He waited while Gilan and Will moved the cloaks experimentally, eyeing each other and studying the unusual colors, seeing how they would blend into the landscape of rock and desert that surrounded Al Shabah.
All right, ladies," he said, "if you're finished with the fashion show, let's go meet the Wakir.
He rose, offering his hand to Evanlyn to assist her. Even though she was lithe and athletic as a cat, she took it, enjoying the contact. She saw Horace's slight frown as she did so and smiled to herself. A girl can never have too many admirers, she thought. Will seemed unperturbed by the fact that she retained hold of Selethen's hand a little longer than politeness dictated. But then, Ranger's were trained to look imperturbable. He was probably seething with jealousy, she thought.
John FlanaganYou know, one of these days, I'm actually going to take offense if people keep throwing out these slurs. And then things are going to get rather ugly. When we Skandians do take offense, we do it with a battleax.
John FlanaganI'm the new Oberjarl."
I knew it," said Halt instantly, and the other three looked at him, totally scandalized.
You did?" Erak asked, his voice hollow, his eyes still showing the shock of his sudden elevation to the highest office in Skandia.
Of course," said the Ranger, shrugging. "You're big, mean, and ugly and those seem to be the qualities Skandian's value most.
After all, he did say you were the issue of an encounter between your father and a traeling hatcha-hatcha dancer."
There was a gasp of horror from the crowd.
Duncan, smiling thinly, said through gritted teeth: "Thank you so much for reminding us all, Anthony.
Halt," said the elegant diplomat, "when you asked me to marry you, did you think we could just sneak off to a glade in the woods with a few close friends and get it done?"
Halt hesitated. "Well, no...of course not."
As a matter of fact, that was exactly what he had thought. A simple ceremony, a few friends, some food and drink and then he and Pauline would be a couple. But he felt that it might not be wise to admit that right now.
Shut up, Axl!" he whispered fiercly. "If you want to break your neck, do it quietly or I'll break it for you.
John FlanaganForty, sleepy, overweight, comfortable Arridi townsmen, who hadn't fought a real engagment in twenty years or more, wouldn't provide much resistance to thirty yelling, fiendish, bloodthirsty, gold crazed Skandians who would come screaming up from the beach like the hounds of hell.
John FlanaganErak. The one they call the Oberjarl," the Arridi answered him.
Impulsively, Axl took a pace forward, raising his ax threateningly.
You'll have to go through the rest of us to take him!" he shouted defiantly.
Well done, Axl," he said. "You've just told them I'm here.
Who's this?" he said, coming across a name he didn't recognize. "Lady Georgina of Sandalhurst? Why are we inviting her? I don't know her. Why are we asking people we don't know?"
I know her," Pauline replied. There was a certain steeliness in her voice that Halt would have done well to recognize. "She's my aunt, Bit of an old stick, really, but I have to invite her."
You've never mentioned her before," Halt challenged.
True. I don't like her very much. As I said, she's a bit of an old stick."
Then why are we inviting her?"
We're inviting her," Lady Pauline explained, "because Aunt Georgina has spent the last twenty years bemoaning the fact that I was unmarried. 'Poor Pauline!' she'd cry to anyone who'd listen. 'She'll be a lonley old maid! Married to her job! She'll never find a husband to look after her!' It's just too good an opportunity to miss."
Halt's eyebrows came together in a frown. There might be a few things that would annoy him more than someone criticizing the woman he loved, but for a moment, he couldn't think of one.
Agreed," he said. "And let's sit her with the most boring people possible at the wedding feast."
Good thinking," Lady Pauline said. She made a note on another sheet of paper. "I'll make her the first person on the Bores' table."
The Bores' table?" Halt said. "I'm not sure I've heard that term."
Every wedding has to have a Bores' table," his fiance explained patiently. "We take all the boring, annoying, bombastic people and sit them together. That way they all bore each other and they don't bother the normal people we've asked."
Wouldn't it be simpler to just ask the people you like?" Halt askede. "Except Aunt Georgina, of course--there's a good reason to ask her. But why ask others?"
It's a family thing," Lady Pauline said, adding a second and third name to the Bores' table as she thought of them. "You have to ask family and every family has its share of annoying bores. It's just organizing a wedding.
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