Free King of Swords (The Starfolk) by Dave Duncan

appearance as the swimming glade. Whereas the Moon Garden had felt real, this place was strangely out of focus.
    “They were still building it, then,” he explained. “King Louis the something or other?” He peered inquiringly along the table at Rigel.
    “Fourteenth, probably,” Rigel said, that being the only Louis he could recall.
    “Sounds too low. It was about three hundred years ago. What number are they up to now?”
    “I don’t think France has kings any more, starborn.”
    “Queens are better,” Muphrid agreed, nodding.
    He and his dozen guests were dining under a row of chandeliers the size of Honda Civics, all of which blazed with candlelight, even though afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the huge arched windows. The meal was being servedby about twenty footmen in historical costume—knee britches, silk stockings, powdered wigs, and so forth—under the direction of Senator, who wore a similar outfit with extra gold and scarlet trim on his frock coat. All the servants were human, and they seemed grateful for their heavy wool garments, for the hall was cool even for Rigel. Some of the full-blooded elves in their trifling moon-cloth wraps had drunk enough to become loud, flushed, and sweaty.
    King Louis of whatever number would have disapproved of the diners’ dress and recoiled at their choice of food. The live starfish, for instance. The trick, as explained to him by Nashira, was to pop the wiggly beasts into your mouth and hold them there while they thrashed around, emitting an unpredictable spectrum of flavors. If you bit them, they would sting, and when they turned bitter you had to swallow them quickly or they would nauseate you. Rigel found that such eating required extreme concentration, and he was seriously distracted by the presence of beautiful bare-breasted girls on either side of him and another directly across the table.
    His left-hand neighbor was the purple-eyed Nashira, who amused herself between courses by stroking his thigh under the table. This activity had been noted by Alniyat, who was directly across from him, and she kept sending him warning signals, which might mean that she’d kill him if he responded to Nashira or that Nashira would if he didn’t. Or perhaps if he did. Some of the foreplay going on around the table was even more blatant.
    Most of the conversation bored him, for it was vapid gossip about the rich and famous of the Starlands. There was trivial chatter about royalty: Princess Talitha, Prince Vildiar, and Regent-heir Kornephoros, who was designated to succeed Queen Electra when she retired “soon,” meaning in a centuryor two. Some starborn with an unpronounceable name had created the
most fascinating
ice park, complete with penguins and polar bears—one
must
see it. My lord This had lost several subdomains, apparently by absentmindedness, and my lady That had reportedly been found in bed with a human boy, which was much worse. This confirmed Rigel’s suspicions about Alniyat’s attempts to make a pass at him earlier.
    The talk that should have interested him made no sense. Starborn Icalurus, who had pink hair, announced that he had found an intriguing temple park in Japan and was planning to imagine something like it in his domain as soon as he completed his new thunderbird aviary. Nashira cattily asked if he had been extroverting after those geisha girls and he angrily told her that two good friends of his had been convicted of extroverting recently, and the regent had confiscated half their domains as a penalty. The others expressed sympathy but generally agreed that the ban on extroverting made good sense, and then began to argue about friends who had been stoned to death. It was all gibberish.
    Desperate to make conversation, Rigel asked about maps. The starfolk looked blank. Geography, he explained. Blanker. Eventually he got his meaning across, and they all burst out laughing. Geography was an earthling idea. They had no geography and didn’t