The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (28 page)

“Stupidity?”
Captain Marsden visibly bristled.

Yes, yes,
Ian thought as they reached the table.
Go and defend His Majesty’s sabre.

“That is absurd,” the captain said as he threw down the n
apkin he had he just picked up, “in addition to grossly insulting.”

Gressaire looked a little
commiserative, but also encouraging, in an impish sort of way. “Zhat is what zhey say, but maybe zhey do not mean zhat bad of a word.”

“Excuse me, milady,” Captain Marsden said to Elizabeth Wester before
stomping off after a jubilant Gressaire. “I don’t care where we are, this won’t be—”

Ian quickly slid next to
the margrave’s daughter. “Would you permit our intrusion, milady?”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes had lit up a little when she had turned to find so many familiar
, red uniforms near her, but they quickly became more controlled.

“This is rich,” Kieran muttered angrily as an elderly
, Dervish man was already sitting down on Elizabeth’s other side. Kieran made a quick calculation, then jerked Brodie down the length of the table and toward—

“I don’t suppose wagers are
estimable within your circles, milady,” Ian said.

“No,” Elizabeth said, also watching Kieran’s progress around the end of the table and around to the other side, “but if they were, I would not wager that he will make it.”

“But—” Ian said, his eyes on the considerable but indecisive competition of guests milling about the opposite side from them, “—if the obstacles prove to be overestimated …”

“Excuse us,” Kieran said as he pushed his way to the seats directly across from them.

“Pardonze him,” Brodie said as he took the seat next to Kieran with a little less gusto.

“You know …” Ian said hesitantly, “I would have moved if you would have asked.
”

Brodie burst out laughing, and even Elizabeth smiled as Kieran irritably pulled in his chair and arranged his napkin.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kieran muttered, then looked at the margrave’s daughter. “The view is far more beautiful from here.”

“Words,” Elizabeth said,
looking off in a purposefully airy way, toying with her own napkin, “they delight only the ears.”

Kieran laughed back, and Ian wondered if he really thought that she had made that up.

By this point, the majority of the guests had seated themselves, most of those nearby being more elderly. They were at the foot of the most prominent stretch leading up to their host and his most valued guest.

As Ian watched, streams of waiters dressed in spotless white overcoats made their way to the tables, carrying platters that he
ld an assortment of bowls.

With the intention of getting
his bearings before they reached their table, Ian turned to the array of dinnerware laid out in front of him.

There were, as he quickly counted, thr
ee plates, two large, one small, as well as one fairly large soup bowl, two silken napkins, three glasses, two small silver instruments to the left that he didn’t recognize, and a bevy of silverware to his right.

“Are some of these yours?” Rory asked Ian, but quickly looked embarrassed when he saw that their
allocations were all the same.

“Oh
dearest, noble lady,” Brodie said across to Elizabeth. Though, when all their attention had turned to him, Brodie abruptly turned to the elderly lady on his left. “Please educate a poor Bevish man on all this trumpery.”

She looked at him, haughty in a defensive way, saying something in Dervish.

“Please?” Brodie said, holding up his utensils upside-down imploringly. “I’ll starve.”

With a huff, the woman turned back to the much less urgent conversation going on
at her other side.

“
There’s never any reason to be worried,” Ian said, looking over at Elizabeth, “until all your options have been exhausted.”

“Indeed,” Elizabeth raised her larger napkin to dab at her lips. “It is all merely a matter of order. Every item has its place and turn. We begin with the lapel, which we unfold and refold like this, and then tuck into the front.”

They made something of a white-knuckled competition out of it, as they were generally behind the progress of the rest of the surrounding guests, who probably didn’t actually care nearly as much about these matters of etiquette. Ian made sure to keep up with Elizabeth’s instructions, even anticipating the next step in the preparations so that he was safely ahead of Kieran. Brodie made the most fun out of it, and Ian imagined he could feel Rory’s tension beside him.

Once
, Ian wondered if Corporal Wesshire, perhaps isolated from the rest of them, as odds were, was struggling nearly as much as they were. But then he remembered just who Corporal Wesshire was. Though Ian had no idea what social circles the corporal had been raised in, it was plain the kind that he had been born for. Ian also remembered that he knew Dervish, which perhaps made him even less of an outsider by himself than all the rest of their company was together.

If only
I could speak their language,
Ian thought. He wondered at what it would be like to be able to speak without words, with all the intents and unhindered meanings people had to communicate to each other. He thought about how much that would make all things better.

But as he sat, a little quieter than the rest
of them while the servers brought their food, their eyes and their laughter bright among the candlelight that moved with the water in the center of their table, Ian was afraid at what he might find. No overly friendly opinions of him were expected in Kieran’s feelings, but were there any in Brodie’s either? And while Rory seemed the most straightforward, it wouldn’t surprise Ian to find bitterness, of more than one kind, toward Ian. He certainly had call to, as their conflicts had fallen almost entirely quiet since the hunt, but no one could say whether they had been forgiven.

“Is that something you would like as well, Private
Kanters?” Elizabeth was asking him.

And her, there was nothing to her he could really know for sure. As he nodded and said that it was, stared at her for a couple moments longer than he should have, he wasn’t sure that he
actually did want to know.

“There
, you’ve done it,” Brodie said.

“And what exactly is that?”
Ian asked, trying to bring himself back to matters. The server who had asked Elizabeth what she had wanted, and consequently Ian and Brodie, was moving on, having already sent orders through his communication pad to the servers that were just reaching the head of the table with food.

“
Eltraités menlon,” Elizabeth Wester said with a flourishing accent. “It is a delicacy in the leeward parts of Derfi, extremely soft and succulent. It has a bitter sort of sweetness. That is probably because it has saffron in it.”

“Is that a Dervish kind of animal?” Rory asked dolefully, staring down at his plate in some apparent trepidation.

Ian tried not to laugh at that. “I trust milady’s better judgments.”

“The same for us,” Kieran told their accompanying servant, doing his best to repeat what Elizabeth had
requested when the servant had to prompt him. “Is that all we’re having though?”

“Don’t you have the same sort of faith in our noble lady?” Brodie asked him.

“Of course I do,” Kieran said, looking down the table. “It just seems like they’re putting food into the water.”

They all peered, with as much
dignity as possible, to confirm that it did indeed appear to be the case. And as they watched, the deep bowls that the servants set into the beginning of the table’s waters began to slowly spin down its length.

“Must be the side courses,” Ian said, looking about them, “and those must be how you pull them in.”

They all looked where Ian was watching a rather hungry-looking older man. The man was peering down the table at the oncoming dishes with what looked like half of a billiard stick. It was some high spectacle as they sat and observed him carefully pick one dish out from the rest, lean forward, and gingerly bring his stick over the silver bowl. It immediately stopped spinning and followed closely underneath the stick to beach just in front of the man, within easy reach.

“That must be why they can’t win at billiards or wars,” Kieran said, experimentally taking out his stick that he found was set into the table beside him, “they don’t know the proper use for billiard cues.”

“Private,” Ian calmly said at Kieran, but glaring, “not everyone can be as finely educated in sticks as you.”

Kieran probably would have had a great deal to counter for that, but a fit of self-awareness seemed to come over him. Ian made sure
that the other looked away first. For as generally intelligent as Kieran was, it was amazing how stupid he could be. Never mind that it didn’t look as though anyone around them had noticed, and that their immunity as guests probably allowed for a lot of unwarranted grace, but it wasn’t as though they were the only ones who could understand overly rude Bevish.

Elizabeth Wester glanced over at Ian, a quiet pair of eyebrows showing her assent.

“Well then,” Ian said, without losing momentum as he sought to change the tone, “whether our food should be delivered or floated to us first, I’m a little lost about which fork to start with. You said to begin on the outside, work our way in?”

“Generally,” Elizabeth said in a noncommittal voice, “bu
t I surely advise you gentlemen that these arrangements are quite more splendid than what I am familiar with. None of my advice could be valid at all.”

“I suppose we simply have to take our chances,” Ian said, looking over at Rory soberly, “but as long as milady finds us still to be gentlemen
, then all is not lost.”

“Here, here,” Brodie said, raising his cup—his flute high.

“Wait,” Ian frowned, “is that wine? Where did you get wine?”

They all checked their own wine flutes to find them
still empty, and they tried to crane in closer as Brodie tried to answer over a sudden and boisterous peal of laughter just down the table.

“What?” Rory asked.

“He said he got it from the fountain,” Kieran supplied sullenly, as the noise fell somewhat.

“Yeah,” Brodie point
ed down the table. “That’s what that chap did. I think we should just watch him for the rest of the night.”

“I see,” Ian said, looking down the fountain stream directly in front of him.

Upon closer inspection, he saw that the waters there were of a slightly more amber color than the rest, though there were of course many points throughout the length of the table where different colors were used for effect. But this small portion in front of him was remarkably contained. Ian had noticed the three crystal pieces in front of his setting before, but he had just assumed the squat, chess-like pieces were merely for decoration. Noting that everyone else also had three of these pieces and guessing that they were too small to offer any special aesthetic qualities, he experimentally tried nudging one.

“Look,” Elizabeth said, “the color changed.”

Ian glanced up and saw that the swirl in front of him had become somewhat darker. But Ian was watching the name that appeared on the surface of the table between the three crystal pieces in very stylized, dark red letters.

“Munion,” Rory said, “that’s a sort of brandy, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It is,” Kieran said.

“Brilliant,” Ian murmured, carefully taking a different
crystal piece and moving it much further in relation to the others and watching the accorded effect in the name and color of liquid.

By this point
, they were all trying their own pieces, though the margrave’s daughter merely watched Ian’s. Feeling far more satisfied at his choice of seating than of actually being the first to discover the method of beverage selection, Ian continued with a great deal of said satisfaction—since he was actually also very satisfied he had been the one to figure out the method of beverage selection.

“Oh, that sounds interesting,” Elizabeth said, from near his shoulder.

Ian was only perhaps three-fifths aware of the drink he had come to, in dark green letters. The other, far more excited two-fifths were devoted to the rather intoxicating scents spilling off from Elizabeth’s hair, and down her shoulder, as Ian imagined it. He was quite sure he had never quite experienced anything like it—quite sure it had to be some sort of expensive perfume their hosts had lent her, so vividly reminiscent in his mind of cedar and rose petals, mixed together with something else …

“Let’s try it then,” Ian said, taking his
flute and leaning forward to dip it into the little alcove they each had. It wasn’t the simplest of arrangements, but he supposed that wasn’t the point.

Kieran and Brodie were laughing about something as he took a tentative sip.

“Well?” Elizabeth asked from over her water glass.

Ian smiled. “I think our food is nearly here.”