The Pirate and The Piper

Iekika Crashes Our Picnic

Iekika Crashes Our Picnic

I showed Kade how to make sandwich melts. They were an easy food to make, and one that people in Lil took on picnics quite often. The only problem was that they got cold before you could get to your picnic spot, which wasn't a problem since we were having our picnic in our room.

We talked as we ate, sitting on the floor under the skylights. There were flowerpots in the floor around this area that looked like gardens. It was, as Kade had told me, quite flamboyant, but I understood that he had no choice in the mater.

We were interrupted by a knock at the door. Kade and I looked at each other, wondering who it could be, then Iekika let herself in.

"Pardon the intrusion. There will be someone in my room soon, and I do not want to be there then. He does not like me very much."

"Who is it?" Kade asked.

"It will be Father," she responded.

"Kika, you shouldn't run away from him. Maybe he's finally trying to be a parent for you."

"He is coming to yell at me for fleeing the party earlier. He does not wish to be my parent. He wishes I had never been born."

"Would you like a sandwich melt?" I asked.

"I will take one of the ham ones, please. The one without the pickles."

I gave her the sandwich melt she'd requested. She took it and sat down gracefully, then polished her sandwich melt off in three bites.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome. We have cupcakes, too. Would you like one of them? They're chocolate."

"That is why I came here instead of going to the library. I knew you would have chocolate cupcakes."

Clearly, her seeing the future wasn't all that bad if she could predict when and where there would be chocolate cupcakes.

"There will be waffles for breakfast in the morning if you go to the dining hall," Iekika remarked. "And there will be maple syrup."

"That sounds delicious!"

Iekika smiled. "Seeing the future is only bad when bad events are going to occur, and when you see how your favorite book will end."

"She spoiled my favorite novel," Kade said with his mouth full of cupcake.

"In my defense, I thought you had already read the ending. I wasn't very good at knowing what time I was seeing yet."

"I think you did that on purpose for a prank," Kade said.

"Nonsense day wasn't for another week," Iekika protested.

"But you said you weren't that good at knowing when you were seeing," I pointed out.

"I admit nothing. It is not my fault that Kade is such a slow reader."

"Hey! I like enjoying to book as I go through it, not rushing to the end. I could read faster if I had too."

"But you won't."

Iekika jumped, and then Kade and I heard a loud crashing sound from far away.

"I must go," she said. "Alika is being an idiot in my room and Father isn't stopping him. I must make him go away."

"Do you need Kade and I to go with you?" I asked.

"I will be fine. He merely passed out." Before she left, Iekika took another cupcake.

"That was an interesting picnic," I said after she had gone.

"With Iekika around, things are always interesting. I hope Alika leaves her alone," he said worriedly.

"I hope so, too. We should start cleaning up soon," I said.

"I can call a servant to come do that, if you would like me too," Kade offered.

"We made the mess, so we should clean it up." I started gathering up our dishes to take them back to the kitchen. Kade helped me after a minute. I guess he wasn't that used to cleaning up when he wasn't on a ship.

"I hope Iekika's okay," he remarked. "Alika is a nasty piece of work even when he's passed out. Actually, I take that back. He's an especially nasty piece of work when he's passed out, since that means he's drunk."

"I can't believe he's going to be the next king," I said.

"Not if I have anything to do with it. If I can prove to my father that he's broken the law, then he won't be the Crown Prince; I will."

I shook my head. Before I'd met Sophie, I thought that being royalty was all about living in a cushy palace and never working a day in your life. Before I had met Kade, I thought she was unusual for being such a schemer. It looked like all royalty fit into one of two categories—the ones who should never lead a nation, and the ones who would never get to lead.

"It won't be that hard to prove he breaks the law. He loves to brag about the time when he stole an Islander ship to pay off some people he owed gambling debts to. The trick is to make him do it in front of my father."

"No offence, but I didn't think it was against your laws for you to steal ships, since you are, you know, the Pirate Nation."

"It's generally not, but stealing Islander ships goes against the rules of the alliance. Everyone in the Thousand Isles tries to honor those rules, since they're what give us our power."

That made sense. Now I just had to help Kade come up with a way to make Alika brag to his father about what he'd done. I asked Kade if he had any ideas on how we could do that.

"I have no clue what to do," he responded. "Even at his most drunk, Alika always manages to keep up the pretense of being the perfect son when our father is around."

"What if we got help? We could ask Iekika if she seems him spilling his guts at any point in the future."

"You Lilians have the strangest expressions," Kade remarked.

"They get the point across well enough."

"They certainly do," Kade said, smiling at me. "Or maybe it's just that I understand you so well I can understand what you're saying even when you choose strange words."

"Maybe," I agreed. "I understand you, too. Just like I understand you're going to help me carry these dishes down to the kitchens now."

Kade laughed. "Whatever you say, Silver Piper."