The Uncrowned King by Michelle West

Author:Michelle West
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 0886778018
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1998-09-02T07:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Evening, 17th of Lattan

Averalaan, Guesthouse in Avantari

The witnesses were given quarters adjacent to Avantari. the Palace of Kings. They were also given guards, in a manner of speaking. These were placed at the doors, the street windows, the long halls; they were stationed in the kitchen; they were, in short, everywhere, and far more numerous than the witnesses they purported to be guarding.

Aidan couldn't understand it; not at first. He didn't expect to, though; the Kings had money, and no one who had a lot of money had to make sense if they didn't damned well want to.

And they had money all right. Aidan had meat for dinner that night, covered in weird sauce—he scraped his off—and after that, cream, sugar, fruit that was rare no matter what the season. Everything was pretty, and he regarded the food with a mixture of hunger, disdain, and curiosity before he was convinced that he wouldn't make an idiot of himself by eating it.

There were three boys his own age, and one girl; they sat together, ate the same way. and eventually went off to their rooms by some silent mutual agreement. The woman in charge of the guesthouse had put them all in the same stretch of hallway because, as she said, there was al least some chance that one of them was paying enough attention to remember it. Sam—funny name, for a girl—was.

So he found his huge, empty room, on the second floor of what was a huge, bustling building, and he sat in the center of a bed six times too large, wondering what it was going to cost him to be here. When she smiled. Kalliaris was the most wonderful god in the world.

But when she frowned, you kind of forgot what the smiles were like. You beware, his mother used to say, of any luck you don't

make. He'd wondered, then, how the Hells you were supposed to make luck. But he almost understood what she meant: Things could go just that shade loo well. Kalliaris liked the helpless and the downtrodden—and as long as you didn't forget just how helpless or downtrodden you'd been, she was fair.

But forget—just forget for a minute who you owed your life to, and she reminded you. If you survived it.

Things were going too damned well, that was the problem.

That and he'd eaten way too much.

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