“So you’re the one I’ve been hearing so much about,” Hengrys grinned at me, “Kyvaine, was it?” He mispronounced it, like most people do. Added some flourish onto the ‘y’, added an even bigger one onto the final syllable. My name is essentially Kevin. Apparently the more exotic spelling coupled with my reputation leads to all sort of mispronunciations.

  “That’s right, your majesty,” I nodded, because one does not correct a King, “it’s an honour to meet you.” I just barely stopped myself from extending a hand for him to shake, which would’ve been quite the social faux pas. Then he extended his own for me to shake, which was completely appropriate due to being done by a King.

  I shook it of course, and King Hengrys kept chatting away.

  “I heard of the show you put on in holding back the orcs,” he grinned. I froze in sheer, abject terror. Then realised he meant show as in ‘performance’, as in ‘actual things you did’, not in the way of some falsified demonstration. Not in the ‘I’ve seen through you and am going to have you flogged and publicly disgraced’ way.

  “I…had no choice, your majesty,” I managed after a brief pause to gather myself. “People would have died if I hadn’t helped…they did die, anyway.”

  Hengrys eyed me sympathetically at that, nodding briefly.

  “You did your country proud, my boy,” he assured me,” don’t hold yourself accountable for the lives you couldn’t save, be thankful for the ones you could.”

  Looking back on it, he really was skilled at saying things that sounded wise. I lapped it all up of course, still very much enthralled with royalty back then. A symptom of not having met enough royals. In my defence, Hengrys was far better than most of his kind at feigning respectability.

  “Thank you, your grace,” I replied stupidly. From the corner of my eye I saw a complex blend of emotion running along the King’s courtiers. There was resentment on many, quickly giving way to opportunistic thoughtfulness. It was my big warning that I’d not have much time to myself for the rest of the evening.

  And of course, I did not. Now that King Hengrys had done something as extreme as be slightly polite to me, there was no shortage of fawning idiots desperate to feel some measure of his favour splashing onto them off me. I would’ve been beating them off with a stick, except that seemed like slightly inappropriate behaviour given the present circumstances.

  So instead I smiled and nodded, forcing myself to remain patient as one person after another asked me pointed questions about lands and ancestry, then did an atrocious job at hiding their disappointment. If nothing else, being a merchant was better in this place than being some farm boy. Sure, the aristocracy hated my caste, but they at least registered us as entities. I was earning contempt, but not total dismissal.

  On the other hand, earning contempt was not exactly nice either.

  It mostly came packaged up behind manners and good form, which protected the people dolling it out from retaliation. More of the men, I noticed, were prodding at me, while more of the women at Vara. There’s a lot of complicated social reasons for that, none of which I understood at the time. Truth be told, that understanding wouldn’t have exactly helped me either. Knowing why people are being cunts does not empower one to curtail their cuntiness.

  Heroism does, but I was a good while away from achieving that also.

  The way I’m prattling on now, you could be forgiven for thinking that the party was any sort of unpleasant affair on balance. Maybe for Vara, someone who wasn’t enjoying credit for things she’d barely done, but on my count I was having the red carpet rolled out a mile ahead of me.

  Now, there is a big difference between what I had come to regard as luxury—actual beds and food I didn’t have to kill before eating it—and what is considered to be luxury around the more polite, higher stratas of society. There is a much greater difference still between this secondary order of luxury and what gets put on display when a King is showing up to party.

  Hengrys himself didn’t seem to actually partake in much of it. Not the neatly wrapped little fancies and pastries being plated around, nor the wine that felt like it was made from grapes grown in heaven, nor the way the whole room was heated to more or less perfect temperature despite the constant fluctuations of human body and outside air.

  I was enjoying myself well enough of course, on account of growing more drunk by the hour, but Vara didn’t seem to be having nearly so good a time. This is the part where I describe how things were going for her, and then she edits in her own impression of them in the notes. Given that she is Vara and I am not, I’m going to just save time guessing at it and let her tell you.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  ++”Clever bastard. Fine, he’s about right regarding how much I was enjoying myself. Everything Kyvaine has said is more or less accurate, though if you’ll believe it he actually has a better memory than I do despite all the rantings about how idiotic he was.”++

  ++”The big hitch there is that he was Kyvaine and I wasn’t. He was a merchant-class hero whose family was of property. He was a man. I was a woman, still am in case you’re wondering, and the only land my family had ever been connected to was owned by Baron Levoir back in Sheppleberry. That means that all the rules of politeness that go for other people don’t go for me.”++

  ++”I had to deal with all of the rudeness with none of the subtlety, up to and including direct instructions from the nobility that I would not be served in front of them. I just put up with it of course, keeping a level head. That my wine intake was being restricted helped there, I must say.”++

  ++”But Kyvaine’s wasn’t being restricted. And he was already quite drunk when one of the more enterprising and intoxicated young men started pawing at me.”++

  So there I was, watching Vara getting drooled on by some young bastard who was about one tenth as handsome and one infinityeth as welcome as his drunken mind was telling him. I am not a knight in shining armour, and I don’t fully know why I did what I did next. It wasn’t for her sake, let me stress that, I wasn’t rushing in and saving a damsel in distress.

  ++”Liar.”++

  But I was starting a fight.

  Now, I didn’t just walk over and thump the stupid bastard. That is a very good way to die no matter how heroic you’ve been. But I did shout at him a bit, failing to at all modulate my voice in my drunken state. The fortunate side-effect of this is that it seemed to make the drunkard shit his entire self and jump out of his skin as he turned on me.

  The less fortunate effect was that it also got the attention of everyone within a seventy yard radius, and quickly dragged a storm of eyes to rain down on the confrontation.

  “Do I know you?” the idiot slurred, shambling towards me like…well, a shambler, and looking about half as smart.

  “I don’t think you do, no, but I know her, and I’d like you to stop rubbing your groin against her like a rutting pig.”

  Not the smartest thing you can say to an aristocrat, but I was angry. And, again, drunk. Besides, he was a prick.

  “Say that again,” he challenged me.

  “You’re a rutting pig with a tiny cock, and you’re so drunk that you’re trying to put it inside a person rather than a fat sheep like you normally do.”

  I was young.

  So was he.

  The fist came for me like…an elderly cow plodding out to pasture, was this what passed for a punch among non-combatants? Even with my blood rendered as alcoholic as wine I sidestepped easily, and just about had the good sense not to throw my own punch.

  But not enough to back off entirely. I stuck a foot out and let the idiot trip over it, watched him stumble. Then watched his drunk arse keep stumbling thanks to having about as much coordination as one of those men who’d gotten themselves headshotted by an arquebus the other night. Had he cracked his skull upon falling, a distinct possibility, I’d probably have been hanged. Fortunately the moron went all limp and fell in that naturally preservative way drunkards tended to.

  He was up soon, snarling within the grips of a rage so sudden that only the truly intoxicated can muster it. I saw murder shining in his eyes.

  That didn’t really mean much to me, though, most of my human interactions of the past few months had involved more murderous looks from more murder-capable fellows. What was concerning was the other looks, the ones of excitement, scandal or, much more rarely, unhidden approval emanating from all of the aristocrats now staring pointedly at the incident as it unfolded. I kept the corner of my eyes affixed to them and watched the drunkard through the front of my vision.

  Some men explode into violence right away, but this wasn’t one of them. I could tell he was readying himself for a fight, but he’d probably not been in many. He had to work his way up. Swearing, threatening, all the human equivalents of an ape beating his chest. I just watched him do it, feeling myself sober, growing that little bit sharper.

  Before either of us could escalate things from threats to violence, however, a voice cut out through the room. I snapped my head around to find about the last sight anyone would ever want to be greeted with in the midst of a drunken brawl.

  King Hengrys himself staring right at, or more accurately through, me.

  “Your grace,” I began, then fell silent the moment he began talking again.

  “Quiet,” he snapped, face twisting a shade with displeasure, “what is going on here exactly?”

  I was paralyzed, and the drunkard apparently was not. He wasted no time in getting his side of the story across, whinging about how he’d been accosted, sucker-punched, the works.

  When the boy was done, King Hengrys turned to a man standing in the crowd. A noble.

  “This is the fourth time your idiot son has gotten himself into a brawl in my presence,” he told the unfortunate subject of his glare. To his credit, the man weathered it better than most would have. He didn’t babble or bluster, just swallowed, met his King’s eye, and waited for more to come. “I propose we resolve this clash of wills in the proper way,” Hengrys continued, “a duel between young Kurtwad and Kyvaine.”

  Murmurs of excitement ran across the hall of that, while I just stood there and tried not to piss myself. The noble went white as a sheet at his King’s words.

  “Your highness, I hardly think that’s necessary—”

  —”I have spoken,” Hengrys cut in, “and last I checked it is I who wears the crown.”

  A look passed between them that I was not then able to identify, but a little bit of historic context makes it apparent what was going on.

  See, I’d just witnessed the latest in a long line of political dick-slaps exchanged between King Hengrys and his second cousin a billion times removed, Duke Leibricht. He was probably the second most powerful man in the country after the King, and excluding the crown’s authority was unquestionably the first.

  And I seemed to have just gotten between the most fearsome rivalry Anglyn had seen since its royal civil war ended.

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