The exterior of what had been Mother Grimes looked like a puffball, half-deflated and already rotting. Dennis couldn't imagine how he'd thought it was a house.
"Let's go back to Rakastava, Chester," Dennis said. Now that things were calm, his body sagged with the effort it had delivered.
He left his clothing where it lay. The garments were still crumbling, though the weight of direct sunlight seemed to be slowing the process. He carried the belt, the damaged scabbard, and the star-metal sword instead of wearing them against his bare, swollen skin.
"Is it me or yourself that you would have carry the baton, Dennis?" the robot prompted.
"There's nothing of men in that thing, Chester," the youth replied with a vehemence that surprised even him. "I'll take the sword, for it's a fine sword and I've lost the one I came with. But that other thing—"
He spat. "I want it no more than I want Malduanan tramping at my side, Chester."
"Do not slight a little thing, lest you suffer for its lack," Chester murmured.
But one of his tentacles looped around the scabbard, taking the weight from his exhausted master as they trudged back to Rakastava.
CHAPTER 42
Rakastava was so underpopulated that Dennis encountered only three of its citizens on his way to his room.
He expected to be laughed at. He was a ludicrous figure, tired, naked and blotched with swellings.
The woman and men who faced Dennis, from around corners or a doorway, fled in the opposite direction as soon as their eyes took him in. A naked wildman might frighten anybody, but there was more to it than that. One of the men bobbed a nervous bow, and the woman muttered, "Prince Dennis," before she bolted away.
They were in awe of him. Not even because he'd killed monsters.
The folk of Rakastava were in awe of Dennis' willingness to go well beyond the city's walls.
"They're all cowards," he muttered as the door of his room opened with its promise of bath and balm. He was too exhausted to put real venom into the observation.
"Not all of them are cowards, Dennis," Chester disagreed in a mild tone. Then he added, "The Princess Aria will be at meal in the assembly hall when you have bathed."
Dennis grinned. "Not all of them," he agreed.
But the cheerful expression faded when he remembered the way Gannon's image looked at the princess—and the way the princess looked back.
CHAPTER 43
The evening meal had started by the time Dennis joined the gathering. There was an empty space on the bench between Conall and his blond daughter.
Aria glanced around as Dennis approached. The way her face brightened to see him made memories of her mirrored image less bitter.
Conall peered at the youth. "You've been—" he said, then looked down and took another forkful of 'meat'.
"Always glad to have you with us, boy," he said gruffly.
Aria's finger traced a splotch on the side of Dennis' neck where a drop of slime had splashed the youth soon after Mother Grimes' door shut behind him. The swelling had gone down, but the skin was still tender.
He turned. She touched a similar blotch on his forehead.
"You've been fighting again," she said. If her touch was cool, then her voice was cold, clinical. "Did you have a good time?"
A disinterested adult talking down to a six-year-old.
"Well, I..." Dennis said, taken aback by this kind of hostility, from—from Aria.
She was concentrating on her plate again, though a certain stiffness in the line of her back suggested that she was no less aware of his presence than she'd been before.
Well, I... Dennis thought; but he couldn't find a useful way to finish the sentence even in his mind, so he didn't attempt it aloud.
They'd seen the damage Mother Grimes had done him. It wasn't their fault, hadn't anything to do with Rakastava and her people; but it reminded them of those they'd sent to die in the past. King Conall was embarrassed. And Aria—
Dennis blushed. He didn't understand Aria, but he suspected the fault was in the way he felt about the princess.
"Say, boy," said the King's Champion, leaning forward to speak past Conall. "Some more flotsam tossed up in Rakastava. See them?"
He pointed to the next down of the circular arc of tables rising from Rakastava's floor.
A couple, brightly dressed but obvious from their emaciation, sat gawping at the splendor around them. They looked ancient, though after staring at them, Dennis decided neither was more than thirty. Their faces were smeared with gravy from the food they'd shoveled in—with their bare hands, from the look of them. The time they'd spent in the jungle had left them with no more table manners than the lizards.
If they'd ever had table manners to lose.
"Maybe you'd like to go join them, boy," Gannon continued. "They're more your type, aren't they?"