Tom began to relax. He was going to dine with the guardians. They must think highly of him or they wouldn't have invited him to join in their festivities. The Kougal Knight costume, with its ridiculous yellow cloak, was presumably the gear you wore on such an occasion.
***
Peter stared though the spy hole and suffered further agonies. The sirens had taken the Lord of Light into the banqueting hall and were showing him around when Dafne appeared. She had been making herself invisible behind one of her screens and the girls got a tremendous fright when she popped up. She told them to go and they scurried off leaving the Lord of Light to her mercy.
It couldn't be worse. Dafne was in charge of the furies. They finished off a victim after the sirens had exhausted him with their vile and lustful ways. It looked as if the process had been short-circuited. The good lord would be delivered to the furies right away.
Mercifully, that didn't happen. Instead of taking him to the furies, Dafne summoned a pod and took him to the big wheel. That's what he and Crispin called the high table. It was where the guardians had their evening meals and get-togethers like the full moon party.
The wheel was suspended in space by geo-gravitational forces and the table ran around the rim. The guardians sat facing inwards. It was an arrangement they had decided upon eons ago and was designed to make them all equal. There was no top to the table and no end. Just a central hub with walkways on the spokes for the servants to use.
The guardians arrived in their private pods and docked at the rim. Servants and prisoners arrived in communal pods and docked at the central hub. That was where Dafne took the Lord of Light. She left him there and the guards took him up onto the podium.
Prisoners were taken there for interrogation. The hideous structure was mounted on top of the hub and could be rotated so that the prisoner was made to face his interrogator. Most prisoners looked terrified when they were taken up there. The Lord of Light showed no sign of fear.
Instead of quivering and quaking, he flourished his yellow cloak and bowed deeply to the guardians as he was rotated before them. The noble man looked like he was enjoying every moment of it. Peter remover his earphones and turned to Crispin.
'I can't understand it ...'
'You mean ... why is he doing all that?'
'He looks like he's pleased to be there.'
'Probably thinks he has been invited to dinner.'