7. N #3
This was a different dialect, more sibilant and smooth, and Triana had trouble with it.
Their smiles told her that they were either friends, or Nora was a long and favored customer here.
The elf bent down and took a good, deep sniff of the brick before going to fetch a small scale.
Triana watched with amusement as first one, then the other, pointed to different shares of the brick, dickering back and forth.
After a time, they agreed on a share, and Nora cut about a fifth off of the brick, which the male elf weighted carefully, returning a few crumbs to Nora who pressed them back into the brick.
Satisfied, he brought them a small brazier with lit coals, a selection of sauces, a tiny copper dish with some kind of oil, and a pair of plain, very straight sticks.
Nora cut a wafer thin slice, dribbled a bit of oil on the brazier, and with the sticks set the slice onto the brazier where it popped and sizzled for a few moments.
She made a deft movement to flip it over, then slid it, now golden-brown and piping hot, onto a tiny plate for Triana.
“The sauces range from sweet over there on your right, to the more sour and savory on the left. Little dab of sauce, just enough to get the flavor. You might want to skip the green one, furthest on the left. Definitely an acquired taste. Hot enough to melt bronze, if you take my meaning.”
Triana followed her lead and dabbed a bit of sauce, and lifted the small plate up to her mouth, as she saw Nora do.
The wafer, fried in oil to a delicate crunch, mixed with a sauce that combined sweet and savory.
“That is really good!” she declared. “The first thing I’ve eaten here that tastes like real food!”
Nora smiled. “Most of the vendors along here had eating establishments. Now, you have to bring your own rations, and they take a share, in exchange for the sauces, the cooking oil, the charcoal, and the rest. All of that kit costs rations—or effort.
You can grow the herbs and spices to make the sauces, but that takes skill and time. When they are done for the day, they keep what’s left over. Some days they eat well, others … less so. But this is all they have in the way of a skill to make their ration.”
The elf brought a pot of fragrant tea, and filled mismatched cups. They sipped gratefully for a moment, inhaling the floral scents. For just a moment, Triana smelled the gardens outside her estate. Homesickness rose up and she sniffled back a tear.
“Hot?” Nora asked. Triana suspected Nora deliberately misinterpreted the gesture.
“Yes,” Triana replied. She tipped her head to one side a bit, “but good.” She studied Nora, whose mood seemed pensive, a bit off from her usual self. “Is there a problem?”
Nora shook her head, brightening. “No, just having a memory.”
Triana, schooled in the arts of lying, saw through that one at once.
Something had happened. Triana could see the small quirk, the little pause before Nora told an untruth.
Triana, raised in the company of elven lords whose relationship with the truth was always courting, never marrying, found Nora’s “tell” as obvious as a banner.
The stakes had gone up, and Triana still didn’t know whether she was a player, a game piece, or a prize.
“What shall we talk about?” Triana asked, hoping to draw her out. “The lesson.”
“Ah,” Nora answered. “How does it work? Where you come from, I mean? Your king?”
“Oh,” Triana paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts.
“Well, we don’t really have one. We have a Council of all of the Great Lords. The Lesser Lords have to swear fealty to one of the Great Lords and obey their decrees. V’kel Lyon Lord Kyndrath is the most powerful, and has the backing of most of the Council.”
“V’kel?” Nora interrupted.
“Yes, it’s one of his titles. Mine’s V’dann. I’ll admit they can be quite a mouthful.” She started working through honorifics from home and translating them for Nora, but got lost in the thread. “Oh, what’s the skiving word for …?”
Nora smiled. “Profanity isn’t punctuation, dear. Remember, upper birth names have a slightly trilled second syllable, it denotes rights of blood … born lordly … rather than rights of marriage … bedded lordly. Do as I do.”
Triana copied her as Nora made the soft trilling sound. She laughed a bit.
“What’s funny” Triana asked.
“Oh, here it’s the opposite,” Nora replied. “The shorter the title, the better … if you are explaining, you’re losing.”
Triana’s puzzlement must have been obvious to Nora.
“So,” Nora said, slicing another layer of wafer from the ration bar and setting it to sizzle.
She dabbed a bit of sauce on it and slid it to Triana.
“King. Says all it needs to say. One king. Each city has one. The cities get there by different routes … right mother and father for some, get voted in by your peers, cut cards for it, get stuck with it because no one else wants it. Paths differ, but destination is the same. Top of the heap,
nice house, good rations, shiny hat, even grown food. They all come from the most powerful families … magic powerful, not just politically powerful. Last stop for the ambitious.”
“It’s not all grace and glory, though. It’s easy to king it when times are good. A lot harder when things are tough.”
She sighed. “Something goes wrong, you are the first to fall. Literally, sometimes. If a Predator attack is serious enough, then the king goes to the front of the attack and is expected to wield his magic until he is utterly spent. Or dead. Often dead. Usually dead. A few years back,
one of the cities went through four kings in a year. I think they stopped giving them numbers after a while, or it’d be Ardbeg the Twenty-Sixth or something like that.”
Triana sipped her tea, as Nora cooked a slice for herself and popped it into her mouth. “Good king.” She licked her fingers.
She cut a few slices in quick succession, and laid them out in the row, before pointing at them with her little knife.
“Next, these are the lords by birth, all with birth pedigrees going back enough generations to qualify for the city. Standards vary, as some have had their hereditary families wiped out … lords also have to be good at magic, very good, and more than a few died fighting when the cities warred. Now,
we are too busy fighting the Predators outside to bother with going to war with each other.”
She slid two wafers onto Triana’s plate, including one doped with the green sauce.
“Try it.” Nora said. “It’s said to be good for the infrenzia you had. Opens up all the breathing passages.”
If that’s not a dare, then I’ve never heard one.
Triana took a deep breath, and slid the wafer off the plate and into her mouth.
Things were fine, no problem with the heat …
for about three heartbeats … then it felt like she had swallowed a solid ball of dragonfire.
She inhaled involuntarily, carrying the pestilent stuff into her lungs.
She coughed and wheezed, trying to expel it.
Nora slid her a large carafe of water, which she gratefully drank.
“What the …” Triana started.
“Language …” Nora inserted helpfully.
“… was that?” Triana finally wheezed out. Her eyes still firmly shut and tears leaking out.
Nora passed her a paper handkerchief, and Triana blew her nose. After her bout with that illness she was very familiar with those paper handkerchiefs now. Harsh on the nose, but preferable to blowing your nose into the same soggy square of fabric over and over.
“Erdivin will never tell,” Nora answered. “It truly is good for several illnesses. There is hornroot in there that cuts the heat. I do know that. Otherwise, without the hornroot, it can blister.”
Triana had no idea whether to take that seriously.
Nora continued with her explanation, while Triana recovered from the dragonfire sauce.
“After the birth lords come the technical lords. Less powerful, less magic, less family, but with some unique skill with things and contrivances. Anything mechanical or nonmagical. Could be the lifts that carry things to the upper floors.
Could be Machinas that do most of the fighting when the Predators attack. The title goes with the job. Serve at the king’s pleasure. King can’t take a birth lord’s title … that came from the parents. But he can take a technical lord’s title at any time … for any reason.”
She leaned towards Triana, glancing around, ready to share a confidence. Triana leaned in as well. Nora lowered her voice. “I heard a rumor that the king removed his chief farmer. Just gave him the boot. Just like that. lord no more, and back to weeding the gardens for his ration.”
As gossip went, Triana found it rather tame stuff.
She was hoping for some kind of skulduggery, knavery, or even garden-variety bed hopping, ideally topped off with a duel.
Nora’s city, she concluded, was more than a little dull, if that constituted juicy gossip.
She realized she missed a bit of what Nora had said.
“… so, more title, more explaining. See?” Nora smiled at her. “You’ll want to be very careful before you dab your eyes, dear. Get any of that in there, and you will be crying it out for days.”
Triana got a fresh paper handkerchief. Her eyes had mostly stopped watering, but it still felt as though she had a hot coal lodged somewhere in her upper chest. Well, if feeling as if her lungs were on fire was “cleaning them out,” the stuff was doing a good job.
“Our birth lords make it a point of stressing the vast gulf between them and the lords technical. ‘Technically lords,’ as the wheeze goes …. Not really lords. The ever so not too subtle reminder to Haldeen that no matter what he does, how much success he has,
he will never go any further than he has now.”
She made a vague gesture, taking in the city around them.
“How is it for you, and your ever so long titles?”
Triana definitely heard the note of bitterness in Nora’s voice. There was a story there, and a crack in the facade. Another crack. The school was the first. The packet Nora had passed to the woman, who was not thrilled to receive them. Something definitely going on there.
“Well,” Triana replied, testing her voice. “Lord Kyndrath.”
“Trill, dear,” Nora reminded her.