Council of Blades Read Online Free PDF Page A

Hundreds of celebrants packed the colonnades and floors-nobility decked out in eye-wrenching, tasteless splendor. Slashed tunics, tight hose, and loose-laced doublets adorned the strutting men, while the women cruised beneath headdresses adorned with points, turbans, battlements and horns. Music swelled and fine wines poured, as the culture of the self-obsessed luxuriated in a glorious afternoon.
    The Manniccis' palace looked out across fields of grape vines and olive groves, up on a land of rolling hills and gen-tle ochre-colored dust. Within the halls they had laid tables heaped with the choicest foods, serviced and maintained by waiters who were the very essence of magnificent disdain.
    On the dance floor, half a hundred brilliantly clad men and women turned and stepped to the intricate measures of an arrogant pavane. The dancers seemed to be split evenly between demure artistes and strutting, posing fig-ures who swung briskly back and forth to slash the other dancers with their swinging capes and sleeves.
    Above the dancers, a dense crowd had converged-the elderly, the pompous, the wealthy and elite.
    Sumbria's Blade Captains each boasted a palace of his own-a palace well stuffed with wives and daughters, dowagers and sons, all of whom now claimed a place at the Manniccis' victory ball. Soldiers who had returned home from the wars each formed the center of a small admiring crowd; here and there a man still wore an armored gor-get or kept his arm inside a sling, artfully attracting the attention of the ladies in the hall.
    Hovering beside a table strewn with orange rinds, roast ostriches, and singing fish, a thin, rather unhappy young man hovered in the shadows and played with his nails. Tall and forlorn, with unfashionably long, strag-gling hair and a court costume smelling of mothballs, the youth clutched a leather folder to his breast and watched the festival sweep dizzily past his eyes.
    Hanging between two of Sumbria's "young blades," a brash young nobleman spied the youth and veered over to his side. Helping himself to a chilled bottle of wine, the newcomer thrust drink into his companion's hand.
    "Lorenzo! Lorenzo, you look like a landed fish. Dance and drink-lie to women and flash your blade!"
    The noble clapped a hand against his dress sword-a silly toy that would have scarcely tickled a mouse-and clung to his companion in an unsteady daze. "We are an embassy! And an ambassador must make an impression-an impression of strength."
    Lorenzo saved his folder from splashing wine as his friend collapsed into a velvet-covered chair and planted his boots between the eyes of a roasted ostrich.
    Lorenzo Utrelli, scion of the Blade Kingdom of Lomatra and a visitor to Sumbria's court, stared at his friend with outrage and surprise.
    "Luccio! Luccio-you're drunk."
    "Drunk as a… as an animal that drinks a lot. Indeed! Indeed." Lorenzo's friend poured himself more Sumbrian wine, managing to come quite close to actually putting wine inside his glass. "I have been fostering diplomatic goodwill."
    "Luccio, if the ambassador finds you, we're both dead!" Wrenching the drunk out of sight behind a platter of stuffed hamsters in sauce, Lorenzo unsuccessfully tried to draw his friend erect. "Look-brace up! Breathe deeply or something."
    "Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo!"
    Luccio swung his friend about by the shoulders and led the nervous youth back out toward the dance floor. "I'm the one in the middle, actually," Lorenzo muttered.
    "Why is it? Why, why, why is it that you never, ever, ever have fun?" Luccio blew a drunken breath out between his mustache hairs and rolled his head to watch a stately, slender damsel wiggle past. "You are here upon a hunt, my boy! You have been offered the possibility of marrying a princess, and I…" Here, Luccio thumped his chest with one hand, splashing wine all across his clothes. "I am commanded to assist you upon the hunt!"
    "I don't want a hunt, and I don't want a princess." Lorenzo's face fell into a