The acrobats rapidly assembled their human pyramid. Vaulting one at a time into the air, they somersaulted before each landed feetfirst on the shoulders of the one below. One after another they flew, continuing to build the formation until the final man reached up and touched the ceiling of the great hall. Despite the danger involved in the exciting performance, Amilia was not watching. She had seen the act before at the audition and rehearsals. Her eyes were on the audience. As Wintertide neared, the entertainment at each feast became grander and more extravagant.
Amilia held her breath until the hall erupted in applause.
They liked it!
Looking for Viscount Winslow, she spotted him clapping, his hands above his head. The two exchanged wide grins.
“I thought I would die from stress toward the end,” Nimbus whispered from the seat next to Amilia. The bruises on the tutor’s face were mostly gone and the annoying whistling sound had finally left his nose.
“Yes, that was indeed excellent,” said King Roswort of Dunmore.
At each feast, Nimbus always sat to Amilia’s left and the queen and king sat to her right.
King Roswort was huge. He made the Duke and Duchess of Rochelle appear petite. His squat, portly build was mimicked—in miniature—in his face, which sagged under its own weight. Amilia imagined that even if he were thin, King Roswort would still sag like an old riding horse. His wife, Freda, while no reed herself, was thin by comparison. She was dry and brittle both in looks and manner. The couple were fortunately quiet most of the time, at least until their third glasses of wine. Amilia lost count that evening but assumed number three had arrived and perhaps already gone.
“Are the acrobats friends of yours?” the king asked, leaning around his wife to speak to Amilia.
“Mine? No, I merely hired them,” she said.
“Friends of friends, then?”
She shook her head.
“But you know them?” the king pressed further.
“I met them for the first time at the auditions.”
“Rossie,” Freda said. “She’s clearly trying to distance herself from them now that the doors of nobility are open to her. You can’t blame her for that. Anyone would abandon the wretches. Leave them in the street. That’s where they belong.”
“But I—” Amilia began before the king cut her off.
“But, my queen, many are rising in rank. Some street merchants are as wealthy as nobles now.”
“Terrible state of affairs,” Freda snarled through thin, red-painted lips. “A title isn’t what it used to be.”
“I agree, my queen. Why, some knights have no lineage at all to speak of. They are no better than peasants with swords. All anyone needs these days is money to buy armor and a horse, and there you have it—presto—a noble. Commoners are even learning to read. Can you read, Lady Amilia?”
“Actually, I can.”
“See!” The king threw his hands up. “Of course, you are in the nobility now, but I assume you learned letters before that? It’s a travesty. I don’t know what the world is coming to.”
“At least the situation with the elves has improved,” his wife put in. “You have to give Ethelred credit for reducing their numbers. Our efforts to deal with them in Dunmore have met with little success.”
“Deal with them?” Amilia asked, but the monarchs continued under their own momentum.
“If they had any intelligence, they would leave on their own. How much plainer can it be that they are not welcome?” the king said. “The guilds prohibit them from membership in any business, they can’t obtain citizenship in any city, and the church declared them unclean enemies of Novron ages ago. Even the peasants are free to take measures against them. Still, they don’t take the hint. They keep breeding and filling up slums. Hundreds die each year in church-sanctioned Cleansing Days, but they persist. Why not move on? Why not go elsewhere?”
As the king ran out of breath, the queen took over. “They are like rats, festering in every crack. Living among their kind is a curse. It’s what brought down the first empire, you know. Even keeping them as slaves was a mistake. And mark my words, if we don’t get rid of them all, so that not a single elf walks a civilized street or country lane, this empire will fall to the same ruin.”
“True, true, the old emperors were too soft. They thought that they could fix them—”
“Fix them!” Freda erupted. “What a ridiculous notion. You can’t fix a plague. You can only run from it or wipe it out.”
“I know, darling, I agree with you wholeheartedly. We have a second chance now, and Ethelred is off to a good start.”
Realizing that the king and queen ran through a conversation as familiar and comfortable to them as a pair of well-worn shoes, Amilia nodded politely without really listening. She had seen elves only once in her life. When she had still been living in Tarin Vale, three of them had come to the village—a family, if they had such notions of kinship. Apparently content to dress in rags, they were dirty and carried small, stained bundles, which Amilia guessed were all they had. They were so thin they looked sick, and walked with their heads bowed and shoulders slumped.
Children had called the elves names and villagers had thrown stones and shouted for them to leave. A rock struck the female’s head and she cried out. Amilia did not throw any rocks, but she watched as the family was bruised and bloodied before they fled from town. At the time, she did not understand how they could be a threat. The monk who had been teaching her letters explained elves were responsible for the downfall of the empire. They had seemed helpless, and Amilia could not help feeling sorry for them.
Roswort concluded his tirade by accusing the elves of being responsible for the drought two years before, and Amilia caught Nimbus rolling his eyes.
“You don’t share their opinions?” she whispered.
“It’s not my place to counter the words of a king, milady,” the courtier responded politely.
“True, but I sometimes wonder just what goes on under that wig of yours. Something tells me there’s more than courtly etiquette rattling around.”