Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (7 page)
Read Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) Online
Authors: Kevin Hardman
Sloe only escorted me so far as the double doors that I had come through earlier with Berran. At that juncture, he bade me good day and left to attend to other matters. From there, however, I was unlikely to get lost. Once again, the doors were opened by servants, and I stepped outside.
The grounds appeared almost exactly as they had before, except now there were throngs of people milling about. Those present seemed to fall into either one of two categories: servants or royals, and the class distinction was readily apparent. The former were easy to identify, as they all seemed to wear similar attire and bustled about in a subservient manner. The latter were bedecked in the finest clothes, expensive jewelry, and occasionally a coronet of some sort.
No one seemed to have taken note of me yet, which was fine as far as I was concerned; it gave me a moment to think. On Earth, I would have just sauntered down among the guests and begun to mix and mingle. Here, I didn’t know if there was some type of protocol to be followed. (After all, I’d already had my hand slapped once today for approaching someone – Fesinin – in a way that was apparently inappropriate. I was hesitant to make a similar
faux pas
at an event where I was the guest of honor.)
Fortunately, I was saved from possibly making a fool of myself by my grandmother, who suddenly appeared at my side out of nowhere.
“So,
Sxibbo
, you finally made it,” she said, looping her arm into mine. “Come, let’s meet our guests.”
*****
For the next hour, Indigo shepherded me to and fro, introducing me to a host of individuals, most of whom had appellations and titles I was unlikely to ever properly remember. Part of the problem was that quite a few of them seemed to have the same name. For instance, I met at least a half-dozen princes named Plavicre and several women called Dornoccia. (I even thought my grandmother introduced one of those present as another Prince J’h’dgo, but felt certain I must have misheard or misunderstood.)
Almost everyone I met was generally cordial, but on an emotional level many of them exuded a strange dichotomy – acute interest mingled with cool detachment – like someone eager to see a popular Broadway show not because of the subject matter, but just so he can discuss it around the water cooler the next day. I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly what it was until my grandmother sought to present me to a woman – a princess of the Second Patrilineal line named Assedna – who evidently had no filter between her mouth and her brain.
“
Gzint msint
!” the woman had practically shouted, cursing mildly in Caelesian. “He really is
dofuncon
!”
I recognized the last word, which loosely translated as “crossbreed,” and with her statement came understanding: there was a circus in town, and I was the star attraction. To many Caelesians, I was a freak, and some of them were only here for the sideshow.
Indigo had ignored Assedna’s outburst and calmly introduced me, but internally I could feel her seething and wishing she could catch this lady alone in a dark alley. Telepathically, I sent her a cartoonish image of a dazed Assedna sporting a black eye and with a halo of birds circling her head. I wasn’t sure if my grandmother was familiar enough with Terran culture to get the reference, but the answer became clear when she immediately snorted with laughter, causing a few guests to give her odd looks.
By the time I finished making the acquaintance of our guests, a servant announced in stentorian tones that it was time to eat – and a good thing, too, because I was famished. (In fact, I had tweaked my biological systems just a short time earlier in order to suppress hunger pangs.)
Everyone began making their way to where the meal would be served: five elongated banquet tables arranged perpendicular to each other. Just eyeballing the setup, it appeared that each table could seat about sixty people – thirty to a side.
Indigo escorted me to a seat at the end of the center table – a place obviously meant for the guest of honor. She then took the chair immediately to my left. As we sat down, the place to my right was taken by someone I had met earlier – a young man who appeared to be in his early twenties. He was clean-cut and stylishly dressed, with a dazzling smile that I’m sure drove all the girls wild. I struggled momentarily to recall his name.
“Prince Plavicre, isn’t it?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yes, but I go by Vicra,” he said, chuckling in a hearty tone that matched his smile. “Good guess, by the way. Probably one out of every ten Caelesian males is named after Plavicre the Great.”
“So if I forget some guy’s name, I’ve got a pretty good chance of getting it right if I just call him Plavicre.”
Vicra laughed. “Yes, but among the royals most of us go by some other moniker. It’s just too confusing otherwise.”
“So ‘Vicra’ is a shortened form of Plavicre? A nickname?”
“One of them. There’s probably about twenty of them altogether.”
“I guess you need them when so many people are named after the same guy.”
“So it would seem. In that respect, you should feel thankful that your own name has waned somewhat in popularity.”
“Huh?” I muttered in surprise. “‘J’h’dgo’ was a popular name?”
Vicra gave me a look of surprise. “Didn’t anyone tell you? ‘J’h’dgo’ is the given name of the First King – the predecessor of Plavicre the Great.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I never heard.”
“Well, most of us royals are the namesake of some great king or queen in the past. Where did you imagine your name came from?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “I guess I just thought…”
I trailed off, glancing at my grandmother, but she was engaged in conversation with the woman to her left.
“Well,” Vicra said, “regardless of your formal name’s popularity, I hear that you have a nickname as well.”
“What?” I said, my thoughts having drifted slightly.
“Youth Fascination?” he said.
I stared at him for a moment, totally lost. And then it hit me.
“Not quite,” I said, snickering slightly. “It’s actually ‘Kid Sensation.’”
“Hmmm,” Vicra said, frowning. There may have been something lost in translation, because the distinction seemed lost on him. He seemed on the verge of commenting further, but was interrupted when servants began placing dishes of food before us.
At that juncture, the conversation changed, with Vicra and I discussing a wide range of topics as we ate, including Caelesian history, the royal lines and sports (yes, Caeles has them), among other things. I found him to be fun and witty, aristocratic without being arrogant, and thought to myself that perhaps I had made my first real friend here (outside of Berran).
The meal itself consisted of about a dozen courses, almost all of which presented me with cuisine that left me mystified. By way of example, there was something like a soup course, except the liquid gelled when you put it in your mouth. Another course was comprised of what appeared to be a dish of uncooked rice, each grain of which seemed to have a liquid center. The other parts of the meal were, for the most part, just as odd.
In terms of taste, the food ran the gamut: about half of what was served was incredibly bland (I’d have traded my crown for a salt shaker), two items tasted as though they’d been marinated in pepper spray, and there was one where I had to immediately suppress my gag reflex. About the only thing that tickled my fancy was a serving of some type of rare fish that was perfectly seasoned and melt-in-your-mouth delicious.
It was probably during the middle of the meal that my grandmother reached out to me telepathically to ask how things were going.
,> I replied.
Following her gaze, I took note of something that I had paid little attention to previously: roughly half the places at the banquet tables were empty. For instance, there was no one sitting in the next two chairs to the right of Vicra.
Indigo mentally sighed.
. For once, however, the fabled influence of the House Nonpareil falls short.>
.>
As she spoke, I picked up a vibe of deathly earnestness from her that was almost religious in its fervor and intensity. I suddenly felt very sorry for these no-shows, whoever they were; skipping this event was going to be one of the major regrets of their lives.
Although still feeling my grandmother’s ire empathically, I turned my thoughts away from the politics of the banquet and back towards the fare itself. We seemed to be nearing the end of the meal, and that’s when one of the servants placed a clear, hourglass-shaped bottle containing a dark liquid in front of me.
Vicra looked at the bottle in frank admiration. “Impressive.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Yolathan,” my grandmother chimed in. “A special type of wine.”
“More than that,” Vicra said. “The fruit it comes from is only found on one planet in the entire Caelesian Empire, and it ferments for a full century.”
“Wow,” I said, suitably impressed. “Sounds expensive.”
“It is,” Indigo confirmed, “which is why you’re the only one getting a bottle, but you’re worth it.”
I stared at the bottle, slightly nervous. Back home, Mom and Gramps had occasionally let me have a glass of wine or champagne on certain occasions (like New Year’s), but I’d never had anything alcoholic outside their presence. That said, I had to assume that my grandmother had just as much authority as those two, and she seemed to have given her blessing.
With a mental shrug, I took the bottle and poured a healthy portion of its contents into a nearby glass. The wine was a deep purple in color and – when I put my nose to the glass – had a light, fragrant smell.
“Bottoms up,” I said to no one in particular, then drained the glass.
Almost immediately, I could sense that something was wrong. I hadn’t expected the Yolathan to taste like Earth wine, but this was a far cry from anything I had anticipated. Rather than something consumable, it felt as though someone had poured a gallon of napalm down my throat and then stuck a lit fuse in my mouth.
I turned to the side and retched violently, coming close – I’m sure – to getting something on Vicra’s shoes. (Vicra himself scrambled hastily out of the way.) Legs wobbling, I tried to stand up, but felt myself swaying once I got to my feet. Placing both hands on the table to steady myself, I stood there, trying to think as mind-numbing agony spread through my body like wildfire.
Turning almost all my senses inward, I tried to stay calm and figure out what was happening to me. The task was made more onerous by the fact that I felt like I was burning up from the inside out; every nerve ending was being mauled and tortured. In addition, my breath started coming in short gasps, while my heart was pounding in my chest faster that a hummingbird’s wings. I heard my grandmother shouting my name, but I blocked her out as I concentrated on shutting down pain receptacles and rerouting electrical impulses that normally would be sending signals to my brain that my body was in torment.
A moment later the agony ceased, but I was still deep in the danger zone. I had merely blocked the pain, not stopped whatever was happening. As if to confirm this, I suddenly had trouble catching my breath, but it only took a second to realize what the problem was: my lungs had seized up.
Using my shapeshifting ability, I began expanding my lungs and then contracting them, rhythmically, trying to force them to continue moving air into my body. I can’t swear that it worked, but it felt as though I could breathe again, albeit shallowly.
Just then my heart gave a final flutter and simply stopped beating. Almost crazy with panic, I telekinetically reached inside my chest and began squeezing it, gently but firmly, about once per second. I didn’t have time to figure out whether this was enough to keep my circulatory system functioning, because a moment later everything else seemingly shut down: my kidneys stopped functioning, my liver failed, my stomach seemed to fill with battery acid… Almost every organ seemed to simply throw in the towel simultaneously.
It was too much for me to keep up with; I couldn’t keep everything going. Moreover, darkness began to creep into the edge of my vision – a telltale sign that I was starting to black out – but there was nothing I could do about it.
My eyes fluttered and I felt myself toppling over, noting as I did that my crown came off and went rolling away. A moment later, I hit the ground hard enough to rattle my teeth (and somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain, I was a little annoyed that no one had bothered to catch me). I couldn’t see her, even though my eyes were open, but I could hear my grandmother incessantly screaming for a doctor and begging for me to hold on. Truth be told, however, I was having trouble just hanging on to coherent thoughts; my mind was all over the place – thinking about my girlfriend, the last blockbuster movie I saw, where the heck was my crown, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck… Like all my other organs, my brain was apparently shutting down.
With a herculean effort, I put all my remaining energy into focusing on Indigo and what she was saying, but it was incredibly difficult. Even worse, her voice began to sound more distant and get farther away by the second – as if she were on a train and shouting goodbye to me as it slowly pulled out of the station. I tried to speak, but only seemed capable of making mumbling sounds. Clearly, I was fading fast.
I couldn’t be sure, but it felt as though something light and wet landed on my cheek, like a light sprinkling of rain.
Indigo’s tears
, I said to myself, and it suddenly occurred to me that those two words would make a fantastic song title, or be a great name for a book…
With that, I felt the tiny spark that was the remainder of my life force starting to wink out. The last thing I remember was an explosive sound accompanied by a weird, musical tinkling – like a grenade going off in a glassworks factory – followed by the ground shaking as though a T-Rex had decided to crash the party.
