«How beautiful.»
«Now that is contemporary. Not bad,» Carialle said, with grudging approval. Keff turned the goblet and let it catch the torchlight. He pinged it with a fingernail and listened to the sweet song.
A hairy-faced server bearing an earthen pitcher appeared next to Keff to fill his glass with dark golden wine. Keff smiled at him and sniffed the liquid. It was fragrant, like honey and herbs.
«Don't drink that,» Carialle said, after a slight hesitation to assess the readouts from Keff's olfactory implant. «Full of sulfites, and just in case you think the Borgias were a fun family, enough strychnine in it to kill you six times over.»
Shocked, Keff pushed the glass away. It vanished and was replaced by an empty one. Another server hovered and poured a cedar-red potation into its bowl. He smiled at the furry-faced female who tipped up the corners other mouth tentatively before hurrying away to the next person.
«Who put poison in my wine?» Keff whispered, staring around him.
Chaumel glanced over at him with a concerned expression. Keff nodded and smiled to show that everything was all right. The silver magiman nodded back and went on his way from one guest to another.
«I don't know,» Carialle said. «It wasn't and isn't in the pitcher, but I wasn't quick enough to follow the burst of energy back to its originator. Seems it isn't an unknown incident, though.»
All around the room, a Noble Primitive was appearing beside each mage. Full of curiosity, Keff eyed them. Each bore a different cast of features, some more animal than others, so they were undoubtedly from the magimen's home provinces. Asedow's servant did look like a six-pack. The pretty girl's servant was hardly mutated at all, except for something about the eyes that suggested felines. Potria didn't look at her pig-person, but stiff-armed her goblet toward him. Cautiously, the Noble Primitive took a sip. Nothing happened to him, but two other servants nearby fell over on the floor in fits of internal anguish. They vanished and were replaced by others. Whites showing all around the irises of his eyes, the pig-man handed the goblet back to his mistress, and waited, hands clenched, for her nod of approval. Other mages, their first drink satisfactory, held their glasses aloft, calling loudly to the wine servers for refills.
«Food-tasters! There's more in heaven and on earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio,» Keff said.
«Hmph!» Carialle said. «That's an understatement. I wish you could see what I do. Those langorous poses are just that: poses. I'm recording everything for your benefit, and its taking approximately eighteen percent of my total memory capacity to absorb it. I'm not merely monitoring three language forms. There is a lot more going on sub rosa. Every one of our magifolk is tensed up so much I don't know how they can swallow. The air is full of power transmissions, odd miniature gravity wells, low-frequency signals, microwaves, you name it.»
«Can you trace any of it back? What is it all for?»
«The low-frequency stuff is easy to read. It's chatter. They're sending private messages to one another, forming conspiracies and so on against, as nearly as I can tell, everyone else in the room. The power signals correspond to dirty tricks like the poison in your wine. As for the microwaves, I can't tell what they're for. The transmission is slightly askew to anything I've dealt with before, and I can't intercept it anyway because I'm not on the receiving end.»
«Tight point-to-point beam?»
«I wish I could transmit something with as little spillover,» Carialle admitted. «Somebody is very good at what they're doing.»
IT continued to translate, but most of what it reported was small talk, mostly on the taste of the wine and the current berry harvests. With their chairs bobbing up and down to add emphasis to their discourse, two magiwomen were conversing about architecture. A couple of the magifolk here and there leaned their heads toward one another as if sharing a confidence, but their lips weren't moving. Keff suspected the same kind of transference that the magifolk used to control their eye spheres. He looked up, wondering where all the spy-eyes had gone. That afternoon on the field the air had been thick with them.
Keff contrasted the soup that appeared in huge silver tureens with the swill that Brannel's people had to eat. And he and Cari were still not free to leave the planet. Still, in spite of the shortcomings, he had a feeling of satisfaction.
«This is the race everyone in Exploration has always dreamed of finding,» he said, surveying the magifolk. «Our technical equals, Cari. And against all odds, a humanoid race that evolved parallel to our own. They're incredible.»
«Incredible when they amputate fingers from babies?» asked Carialle. «And keep a whole segment of the race under their long thumbs with drugged food and drink? If they're our equals, thank you, I'll stay unequal. Besides, they don't appear to be makers, they're users. Chaumel's mighty proud of those techno-toys left to him by the Old Ones and the Ancient Ones, but he doesn't know how to fix 'em. And neither does anyone else. Over there, in the corner.»
Keff glanced over as Carialle directed. On the floor lay Chaumel's jelly jar. He gasped.
«Does he know he lost it?»
«He didn't lose it. I saw him drop it there. It doesn't work anymore, so he discarded it. Everybody else has looked at it with burning greed in their eyes and, as soon as they realized it doesn't work anymore, ignored it. They're operators, not engineers.»
«They're still tool-using beings with an advanced civilization who have technical advantages, if you must call it that, superior in many ways to ours. If we can bring them into the Central Worlds, I'm sure they'll be able to teach us plenty.»
«We already know all about corruption, thank you,» Carialle said.
A servant stepped forward, bowed, and presented the tureen to him. Keff sniffed. The soup smelled wonderful. He gave them a tight smile. Another popped into being beside him bearing a large spoon, and ladled some into the bowl on his tray. The rich golden broth was thick with chunks of red and green vegetables and tiny, doughnut-shaped pasta. Keff poked through it with his silver spoon.
«Cari, I'm starved. Is any of this safe to eat? They didn't assign me a food-taster, even if I'd trust one.»
«Hold up a bite, and I'll tell you if anyone's spiked it.» Keff obliged, pretending he was cooling the soup with his breath. «Nope. Go ahead.»
«Ahhhh.» Keff raised it all the way to his lips.
His chair jerked sideways in midair. The stream of soup went flying off into the air past his cheek and vanished before it splashed onto his shoulder. He found himself facing Omri.
«Tell me, strange one,» said the peacock-clad mage, lounging back on his floating couch, one hand idly spooning up soup and letting it dribble back into his bowl. «Where do you come from?»
«Watch it,» Carialle barked.
«From far away, honored sir,» Keff said. «A world that circles a sun a long way from here.»
«That's impossible.»
Keff found himself spun halfway around until he was nose to nose with a woman in brown with night-black eyes.
«There, are no other suns. Only ours.»
Keff opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get the words out, his chair whirled again.
«Pay no attention to Lacia. She's a revisionist,» said Ferngal. His voice was friendly, but his eyes were two dead circles of dark blue slate. «Tell me more about this star. What is its name?»
«Calonia,» Keff said.
«That leaves them none the wiser,» Carialle said.
«That leaves us none the wiser,» Chaumel echoed, turning Keffs seat in a flat counterclockwise spin three-quarters around. «How far is it from here, and how long did it take you to get here?» Keff opened his mouth to address Chaumel, but the silver magiman became a blur.