19.4

Dinner at Castle Blackpool was always punctual. The castle's residents and guests knew that arriving late annoyed the lord of the house. Such affronts tended to have fatal consequences. Geoffrey, Cai and several generals already hovered near the fire, sipping mulled wine.

The generals shuffled from foot to foot nervously. A meeting of the War Council had been scheduled earlier in the afternoon. They had waited for the king for several hours; he had never come. This was the first time in his life he had failed to attend such a meeting. Privately they bickered among themselves about the proper assault strategy. Without the king's word, though, they could do nothing to finish off the South. The troops were in a holding pattern in Tronin, waiting.

Dirk had been inaccessible since the betrothal. He would not deign to meet with anyone. Cai could only get to him for a few minutes at a time before being summarily dismissed while the king's attention wandered to other matters. One "other matter" in particular seemed to occupy all of his time.

Tonight was the first time since the betrothal the king and queen were not dining privately in Dirk's chambers. It was the first opportunity anyone had to interact with the royal couple. In principle, it was the beginning of a return to the castle's normal routine. Or rather, it might have been, had the new queen actually been present.

Dirk entered the dining room promptly at seven o'clock. To everyone's surprise, he was alone. General Ragnar breathed a sigh of relief. There was a chance, then, that they could settle the invasion plan over dinner. The king would be able to focus.

"Hi," Dirk greeted those present in the dining room, his eyes moving to a large grandfather clock in the corner of the room. His expression darkened when he saw the time. "Where is my wife?"

A series of clueless shrugs met the query.

"I would have thought she was with you, my lord," Cai replied, testing the waters. Perhaps they were quarreling again, already.

Dirk gave his seneschal a dark look as though the remark were somehow insolent. The fact of the matter was tonight was the first time in several days Zyrdicia had been out of his line of sight for more than short time. It felt strange. In the initial days following the betrothal, they had been apart very little. Getting away from her tonight had been absolutely necessary. A messenger from Kastania had arrived, bearing word from Duke Kastan regarding the Blackpool claim to the southern province.

Keeping the matter hidden from Zyrdicia was an unfortunate necessity, given her unpredictable, dangerous nature. Dirk made certain the messenger was kept far away from her to avoid any possibility that she might pick up the man's thoughts. The new king had been careful to keep the negotiation a personal secret. Not a single one of his advisors knew of it.

Dirk dreaded the eventual need to reveal to Zyrdicia that he had arranged the theft of her birth records from Lyr in order to claim the duchy, based on a past she refused to acknowledge. He knew she would be angry. He expected she would disappear for days, at the very least. At worst, she might well try to sabotage his southern invasion purely out of spite. It was a delicate matter he intended to handle very, very carefully.

He had left her in her chambers with the twin buffoons who served her, hoping she would stay put a few hours. Charles and Anthony were desperate to spend time with her. He did not particularly care what their motive was - as long as it would keep her busy long enough for him to deal with his messenger from Kastania.

Dirk's jaw set in disapproval. Zyrdicia knew better than to arrive late to dinner. Any other time he might have believed she was merely trying to annoy him deliberately. He rather doubted that tonight. She seemed to have given up on that particular unpleasant hobby since her return from the Astral Plane. He wondered briefly whether she had somehow sniffed out his plot to claim Kastania and was now angry. That thought made him vaguely nervous.

Geoffrey picked up an appetizer from a silver tray and pulled a small square of white cheese from it. He placed the toasted bread back on the tray, then popped the cheese quickly into his mouth. Mouth full, the younger Blackpool smiled, "Hi! You should try these. They're really good."

A poisonous glare met the suggestion. Dirk's eyes moved back to the door. He was about to send guards looking for Zyrdicia when her inimitable laughter resonated from the passageway.

She sauntered in with Charles and Anthony in tow. Charles held her hand tightly as they walked, babbling nonstop.

"So this friend of Krankstoff's in LA is all you need, honey. We don't need to talk to the Pope after all, but a trip to the Vatican would still be fun. Wanna go?" Charles grinned. "Rome is great this time of year!"

"Enough about that shit!" Anthony interrupted. "Who else did you see?"

"You think I went there to socialize?" Charles mocked.

"I'm sure you did. I was stuck here redecorating this nasty pile of rocks, and you got to go home and screw around. Which nightclubs, who with and what were they wearing?" Anthony demanded.

Dirk cleared his throat in annoyance, silencing the babble. "Hi. Where have you been?"

"Catching up on the drama I missed," she smiled pleasantly, pulling her hand out of Charles grasp to move to her husband.

"You're late. I told you to be here by seven o'clock."

"Does that mean you missed me?" she asked innocently, kissing his cheek affectionately.

"It means you try my patience." He took her hand and led her to the table. The chair to which he gestured was at the table's foot, directly opposite his own, nearly ten feet away at the head of the table.

Her eyes widened in surprise at the unfamiliar location. "What's this?"

"Your place at the table, obviously."

"You're that mad at me for arriving five minutes late?" She looked from the chair to his face, first in disbelief than gradually in distress.

He stared at her, his own irritation growing. The place at the table was traditionally the seat of the queen. She should have found it an honor. "Where else would you sit now?" he snarled impatiently.

"I'm not sitting there." Her face settled into a perfect pout. She regarded at him expectantly as though the answer were obvious. Her grip on his hand tightened.

At that instant, he realized no matter how much he insisted, she would not stay in the seat for an entire meal. She could not accept the implicit deprivation of touch the place entailed. She was upset because it was simply too far away from him. He sighed reluctantly, his resolve wavering.

A hint of a smile escaped her lips as she read his face. Before he could change his mind, she nuzzled her cheek quickly against his.

He led her to the chair nearest to his own at the head of the table. The queen's seat at the table was, after all, wholly meaningless. It had not been occupied in over a decade.

Geoffrey watched the interaction slack-jawed. He glanced at Cai, baffled. The seneschal merely shrugged.

Once dinner commenced, as usual, Zyrdicia ate very little. Her fork touched a piece of steak on her plate, pressing against it delicately. She watched the red juices flow out of it. Per her request, the meat had been only quickly seared on the outside; it gave new meaning to the word 'rare.'

"How can you eat it like that?" Geoffrey grimaced, his mouth twisting. "It's still mooing."

"I like to taste the blood."

"For that to be true, you would have to have actually tasted it. So far you've merely toyed with it," Dirk reproached.

Zyrdicia pondered the remark a moment. "Since when did you come to believe that toying with something and tasting it are mutually exclusive?"

"If you don't learn to behave properly at dinner, I will banish you to the far end of the table," he warned, his eyes twinkling in amusement.

"Last night you had no complaints about my behavior on the table in your room. And it involved both toying and tasting, as I recall." She put the bite of meat on her fork in her mouth and chewed it slowly.

"Last night-"

"--So whose favored to win the Whale Ball finals in Grogan this year?" Cai asked Geoff rather loudly. Several of the visiting generals at the table laughed softly in response.

"Huh? What Whale Ball finals?" Geoffrey scowled. "What are you talking about?"

Zyrdicia glanced up from her private conversation. "What's a Whale Ball?"

Charles burst out in a fit of giggling, choking on the sip of wine he had just swallowed.

Her brow furrowed. The thoughts around the table were sufficiently conflicted in meaning to leave her thoroughly confused.

Geoffrey echoed her confusion. "Whale Ball is a southern sport. There are no finals in Grogan."

"Ooooooh!" Anthony grinned, snapping his fingers loudly. "So it's like asking, 'How 'bout them Mets' at a drag queen bar!"

"I still don't get it," Zyrdicia replied.

"It means -oh, never mind. Just pass it on by, honey."

Dirk sent them both a look of annoyance, then chose to ignore them. He pushed his plate away, finished. He looked as though he had no further interest in tolerating them.

He informed Zyrdicia in a deceptively neutral tone, "You and I have business to attend to in the dungeon. Come!"

"Now?"

"Yes, now!"

"What business?"

"Barons and spies to execute."

Zyrdicia stared at the food on her plate weighing how to respond. He still had no idea about the blood hunger her last killing spree had unleashed. "I don't feel like it," she announced somberly.

"You don't feel like torturing a dungeon full of captives?" he asked incredulously.

"Not tonight."

"Are you ill?"

She shook her head, "No."

He stared hard at her. She had not killed since the coronation. To his knowledge, Blathmoor had been the last. By her reckoning, that was a very long time.

"I'm just not in the mood for it," she explained indifferently. "It's not like they are going anywhere. You go ahead. Maybe I'll join you later."

Dirk said nothing more about it. He left the table and proceeded to the dungeon without her. He fully expected she would follow shortly.

19.4.1

Once the king left the dining room, his generals soon took their leave as well. Everyone else lingered.

Geoffrey stared at Zyrdicia. "What have you done to Dirk?"

Her gaze lingered off in the direction in which the king had departed a few moments ago. "Disappointed him, probably," she frowned.

"Is he under a spell?" Geoffrey asked casually. Nothing in his tone implied there would be anything wrong with it, if he were.

"Of course not," she laughed. "Tell me why you ask!"

"The past month he has been unbearable. Worse than ever. Then during the coronation he was all charm and smiles. Now it's as though he isn't even himself."

"He isn't?" she repeated, confused.

"We've hardly even seen you two for three days. He even cancelled a meeting of the war council's generals. He didn't even mention it to them during dinner. It's like he forgot or didn't care. He hasn't spoken of the assault on the South in days."

"He's been busy. He'll get to it eventually. I've needed a lot of attention lately," she reassured.

Charles patted Geoffrey's arm, "She always cocoons after she gets-"

"-Ssh!" Anthony frowned, putting a hand over Charles' mouth.

Charles glared at Anthony then swatted him away, protesting, "But Geoff's practically family now!"

"After she gets what?" Geoffrey prodded.

Ignoring Anthony's glare, Charles explained, "After she gets her ass kicked by tangling with something she shouldn't have messed with." He got up from the table and moved close to Zyrdicia, wrapping his arms around her fondly.

"You did?" Geoffrey asked, staring at her wide-eyed from across the table.

"No!" she protested. She turned and glared at Charles, "You don't even know what happened."

"I know what Anthony said you looked like after you got back."

"It was a fight. I won it," she said defensively.

"Uh, OK," Charles smirked. "And why are you hanging around here in full-on cuddle mode like you'll die if you don't have someone's arms around you?"

Zyrdicia's eyes flashed angrily. The fact of the matter was that since the coma she had the unpleasant sensation that the boundary between her dreamworld and waking reality was dissolving -- touch was the only thing that reminded her she was still safely in the material world. Being alone right now made her feel as though the dreams would come careening out of her subconscious and swallow her entire existence. To imprison Baal, she had very nearly unleashed Azriok. She did not expect any of them to understand. The suggestion that she lost to Baal, though, was infuriating. She snarled at Charles, "You weren't even born the last time I lost to anything. How would you know?"

"Philip said you act like this after you lose."

"I didn't lose. I just feel cuddly. Maybe I missed Dirk!"

"Yeah, right," Anthony laughed. "That's a good one."

"I did miss him," she protested, laughing finally.

"Oh, please," Anthony replied, sweeping the air dismissively with his hand.

"Portia's worried about you," Cai noted, fully at ease with the queen. He knew she would snap at him if he addressed her with proper formality. It would not have felt right, in any case.

"Dicia's OK. Tell Miss Portia we're on top of it," Charles piped up.

"I think that is what has her worried," Cai grinned.

"Dirk's not exactly good at putting people back together," Geoffrey warned. "Cutting them apart is more his specialty."

Charles cut in, "'Dicia knows what 'Dicia needs. If he could not give her what she needs right now, she would be in Lyr finding someone who could."

"Does anyone want to notice that I'm still sitting right here?" Zyrdicia interrupted, her tone defensive. "I don't fucking need anyone worrying about me. I'm fine!"

Four faces stared at her silently, uncertain whether to believe her.

"So why aren't you in the dungeon with your cuddle-object then?" Charles whispered.