Hi! Sorry it's been a while, but my cousin from California decided to invite herself over with her husband and four whiny, annoying children. So I was stuck babysitting the little…*holds breath, composes self*…darlings. They just left yesterday, so now I am finally free to keep writing. –Lady PhoenixDagger
Four of the most powerful men in the world sat down to eat breakfast. It was a private ritual they had been practising for centuries, every Saturday at eight o'clock sharp in a seldom-used room in the Keep. Wizened and wrinkled, these men were the oldest in the world, the youngest of the four having just rounded off his fifth century only a scant decade ago.
They had lived longer than most family names ever did, doing more than any one man could do in several lifetimes. One had been the son of a lord in his homeland of what was now called Wales; two others were half-brothers, sons to a dead-eyed whore who walked the streets of old England late at night; the last was the son of a common Jewish money lender from Germany. Their lives had borne them to walk in different directions, yet age and the pursuit of magic had brought them together and forged their separate lives in the fires of brotherhood. These men had also taken on the names and identities of more men than they cared to recall, for an old man who has managed to live around the neighbourhood for about four centuries without dying tends to stand out among the general populace. So for now, they were Nat, Gil, Talon and Zach.
Gillem Ichara –as he was known for the present- was Head Librarian of the Keep's several huge libraries. A solidly built man with waist-length, snow-white hair and a vast expanse of beard, he exuded an air of involuntary kindness about him. His eyes were deep brown and his face –not to mention the rest of him- was cragged all over with wrinkles and laugh lines. This was to be expected of a man of his age, of course. As Talon wryly liked to point out, six-hundred-year-old men tended to look a little different than they did on their twenty-first birthdays. Vainly trying to keep the crumbs from falling into his beard, Gil was at the moment eating a bagel with lox on it. Nat sat on his right, sitting a little further away than usual, complaining about how much he hated the smell of smoked fish so early in the morning. Gil had tried to understand, but had given it up years ago, chalking it up to good old familiar routine. Honestly, he couldn't smell anything.
"Wakey, wakey, Gil. I asked for the jam."
Absently, Gil reached over and handed the small pot of strawberry jam to Talon, a thin, wiry man with shoulder-length white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was the youngest of the four and Head of Intelligence at the Keep, a position which earned him all sorts of snide jokes from the others.
"Thanks, Spaceman."
"Mmm."
"What's with the silent treatment, Gil?" Zach asked. Zach –who he always had to tell telemarketers and others who had never heard his name said that Zach rhymed with "thatch" and not "mack" as others seemed to think- was Talon's older half-brother by about eight years, thinner and wiry-er with a dry crackling quality to his voice. His hair was also white and, like Gil's, it reached all the way to his waist. Unlike the other three men, however, his face was clean-shaven. The others liked to tease him about it, calling him the "rebel" of the group.
"Hum?" Gil mumbled, his teeth already sinking deep into his bagel.
"You haven't said more than three words since we sat down to eat," Zach said, rolling his eyes.
"Oh." The bagel was set down. "It's those kids that came through the Bond just yesterday. Belle is getting rather attached to them, it would seem."
Zach raised a five-hundred-and-eighteen-year-old eyebrow. "Oho… I see. She wants to hear the pitter-patter of little feet, no?"
"Hardly little." Laughing, Gil drank down the last of his coffee. Then he rearranged his robes, dumping any stray bagel crumbs to the stone floor. "But still feet nonetheless. I don't mind, really. It's all about how Kari's going to take this new development."
Talon, who had managed to survive over half a millennia without ever having to wear a ring on his finger, stretched, adding the crumbs from his own robes onto the rapidly growing collection on the floor. "So just tell Belle that you don't want to-"
He was cut short by three pairs of incredulous eyes staring at him over the coffee pot.
"Oh, yeah. I forgot. Your wives are smarter than you are." He bowed slightly in his chair to Zach. "Or were," he added, acknowledging Eirryn, Zach's wife, who had died about twenty years ago at the hands of Black Hood. Zach was grandfather to Walker, Darien, Ria, Tama and Misty on their mother's side. A couple of years before Zach's daughter, Marrigan and her husband Ali had adopted Walker and Darien, Eirryn was brutally killed by a poison dart in a raid against the Keep arranged by Black Hood. This event forever eclipsed Zach's life as he held her in his arms, watching her die, slowly, painfully from the poison burning like acid through her veins. An uncomfortable silence fell over the room as everyone tried to remember what the Keep was like when Eirryn still walked the earth.
Nat, the oldest of the group at around ten centuries old, coughed. "They're only smarter when they think they're right, Talon," he said wryly. "Only when they think they're right."
Talon grinned. "That's why I never married. It means I'm always right! Even if it is by default."
Zach snorted. "Huh! That'll be the day. Imagine that…Talon actually being right."
"Oh, shut up."
"Well, guess what, gentlemen. Belle knows she's right, so there's no point in arguing," Gil said firmly. "Now, do any of you geniuses know where I can get my hands on seven extra beds?"
"Stop staring, Duo dear. It's impolite."
"Uhhh…yeah…" Duo's eyes darted like hummingbirds on speed in their sockets. Belle, the ex-pilots, Relena and Catherine were sitting on narrow benches pulled up to a long wooden table in Alaryan's Keep's main dining hall, breakfasting on eggs, toast, juice, some sort of cereal thing and dozens of other dishes. Normally, with this sort of spread, Duo would have eaten until he couldn't see his own feet, -hypothetically speaking, of course- which was a throwback from so many days of straight starving back home on L2. Today, however, he was too busy looking at the other folks eating and laughing around him to even see his own omelette getting stone cold in front of him.
"Maxwell, sit still!" Wufei hissed.
Duo made a face at him and took a bite of stone-cold omelette (ugh, gross) and resumed staring. The hall was huge, with fat stone columns going up the long ends of the stone room. Long tables covered the floor and the cheerful clink of silverware filled the air.
With the kind of extreme care that comes from years of fine etiquette training, Quatre set down his fork and wiped his mouth. "They're beautiful, aren't they, Duo?" he said quietly, indicating the other diners. "Like jewels in the sun."
Duo watched the light twinkle on the heads of the other…folks…in the dining room. There had to be at least three or four hundred of them, chatting and eating and from what Belle said, there were more in other parts of the Keep. Their heads were lizard-like –indeed as was the rest of them- with wide eyes and sparkling, pebbly skin in hues of ruby, sapphire, onyx, emerald and diamond. Their clothing was simple and much the same, consisting of light-coloured shirts or blouses and dark breeches or long shirts topped with brightly coloured sashes. Aprons, vest, light cloaks and jackets dotted the masses of living jewels.
"Pass the butter, please," came a voice from behind.
Blinking, Duo grabbed the butter pat and turned halfway around in his seat before noticing it was a ruby-hued lizard-woman reaching for it.
"Hi." Duo was uncomfortably aware of how shy he sounded just then. "I'm Duo."
"Hello, Duo." Judging by her voice, the lizard-woman was probably more of a lizard-girl. "My name is Hylaea. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Ah, can I have the butter now?"
"Huh?" Duo looked down at his hand as though seeing it for the first time. "Oh! Yeah. Here."
Hylaea took the pat and spread some butter on her toast. "I hate dry toast," she confessed. She bit into it. "So, are you new here? I don't think I've seen you around before."
"Uh, yeah, well. Something called the Bond-"
"Ah. Say no more. More people than I can count have come to the Keep via the Bond." Hylaea pointed to a table across the aisle. "You see that redhead over there? She's a powerful sorceress who was sent here, oh, about seven years ago or so. And that man with the little boy? They were sent here while Albin –the boy- was only about three months old. He just turned four a few weeks ago."
"Do they only come here?" Heero asked. He and the others had stopped eating and were listening in on the conversation.
"Not always," said Hylaea, warming to the subject. She caught her bottom lip between sharp, spiked teeth as she looked about the room. "See that man over there with the ponytail?" She pointed discretely to a tall, dark-haired man in a leather jacket. "He was found first by Black Hood and when they found out he was a trained warrior, he was forced to fight in the ring. He's been here, oh, about eight years now?" Hylaea's voice dropped conspiratorially and the fascinated boys, Relena and Catherine leaned in to hear better. "Rumour has it that he and Lady Ria are stepping out together."
"Ria…Ria…oh!" Quatre snapped his fingers. "Twenty or so? Tallish with red hair?"
Hylaea nodded, her ruby head glinting in the sunlight streaming in from the huge windows. "Mm-hm. She's Lord Walker's oldest sister."
"He's the youngest?" Trowa queried, worrying his eggs, but not really interested in actually eating them.
"No, no," an emerald lizard-boy squirmed around in his seat to look at them. He appeared to be about the same age as Hylaea, if not a bit older. "He and Lord Darien are twins and Lady Ria, Lady Tama and Lady Misty are younger than them in two-year intervals in that order."
"I could have told them that, Conor," Hylaea chided him.
"But, unless memory fails to serve, my dear, you didn't."
"For lords and ladies, you certainly speak easily about them," Relena commented. Hylaea and Conor laughed.
"The titles are just a formality, really," Conor stuck a huge forkful of scrambled eggs and continued talking, ignoring Hylaea's disgusted look. "They hate being called by them."
Wufei snorted and turned away from the group in his seat. A lord who won't even use his own title. Huh! Play nobles!
A sudden silence around the table caused Wufei to look up. Looks like I might have said that out loud. He smirked slightly. Damn.
"Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no," Hylaea said. "Nothing could be farther from the truth. They simply prefer to live as we do."
"A man who does not act according to his station is not a true lord," Wufei sniffed, unaware of just how prissy he sounded. "A man like that should lose his title."
"And a man who acts as though he is above others should also lose his title, along with his head," snarled a deep voice from just behind Wufei. Wufei turned to see the huge man with the leather jacket standing over him. The Chinese boy noticed with a start that the big man's eyes were bloody red. "The measure of a lord is not determined by haughtiness, boy. It's how he is received by his people." The huge man loomed in further, his leather jacket creaking. "And I have it on very good authority Lord Walker is very well received by his people."
Belle, who had been sitting quietly until then, stood up, taking the large man by his bulky shoulder. "Now, now, Ryu. There's no need to intimidate."
Ryu turned his blood red orbs to the tiny woman standing at his side. "That would be a rather difficult task for one so large as I, my Lady," said he without even cracking so much as a tiny smile. With a curt bow to the ageless psionicist, he turned and walked away.
"Cheerful fellow," Trowa remarked. Duo began to laugh.
Conor chuckled around his own glass of milk. "If you knew Lord Walker, you'd be singing a new tune, my sceptical little friend," he said to Wufei. Wufei snorted, more than a little crushed by his encounter with the immense, red-eyed man. The emerald lizard-boy rolled his eyes and pointed to the enormous chandelier hanging on heavy chains overhead. It was in the shape of a magnificent dragon, fully thirty feet long from tip of snout to tip of tail. From where they sat as insects to a giant, they could all but feel the heat of its fiery breath. Conor watched the group take in every exquisite detail. "D'you see that? Lord Walker made that dragon."
"He made all of that?" Catherine gasped. "By himself? How could one man build something so huge?"
Hylaea grinned, a disconcerting sight with such dagger-like teeth. "You misunderstood me, miss. He didn't build it with his own two hands. He conjured it. From nothing."
"Come again?" This from Relena.
"That dragon didn't exist, and then Lord Walker flicked his fingers and, lo and behold! Big ass dragon!" Conor emphasised his sentence with a grand flourish of his fork, which ended up flinging scrambled eggs right in Hylaea's face. Hylaea rounded on him with a sticky bun, bouncing it off his pebbly head.
"Oooh, man." Duo wearily set his head in his hands. He moaned aloud as the food war went on around him. "Just when I thought things couldn't be worse, they decide to break the laws of physics, too. Nothing could possibly cause this day to suck any more than it does right about now."
"Ah, Duo? Your elbow is in my oatmeal."
There was a pause as Duo's brain registered the somehow fitting irony of the situation. "I don't care," he said finally. "At least the food here is still normal."
"I dunno." Catherine poked at her meat. "I think I head someone say something about bear."
"Aaarggh!"
Belle suddenly appeared from nowhere, taking Duo by the shoulders. "All full? Good." She looked critically at Duo sleeve where the thick overlay of oatmeal was already beginning to dry. "And it was just washed, too," she murmured. "Ah, well. We shall have to hurry. Walker is finally awake and he wishes to see you."
"You didn't call him 'lord'," Wufei pointed out, a bit snappish from his encounter with Mt. Ryu.
"But my dear, why should I?" Gathering the plates, Belle gave him one of her knee-knocking smiles. "He is my nephew, after all."
More later! Ja!
L.P.D.