Sighing, Myrl looked around the receiving room and let his eyes travel along the restrained splendor of the room. He had been told by the minor herald that the Parthiqueen Foreign Minister’s several large palanquins had arrived in the largest courtyard at the southern end palace an hour past.

A full hour.

He looked to his left, where the three scribes had set up their writing desks in the traditional spaces set aside for them along the North wall. Each scribe, two women of indeterminate age, and a very young man, sat upon their little stools behind their little desks with looks of peacefully mild smiles in place on their faces. THey each crossed their hands in front of them on their individual desks. They each wore a version of the traditional scribes’ robes; fine black fabric with yellow-gold trim that both showed their respective rank and would also hide ink stains.

Very practical, Myrl thought to himself.

Master Page Baison stood to the left and behind where Myrl sat. The heavy older man was as calm as a boat drifting upon the shallowest of tides.

Through the ring on his right hand, that band of precious metal and magic that each monarch of his line had worn for almost as long as his House had held the throne of Rhiada, he could feel their emotions. And those emotions of the twelve guards, and the Royal Herald, who were spaced about the room.

The scribes each were feeling tense. Anxious. Not worried about any one thing, from what Myrl could discern, but they each restrained themselves from the excited anticipation of awaiting the party of trade dignitaries who had arrived to discuss fishing rights, and copper trades.

In contrast, the guards were all bored.

Myrl could commiserate.

They had accompanied him for most of the morning. There were two, Yama and Guill, who had been with him since he came out of his room earlier that morning. Another two, Karlon and Youst, had joined him after breakfast. The other eight had been waiting for him as he had left the counsel room where he had been discussing the very delegation with which he was about to meet with several ministers. Some were even ministers whose jobs concerned trade.

His ring had told him that Karlon, a very tall and ruggedly handsome man, was harboring some very strong feelings of attraction to one of the eight newer guards that had joined in on his procession to this room. His square jaw was always closely shaven, and Myrl couldn’t see any of the man’s hair. Myrl realized that, as Karlon always wore his helmet and coif, he had never seen the man’s ears nor the top of his head.

Karlon, Yama, and Guill had been with him at Jibiril Keep. They were some of Vogel’s men who had made the cut to become Royal Guards. There were several of the guards in charge of his well-being that Myrl had never seen their ears; for all he knew, they didn’t have ears.

That’s a very weird thought.

The sudden and jangled sound of a gong ruined his jumble of thoughts as Lord Ashe stepped into the room from the large arched doorway across the room from where Myrl sat.

Myrl turn his stoic, if mildly smiling, face towards the line of men and women who now slowly entered the room, filing past Lord Ashe in a graceful and dance like, swaying step that every person in the two-by-two procession kept rhythm with as they moved across the floor to eventually stand in front of where Myrl sat enthroned.

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The two women leading the procession stopped before him where he sat, and gave deep and graceful bows that matched one another as they turned away from one another to step aside from the line of the parade, garbed in many layers of silk in a style he didn’t recognize, their oddly draped cascades of fabric belling out and flowing with their sinuous movements.

The next two people in line were a woman and a man holding each other's hands as if they had just performed a formal dance. He suspected they may have, by their culture’s measures. The man was tall and as thin as a twisted, knotted bit of rope. The fellow looked to Myrl like he didn’t have an ounce of fat on his frame, and his tightly stretched brown skin was taught enough that Myrl was willing to bet that if he looked close enough he might see the striations in the man's wiry muscles. He had what might be a solid pound of gold in bangles at each wrist, another pound on his fingers, and several torc-like bands of gem encrusted gold resting on his prominent collar bones.

Beside him stood a woman dressed to match the taller, much thinner man, but in complementary colors. Where he wore green, she wore orange. Where he wore yellow, she wore purple. While she wore gold bangles, rings and torcs, they were not the large, massive things that weighted her compatriot down.

The woman was not nearly as tall as the man beside her, and where he was a spare and narrow as an ascetic, the woman standing before him was as pleasantly plump as a curvy woman could be.

She is, Myrl thought distractedly, as delightful to look at as any woman I have ever met.

Her wide, almond shaped eyes stared directly at Myrl, her thick lips curling into a shallow smile. Myrl thought he might be on the verge of blushing as the lovely young woman’s eyes roved so freely over him. Rarely had he ever had anyone stare at him so directly, and for so long. It was beginning to get uncomfortable with her staring at him like this. Like she was starving, and he was a biscuit.

The woman to the right of the thin man, one of the two now standing to either side of the mismatched couple, spoke now in a strident tone addressing the room in general, and Myrl specifically. “King Myrl, first of his name, Monarch of the Mighty Kingdom of Rhiada, Keeper of the Plains of the Golden Sun, and Protector of the Mountains of the Fangs of the Moon, …”

The woman had a lovely voice, Baison, according to his ring, was impressed with this foreign herald. She continued her drawn out greeting, and was beginning to turn it into a chant. To help the meter, and to make it into an impressive performance, the woman was pulling out every single title any ruler in his line had claimed over the centuries. On the one hand, Myrl knew they were working to compliment him. On the other hand, this litany was getting tedious. And she hadn’t even gotten to either the Nautical titles nor the Beast titles, both of which had been popular some twenty or so reigns back.

His ring let him know how nervous almost all of the visitors were. All except the couple who stood before him now. The man, while pleasantly calm, was actually furious. He had the talent of a gambler to give nothing away with physical tells, and facial tics. But this man was mad. And disdainful. Unreasonably so.

The woman. She was still looking at Myrl as though her favorite desserts had all been piled up in front of her, and she might not even bother to look for a spoon before she began eating. And her mood matched it. Beneath those wide cheekbones, luscious lips, and beautiful eyes, she was… boiling with a mix of greedy anticipation and murderous intent.

He hadn’t felt anything like this since the day of his coronation, when Baron Feesin had idiotically demanded a duel. That man’s mind had this same gibbering, willful, hatred.

Her heartbeat was increasing, along with her breathing, which did wonderful and distracting things to the front of her dress. Myrl could feel her working herself up to something.

As his visitors’ herald continued to call out his various titles, and honorifics, to a lovely beat, Myrl slowly inhaled and drew his Will together. Continuing to look into the curvaceous woman’s eyes without breaking that eye contact he slowly exhaled a breath and he shaped his Will into a sphere that held himself, and Baison who stood close by.

He could see the sphere as a shimmer in the air, because it was his. He knew Ashe could see it, and from where he sat, he saw that Ashe had raised a barrier just like Myrl’s. Ashe’s own covered himself, the scribes, and the two guards closest to where he stood.

When the visiting herald’s voice had reached a dramatic crescendo, the beautiful little dignitary screamed, and with a dancer’s graceful gesture sent a torrent of red flame as thick as her own thigh and surrounded by coruscating blue-white lightning rippling toward Myrl where he sat.