Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

he dish had been arranged on a small, round plate wrought from silver. Fruits, carved into the image of exotic florets, encompassed a selection of meats. Some cooked, some raw, some worked into slices so thin they almost seemed translucent, the morsels were a sight to behold. A mixture of blood and cooking juices pooled around the decoration, adding to its luscious appeal.

Pharan was almost certain the dish’s placement on the table for the auxiliaries had been a mistake, but that hadn’t stopped him from snatching it up. No one had protested. By his side, Ryvern was engaged in conversation with a fellow diplomat. Pharan listened with half an ear, nodding in the odd instances his input was required.

Mostly, he watched the ebb and flow of the crowd.

The gathering, like all gatherings, had his own, intricate dynamics. As always, Pharan tried his best to soak it all up, to file away anything that might prove useful to his work. Who talked to whom. Who was sought out by their fellow guests. Who was avoided. There was a game afoot on the polished stone floors of the villa and Pharan wasn’t sure he understood its rules just yet.

“…at do you think?”

Only belatedly, Pharan realized it was him, the diplomat had addressed. He looked from Ryvern to the old Avriel who lingered by his side and cursed his ever-wandering mind. It was the arrival of a new guest that saved him.

“I probably should—”

“Yes—yes, yes,” Ryvern waved off.

A little mournfully Pharan surrendered his platter to the ambassador. No half a bit later he already stood before Kalortah, to look the bard over. A few of the gathered guests cast them passing glances. Most ignored them.

“You are late,” Pharan observed. “But you brought your own instruments—good.” His lips twitched into an amused smile. “The last girl was so nervous she forgot hers.”

He motioned the other man to follow him as he set out to the other end of the balcony where a dais had been raised. “Do you know already what you want to play?”, he asked. “Pieces about the glory of battle are very popular right now.”

ilord.

Pharan studied the bard by his side with schooled civility. Had his momentary confusion at the address showed? He wasn’t sure.

“Pharan Elluin—but you can call me Pharan,” he corrected as he fell in step beside Kalortah. “I work as an aide to ambassador Ryvern—”, he motioned to an old Avriel at the far end of the balcony, “—but tonight I have the… tremendous honor of helping with the proceedings of the evening.”

Pharan’s smile was thin. For the most part, his duties were simple. Watch the crowd. Take note of lone diplomats. Introduce them to men and women they could talk to—ideally, individuals they had no past feuds or quarrels with. He was tasked with stepping in should tempers begin to flare, but tonight, with the cool Ashan breeze breathing over the crowd, tension was low.

Beside Kalortah, Pharan nodded. “Of course. Take what you need.”

As the bard reached for the chalice, Pharan stepped back towards the crowd. Around him, drinks were raised in answer to the bard’s toast. Conversations creased. Not everyone had the sense to break their moments of self-aggrandizement and boastful retelling of past exploits at the prospect of a song raised to praise the Aeolian, but many at least gave the appearance of paying attention.

As Kalortah’s song ebbed away, the cheers among the crowd rose. It was mostly the aides and auxiliaries like Pharan who gave voice to their approval, but a few of the older diplomats nodded to themselves before turning back to their conversations.

Pharan waited. Once the bard had dealt with the last person to compliment him on his performance, he motioned Kalortah to follow as he led the way to a table in the corner. It was overwrought with artfully arranged dishes and cooled wine in crystalline pitchers.

“And that was a piece you wrote yourself?”

haran watched the captain walk off. Too old, for active duty, he decided, just as the crowd swallowed up the old man’s haggard form. Retired, then.

Before he could consider any potential implications, Kalortah had already joined him. Pharan offered the bard a distracted smile. “So, the second in a line of artists?” he questioned. “Your father must be proud to have a son follow into his footsteps.”

It was what his own father had wanted, for a while.

Too bad you don’t always get what you want, Pharan thought.

They reached the table. Kalortah immediately threw himself at the food, but Pharan only paid it half a mind. He picked up a small plate with pallid fish he did not touch as he watched the nearby guests. A few Avriel, fellow aides, stopped to observe the bard feast, but Pharan ignored them, too.

It was only when Kalortah spoke up, worried whenever knowing the captain would be a problem, Pharan turned. He cast the other man a curious glance. “No… why would it?”

He looked back towards the crowd: some diplomats, some men and women ranking among the military personnel, even a selected human or two. “I suspect some two arcs ago, they would have invited less members of the soldiery… retired or otherwise. But since we joined forces with Nashaki against the Empire… well, their voices gained a certain weight even in our circles,” he said after a bit of consideration.

Not that he had worked for the ambassador two years back, but it was an easy guess.

“I don’t know much about music,” Pharan said and shifted away from the end of the table. In his dark tunic with the sober cut he struck an oddly solemn figure among the brightly colored masses. “I thought it was good, though.” He paused. “I wouldn’t mind to hear something about our history though… if you got something. And the guests would like it too, I suspect.”

He fell quiet, then turned to look at Kalortah again. “Do you plan to also join the military? To aid in battle like your father?”

o, we are not.”

Jaene had once proposed it was a deficiency in the way their human and bird brains had been mended together, as birds grieved briefly or not at all, but he had never quite believed in that explanation and he didn’t repeat it. His eyes found the throng of his fellow aides, now in the process of dispersion as Kalortah stopped eating. Pharan cast him a glance.

“Don’t worry about them. People are quick to forget that they, too, have known hunger—at least once they spend enough time around well-filled plates.” His eyes followed a wispy, raven-winged woman as she walked past them, her cool bird eyes fixed on something way beyond them. “Especially when it means to admit that, sometimes, or most of the time, they failed to make the kill they had set their eyes on,” he said with a wink.

Pharan reached out towards the bard, stopped mid-motion, then continued if the other man didn’t protest to tug his clothes into place here or there. “There is not much etiquette to observe. They thrust us out of the nest in the hopes we return proud warriors, wise of the world and in control of ourselves—so we humor them by making a display of how cultivated we are, how well-restrained, compared to the savage masses beleaguering our borders.”

He looked to left, past Kalortah, as voices rose over the lively murmur of the crowd. Before he could decide if his interference was needed the currents of guests wandering the balcony had swept the arguing parties apart.

And sometimes, he thought, that even works.

He looked back to the bard. “That said—we are the crown of creation so who is going to argue if we just do whatever we want sometimes?”, he asked as he picked up the fish on his plate with pointed fingers and too-sharp nails and dropped the slender morsel whole into his mouth. Running a thumb along his lower lip, he smiled, the expression only a faint tug at the corner of his lips.

“I can't say I got around as far as some,” Pharan admitted as he motioned the other man to follow once he had finished eating. “I spend a decent amount of time in the Hotlands and the surrounding areas—at least till the war. I traveled almost all the way up to Viden once, but the cold was not for me.”

He cast the bard sidelong look at the suggestion they were not, in fact, a decadent lot, but remained quiet. “I do think a lot of our early histories were ill preserved—for a lack of interest or other reasons I can’t tell,” he said instead as he directed them towards the spot Kalortah had picked first for his performance.

“But surely even we can learn a thing or two from our greater victories.”

haran had found himself a spot among the guests once more. With half an ear he listened in on the chatter of a young woman who spoke to an older diplomat about the victories they would surely soon score in Nashaki. He cast her a quick look. She had the straight, haughty bearing of the untested soldier. The woman she prattled to was tall and narrow-faced, and radiant in her layers of saffron-yellow silks. Pharan was almost certain, her attention was elsewhere, too.

Around them, more and more faces turned to Kalortah as the sound of his drum rose above the murmur of the crowd. Somewhere further down an excited voice requested an encore, but before Pharan could spot who it was, a movement by his side caught his attention.

“I thought we hired that girl again,” Nemeth said as he stopped by Pharan’s side. “You know… the one we had last time.”

“I didn’t do the hiring,” Pharan said without looking at his fellow auxiliary. The bard’s words about busking rung hollow and distant in his ears. What were the chances, that a bard happened across a party just as the original performer failed to show up? Slim, he decided. Very slim.

But not impossible.

“I am sure we hired the girl.”

“Why?”, Pharan asked irritably, his eyes on Kalortah. “She was terrible.”

“And good looking.”

This time Pharan turned if only to quirk an eyebrow at his fellow aide.

Nemeth straightened. “And she is the daughter of… I forgot the name. Someone important.” Now he looked towards the bard, arms crossed. “I will go and find Narizah, ask who she hired. We can’t have uninvited—”

“—I will handle it,” Pharan interrupted.

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t mind, to see her get taken down a peck or two,” Nemeth said and shrugged. “She is always so…”

“I will handle it,” Pharan repeated. With a smile he didn’t feel, he clapped the other man on the shoulder. He could sense Nemeth scowl behind his back but paid it no mind as he strode forward to join Kalortah again.

“Just as great as the first time,” he offered as the throngs of people around the musician creased. He looked towards the drum the other man was holding. “It’s not often I have seen poetry accompanied by drum play. Is that also something you learned in Desind? Or a relic of your father’s teachings as a war-singer?”