.”
He’d just turned the table into a stage for our conversation, and the faeries between us were an audience. I looked down, anxious. If I continued not to eat, I’d seem surly and ungrateful, and Jeff would be upset with me.
Instead, I nodded toward the Princeling and Jeff and picked up my fork.
The Princeling nodded back, and the conversations resumed around the table.
“I still don’t know your name,” I told the Gray Knight, staring at my plate.
I could feel her and Sahir both looking at me and wished I had worn concealer to the office.
I had at least ten red spots on my right cheek.
When I leaned forward to get closer to the plate, my waistband strained against my stomach.
“As I said,” she said, soft and stern. “A name is a thing of power. I shall not share mine lightly.”
I cringed. “Sorry.” I stuck the fork into the lentil patty, scooping up some chutney and a bit of rice, too.
I stared at the gooey forkful of food. The forkful of food stared gooily back.
What did the Princeling mean, she will not be harmed? Was there any hidden meaning in there? And the Gray Knight had said it was for human consumption. But what did that mean?
I snuck a glance upward. Jeff was staring intently at me, fork clenched in his fist. I didn’t need telepathy to know he was thinking Eat it or you’re fired.
Jeff had already demolished his plate of food, and nothing had happened.
I took a bite.
Nothing continued to happen, except that this batch of lentil patties was actually flavorful; the rice had some sort of lovely aromatic in it that filled my nose as I ate, and the chutney on top was sweet and slightly spicy, with bits of juicy mango hitting my back teeth as I savored the bite.
The flavors warmed me in a way I hadn’t expected; my limbs were tingly, my stomach sated in a way food court fare doesn’t usually accomplish.
I had no idea how they’d managed to get this to taste this good; maybe Sahir had charmed the cashier in a way I couldn’t and actually gotten the delicious stuff they advertised.
I’d ask him to order my lunch the next day so I could copy what he did in the future.
“Miriam means no ill,” Sahir said around me, continuing a train of thought I’d almost forgotten. “The humans find titles discomfiting, Gray Knight.”
“Her comfort is not my prerogative.”
I swallowed another bite and turned to the Gray Knight again. “My apologies, lady,” I said, straightening my spine, “for any unintended offense. I am not owed your name.”
She tilted her head in acknowledgment, but before she could speak, a commotion broke out from the other end of the table. It sounded like something shattering. I looked up and saw that someone had thrown an acorn onto the table. It had broken the Princeling’s glass.
“Do not do this, Princeling,” a woman said. Her voice carried, and she stood a little away from the table—she wanted everyone to see and hear her.
“Who begs a boon of me?” the Princeling asked. He had propped his head up on one hand, the other hand dangling a silver fork. He sprawled in the silver chair, long and lavish, and stared at her. I nearly bumped Sahir’s shoulder trying to see her.
She was just as regal as the Princeling, with blazing blue eyes and hair like river reeds, sticking up on her head like a crown.
“It is the obligatory climate protester,” Sahir murmured, so quietly I might have imagined it. He hadn’t turned to look at her, and his nose brushed my cheek.
“I speak for the rivers,” she said, “and for the trees.”
I am the Lorax ran through my mind, in a very unfortunate loop.
“Name yourself, nymph.” The Princeling wasn’t even looking at her now; he had his eyes on his fork and spun it on the tabletop on a single tine. A few of our tablemates had resumed eating.
“If he does not know her, she is not of his Court.” Sahir’s black hair lay in a loop on my collarbone, curling under the lapel of my suit jacket.
“There are other Courts?” I whispered.
The protester continued: “I am the voice of all concerned. I am an emissary of the Queen.”
Around the table, everyone lapsed into preternatural stillness. The Gray Knight, on my right, had one hand at her waist, where a slender handgun was slung on a belt she hadn’t had earlier.
“Oh, so there’s a Queen now?” Jeff asked, with a level of snark I had never achieved in my life. I swear I felt my ribs clutch convulsively at my heart.
“Our guest speaks,” the Princeling said, straightening. His mouth tightened. I clenched my hands and tensed my thighs, ready to spring onto the table and protect Jeff if needed.
The Gray Knight caught my eye and raised an eyebrow. I could almost hear her thoughts: You’re going to jump in front of him? I shrugged, as if to say He’s my boss. She raised the other eyebrow, perhaps indicating Your paltry power structures mean nothing to me, mortal.
I redirected my attention to Jeff.
“What’s the issue?” Jeff asked. “I can mediate. That’s part of our contract, you know.” Absolute silence. He chuckled with the panache of a donkey playing piano. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
There was a murmur of unease. Across from me two faeries in diaphanous dresses with gray skin and black eyes slid off their stools and into the darkness. The Princeling looked around the table.
“Please continue,” he said, and gestured at Jeff.
Jeff frowned at the protester. “What’s the problem?”
The faerie woman stared at the Princeling. “Am I to fling myself before a mortal, a creature my Queen would kill on sight?”
“It would amuse me,” he replied, “if you did.”
She tossed her head, the crown-of-cattails hair bobbing. “This proposal to build a company is the end of our way of life,” she said, still staring at the Princeling.
“If she says it, does that mean it’s true?” I whispered to Sahir, my lips brushing the thin ridge of his ear.
“She believes it so,” he replied. I shivered.
“Your factory will poison our rivers, and human greed will poison our lands.”
“She has no prophecy,” the Gray Knight whispered, helpfully, into my other ear. “Look at the eyes.” I did. Blue and bright against the night sky, gleaming with reflected starlight. Nothing about her eyes screamed I have no prophecy to me.
“And, Princeling, your fondness for humans has not gone unnoticed by my Queen. Desist,” she finished, “or the Queen will consider your lands forfeit. She will raze your factory and rule your Court.”
That sounded very bad.
“This is ridiculous,” Jeff said. “We’re bringing you progress. And your lands are just the inside of Central Park, which isn’t yours.”
I slouched down. Maybe no one would notice I was a human.
The nymph turned to the Princeling, as if to say Well? He looked around the table again, at his people. No one looked pleased.