It was a nice room for a jail. The prison Stadeskosken converted into a warehouse after the city relocated its penal facilities nearer the new courthouse smelled like mingled despair and the Mold Prevention Ritual while this place might have been a perfume store. Moreover, a window high above let in more than enough light to aid the prisoners in appreciating the decorative details in the tiny section of Ydridd's castle they were allowed to view.
The confining walls did not describe a simple rectangle but rather formed little swells and depressions as if the three inmates were locked inside a clam. Panels divided the white walls yet further, each of them outlined in gold and surrounding some delicate etched figure, a rearing horse for instance, or a falcon mid-dive and aiming at its prey. The floor might have been crafted out of a single slab of glossy green material; its name assuredly had been included in many a litany of luxuries. Such smoothness and polish did it have that Dirant and Aptezor feared to walk on it and leave smudges. Taomenk, for his part, paced the room while mumbling.
Nothing so crude as brick, stone, or iron prevented them from resuming their journey. A delicate bronze lattice barred the holding cell's inmates from the corridor, and to call it a cell reflected its present purpose alone. It could have functioned as a lounge if the unsightly prisoners were relocated to the nearest cemetery. Fairies waved as they passed, behavior which added to the situation an amount of friendliness which otherwise would have been much missed. The three were down one friend, and their sole consolation was knowing Ydridd had given him a carpet covered with gems as payment for three officer candidates after he ordered his labor fairies to fall on them and enact a capture.
“Mr. Aptezor, nothing I say about Doltandon Yurvitas has the power to retrieve this situation.”
“That is so, Mr. Dirant. What is your opinion of his actions from a commercial viewpoint?”
“They indicate an absence of care for more than the immediate future. He is now rich, provided those are not the type of fairy treasure which dissolves in the sun, in the hand of an honest man, or upon contact with a sounder material such as silver, and little good it will do him without access to financial institutions and investment opportunities.”
“But Mr. Dirant, he may able to call upon Queen Ydridd's extensive resources to expedite his tunneling efforts.”
“Perhaps so. Without Mr. Taomenk's calculations, I am not convinced as to the productiveness thereof. What is the probability you will assist him now, Mr. Taomenk?”
“There's no question there. When the last Doltandon dies, at last we'll have gotten somewhere.”
“That is my opinion as well, Mr. Taomenk.” Dirant reviewed all the assassination rituals he knew. It was a short review, the shortest possible in fact. Still unable to do more than chatter, he did exactly that. “He may perhaps believe he can rely on certain incentives to persuade you to assist him. Art works are often stolen only to be sold back to their owners, it is said.”
“He's wrong if so.”
“I would have advised him to that effect if asked. That is a lesson in the value of consulting a range of persons. Are there methods any among us knows for reaching remote windows or dissolving bronze?”
Aptezor assigned his compete attention to the question before he informed Dirant he had not learned any such in the five minutes since the last time he was asked, either through leveling or a newly acquired optional ability. “It seems my class treats fairies the same as everyone else,” he theorized. That class he had revealed to be Functionary, one no more suited to clever escapes than Ritualist and far less than Visionary. Unfortunately, Taomenk's interests had taken him along a different road.
The three generally law-abiding men (so far as they understood the laws) failed to extract themselves, and so a set of fairy guards did it for them. They led the trio through halls of such opulence in terms of portable items such as tapestries in addition to immovable architectural splendor that their hands twitched and dreams of financial security made bold to descend upon them without the usual aid of slumber. The gradual increase in lavishness ought to have prepared them for Queen Ydridd's audience hall, and it did. None of the three tried to seize a sculpture of a dove plated in silver and accented with more than a few diamonds before jumping through a window to chance an impossible escape as they assuredly would have done had they appeared there without preparation.
Ydridd stood before her throne, perhaps because it defied efforts to sit on it. The seat began somewhere around her shoulders and the back extended to the ceiling some eight or nine Ydridds above. Even if she had ordered her subjects to fetch a ladder from the nearest iron-marble-gold-silver cottage to get her up there, its hard, reflective contours made from some sort of colored glass or polished metal would have distorted her image into something far from regal. There were no cushions either.
The fairy queen's pose did not comport with the highest standards of royal dignity. Standing as she did with one hand's knuckles on her right hip which was turned slightly toward the hall and her head twisted a bit too, she gave the appearance of someone arrested in a stroll by a call from behind and who, upon seeing the caller, no longer considered a complete rotation to be worth the minor physical strain. Dirant knew several young men who would have enjoyed the general attitude, excessively so. A broader segment would have enthused both in public and private about her figure, though in different terms, going so far as to employ “pulchritudinous” in the former setting and in the latter, incoherent noises. The decision she made about her appearance most likely to cause argument pertained to her hair, which she had cultivated to resemble in color, shape, and volume the mane of a lion. Perhaps her dedication to rule was therein signified.
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“You are here that I may decide.” That Ydridd had chosen queen as her career rather than bard was lucky for Wiuyo and further evidence for the proposition pushed by critics that past every success in entertainment stood a dozen people superior in talent, ignored and often pleased to be so. “Who is to serve as my general? One alone among you. But you all will serve.”
Glittering amethyst eyes studied the three and seemed to penetrate their flesh with precision reminiscent of the perfect angles of a professionally cut gem. Dirant reminded himself of the unreliability of words such as “seemed” and the folly of conflating presentation with substance; the evidence he had of her judgment consisted of the facts that she elevated a small-town freelance courier to her highest military position and was convinced to replace her after a full three hours of arguments by Doltandon Yurvitas bolstered by testimony from Wiuyo and the tunnel fairies about the newcomers' prowess in ogre-escaping and their trenchant martial commentary. Only one of those erstwhile companions bore Dirant's ire (and bore it lightly enough), since the fairies had merely told the truth when asked. Come to think of it, they never told the truth when he asked. He distributed a portion of ire to them after all.
The physical examination portion of the group interview ended. Queen Ydridd moved to interrogating them as to their experience in the industry. “How many people have you killed? You on the left first.”
“None,” Dirant answered.
“Middle.”
“At times I wonder. Better planning, better materials, more convincing arguments . . . Did they have to die?” Taomenk spoke to an audience far away. The situation prevented the men flanking him from displaying any sympathy, but they felt it.
“With your own hands, please.”
He jerked back to the present and definite. “Ah. Not a one.”
“Right.”
“None, but both Mr. Zidenk Geshtilk and the Blue Tiger emphasized when I interviewed them that the view which presumes the role of an army is to kill an enemy is entirely mistaken. The crucial step before embarking on a military action is to identify its specific purpose. Better yet, before assembling the soldiers and supplies. Mr. Zidenk admitted in total frankness that half his employers should not have hired him at all. They did so because of a failure to choose methods suited to the outcome.”
“What is your name?” The voice stayed imperious, but Ydridd's face belonged to someone who had no idea what was going on.
“Aptezor Ristaofen. If . . . it please Your Majesty?” Halfway through a royal audience was no occasion to practice unfamiliar etiquette; moreover, Queen Ydridd's presence caused a feeling of constriction in the humans far unlike what Dirant experienced when meeting a crown prince and closer to sensations caused by baleful monsters. Aptezor therefore ought not be censured for maintaining imperfect composure but rather praised for keeping any at all, his companions reasoned.
“Aptezor Ristaofen, explain everything you just said until we understand it. We see fragments of the outside world in dreams. A hunt, a ballroom, a festival. Elucidate the rest.”
Countless tracts of political philosophy as well as anecdotes from Chtrebliseu to Yean Defiafi and past those kingdoms to other continents altogether have addressed the myriad difficulties there can be in satisfying the royal command, but they all failed to anticipate the problems Aptezor faced explaining he had once covered a scuffle between two city-states of Greater Enloffenkir. Concepts such as “cover,” “city-state,” and “Greater Enloffenkir” were entirely alien to the great fairy, though she understood “scuffle” well enough. The account wandered through time backwards and forwards in no set order but as responses to the queen's demands for clarification.
“What do you mean by 498?” Stlintotenlilkishkir 498, he said, and of course nothing so simple as that sufficed. With the assistance of his fellow Adabans, Aptezor laid out the immediate strategic significance, the wider political implications, and the civic symbolism of the Battle of Stlintotenlilk, not to mention several involved personalities. Fairy courtiers around the throne room fell to brawling over who had precedence in naming himself after various Adaban, Rik, Mabonn, and Dvanjchtliv officers and statesmen involved in the events surrounding that unanticipated lever inserted into the continent's affairs, as Dirant recalled some historian putting it.
In a blow to Adaban pride, Ipparenolt Fenktesfoken started few fights despite being the overall commander of the victorious side. The fairies far preferred the incident of Koshtant Mefal, the Rik general to whom the plan of the campaign was generally attributed, and Duke Tlegnu, the last of the Dvanjchtliv heroes in the slightly disingenuous estimation of every Grenlofer. The story that the duke's son refused to commit his cavalry to a charge he considered foolhardy only to have the father shove him off his mount and take it himself, whereupon the valiant duke achieved a breach of the enemy flank which took him to Koshtant so that the duke slew the enemy general, a rare occurrence in that era of warfare, inflamed the fairy soul no less than it did that of the Adaban or the Dvanjchtliv.
Evidently the confinement which Yurvitas's labor fairies yearned to terminate had lasted more than five hundred years. Recognizing that, Aptezor, once the matter was accepted as thoroughly understood on both sides, decided to be helpful. “The relevant year may be referred to as Nidanz 2469 if that is more convenient for Your Majesty.” That did it.
A brief history of Egillen from the arrival of that Egille from whom the continent derived its name to the present day did not exist, and the impromptu effort on the part of the prisoners to construct one caused tangles which required yet more digressions to straighten. Just as Miss Gelfid attested, Ydridd shunned cruelty and provided refreshments for her tutors, but nevertheless she made them talk.
They went over as much as was known of the population at his advent, which was little, and proceeded to set forth the orthodox timeline regarding the flourishing of his colonists, their setbacks, and their many wars through the foundings of countries up to the age of the great Survyaian empires. The common student was more confident in his knowledge of how the empires crumbled when their weakness became exposed by the harassment of the Obenec raiders who abused innovative transportation technologies and doctrines of combined naval and land warfare for invidious ends, culminating in the irruption from the Dvanj Plateau.
From there, every Adaban had as his tribal inheritance, and every Rik and Mabonn as well with Ottkirs and Hewekers sharing it to a lesser extent, the pride of how successfully his ancestors resisted the Dvanjchtliv when so many fell under his sway, undone by his heroic savagery and monstrous excellence in war until that battle discussed earlier which forever severed the western Dvanjchtlivs of what is now Chtrebliseu from their homelands in the east, today called Swadvanchdeu.