Free City in the Sky by Glynn Stewart Page B

Aeradi was very nearly a uniform, and Erik found it highly uncomfortable. It was long, stretching down to his knees, and high-collared. Each septon wore it in his sept 's colors; in Erik's case, dark green and silver. On the shorter Aeradi he'd seen heading into the Great Hall in front of them, the various colors and their lines looked neatly elegant, but he suspected his extra inches had given the tailor difficulty. As far as he could tell, his tunic didn't fit.
    He stopped fussing over his tunic as he and Arien reached the entrance to the Great Hall of the Palace of Newport. He hadn't actually believed her when she'd said she'd present him to the King tonight. Then, however, he hadn't known that the septon s and their families had an automatic right to be at this sort of affair.
    Arien guided him to the doors into the Hall and up to the herald standing next to it. She leaned over next to the herald and gave him their names quietly, so quietly even Erik couldn't hear what she said.
    The man's face shifted through surprise to pure shock to an outright grin. “I see, my lady,” he told her.
    “Oh, and Jamie,” she finished as she pulled back from the herald, “indulge yourself.”
    The grin turned downright feral as the herald turned into the hall and Erik looked at his grandmother questioningly. Before he could say anything, Jamie, the herald, announced them.
    “The Lady Arien septel Tarverro,” he boomed, and then paused for a long moment to let what he'd said sink in. Erik could hear the room rustling in shock. They'd be shocked first that she was even here – from what she'd told him, Arien had not attended these affairs in years – and then the title would sink in.
    Jamie left it a long moment, until the sound shifted from surprise that she was here to questioning the new title. As the rustle of surprise turned to a murmur of questioning conversation, the herald waved them forward and continued his announcement, “and the Lord Erik septon Tarverro.”
    Erik and Arien stepped into the hall together and paused, allowing the whole Hall to see the new septon Tarverro. Erik couldn't help acquiring a feral grin of his own at the utter shock he could see on some of the nearer faces.
    He offered Arien his arm and they swept down into the crowd. As they did, Arien leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Jamie has a horrible taste for melodrama. Normally, we get him to suppress it, but a little melodrama was just what we needed tonight.”
    Erik nodded slightly, and swallowed as he realized where she was taking him: the end of the room, where the thrones of the King and Queen of Newport occupied a raised dais. The thrones were unoccupied, but it didn't take a genius to realize who the man wearing a simple gold circlet and dressed in a black and green sept uniform standing at the foot of the dais was.
    His Majesty Lokar septon Adelnis, King of Newport and member of the Council of the Realm of the Sky, was tall for an Aeradi, at nearly three inches over five feet. Erik still had an inch and a half on the dark-haired, muscular man.
    Guiding him with an iron grip on his arm, Arien stopped him the traditional three paces from the King. “Bow,” she instructed, murmuring.
    Somehow, in the hectic hours of the day preceding this meeting, his grandmother had found time to instruct Erik in the proper bow of a septon to his King. His bow was not as graceful or as polished as his grandmother's, or the other men around, but it was, at least, the proper bow.
    King Adelnis responded to the bow with the equally proper inclination of his head. “ Septon Tarverro,” he greeted Erik. “You have been too long from your proper place.” He offered Erik his hand, something only done among friends and relatives among the Aeradi. “I am pleased to welcome the son of my friend to the halls of his fathers,” he continued as Erik clasped his hand in the greeting, “and am most pleased to confirm you in the rights and titles of septon