Chapter 13. A Feast for Kings (Patreon)

"Daeren, this is Ozyaranthes," Sael said, gesturing down. "Ozyaranthes, this is—"

"I know who he is, Archmage," Oz said. "I have heard of him many times."

Daeren was looking down at the rooster with an expression that hadn't quite settled into anything yet. His smile was still there, held in place, but his eyes were doing careful work.

"So," Oz said, and tilted his head the other way. "I asked you a question, human."

Sael exhaled through his nose. "I'm sorry about him. He has quite a temper, and very little patience for unanswered questions."

Daeren's expression broke into a grin and he let out a short, warm laugh. "As all dragons do! I have met a few in my years, my friend, and every one of them demanded answers before introductions were finished." He looked down at Oz again with renewed interest, as if recategorizing him from oddity to something he recognized. "You and I will get along, I think."

Oz did not confirm or deny this.

Daeren turned from them and faced the crowd, which had been hovering at a respectful distance but listening to every word. He raised both arms and his voice carried across the field without any apparent effort.

"Good people! Thank you, all of you, for coming today. This feast is held in honor of a man I am proud to call my friend, Sael the Great!" He swept one arm toward Sael, and a few hundred pairs of eyes followed the gesture. "Please, go inside, eat, drink, enjoy everything we have prepared. The entertainment will begin within the hour, and there is more than enough for everyone. I must excuse myself to the main tent for a time, but the afternoon is yours. Thank you again for being here!"

A wave of applause and grateful voices rose from the crowd. People bowed, called out their thanks, raised hands in acknowledgment. A woman near the front pressed her palms together and dipped her head low, and behind her a man lifted his young son onto his shoulders so the boy could see the Jade Emperor over the heads in front of them.

As Daeren turned to leave, several people moved forward.

A man in a grey coat stepped into his path and asked if the emperor might consider sponsoring his son's admission to the military academy in his empire, as the boy had great potential but the family lacked the means. Behind him, a woman in a fine dress wondered aloud whether the emperor's trade offices had any positions available for her husband, who was very capable and very loyal.

A third man, older and more direct, simply asked for money. He had a business venture, he said, something to do with importing silk, and all he needed was a modest investment from the right patron.

Daeren listened to each of them for exactly long enough to make them feel heard, then placed a hand on the grey-coated man's shoulder and smiled.

"You honor me with your trust," he said. "My chancellor, Lord Varen, is inside the second pavilion. Present yourselves to him and tell him the Jade Emperor asks that he hear you. He will see to it."

They thanked him and moved off while around Sael, people were still looking.

A few had drifted closer, clearly wanting to approach, but none of them quite managed it. There was even a boy of maybe twelve standing a little further off, staring openly at Oz with his jaw hanging.

Sael gave one of them a polite nod, which seemed to make her freeze entirely, and then Daeren was back at his side.

"Come," the Jade Emperor said, turning toward the main tent and beckoning them both. "Walk with me. The Duke of Orlys and his great aunt arrived an hour ago, they told me many things about you."

Sael felt the tension in his shoulders ease. If Richter and Margaret were already here, he wouldn't have to spend the afternoon navigating a sea of unfamiliar faces alone. He smiled and fell into step beside the emperor.

Behind them, Oz followed, his talons clicking on the grass-beaten path. "You still have not answered my question, Emperor."

Daeren glanced down over his shoulder without breaking stride. "And I will, Ozyaranthes. Once we are seated, with tea in front of us. How about that?"

Oz was quiet for three steps. "Acceptable."

The inside of the tent was louder than the outside had prepared him for.

Drums hit him in the chest before the sound fully registered. A deep rolling pulse, layered with hand-drums and the shimmer of finger cymbals. Dancers moved through the center of the hall in trailing silk, bare feet turning in unison on polished wood that had been laid over the grass and on a raised platform behind them, a woman sang in a language Sael didn't recognize, her voice threading through the percussion.

Long tables ran the length of the tent on both sides, half-filled with guests already eating, talking, pouring wine for one another while platters lined the center in an unbroken spread: roasted meats, bowls of grain with dried fruit, stacks of flatbread, whole fish on beds of herbs, and between them, flowers and candles placed with obvious care.

"I thought this would be a smaller affair," Sael said, raising his voice slightly over the drums. There was clearly more than two hundred people here, and closer to a thousand.

Daeren laughed beside him as they walked. "It was going to be! When I first planned the feast, I had perhaps thirty guests in mind. A modest evening." He guided Sael around a cluster of chairs that had been pulled away from one of the tables. "But when I asked you in person, and I will be honest with you, my friend, I was anxious when I did. Genuinely anxious. I had rehearsed how I would handle the rejection on the way over, which is something I do when I think a conversation might not go the way I want it to."

He said this without embarrassment, which Sael found interesting. Most men in Daeren's position would never admit to being anxious about one. The Jade Emperor seemed to treat his own inner workings as a subject worth examining out loud, and he did so with a kind of directness that caught Sael off guard.

"The first time I met you, I could feel your mana from above the street. You conceal it well, better than anyone I've encountered, but it was still there underneath everything. My master's mana felt like the ocean, it was vast, deep and slow. I remember the first time I stood before him, it terrified me and put me in awe in the same breath."

"Your master was a powerful fellow," Sael said.

"He was," Daeren agreed, and then he laughed. "And I spent most of my life believing I would never encounter density like his again. Then I flew over your street and I thought, oh, I was very wrong about that." He turned to Sael with bright eyes. "Yours dwarfs his, Sael. It dwarfs mine too, by a margin I'm not even going to try putting a number on because it would be embarrassing for me. If his felt like the ocean, yours feels like the space beyond the stars. I was floating above the rooftops trying to challenge you to a fight and the whole time part of my brain was just going, this man's mana has no edge, it has no end, where does it stop, does it even stop?"

Sael said nothing to that, instead, he quietly tightened the concealment around his core.

It was a reflex at this point, one that most mages at high levels practiced constantly: when your core was intricate enough to hold that much mana, you learned to compress your presence the way a polite guest learns to take up less space.

The problem was that there was a limit to how much you could actually hide, and that limit had everything to do with volume. Sael's reserves at this point in his life slightly exceeded those of the World Tree when it had still been rooted in the world, and no amount of technique was going to make that invisible to someone like Daeren. To most people, he would pass unnoticed. To anyone at the Emperor's level, he would always be felt, the way you could always feel the sun through cloud cover even when you couldn't see it.

He compressed it further anyway, out of habit, and Daeren glanced at him with a knowing grin.

"When you said yes, I panicked. Thirty guests and a few platters of lamb were not going to cut it. I wanted to impress you, and I'm self-aware enough to admit that's exactly what all of this is."

He gestured at the tent around them, at the dancers and the drums and the tables heavy with food, and then he turned to Sael with a grin that was equal parts confidence and genuine curiosity.

"So. Are you impressed, Sael the Great?"

Sael looked out across the hall and found that it was, by any reasonable measure, spectacular.

But he had stood inside a collapsing rift between planes and watched the fabric of reality fold back on itself like paper. He had seen planet-killing meteors fall from the sky during the Battle of Yrsult, and the things his mother and his own master had been capable of defied description even now. Those were the things that left him breathless.

He also understood that saying any of this would be a terrible idea.

"I appreciate the effort you've gone through, Daeren," he said. "Truly. This is remarkable."

Daeren studied his face for a beat, then laughed again, louder, clapping Sael on the back hard enough that he had to adjust his footing. "You are a careful man with your words! I like that. Come, come, your seat is at the head of the table, beside mine!"

They moved toward the far end of the tent, where the main table sat on a low platform. As they approached, the people already seated began to rise. The music continued but the conversation at the head table dropped away as chairs pushed back and men and women stood.

Daeren gestured broadly. "Everyone, I present to you our guest of honor — Sael the Great, Archmage of the Realms, and his companion, Ozyaranthes."

A man in a silver-trimmed coat bowed deeply. "An honor, Archmage. Lord Fellen of the Southern March." Beside him, a woman in green inclined her head. "Lady Sorvaine. We are grateful to be in your company." Further down, an older man with a white beard pressed his fist to his chest in a military salute. "General Haas, sir. I've followed your work for years."

Each greeting came with its own weight and formality, and Sael returned each one with a nod and a word of thanks, moving down the line as Daeren steered him forward.

Then he saw Margaret.

She was already on her feet, which given her age, meant she'd started getting up the moment she spotted him. She wore a deep emerald dress with a high collar, her white hair pulled back in a style that was too precise to be accidental, and the expression on her face was the one she reserved for people who had kept her waiting.

"Grandpa Sael," she said. "You came. I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost between here and whatever place you've been hiding in." She looked him up and down, her eyes sharp, and then they stopped on the robes. Her mouth twitched. "Stand up straight. Let me see."

Sael straightened and held his arms out slightly. The robes were the ones Margaret had bought him the day before. They were well-made, dark blue with silver thread at the cuffs and collar, and fit him better than anything he'd ever picked out for himself.

Margaret walked a slow half-circle around him then reached up and adjusted the collar where it had folded under on one side, tugging it flat. "Good. You look like a person. I wasn't sure you still owned a mirror."

"Thank you, Margaret," Sael said. "You look wonderful."

"I know," she said, and sat back down.

Richter was already standing beside his chair, waiting. He wore a dark coat with the Orlys crest on the breast, and his hair was shorter than Sael remembered.

"Archmage," he said, with warmth in his voice underneath the formality.

Sael extended his hand and Richter took it. The grip was firm and steady. Weeks had passed since Sael's departure to deal with the orcish incursions, and this was their first time seeing each other since his return.

"It's good to see you, Richter," Sael said, and held the handshake a moment longer than was strictly necessary. "It's very good to see you."

Richter smiled. "And you, Archmage. I have a great deal to tell you."

"I look forward to hearing all of it."

***

They talked for hours.

The tea was excellent, and Daeren made sure Sael's cup was never empty, pouring it himself rather than letting the servants do it. Margaret held court from her chair, commenting on every dish that passed in front of her and sending two of them back because the seasoning was wrong. Oz sat on the table beside Sael's plate and ate an entire roasted quail without assistance, which drew stares from several guests who were trying very hard to pretend they weren't watching a rooster tear meat off a bone.

At some point, the drums changed rhythm and people began to leave their seats. Dancers pulled guests from the tables, and the center of the tent became a spinning, laughing mess of silk, sweat and spilled wine. Sael tried to stay seated, but Margaret grabbed his arm and said, "You're not sitting here all night like a statue," and that was that.

The problem was that Sael didn't know how to dance. Or rather, he knew one dance: a formal paired waltz that had been popular in the courts of Velharren roughly four hundred years ago. He took Margaret's hand, placed his other hand at her waist, and began stepping through the pattern he remembered.

The music was fast. The dance was slow. Everyone around them was spinning and clapping to the beat, and Sael was guiding Margaret through wide, deliberate turns that belonged to a different era. People stopped to watch, and a few of them looked confused while a young couple nearby even tried to copy the steps and gave up almost immediately.

Margaret, to her credit, followed his lead without complaint. "This is dreadful, grandpa," she said, smiling up at him. "Keep going!"

When the song ended, Sael became suddenly and painfully aware of how many people were looking at him. His face went warm and he released Margaret's hand, stepping back toward the table. But before he could sit down, someone in the crowd started chanting his name, and it spread — Sael, Sael, Sael — until the whole tent was pounding the tables in rhythm and laughing, and he had to raise a hand and bow his head just to make them stop.

He sat down, drank his tea out of politeness and did not get up again.

Even Oz seemed to be enjoying himself. The rooster had moved to the edge of the table where a group of children had gathered, too shy to touch him but brave enough to offer him scraps of food, which he accepted with the dignity of a king receiving tribute. At one point Sael looked over and saw Oz standing on a young girl's outstretched arm, perfectly balanced, while she giggled so hard she could barely breathe.

That was... unexpected, and Sael was about to comment more on it, had a scream not interrupted him.

It cut through the music in a high, ragged sound so strident that the drummer's hands stopped mid-strike. The singer's voice died, conversations collapsed, and every head in the tent turned toward the far end of the left table, where a man had fallen sideways off his chair and was convulsing on the wooden floor.

Black bile poured from his mouth. It came in thick, ropy strands that pooled on the wood beneath his head, dark enough that it barely reflected the lantern light. His body jerked once, twice, and then went rigid.

For a moment, the entire tent was silent.

Then another man threw himself from his seat at the same table and ran to the fallen guest, dropping to his knees beside the body. "Nero! Nero, look at me — Nero!" He grabbed the victim's shoulders and shook him, and when the body didn't respond he pressed his ear to the man's chest and held it there for a long, terrible second.

"POISON!" someone shouted from the far side of the tent. "There's poison in the food!"

Panic rippled through the hall. Guests pushed back from the tables. A woman knocked over a pitcher of wine and didn't notice while two men near the entrance started moving toward the exit, and others followed, and the servants stood frozen where they were.

"My cousin," the man on the floor said, his voice cracking. He looked up, his face white, his hands still gripping the dead man's coat. "He's dead! My cousin's dead!"

Murmurs swept through the crowd. Sael heard the name passed from mouth to mouth — Lord Gamos of Clearfountain. He remembered the man. Daeren had introduced them earlier that evening, a tall figure with a firm handshake and an easy laugh. Level 3004. There had also been talk that Gamos was a leading prospect for one of the two empty seats among the Pillars.

Now his cousin was on the floor with black bile running from his lips, and his Gamos was kneeling in it.

The man stood. His hands were shaking, and when he turned, he looked directly at Daeren.

"What is the meaning of this, Jade Emperor?" His voice carried across the silent tent. "You invite guests into your home and kill them at your table?"

Daeren had risen from his seat. The warmth Sael had seen in him all evening was gone. His face had gone still and hard, and his eyes were fixed on the cousin with an expression that Sael was seeing for the first time.

"I did nothing here," said the emperor. "Lord Nero was my guest, and I honored him as I honor all my guests."

"Honored him?" Gamos took a step forward. Tears were still running down his face, but his jaw was set and his voice was rising. "Look at him! Black bile, convulsions, dead in under a minute, that is nighthollow root, Emperor. It grows in your lands, it is refined in your province, and every man in this tent knows that it is your house that controls its trade." He swept his hand toward the body on the floor. "You poisoned my cousin with your own poison in your own tent, and you stand there and tell me you did nothing?"

A murmur ran through the remaining crowd, and Sael saw several of the seated lords exchange glances.

Daeren's expression darkened. "You grieve, and I understand grief, so I will forgive what you have just said once. But you will not say it again." He stepped down from the platform, and the air around him changed. The casual, generous host was gone. "You accuse me of breaking guest-right. You accuse me of murdering a man I fed from my own table, under my own roof, at a feast I held in honor of a friend. You stand in my hall and call me a poisoner."

"Because that is what you are!" the cousin shouted.

"I am the Jade Emperor," Daeren said as his voice dropped low enough that people leaned forward to hear it, "and you will watch your tongue, or I will remove it."

Gamos's hand went to his side, where the outline of a weapon pressed against his coat. Daeren saw the movement, and his stance shifted just slightly. The guards along the perimeter of the tent began to move inward.

"Draw that blade," Daeren said, "and you will join your cousin."

Gamos's hand tightened around the grip. His face twisted. "You killed him. You killed him, and I will have justice for it, emperor or no!"

Power gathered. Sael could feel it, Gamos pulling energy upward through his core, the Emperor's own mana pressing down like a change in atmospheric pressure. The lanterns flickered. The silk walls of the tent rippled inward despite there being no wind. Plates rattled on the tables, and the ground began to shake.

"I think that is enough," Sael finally said, now understanding Lance's reluctance.