Dragon's Honor - Kij Johnson [32]
“I say, Picard,” the Dragon said, “have I told you how much I admire your woman?” The old man’s gaze roamed over the shapely contours of Troi’s single purple gown. “Beautiful, dutiful, and perceptive. She truly is a prize fit for a captain … or an Emperor,” he hinted broadly.
Picard’s eyes rolled heavenward. He could tell it was going to be a long night.
Chapter Six
“A TOAST! TO THE DRAGON!”
“To Lord Lu Tung!”
“Rebel scum!”
“Son of a cross-eyed concubine!”
With an inarticulate cry of rage, one young Pai warrior lunged at another. The two men grappled amid a chaotic mass of overstuffed cushions, overturned dishes, overwrought noblemen, and under-dressed serving maids. Will Riker, stretched out on a plush velvet divan between the Heir and his blacksheep younger brother, ducked as the battling pair, locked in hand-to-hand combat, threw themselves over Riker’s head and crashed into the wall behind him. Tangled among the satin wall hangings, the two men continued to struggle, their arms and legs thrashing about. Apparently unconcerned with the outcome of the fight, Kan-hi rescued a bottle of wine from the men’s flailing limbs.
“Have another drink, my dear Riker,” the Second Son said.
The Penultimate Bestowing of the Undomesticated Seeds of the Dragon-Heir reminded Riker of some of the wilder celebrations he’d attended on the pleasure planet Risa. Over a dozen young men had crammed themselves into a suite of rooms apparently belonging to Chuan-chi himself. The rooms were broken up by paper screens draped with translucent fabrics of varied colors. The celebrants sprawled on large cushions scattered throughout the suite while smiling handmaidens, clad in wispy strips of diaphanous gauze that left Riker convinced that the Pai were humanoid in every way that mattered, wended sinuously through the party, refilling goblets of wine, serving tasty treats on small china plates, and dodging, sometimes unsuccessfully, the groping hands of the raucous young bachelors. After the voluminous robes displayed at the banquet, including the discreet costumes of the musicians, this generous display of exposed female flesh came as something of a pleasant surprise to Riker, as well as a potentially dangerous distraction. He’d have to make sure all this enticing Pai pulchritude did not divert him from his primary duty: protecting the Dragon’s sons from the assassin—and each other.
He accepted more wine from Kan-hi, thankful for the immunity to intoxication that Beverly’s hypospray had provided him with. The wine was emerald green in color, gently heated, and strong to the taste. He could feel the potent brew burn its way down his throat. Fumes from the goblet seared his nostrils and made his eyes water. Given the rate at which the wine was flowing, Riker guessed that he was already the only sober man at the party. Blinking away tears, Riker grinned at the Second Son and gestured toward the brawling warriors kicking and punching each other on the floor only a few feet away. “Shouldn’t we break them up?”
Kan-hi shrugged. “Why bother? They’ll settle the matter, one way or another, soon enough. And then there’ll be another fight.”
Riker had to concur. Despite his luxurious surroundings, the situation struck him as a very volatile one. These aristocratic young warriors were prickly and quick to fight, and the recent civil wars seemed to have left plenty of hard feelings—and long-simmering grievances—lurking behind the riotous good cheer. Add copious quantities of wine to the equation and Riker saw trouble on the horizon. Under the circumstances, you didn’t need a premeditated assassin to provoke violence; the party alone might be enough to kill an heir or two.
“It’s a barbaric tradition, really,” Chuan-chi said disdainfully.