Gardens and Parks of Castle Amber...
Lance cocks his head and listens while Ari talks about reconciling things with Jon and the dangers of the grey men.
"I think putting Jon and I in a room together would be a bad idea, really. At least anytime soon. Maybe best if there's some time to let it all scab over, y'know? Right now though, I've got too much more important stuff to focus on than Jon. I learned a little bit about what his father was like, and I didn't much like that either. Apparently he and Corwin had some kind of fight that left Corwin wounded and incapacitated, and so he wouldn't get blamed for possible fratricide he dragged him out into shadow to Earth and left him to die in the middle of the Black Plague. Then there's the burning his eyes out when Eric crowned himself King and Corwin was his prisoner thing. While we're not our parents, a lot of times we inherit a lot more than we realize from them."
"The grey men are a real threat, I know, and the danger they represent isn't lost on me. On my last trip out I learned that they don't speak, ever. They communicate with some kind of telepathy between each other, and they're hard-core fanatics that would rather die than fail, and their goal is capturing us, rather than just killing us. I don't know why just yet, but it smacks of possible family involvement. Turns out that our family is actually descended from the Courts of Chaos. Grandpa Dworkin and the Unicorn broke with them and founded Amber, and they hate us to this day for it. Now we've got our cousin Merlin, Corwin's son, on the throne over there but he's AWOL supposedly. Add to that cousin Rinaldo, Brand's son, is the King of some Golden Circle Kingdom named Kashfa. He killed uncle Caine as retribution for Caine killing Brand who was responsible for your mom's death and giving our ancestral relations a way to reach Amber via something called the Black Road."
Lance takes a deep breath. "Now I don't know how Rinaldo wound up as a local King, but apparently there's an outlaw named Dalt who is on Amber's number one most wanted list running around freely in Kashfa and Rinaldo just lets him, so we've potentially got trouble from there too. Cap it off with an uncle who once had his own designs on the throne, Bleys out there somewhere, and we've got a real cluster."
"The earth perspective is somewhat different from here, I admit, but still, insulting people, threatening people, trying to coerce them...bad behavior is still that, local customs or not. You asked about how I grew up? Well, when my mom was pregnant with me she ran into a family member in a place where she absolutely didn't expect. It freaked her out so badly that she hid away until I was born and placed me in a Catholic orphanage in Brooklyn so that I wouldn't be found. That's where I grew up. It was a place nobody would look for a scion of Amber. The nuns had no idea what they had, and working from their messed up world view they thought I had the devil inside me because I was different. Every time I manifested my strength or speed they'd beat me, then I'd heal incredibly fast and it made them even more sure of it. I had to play it down as much as possible just to keep under the radar. I was never adopted out. Saw kids all around me go, but never me. I thought there was something horribly wrong about me that nobody wanted me. I lived there until I was old enough to get a job at sixteen and emancipate."
Lance rubs his eyes at the memories. "They had taken us to a renn-faire once when I was little. I loved it, especially the swordplay. I studied it, and it was my only real escape from my reality. Read every book and reference the NY library had about it. Forms, styles, all of it. Practiced it up on the roof by myself when I could get up there. When I got out on my own they gave me two hundred bucks and wished me luck, said they'd pray for me. I lived in a cardboard box in an alleyway for two months, worked my ass off as a dishwasher and pizza guy, bought an old beater station wagon from my boss. That was my big upgrade in living conditions. School in the morning, work every afternoon and night...sixteen hours a day on the weekends, saved everything, bought a used pop-up trailer. After I graduated high school I got my first gig at a renn-faire, quit the job in the city and started working the faire circuit full-time. Worked my ass off there too, eventually getting into the bigger performing roles. Got noticed, did some Hollywood stuff doing swordfight choreography. I finally got rid of the station wagon, got a slick little pickup truck, fixed up and repainted the trailer and sword fighting was my whole life until the night the grey man showed up with Flora hot on his tail. All modesty aside, I'm really fucking good with a sword. Might be the only thing I'm good at, and I've really gotten used to being alone. Thirty years of not fitting in and being the odd man out. Now suddenly I'm a Prince with this huge family and servants and ancient ancestral enemies. It's gonna take a while to break a lifetime of habit."
He smiles a little wistfully. "So Flora brings me here, I meet Ballad, really fall in love for the first time ever, and because I'm a dumb-ass go and get my heart broken. Again, not gonna be a quick fix, and it's gonna take me some time to work through it, and I'm doing the best I can. I had originally thought about vanishing off into shadow forever and putting it all behind me, but it's not the answer. So instead I'm just working on trying to improve myself, feel better about things, and learn some new stuff while working for Random and trying to deal with all of it."
A bell chimes the quarter hour. "Speaking of which, I have an appointment with my mom coming up, so I gotta get moving. Not sure how long I'll be, but probably all afternoon. Maybe you and I can catch up more tomorrow morning, or something?"