“I hate you, Mordon,” Jedes said as I opened the door
to the balcony.
It was night and very cold, but at least it wasn’t
raining like the last time I snuck out. I tied one end of the sheet rope to the
banister and threw the other end over. It was not long enough, which was
normally not a problem, but the jump would be a lot more painful with a wound.
“Don’t do this Mordon. You’re going to get yourself
killed.”
“Has death ever stopped me?” I turned back to her,
put my arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed her. She was too startled
to kiss back, but it was nice in a plutonic way anyway. Then I took hold of the
sheet and climbed over the rail.
I loved heights normally, but a stomach wound could
take the fun out of anything. By the time I ran out of rope, I was so tired and
out of breath that it was easy to just let go. It hurt, but not quite as badly
as climbing down the rope did, and I took a few minutes to let the pain ease.
Stealth was the key factor in sneaking out and I couldn’t do stealth very well
if I was wheezing.
I went to archery house first and got the bow and
arrows I practiced most often with, and then I snuck across the castle grounds
to the stables. Predictably, the tokuami, startled from their sleep, growled. I
approached the king’s tokuami’s stall without hesitation and growled back. The
beast quickly realized he didn’t want to challenge me and lowered himself in a
submissive gesture. I pet his snout and he licked my hand, then I undid the
latch to his stall and opened the door.
“Go. Get away from people,” I told him. The tokuami
exited the stall hesitantly, then ran out the door with excitement. I repeated
the process with Haru-joul’s tokuami and the animal escaped with the same
enthusiasm. Since I let all our own tokuami go a month earlier, the stables
were empty.
It was then that the Zendii house stable boy burst
through the side door. He was young, only about seventeen, and did not expect
to find the tokuami gone and the perpetrator still here. He looked around for
something to use as a weapon or maybe an escape route, before he realized who I
was.
“Mordon!” he exclaimed.
Obviously, someone had told him about me and the fact
that my father had not given me my family name. It was embarrassing at the best
of times, but disastrous when I needed to be intimidating. My father had a
reputation for being grueling and unforgiving, but that seemed to be the only
way to get what I wanted from the servants. The people who were paid to do what
we said were typically lazy and gossiped and worked harder to find shortcuts in
their chores than to do them right.
“I heard you were injured,” he said, eyeing the gauze
around my abdomen.
“A minor scratch. You need to get out of here and
alert the castle of the fire.”
“What fire?”
I pulled energy into me and focused on the heat I had
dreamed of for days. This was an old building filled with cotton blankets and
dried grasses, so when I released my energy, several fires broke out randomly.
The boy felt the heat, looked around at the fires,
and shrieked.
“If anyone asks, you don’t know who I am, you
couldn’t see my face. All you know is that I started the fire and released the
tokuami to keep the people of Zendii from leaving, because I know who tried to
kill the king. Tell this to anyone who will listen, but do not tell them that
you know who did this.”
“I will not lie to my king.”
“You are on Mokii lands now; Ishte-mor is the king
you have to fear.”
I turned and walked calmly out of the front doors,
then went into the castle through the throne room. I easily made it to the
servant passage without being seen before anyone responded to the panic
outside.
As guards, servants, Ome-mor, and Haru-joul rushed
outside to investigate, I entered the kitchen and opened the window to watch.
Luckily, my father was intelligent enough to stay in his chambers where he was
safe, because the assassin was one of those people standing around listening to
the stable boy say exactly what I told him to.
When that person snuck away from the crowd, I made my
way through the narrow passages until I came out close to my room. There were
guards standing outside and I was sufficiently hidden from view when the
assassin arrived at my door.
The unsuspecting guards didn’t try to stop the
assassin from knocking on the door frantically.
“I have a message for Mordon!” the assassin pleaded.
I heard the door open, but I knew Mokomo and Jedes
would follow my plan, even when they didn’t know what it was.
“The prince is not seeing anyone,” Mokomo explained.
“It’s important. I have a message from Haru-joul. You
have to let me speak with Mordon.”
“The prince has been attacked; nobody is going to see
him until a thorough investigation on every person in the castle is complete.”
There was a scuffle before the assassin grunted,
having been shoved away. People often tried to strong-arm the old physician
because he looked frail and weak and had a stubbornness that rivaled the
king’s, but he was actually the man who trained my own father in combat.
Instead of waiting to hear what came next, I
continued through the servant passages to the hallway right outside my father’s
private chambers. I tried to ignore the guards.
“Mordon! You should be in bed!” Amo-ser said.
“I need to speak with my father right now.”
Amo-ser put his hand on my shoulder and the worry in
his eyes warned there was a fuss-fit brewing. Amo-ser was my private bodyguard
when I was little and since I was pretty accident-prone, he still felt the need
to take care of me. When I glanced down, I saw his point; my bandages were
soaked through with blood.
“Go get Mokomo,” Amo-ser told the second guard.
“It doesn’t hurt. I need to talk to my father.” I
shook off the guard and pushed open my father’s door without even knocking,
then shut it before scanning the room. My father was sitting at his table with
a goblet and an old book.
He observed me expectantly: “
A king is never
surprised or caught unaware
,” as he often lectured me. “You must be feeling
better,” he said.
“I didn’t die from the poisoned dagger. I’m sorry to
bother you, but the assassin is coming this way and I just thought I should
probably do something about it.”
“You know who it is?”
“I do.”
“How do you know he’s coming after me now?”
“Because I gave her no other choice.”
“
Her
? Don’t tell me the assassin who
overwhelmed two of my guards, doused the torches from outside the room with
powerful magic, and nearly killed my son is a
woman
.”
The moment the words left his mouth, the torches went
out and it was dark again. While there was a window, it was a dark and cloudy
night with no moonlight to illuminate the room. Instead of getting my father to
safety, I pulled my bow from my shoulder, took an arrow from the quiver
strapped to my leg, and notched it. Facing my body perpendicular from where I
knew the door was, and aimed.
It was about a minute later that the door finally
opened and the assassin gasped in surprise, nearly dropping her torch.
Haru-joul’s maid was a small woman in her late sixties with a very fragile façade,
probably strenuously built up to keep her from being victimized by more
dominating people. Her carefully humbled makeup and clothes couldn’t hide the
envy and hatred emanating from the woman.
Knowing she was powerful in magic, I couldn’t afford
to let her open her mouth. I released my arrow… Unfortunately, it hit the wall
beside her. Unlike last time, she had a torch, which I immediately understood
the purpose of as she raised it like a sword. People with so much hate usually
had a weapon of one form or another. Obviously as a servant, she didn’t have
the education to outsmart her enemies, and since swords and guns were not very
feminine, it made sense that she would use magic.
I pulled another arrow and notched it, but before I
could draw the string, a blast of fire hit me square on the chest. Yes, her aim
was better than mine, but I had to grin snidely as she gawked. The bandage was
wet with my blood and took no more damage than my flesh. Instead of burning in
pain, I pulled the heat into me and aimed my bow as I pulled the string back to
my cheek. I breathed in… and out… aimed again… breathed in… and as I breathed
out, I released my heat into the arrow until the tip caught on fire. I imagined
her throat was Haru-joul’s face… and I released the string.
* * *
“Where are you going this time?”
I didn’t bother to look up as Jedes entered my room,
and continued shoving clothes into my bag. “I don’t know yet. I’m running
away.”
“What did he do?”
I threw down the shirt in my hand because I didn’t
want to rip it in frustration… especially not in front of her. “The king
decided that since the assassin was Haru-joul’s maid, that she was the one in
real danger, and since I exposed the assassin, that I was saving the princess’s
life! Now he believes that she needs someone to watch over her and that someone
is me! I have been ordered to take her on a romantic trip and was
advised
that I discover that I am actually attracted to her and want to marry her! The
next attempt on my father’s life will be from me! And would you stop
laughing?!”
“I’m sorry,” she lied, trying to compose herself. “I
know how much you are looking forward to that, so it’s too bad that you have to
go to Banjii for that treaty over the Caito islands.”
“Wait, what?”
“Soe-mor wasn’t very specific on the date, but I’m
pretty sure when your father tells you the date of your romantic getaway, you
will remember that Soe-mor is expecting you then.”
Hint, hint…
“You are fantastic.”
“I know. But I still don’t understand how you knew
the assassin was Haru-joul’s maid.”
“I explained it many times.”
“I understand what your plan was. The stable boy
didn’t say who you were, so she was the only one who knew it was you, because
you were the only one who could have known it was her. She went to your room to
try to stop you from talking, but failing that, had to go after your father
before you could. Only she was too late. I understand all that. What I don’t
understand is how you knew it was her. You said you got her scent when she
stabbed you, but you never met the maid.”
“No. I knew for sure
what
she was because of
her scent. I didn’t know what she looked like until I saw her leave the fire.
Emotions and intentions are extremely easy for me to detect; they often cloud
other smells. When she stabbed me, I got a deeper scent. It wasn’t that I
recognized her, but what she was in contact with. She had Haru-joul’s scent
infused with her own, so I knew she had a lot of close contact with the
princess. She also smelled of Haru-joul’s oils; the kind that Haru-joul would
pour into her bath water. What was most out of place was the scent of the
Zendii stable boy and tokuami.”
“The twins said Haru-joul’s maid and the stable boy
were kissing. But you couldn’t have been entirely sure.”
“I was. There were many more things, like how she
didn’t have a trace of Ome-mor’s scent on her. Who else but a personal maid has
so much contact with the princess, and absolutely none with her father? Still,
when I spoke with the stable boy, I could smell the assassin on him, but I
could also smell that he wasn’t the killer.”
“Well, she will never bother the king again.”
“That’s right. Now, my father doesn’t need me, so I’m
getting out of here before I end up married to a dejeva.”
As soon as I picked up my bag, I heard a loud fight.
Realizing it was coming from somewhere in the castle, I dropped my bag and left
my rooms to follow the sounds. Unfortunately, the brawl was taking place in the
throne room. There were several spectators on the balcony by the time I arrived
to see what was happening.
A man in farmer’s clothes was being held, forced to
his knees. He had a desperation about him that worried me, but it wasn’t quite
the desperation of a madman who was ready to kill. By the looks of several of
the younger guards, he had put up a good fight.
“You shut down the schools in my town and charged us
for doing it!” he yelled, responding to my father’s apathy.
“They were violating tax laws,” the king said, almost
yawning.
“We couldn’t afford to feed the children when you
were already taking too much.”
“Your city is subject to the same laws throughout the
land. If your people are poor enough that you cannot afford to feed your
children, perhaps now that they are out of school, you can put them to good
use. Make the children earn their food. The boys can farm and the girls can
make stuff.”
“We have nothing left! We have no money, no food,
pillagers have ruined our crops and homes, and if we can’t scrounge up more
money for taxes by the end of the month, the only people who can physically
work will be imprisoned.”
“Then I suggest you beg your own king for help. You
are not part of this kingdom. You bring your problems to your king and if he
feels he cannot handle it, he brings them to me.”
“The king of Cielse doesn’t care about his people.
You are the king of Mokii; we are all your people to take care of.”
“Then leave Mokii. I have no time to worry about one
little village when I have an entire land to run.”
“You will regret this,” the farmer warned. “You
prevent our children from getting an education. You force our working men to
starve, paying for your fancy castle. And when you send men to take money we
don’t have, you will take husbands from their wives. This will not stand. There
are many cities all other Mokii that are ready and willing to bring down your
house.”