“Yes?”
“Yesterday evening at the great coronation of the century, the Imperial Glory, Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan, bestowed his favor upon you in the form of a rare and reverenced bird like unto the incarnate image of the Mother as a Firebird, beautiful in plumage, graceful in deportment.”
“Help!” said the peacock. It hopped down from the bed and strutted over to stand beside Lionheart’s knees. The gorgeously clad gentleman looked down upon it and bowed gravely. He would never have considered giving Lionheart that homage. The bird hissed at him too.
The man turned to Lionheart again. “The gift of the reverenced bird was offered in a symbolic nature.”
Lionheart took a moment to try to translate this in his head. He responded with the Noorhitamin equivalent of “Huh?”
“You were not supposed to accept the bird.”
Another moment. Then Lionheart flung up his hands and swore in every language he knew. “Fine! Take the bird too! Do I look like I mind?”
“Your veneration and devotion will be conveyed to the Imperial Glory. . . .”
“HELP! HELP!”
“And your prayers for his eternal and prosperous reign . . .”
Lionheart picked up the peacock, receiving several nasty pecks to his hands, shoved it and its wretched tail into the other man’s arms, and slammed the door.
No stew tonight. And no profit from peacock plumes either. What wretched, wretched luck! He flung himself down on his bed and only then realized that the bird had used his blankets for more than sleeping. “Dragon’s teeth!”
Another knock at the door. Probably the landlord, coming to charge for the disturbance. Lionheart, busily wiping off his jester’s smock, stomped back to the door, muttering as he did so, “Dragons eat that wretched Imperial Glory and all his wretched Imperial Gloriousness! And all peacocks too—”
He opened the door and found himself looking down into the delicate face of the emperor.
At least, that was Lionheart’s first thought. His second was that he must be mistaken. The little boy in front of him was dressed in peasant’s rags, with mud smeared over his cheeks and his hair covered in a ratty old hood. He could be the emperor’s doppelganger for sure, but certainly not the emperor himself.
Then the boy spoke, and all doubt was banished. “I have come to repay my debts, Leonard of the Tongue of Lightning.”
He spoke in a smooth Westerner’s dialect with only the slightest trace of an accent. This could be no beggar boy.
“I . . . wha—Your Majesty. Your Imperial Majesty!” Lionheart sputtered in Noorhitamin—or, what he thought was Noorhitamin—and bowed deeply. Then, on considering, he went down on his knees, prepared to prostrate himself as was considered right in the presence of the Imperial Glory.
But the emperor, trying to hide a smile, spoke hastily in Westerner, putting out his hand. “No, no, I am incognito! And perhaps it will be best if we speak your tongue when there is no one present. I will laugh otherwise.”
Lionheart staggered up from his knees, his heart racing. Any moment he expected soldiers to leap out of the doorways down the alley and run him through for daring to speak to the emperor, to even look upon him in such a humble state. “You . . . Your Imperial—”
“Don’t call me that,” the Imperial Glory said rather sharply. “Klahan is enough. I have come to repay my debt, but we must go swiftly.”
“Your . . . I beg your pardon, Your—Klahan. What debt?”
“I promised anything that was within my power to grant,” said the boy. He backed away from Lionheart’s doorway, looking carefully up and down the alley. It was quiet enough at this hour of the morning. The dregs that lived in this quarter were all passed out asleep and would be until evening. The emperor did not look concerned but wary. “We must go quickly,” he said.
“Where?”
“Ay-Ibunda, of course.”
Lionheart stared. For a long instant, his world froze, and he thought nothing. Then it rushed into motion again, and his mind was awhirl. At last! At last, he would get answers! He was out the door in a moment, scarcely remembering to lock it. (Not that it would do any good one way or another. One did these things out of principle, not practicality, in this part of Lunthea Maly.) The emperor was already moving, and swiftly for his age, back up the alley toward the street on the far end. Lionheart pelted after him, gasping as he went, “But I thought you refused!”
“Naturally,” said the Imperial Glory. He spoke the word so gracefully. Lionheart would probably have hated the boy had they met when the same age; everything about him was so carefully put together, every word spoken with such care. At age nine, it was not a manner that would win him friends among his peers.