The Feast (Part 2)

The feast for the infant prince Sudinnabo was attended by chieftains from most of the villages, when often they would send representatives or those delegates of theirs even already in the royal court in their stead. The King had grown to throw so many feasts after all. 

The village of the infant prince's father, Gress, sent several caravans and they made camp inside the outer walls days in advance. 

While King Razzasbel had planned to send Gress back to his village to administer the province and represent the crown, he had told neither the man, his own his sister or the men of the village.

Some of the men of the village wanted to petition the King to send Gress back with them, with others still preferring to present it as a demand, and others as an already accomplished fact. 

They had grown tired of the King's rule. 

For Good King Razz the feast served as an opportunity to give back to the Kingdom he had made. All the feasts nominally were for this reason, and the Treasury was open for the necessary expenditures or food and drink and even entertainment. The coin from the Treasury for these things often collected in the dungeons, where the different palace hands and hangers on put together what made the feasts and other operations of the royal palace possible. 

For this feast, King Razzasbel had also commissioned the striking of commemorative coins for the guests. The guests could melt these down when they got home and recoup the cost to them of the feast

Pala when she finally arrived at the outer walls did not like the look of the camp that Gress' people had set up and steered clear of it, finding the least conspicuous route to a gate at the inner wall.

They waited also until the break of day the next day to approach the gates, knowing the manner in which they looked. 

It didn't help. They were marked as refugees and turned away. Pala tried to explain what family they had come from, the Queen's herself, but the guard said he knew well what refugees looked like and wouldn't have a fast one pulled on him.

The guard had never seen the Queen before. He had never seen Prince Gress either, and though he knew this feast was for the Prince's infant son, the guard did not appreciate the prince's people camping on the outer grounds or the way they seemed to lord over it on both sides.

Half of the lot looked like refugees, and the guard couldn't be certain Pala and the handiman weren't actually from among them after all. It would be just the kind of thing these people would pull, the guard thought, trying to enter the feast separately to overwhelm the palace. 

Pala and her handiman didn't argue. They were tired and had nothing left for the feast, and they wanted to find Lapa and the handmaiden. 

Pala and the handiman returned to the outer walls circuitously, hoping to come across some sign of the others of their party, but instead they crossed paths with the groundskeepers of the palace, among whom were Zejja's people, who recognized Pala's appearance and manners as that of Queen Ryheza's and took Pala and the handiman into the dungeons as the feast began.