Vol.3 Ch.17 – Gala Dinner

Chapter 17: Gala Dinner

Instead of walking all the way from the dungeon entrance back to the castle Alisha instead used Homeward to bring us to the Plucked Cockatrice, which was located only twenty minutes away from the palace and saved us a couple hours. She had wanted to cast it with Annabella as the focus but the princess had insisted that it wouldn't be a good idea since the guards might get worried if mercenaries showed up in the middle of the palace.

It sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation coming from her mouth but I had the sneaking suspicion that the real reason was that Annabella didn't consider her room in the palace her home at all and the miracle would have sent us somewhere else entirely.

Once we were at the palace Annabella insisted on speaking to her mother, annoying a noble who had been waiting in the antechamber for his audience, but a count had no choice but to bow to a princess and so we were permitted to cut in line.

We walked all the way through the throne room and this time I took a much better look at the giant swords made of what Queen Emilia apparently called blood diamonds. Just as Annabella had claimed, the throne room looked as if it might collapse if those swords didn't hold the roof up and they were angled in such a way that they would box attackers in while not impeding anyone's egress. If you ran away from them you'd end up unharmed. If you were charging at the queen as they fell, you'd be crushed.

When we reached the throne Queen Emilia seemed surprised and slightly curious.

“Sir Mercenary," Annabella addressed me in the slightly stilted tone of what I'd begun to think of as her stage persona, “lend me the cone of silence you carry, please.” It would have seemed like a weird request out of the blue but we'd discussed this on the way back. We wanted absolutely nobody to know what Annabella was about to tell her mother.

So I pulled out my cone of silence and handed it to Annabella, saying: “Of course, your highness.”

And after that, once again, things got really boring as Annabella spent almost half an hour briefing her mother while the cone of silence kept anyone, including us but much more importantly including the scribe off to the queen's right, from listening in. Not that we suspected the scribe specifically, but the fact that his records ended up in a room all the royals and several servants had access to was disconcerting.

When the cone's effect turned off Queen Emilia immediately addressed the scribe:

“Pen a letter to the head chef, if you would.”

The scribe didn't answer. He simply pulled out a piece of parchment and readied his quill.

“Dear August," the queen dictated, “after our dungeon was deemed inaccessible several weeks ago my daughter, Third Princess Annabella, has mounted an expedition to see whether the issue was resolved. On her way to complete this mission she slew the first boss and brought us both its meat as well as that of one of the giant fish. We wish to inquire whether that will suffice to begin preparations for one of your famed seafood dinners and, if so, when said dinner can be held, for we wish to invite all residents of the palace, as well as those who fought alongside my daughter, for this joyous occasion. Insert appropriate pleasantries.”

The scribe finished writing the letter and then summoned a minuscule working of air and fire magic to instantly dry the ink before he folded the letter. Neat trick. And yet another dual affinity mage in the royal family's employ. Those fruits were clearly popular.

“Herald," the queen called and the herald came running and took the letter. Then he summoned his own magic, the odd colorless flash of space magic, and vanished.

I so wanted to ask if the herald was from Shackled Hollow but, again, one did not speak to the queen unless spoken to.

“We will have a room prepared for you," the queen told us. “Please rest. A messenger will inform you when the dinner is being held. As the providers of the meat you are of course the guests of honor. The Third Princess will no doubt fill you in on... all other topics.”

“Thank you, your majesty," I said.

**

An hour later we sat in Annabella's room, the cone of silence active around us just in case.

“She agrees with our suspicion," Annabella told us. “She also confirmed what you told me, that our powers are a manifestation of life force rather than mana.”

“That reminds me, why didn't she simply hire another teacher for you?" I asked and Annabella winced.

“It's a bit of a personal issue," she said. “But in short, while I say I have no interest in politics, I am also politically worthless and diplomatic missions like the one you accompanied me to are just about all I'm good for. And so I didn't warrant another teacher.”

“That seems quite enough to be considered useful," I said.

“It's... I don't really like talking about it," she said.

“You don't have to if you don't want to," I said. “It just strikes me as odd. Your mother doesn't seem to consider you worthless.”

“As a mother she loves me," Annabella said. “As a queen, she considers me all but worthless.” The words were bitter but her tone sounded more... tragically amused.

“I won't pry," I said. “But if you ever want to talk about it...”

She nodded.

We spoke a bit longer before we deactivated the cone of silence and then began speaking of things we didn't need to worry about others overhearing.

Soon enough there was a polite knock at the door. When we answered it we found the herald who informed us that the seafood dinner would be held the following day.

**

The bed in the guest room was beyond fluffy and we just flopped into it. I'd had some idea of having fun with the girls but we were all too exhausted to do anything and fell asleep immediately.

Once we woke up we had to rush to get cleaned up as best we could and find appropriate clothing to wear to an event like that. According to Annabella, the guards who slew the monster usually attended in their dress uniform but we didn't have dress uniforms. We only had casual clothes, adventuring outfits and nice clothes, so we went with the nicest we owned, namely the stuff we'd worn to my mother's birthday. Of course, the moment we had put those clothes on a maid knocked on our door and handed us some new clothes and mentioned to us that Princess Annabella had picked them out. Apparently she had thought our nice clothes might not be nice enough for this dinner.

Yume found a kimono made of the finest blue silk, which looked amazing on her even if it was clearly tailored for someone slightly taller.

Alisha found a knee-length white and green dress far finer than the one she owned, which was impressive given that hers was probably some of the finest the chief of her tribe had been able to afford. She'd looked breathtaking in her other dress. This one looked... well, if she summoned her magic the wings of her aura would combine with the dress to make her look like a fairy queen.

Selene found a pair of pants and a tunic not unlike what she usually wore but cut a little tighter than she preferred and it did an amazing job showing off her curves.

I smirked when I realized that Annabella had picked out clothes that made all of them look even sexier than they already did, all designed to draw gazes and keep them drawn. Clearly the princess enjoyed looking at my women almost as much as I did.

Of course my smirk died when I noticed that the pants and tunic she'd picked out for me were more form-fitting than what I usually went for as well and from Alisha's smirk as she looked at me the outfit clearly served the exact same purpose as the girls'.

Apparently the princess was an equal-opportunity ogler.

To my immense relief Annabella came to escort us to the dining hall and explained the basics to us as we went. As we were the ones who had slain the boss we would get a table to ourselves. Allegedly it was to show their appreciation for the ones who had provided the meal but some of the nobles considered it a way to keep the peasants away from them. Had I known that beforehand I might have spat on the meat a little.

There would be time to socialize before and after dinner but the dinner was the main attraction so if we wanted to speak to people we would probably have to wait until after. That was more than fine by me. I wanted to see if someone was obviously glaring at us first.

Finally we entered the dining hall. It was a surprisingly huge place. The center of the room held several tables, all of them huge except for a center table that seemed to be ours. Not only did it have precisely five chairs while the other tables started at eight and went up from there but I also noticed that the space between that table and the others was greater than the space between each of the other tables. Definitely keeping the peasants at bay then.

Of the tables surrounding ours, the closest was the one the queen would be sitting at. It made sense. She'd married a peasant, so of course she'd have little problem dining with peasants. Or maybe it had more to do with her not wanting to appear as if she despised the people who worked for her.

Around the group of tables there was lots and lots of empty space and that was where people were currently standing and talking to each other.

In our old attire we would have stuck out horribly but with the clothes Annabella had sent to us we blended in decently. Our mannerisms were clearly different from those of the other guests but we didn't look like unwashed riffraff. That was good. If everyone was glaring at us it would be hard to pick out the one with the actual hostile intent.

Speaking of attire, Annabella's dress surprised me. Or rather her lack of dress did. As she explained, she was there as the adventurer who had slain the dungeon boss, not as the Third Princess, so she was allowed to wear something other than her court dress and she'd gone for something almost androgynous.

The pants she wore looked similar to those Selene wore in that they hugged her hips but up top her outfit looked almost more masculine than the one I was wearing: A white button-down shirt and a black outer garment over it. Both were cut so tight that, like her adventuring clothes, they emphasized more than hid her lack of curves. It took me a while to realize what her outfit reminded me of but when I did I almost smacked my forehead.

There was a popular play about a woman called Angelica the Womanizer who dressed as a man and seduced pretty girls to her bed and on stage the main character's actress wore something remarkably similar to what Annabella was wearing right then. From the looks some nobles were shooting her I had to assume it was a deliberate provocation on her part.

I was most interested by what her family was thinking of us. Unfortunately except for the king and queen, Princess Mariabella and Prince Marcus I didn't know what any of them looked like, so we'd have to wait until dinner to see who sat down next to them. As for the ones I did recognize?

King Luke looked amused at Annabella's outfit while Queen Emilia was trying very hard to fight the smile creeping over her lips. Prince Marcus was too deep in discussions with a few other nobles to even notice us and Princess Mariabella gave her little sister a radiant smile.

Princess Mariabella, most likely candidate to inherit the throne, was gorgeous. I could see a definite family resemblance with Annabella but aside from those similarities Mariabella was everything Annabella was not. They shared the curly brown hair and the attractive facial features, but that's where the resemblance ended. Where Annabella's hair was barely two inches long, Mariabella's was done in a complicated up-do and I was pretty sure her hair would hang down to her hips if she loosened her hairdo. Where Annabella had shapely hips but no chest to speak of Mariabella had a pronounced hourglass figure that was further emphasized by the corset woven into her dress. And where Annabella looked beyond uncomfortable dealing with court business, Mariabella clearly lived and breathed politics and court intrigue. Overall, I vastly preferred Annabella.

Mariabella seemed about to make a beeline for her sister, dragging along the duke she had married, but just then the head waiter announced that the food would be out momentarily, so everyone migrated to their seats, including us.

**

I tried to look over at the royal family. I really did.

Unfortunately the food was too good to do much of that.

The first course arrived soon enough, brought to us by an elderly waiter who tried his hardest to keep a neutral expression but who seemed clearly worried about peasants like us being unappreciative of the food. And I admit, it was a little more extravagant than what I was used to. The plate was covered in slices of monster fish meat so thin they were translucent and I figured that simply preparing the meat like this must have taken help from an ice mage to freeze the meat to make it more rigid and easier to get clean edges on the cuts and then a force mage to slice it as fine as this without tearing it. The meat was decorated by a few greens as well as some thinly sliced pieces of radish and then drizzled with a tart dressing. I looked around at my women and Yume's tails were wagging. Raw fish was something she was very much used to, though they ate it with rice rather than the bread this had come with. Alisha seemed impressed with the dish as well, but Selene looked dubious, though once she saw us eating it she tried it as well and her expression melted away as she did, replaced with clear enjoyment of her meal.

Once I had sampled the dish to my satisfaction I could finally look around. All in all there were maybe sixty people in attendance, most of them nobles who were residing within the palace, apparently. They were interesting enough and to my amusement I noted that Annabella was not the only woman who wore an outfit reminiscent of Angelica the Womanizer, but what really interested me was the table of the royal family. Queen Emilia and King Luke sat side by side. Annabella had told me that the daughters would be sitting on the queen's side while the sons would be sitting on the king's side and a good thing, too, because otherwise it would have been beyond confusing. To the right of Queen Emilia sat Princess Mariabella with her husband, while the other princess, Isabella, was absent. To King Luke's left sat Prince Marcus with his wife, followed by two other princes.

Prince Marcus looked very similar to his father, except he had inherited his mother's blond hair rather than his father's brown. Prince Marcus also had a much weaker chin than his father and it was telling just how obvious that was considering that he wore a goatee precisely to hide said chin. His expression made it clear he thought his time was far too valuable to spend on this dinner but his wife seemed to be enjoying herself well enough.

“Which one of your brothers is absent?" I asked Annabella very quietly.

“Albert," she said. “The three you see there are Marcus, Richard and Wilhelm, in order.”

“Thanks," I said, then went back to looking at the princes.

Prince Wilhelm was an unassuming young man with tousled brown hair. At a glance I would have put him at around twenty or twenty-one, but I knew from Annabella that he was twenty-four, just one year younger than me. He seemed calm and quiet and looked to be enjoying his meal. He was also deliberately not making eye contact with anyone and from the way he dressed in understated earth tones rather than the rich colors of the other royals I thought the boy might be a bit shy, or maybe just bad with crowds.

Prince Richard, on the other hand, gave me pause. He was glaring at us. Given how close we were sitting I wasn't sure if he was glaring at me, at Annabella or at one of my women, but the glare was undeniably aimed at our table. It was a shame because without the ugly expression Prince Richard would have been a fairly handsome man, with short-cropped blond hair and the same strong chin as his father, though his features were a little softer, a little more feminine. I imagined the noblewomen would be all over a pretty-boy like him.

“So, is Prince Richard always like this?" I asked mildly. “Or did we do something to set him off?”

“He doesn't approve of my adventuring," Annabella said. “Or of anything else I do, really. If I'm being perfectly honest I wore this outfit mostly to get a rise out of him.”

I did not mention that this made him the perfect candidate for being behind the 'accident' that had befallen her Qi instructor, because that's not the thing you say out loud without a cone of silence active, but I could tell we were all thinking it. Talking to the guy later was going to be a blast, though.

I was pulled out of my musings when a rather pretty maid who I noticed was blushing when she looked at Annabella took my empty plate away and then a butler replaced it with the next course.

“Are those worms?" Alisha asked as she poked the things on her plate.

I couldn't suppress a chuckle. “They're noodles," I said. “Flour, eggs and salt worked into a dough and then cut into thin ribbons that are boiled in water. I'm guessing those aren't a thing among Wood Elves?”

“No," she said and watched intently as I twirled my fork to form a little nest of them, then speared a piece of the shrimp meat to top the bite off. The sauce was made of olive oil, garlic, parsley and pepper flakes, with perfectly cooked pieces of shrimp in it. This wasn't a complicated gourmet dish. This was a chef serving up a very simple dish that showed off all the high quality ingredients he had been given to work with.

I looked over at Yume, who seemed to have an inordinate amount of trouble eating the dish. She hated eating with a fork. It was an instrument that didn't exist in her land and one she loathed. But in this case her trouble seemed to be even worse. I learned later that noodle dishes were very much a thing in the south but that they were usually eaten by noisily slurping down the noodles from a bowl, which would have been considered beyond barbaric in our realm. And so she was struggling with the dish, blushing all the while, her cheeks almost the color of the alexandrite she wore as a pendant on her neck.

Alexandrite was a special little gemstone that seemed to change color. In artificial light like that of the magic crystals lighting up the dining hall it looked red while in natural light it looked green instead. And right now the blush on my little fox' cheeks competed with the red hue of the stone.

I looked away from my women and this time let my gaze wander over the servants. There were none that were obviously glaring at us. Just about the worst had been that butler who'd considered us bumpkins, but after we had proven that we had table manners and weren't going to throw the food back in his face he no longer had to try for a neutral expression, it just came naturally. Other than him, the most negative expression I could see from any of the wait staff was a maid who looked irritated, but given that she was glaring at a tear in her apron I was pretty sure she wasn't upset with us.

The next course arrived and it was clearly the main course. Three big pieces of pan-fried giant shrimp meat in a sauce invented in Calice, called beurre blanc in their strange local tongue. In short, it was garlic browned in the same pan as the meat, deglazed with white wine, reduced to almost dry and then a lot of cold butter was mixed in until it became a creamy sauce. Definitely not healthy, but certainly delicious. The sides weren't much healthier, either. The first I would call mashed potatoes but they were far too sophisticated for that name to be appropriate. They were mashed finer than I had ever seen, almost as if they had been passed through a fine strainer, while the other were thin ribbons of leak and carrots, pan-fried with, you guessed it, more butter.

It was absolutely phenomenal. Thanks to my status as an adventurer I had the money to splurge on fancy meals if I wanted to but I had never really seen the point of paying that much more for my food, but food like this made me wonder if I'd been missing out.

After I could concentrate on something other than the food again I looked once more at the royal family. Queen Emilia was having a quiet conversation with her daughter while King Luke was surveying the crowd similar to the way I was. Prince Marcus looked annoyed, but I figured it had more to do with his wife scolding him. She was hissing quietly, but considering I'd heard the words “You're a prince, bloody act like it” and saw him straighten up and look slightly less annoyed afterwards I had a good idea what she was telling him. Prince Wilhelm looked a bit uncomfortable, as though he could barely stand to be in a room with this many people and seemed to be finished eating halfway through his plate. And finally, Prince Richard was continuing to glare at us. He was trying to disguise his teeth grinding as deliberate chewing, but there was nothing on our plates that warranted even half as much effort to chew as he put into every bite. The other sign of his displeasure was that his knuckles were practically white he was gripping his cutlery so tightly. Other nobles were clearly noticing it and leaned away to not be subjected to his glare.

Now, as I said before, I had enormous respect for the queen and she was the only authority figure I would bow to. But the way her son was glaring at us reminded me quite a bit of how some of the Olympians had glared at me in the past and it made my old instincts flare up. Given that we currently worked for the queen I had to be careful about which gauntlets to throw, but on the flip side, given that we currently worked for the queen Prince Richard was going to have to be careful in his dealings with us. If he was going to verbally harass Annabella while I was watching I was going to yank his choke chain with the same gusto with which I'd once pissed in the ocean right after Poseidon had threatened me not to do exactly that.

Of course, there would be none of that until after the dessert course, which was delivered soon after we were done with the main course. I wondered whether they would continue the maritime theme of the rest of the menu, but my worries were blown away by the plates that arrived. A big, crispy piece of meringue garnished with whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

Alisha was ecstatic and I couldn't fault her. The strawberries by themselves were just a bit too tart, the meringue just a tad too sweet and the cream not quite sweet enough, but eaten together they were absolutely perfect. The meringue was expertly baked so that the outside was crunchy while the inside was still soft and foamy like a cloud of sugar. Just about the worst thing I could say about dessert was that it was over too quickly.

**

After dinner everyone was obliged to stand up and mingle and it quickly became apparent which nobles had resided in the palace for a while and which ones weren't familiar with the inner workings of the palace. The latter category kept their distance from what to them must have looked like a table of peasants while the former all came to thank us for providing the meal and greet Annabella as the princess she was, even if her outfit didn't give it away.

Once all the nobles who wanted to thank us had come and gone Prince Richard approached us. From the way he'd been tapping his foot for the past five minutes he was clearly not a patient man and had been wanting to approach us for quite a while.

“Sister," he said tersely as he approached Annabella.

“Brother," she said, a hint of a taunt to her voice. It seemed as if he wasn't allowed to blow up at her in public and she was trying her best to goad him into doing it anyway. I might have thought that petty if I hadn't spent half of dinner being glared at by him.

“Still gallivanting around dressed like a man I see, pretending to be an adventurer," he said, his own taunting much less subtle. “Why you insist on working through the dungeon I will never understand.”

“In case it escaped you once again," Annabella said, “all of us are required to train in the dungeon, no matter how much you'd like me being coddled at home instead.” There was still a teasing note to her voice but I could tell he was getting to her.

“You have done all the training in the dungeon our family requires of you," he said. “And yet you continue to risk yourself with this foolishness. Do you even know what people are saying about you? Clearly you don't, or you wouldn't be encouraging them by running around with these peasants while dressed in drag.”

“I'm sorry Richard, you seem to have confused me with someone who gives a fuck," Annabella said and Richard gasped at her language. “We all know that I will never be married off to anyone, so I don't have to pretend to be a pure, nubile maiden. I can be the picture of debauchery, in fact.” At that, she deliberately turned away from him, faced Selene and bowed before kissing her hand, aping the famous gesture of Angelica the Womanizer.

He seemed ready to explode and approached her while reaching out his hand as if trying to make a grab for her, so I stepped between them.

“And who are you supposed to be?" he asked me with a sneer.

“Her companion," I said. “Careful now, you don't want to get your hand dirty by touching a peasant, your highness.” I put the most sarcasm into the title that I could get away with. And considering I was technically following court protocol to the letter, I could get away with quite a lot.

“Companion," Prince Richard sneered again, then looked at Annabella. “So not only do you insist on putting yourself in unnecessary danger, you surround yourself with such riffraff as well?” He turned back to me. “You know what a loose woman my sister is, right? Whatever she promised you, she's promised it to dozens of men and women before.”

“Your sister didn't have to promise us anything," I said with a shrug. “We'd take her along anyway. But leaving that aside, we were hired by the queen for this task. So you might consider who it is you're second-guessing when you tell her she shouldn't be in the dungeon.”

His eyes widened. “Mother sent you down the dungeon?" he asked Annabella, ignoring me completely.

I still replied, though. “She did," I said. “She also told us what an accomplished adventurer your sister is and how competent she is. So we all know that her going adventuring is a problem to you and you alone.”

Finally he looked at me and said: “You sound as though you want to pick a fight with me, peasant.”

I pitched my voice so that the nobles around us couldn't hear. “Oh, I want to. But I'm not stupid enough to assault a royal. So go on, throw the first punch, give me an excuse to lay you out, twerp.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and held his hand out to his side, the crystal-tainted Qi rushing out of him trying to create a sword before he dispersed the power and shook his head.

“You're not worth getting my hands dirty for, peasant," he said and then turned and left.

I waited for him to leave and then counted to ten before I said quietly:

“I'm sorry. I know I should have let you handle him on your own, he just pissed me off too much to leave it to you. I didn't mean to offend.”

I felt Annabella's hand squeeze my shoulder. “No need to apologize. I don't think anyone has ever stood up to him for me. It was nice.” Then she turned around to my women and asked: “Would you like to retire for the evening?”

“Yes," Selene said with a small smile in my direction. “Let's.” From the glances she'd been throwing me I had a very good idea of what she had in mind for the evening.

We walked the halls of the palace, first to bring Annabella to her room and then to retire to our own, which was conveniently placed close to hers. Alisha and Yume were discussing the mana channeling technique they found while Annabella, Selene and I were walking close together, talking about the food and the other dinner guests, when I felt my instincts scream a warning.

After nearly a decade of fighting Dark Lords I had developed some very keen instincts, some might even call them a sense for danger. It wasn't as all-encompassing as the Sense Evil skill Alisha and Selene possessed, it was more a sense for when killing intent was focused on me and mine. I'd felt it a great many times, but only very rarely had it ever been as bad as it was then.

I threw my arms wide and flung myself forward, grabbing both Selene and Annabella and throwing all three of us to the ground. Less than a heartbeat later I heard the sound of something striking stone in front of us.

Alisha and Yume, bless them, had cast a wind barrier and Phantom Step before the three of us even hit the ground.

“What was that?" Annabella asked.

“Projectile attack," I said and then helped both her and Selene up, then looked ahead to see what I'd just saved us from.

There was a sword made of red crystal sticking out of the wall in front of us.