And so the next day finds him waiting for the Illyrian envoy in one of the Elector’s lesser receiving rooms. He’s wearing his best doublet, his best trunk hose, his best sleeves. Golden earrings gleam against his dark skin. His black hair is caught in a gold clasp. He doesn’t look at all like a hard-bitten mercenary. He looks like a prince.
“What if she’s an idiot?” Reynard says.
Typically, Reynard has not bothered to dress up. He wears the same tattered rusty red robe when-ever, what-ever. Since it’s never in style, it’s never out of style either. Unlike heroes, jongleurs of his caliber have no reason to try to impress with their clothes. When he sings or tells his tales, most people close their eyes to listen harder. Now, Reynard quits his pacing and perches on the velvet settee, hands clasped in his lap.
“As long as the princess is rich, I don’t care.” The Hero helps himself to a sugar plum. Since he’s in constant fighting trim, he never has to watch his waistline.
“Perhaps they are her best feature.” Reynard waves the dish away; he doesn’t fight. He’s been with the Hero ever since the Hero rescued him from a nasty trap he was caught in up in the Refusian Mountains. Like the Hero, he, too, has no place of origin, not that he’ll admit to. He knows the songs and stories of many lands, and plenty of good riddles, too.
He says: “What if she’s a scold?”
“Let her scold! My hearing is half shot already. Is my buckler on straight?”
“You look perfect and you know it,” Reynard says. “What if she’s an idiot and a scold and ugly besides?”
“Why then,” the Hero says fondly, “I still have you.”
Reynard snuggles up to him, and when the Illyrian envoy enters the room, he sees only a handsome dark man with a fox tucked under his arm. The Hero is feeding it sugarplums.
“HOW MUCH FARTHER is it to the palace?” the Hero asks. He tries to ask casually, aware that even so he risks sounding like a child on the road to granny’s. He is game but disgruntled; he’s no longer used to not being the one in charge of an expedition. They’ve been on the road for three weeks, with various modes of transportation: a ship down the coast, barges up river, and now horse-back. And yet, they don’t seem any closer to arriving.
Illyria is a much drier land than he had expected. And a redder one, besides. Each day seems hotter, and they left the last tree behind two days ago. Now it’s red rocks and cactus, and, at the watering holes, the occasional scrubby thornbush. The only green is a green by courtesy; at home, he would have called it gray. But things are different, here. The sky above is as blue as well-tempered steel.
“Surely that third river was the last one we had to cross?” The ‘river’ had had no water in it. If the Envoy hadn’t identified it as a river, the Hero would have thought it just another wash. The desert was criss-crossed with washes, proof that some day it would rain. But not today.
From the back of his grey gelding, the muffled Envoy sighs and answers, “I’m afraid the map is a bit of a muddle.”
“You’re afraid?” The snappish redhead who rides at the Hero’s side turns his head to the Envoy, lightning quick. When he isn’t singing or telling stories, nothing but quips and pleasantries ever fall from his lips. It annoys the Envoy no end. “My dear sir,” continues the redhead, closing in for the punchline; “if you’re afraid, imagine how the rest of us feel.”
“Reynard.” The Hero holds up his hand, and the jongleur stills, as if by magic.
“I only meant,” the Envoy says with forced patience, “that things are not exactly what they seem. On the map. We are not used to describing things as if we see them from above. Our maps, the ones our people use, are drawn from the foot’s eye view. Foreigners find them incomprehensible.”
“A map in translation,” the Hero says. “I see.”
“But we must arrive before dark,” the Envoy intones ominously, and the Hero does not need to ask why.
He betrays no disappointment when they come to the palace. After all, it’s not as though he’d been shown a picture of it surrounded by rubies. Nobody said it would be huge and splendid. And it’s not. Just a long building, melting into the hilltop it sits upon. Made of dried mud, painted a faded blue, with a red tile roof. They cross a moat full of prickly pear cactus, pass through a fence made of tall ocotillo spines. A simple house, but well-fortified.
And the forbidding mud walls hold a secret: a courtyard brilliant with purple and red bougainvillea, fragrant with fruit trees: oranges, lemons, fat red pomegranates. A stone fountain burbles refreshingly in the center of the courtyard. Above, the second floor balcony is lined with people, silently watching their arrival.
“Oh, good,” says Reynard; “I love an audience.” But he dismounts wearily, and says nothing more.
Before the Hero can follow suit, he is approached by a big man draped in a molting bear-skin, holding a stirrup-cup. The man does not speak any tongue the Hero is familiar with from his travels, but the ever-serviceable Envoy translates as the Hero is enthusiastically greeted with the cup and, once he has drunk and dismounted, an embrace. He still hasn’t figured out who the man is—could be the King, or the chief of security, for all he knows—but it doesn’t matter for now. Plenty of time tonight for reccy work. There will be a feast. There always is.
The welcome cup is promising, though; it implies brief hospitality, followed by a rest. He’s exhausted, and glad to be led to a hot bath. Once, he could ride all day and feast all night. Now he looks forward to his bed.
But first, as he predicted: the feast. The food is simple but ample. It’s not like anything he’s tasted before—everything is fiery hot, or seems to involve maize in one form or another—but he guesses he’ll get used to it in time. There’s plenty of cool, fizzy ale to put the fire out.
Reynard’s songs are well-received, even if the words are not understood. Reynard is well-versed in many languages and probably can speak this one, too, but he likes to lead with his best material. And not to reveal all he knows.
The bear-skin man does turn out to be the King. No crown, but a very impressive jade earring. You’d think he’d have broken out the rubies tonight, but nothing doing. He grins a lot, and slaps the Hero on the shoulder, his bad shoulder, alas. But he grins back; no need to get on the wrong side of his prospective father-in-law.
The Princess does not appear until the sweet is served; in fact, there are no other women at the feast at all. The Hero, used to the casual egalitarianism of the Elector’s court, finds that somewhat jarring. The Princess turns out to be a small, nervous girl, her hair in elaborate braids. No rubies there, either, though some nice enameled hairpins. She wears heavily-embroidered red velvet slippers on her feet, which are larger than the portrait made them appear. Maybe it’s the embroidery.
All in all, not what the Hero had hoped for, but it could have been much, much worse, so he will not complain. The Princess pours him tea with shaking hands, and smiles tremulously when he drinks it. It’s over-brewed, bitter and skunky, but he smiles his thanks. Heroes must operate heroically on many levels.
Eventually, the Hero brings up the Monster himself. He’s been waiting for the King to mention it, but the King seems to have forgotten why he’s there. Unaccountably nervous, the King. Probing questions receive vague answers.
Where can the Monster be found? In the hills, somewhere. Or possibly the sky. What does it look like? Big. How big? Bigger, apparently, than a man flapping his arms in a terrifying manner. It flies, then? Maybe. Unless it doesn’t. It has claws, or possibly extra sets of hands, or talons.