“Yes?” the clerk said without looking up as Relam approached. Now that he was in front of the man, Relam could see he was scribbling in a ledger of some sort, his bald head gleaming in the lantern light.
“We have one for execution,” Relam announced.
“Name?”
“Mine or his?”
The clerk looked up, annoyed with his visitor’s ignorance. Then, his mouth dropped open and he stood quickly. “Your highness! I-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Relam said, cutting off his apology. “It’s fine.”
“Oh, yes. Let’s see, execution you said? The room is not in use now if you would like to take care of it immediately.”
“That will suffice.”
“Excellent,” the clerk said. “Your guards will witness?”
“Yes, and they’ll take care of the body as well.”
“Perfect,” the clerk said, scribbling notes in the ledger. “I don’t even have to dispose of him. Very well, very well, what is the condemned man’s name?”
“Narin.”
“Narin,” the clerk repeated, adding the name to the book. “Excellent,” he said again, nodding several times. “Here is a bag,” he continued, tossing a thick canvas bag to one of Relam’s guards. “And the key to the execution chamber. Do you plan to torture him for information first?”
“No.”
“So, no need for a professional then. You will do the execution yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s everything. It’s at the end of that hallway there, your highness,” he added, pointing to the hall opposite the one they had entered from.
“Thank you,” Relam grunted. “We’ll be finished shortly. Come on men, and bring him along.”
The guards dragged and jostled Narin across the room and frog marched him down the hall, gripping his arms tightly to prevent escape. Narin bore the rough treatment stoically, meekly following as a loyal soldier should. When they reached the door to the execution room, he hung limp in the guard’s grasp, as though utterly resigned to his fate.
Relam pushed through the door and held it open for the other guards. He did not look around until he had bolted the door shut behind them, releasing a deep sigh of relief as he did so.
The execution room was a bare, rectangular room. Four walls, a floor that was slightly bowl-shaped and centered by a drain. The far wall held a spigot and bucket, presumably for cleaning up after executions.
“It’s not as bad as it could be,” Narin observed.
Relam snorted. “And here I was expecting torture tools to be hanging on the walls, and flies and dried blood everywhere.”
“For once, your highness, I’m glad you were wrong,” Narin replied. “Shall we get on with it?”
“Of course,” Relam said, grinning. “Any last requests?”
“Not today,” Narin grunted. “Seeing as I’m not planning on dying yet.”
“Fair enough. Now, best get in your bag,” Relam said, gesturing for the guards to help.
They unrolled the bundle of canvas and found the open side of the bag. Then, laying it flat on the ground, they shoved Narin in feet first and tied it off. While they were doing this, Relam went to the spigot and bucket. He filled the bucket then dumped its contents across the floor. He did this several more times, trying to make it look like he had just cleaned up a messy execution.
“Not much air in here,” Narin complained as Relam rejoined the others.
“You’ll be fine. You won’t be in there too long,” Relam reminded him. “Right, move out.”
The guards took positions around the bag and hefted it with grunts, the handles straining and stretching. They waited a moment to be sure the bag would hold, then one of them nodded to Relam.
“We’re ready, your highness.”
The young prince threw the door open and marched out briskly, followed by the guards and their awkward burden. All too soon, they were passing the clerk on their way out. Relam raised a hand in farewell, smiling grimly.
“Thanks for your help.”
“Anytime, your highness,” the clerk replied, raising his head for just a moment before returning to his ledger.
Relam breathed a sigh of relief and hurried the guards out of the dungeons and up the steps. In another moment, they were leaving the Citadel through the main gate and marching through the rain once more.
“How are we holding up?” Relam asked the guards as they moved through the quiet streets.
“Pretty well, your highness,” one grunted. “Where are we headed?”
“North of the city, where criminals are usually buried,” Relam replied. “Does anyone have a shovel?”
“No,” the guards said in unison, looking around.
Relam sighed heavily. “Well, we can use your shields if that’s what it comes to. If anyone sees someone selling a shovel along the way, sing out.”
They continued moving along the River Road, passing Tar Agath’s training ground, Oreius’ house, and Bridge Street. Not far from the walls, they finally came to a small, dingy shop that sold a wide array of tools and offered repairs. Relam ducked into the small space and quickly bought a sturdy shovel. He paid the shopkeeper, who seemed a little confused as to why a prince would be buying a shovel from him, then headed back out onto the road. He tossed the shovel to one of the guards, who caught it easily.
“That’s better,” Relam muttered. “Now, let’s get this done. How’s it going in there, Narin?”
“It’s dry at least,” came the muffled reply. “But it’s getting a little hard to breathe.”
“We’d better hurry up then,” Relam replied. “Come on.”
The small band continued moving north along the River Road, passing impressive manors on the left and towering shops to the right. Occasionally, other types of buildings would appear, like a blacksmith’s shop, low and spread out by the river, a waterwheel turning in back to power a machine inside. On this rainy, dreary day though, the forges were dark and the smith was sitting alone on a low stool. He looked up hopefully as Relam and his companions passed, then hunched over again when it became clear they weren’t stopping.
When they reached the north gate, they found there was no line to enter or leave the city. Relam marched right up to the guards on duty, who saluted him crisply.
“Good morning, corporal!” he said briskly. “How are things at the north gate?”
“Wet, your highness,” the corporal replied, blowing water from the end of his nose. “And slow. Not much traffic today. Where are you bound?”
“Burying a traitor,” Relam replied, gesturing to the bag his guards were carrying.
“A traitor? I’d love to hear that story,” the corporal said hopefully.
Relam looked glanced around and saw the other city guards closing in, gathering round to hear the story. “Perhaps another time,” he said firmly. “This isn’t the sort of weather to be standing around talking in. Besides, we’ve got a job to finish before we go home.”
The corporal shrugged. “Ah, well, another time, then. You’ll be coming right back, your highness?”
“Yes.”
“Good, we’ll watch for your return.”
“Thanks,” Relam said, grinning.
“Open the gate!” the corporal called over his shoulder. Several guards disappeared into the two guardrooms set either side of the massive portal. Chains rattled and clanked against each other, and the iron portcullis began to rise, along with the locking bar of the gate. As soon as the portcullis was up, two more guards pushed one of the gate doors open, hands on their weapons, just in case. Relam nodded his thanks to the guards as they passed. Then, the little group was through and marching off to the north. The communal grave of criminals was on the other side of a small grove of trees, about two hundred meters from the outer wall of the capital city.
“Nearly there now,” Relam murmured. “Then you’re free, commander.”
They made good time to the grove, where the guards
set the canvas bag down with a muffled thump. Rain was still falling, slipping from the leaves of the trees in large droplets and splashing downwards. Relam shook his head vigorously to rid himself of a particularly large drop.
“Get a hole dug,” he ordered, stepping back. “Anyone see a log or something we can use?”
“That’s not really necessary,” one of the guards pointed out. “There’s no one around for miles.”
Relam looked around cautiously, searching for any sign that they were being watched. The good news was, there weren’t many places an observer could hide. The bad news was it meant Narin would be out in the open if he tried to leave the grove.
“Dig a grave anyway,” Relam said, handing one of the guards the shovel. “Switch off if you need to. We’ll just bury the bag, since there aren’t any logs lying around.”
The guard dug the shovel into the ground, ripping a chunk out of the earth’s skin and tossing it to one side. Then, he widened the hole with another massive load of dirt. Shovelful after shovelful piled up to one side as the grave began to take shape. When a space some two meters by one had been cleared and dug about a shovel head deep, the guard passed the shovel to one of his comrades. The second guard dug down, deepening the grave another shovel head before yielding to the third guard and finally the fourth.
When the forth man stepped back, the grave was about a meter deep, plenty large enough for their purposes. Relam surveyed the finished product critically, then grunted.
“All right, Narin. Out you come.”
The guard commander crawled out of the canvas bag just as the rain picked up considerably, falling with such force that drops actually rang on the guards’ armor. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I rather preferred the bag,” Narin muttered, getting to his feet and wiping his muddy hands on some leaves.
Relam grinned. “The bag’s going in the ground, remember? Guards, bury him.”
Two guards hefted the bag at either end and, pretending it still weighed as much as a full-grown man, awkwardly lowered it into the hole, letting it fall the final few centimeters. Then, they all stood staring down at it for a few long seconds.
“Let’s finish the job,” Relam said finally, looking up at the sky. “Fill it in.”
The guards accomplished this by the simple expedient of shoving large handfuls of earth back into the pit, with one guard using the shovel to push larger amounts. In seconds, the grave was merely a stretch of freshly turned up earth, the grave of any common criminal.
“How does it feel to be dead and buried, commander?” one guard asked.
“Rather like being alive,” Narin replied with a slight smile. “Thank you, your highness, for saving my life.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Relam grunted. “You sure you’ll be all right?”
“Positive,” the former commander replied.
“Good,” Relam said, nodding. “By the way, the code that was given to me earlier. What did it say?”
Narin pulled out the slip of parchment, now slightly damp from the rain soaking through his pocket. “This means that I may have my first lead.”
“On my mother’s death?”
“Yes. My informant possesses ‘I’, information, and wants to meet at the Red Hog, that’s RG-”
“Shouldn’t it be RH?” Relam interrupted, frowning. “That’s the first letter of each word.”
“Ah, but our code does not use the first letter of each word,” Narin said, smiling. “That’s the beauty of it. Anyone would immediately associate the letters RH with the Red Hog as a meeting place. But by taking the first letter of the first word and the last letter of the last word we get a different, totally unrecognizable acronym.”
“Brilliant,” Relam murmured.
“And it works even better in cases where the meeting place is more than two words,” Narin added. “Because no one in their right mind would think a two-letter acronym stood for a place with more than two words.”
“Fascinating. What about the rest of it?”
“Oh, the five is the fifth day of the week, two days from now. Perfect timing actually, since that is also a market day. The E stands for evening, the time I should expect to see my man arrive at the Red Hog, and the T-N-N is the informant’s identification number, based on the old Gobel-Tek system. Are you familiar with it?”
“Not remotely,” Relam replied, looking around at the guards, who looked just as confused as he was.
“Good,” Narin said. “That’s the reason we chose it. The old plainsmen used a numbering system of ‘T’s, ‘N’s, ‘E’s, and a few other letters to indicate amounts. T is ten, N is one, E is fifty, and so on. So, T-N-N translates to twelve.”
“Fascinating,” Relam said. “I must remember that. How many informers do you have?”
“A lot,” Narin replied.
“At least twelve,” one of the guards put in.
“Not exactly,” the guard commander countered. “Each man picks his own number. I have one man that wanted the number two-thousand-six-hundred and forty-three. I’m still not sure why exactly, but that’s how he signs all of his messages.”
“Well, I hope the lead turns out to be helpful,” Relam said, looking around. “But we should be going. We’ve already lingered too long here.”
“Yes,” Narin agreed quickly. “Go. I’ll get in touch somehow if I make any progress on this.”
“Thanks,” Relam said. “I’m going to miss you, Narin.”
“And I you, my prince,” the former commander embraced Relam warmly. “Be careful,” he whispered before pulling away. “The murderers are still on the loose, and I fear that your father’s judgement is skewed. These are dangerous times, your highness. Do not become a victim of them.”
Then, the former commander pulled back, shook hands with the four men he had once commanded, and trudged off to the north, quickly disappearing amidst the swirling, driving rain.
Chapter 25
The return trip was much easier. There was less worrying about whether they would be caught, less struggling with the heavy body bag. There was more rain, but Relam would take bad weather over the anxiety of the last hour and a half any day. By the time they returned to the palace, Relam and his four guards were thoroughly soaked, cold, and miserable. But there was also a wonderful feeling of triumph within each of them, for they knew they had just accomplished something spectacular. They had saved Narin, and no one was the wiser.
The guards stopped outside the royal suite, leaving Relam to face his father on his own. The prince entered the room calmly, acting a little subdued as he turned and closed the door quietly. The acting was all for naught though, as his father was not in the main room.
Taking this as a good sign, Relam went into his own room and took a hot bath, then dressed in dry clothes and hung the wet ones up to dry. As he lay back on his bed to rest for just a moment, he realized that for the first time since his mother’s death he felt optimistic He was also motivated. He had something to live for, and a hope that the situation would improve soon.
As he thought about what the future might hold, he drifted into a light sleep, waking guiltily an hour later. Scratching his head ruefully, the prince stood and went to the window, where rain was still pounding the glass in terrific bursts of manic energy as the wind gusted and swirled. He shivered as he thought of Narin, alone and without shelter somewhere beyond the city.
He can take care of himself, Relam thought quietly, sitting down at his desk.
Now that the deed was accomplished, Relam wondered what he would do with his time. Today was the third day of the week, which made tomorrow the fourth. A sparring day, if Cevet showed up. Earlier, Relam would not have had the heart or energy to spar. But with his recent success and the pride of having done something, he felt he could take on the world.
As he had the thought, Relam realized that this was exactly the kind of energy he would need. His training with Oreius was to start the first day of the next week at the seventh hour at the
warrior’s house, which meant that Relam needed to be in shape and ready to learn.
The next morning, Relam rose early, nearly as early as he had in his days as one of Tar’s students. He had eaten and left the royal suite before his father was even awake, and he reached Tar’s facility before the sun had even started to brighten the eastern horizon. The sword master was just opening the gate when Relam arrived.
“Relam!” he called, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here so early? Couldn’t sleep?”
“No, I slept well enough,” Relam replied, smiling. “It’s the fourth day of the week.”
“Yes, but Cevet won’t be here for a while yet,” Tar countered, ushering Relam into the compound. “Getting some work in ahead of time?”
“I need to,” Relam replied. “I start with Oreius on the first day of the next week.”
Tar’s eyebrows shot up. “I’d forgotten about that,” he muttered. “Well, good luck, your highness. It’s been a long time since Oreius accepted a student. I hope he isn’t too hard on you.”
“I hope he is,” Relam replied. “It would take my mind off of . . . other things.”
Tar nodded sympathetically. “I know what you mean, lad. Death is a hard thing to come to terms with. But it happens to all of us sooner or later. The good, the evil. The rich, and the poor. No one is exempt from the end.”
“Yeah,” Relam muttered. “I’m still not used to it.”
“It takes time,” the sword master agreed. “But you’ll get there, someday.”
“I’d better get started,” Relam said, eager to change the subject. “And you have classes to prepare for.”
“Yes, I do,” Tar said absently, frowning. “I think they’ll start mock combats today.”
“That should be interesting,” Relam said, grinning as he drew his sword.
The sword master nodded eagerly. “Yes, they’re making good progress, all of them. Including the boy you recommended to me, Aven.”
“He is catching up?”
“Faster than I had hoped. It’s amazing the difference a year of hard work can make. I may switch him to this group soon, but don’t tell him I’ve said anything. I don’t want any of the cadets thinking I’ve gone soft.”
The Prince (Heirs of Legacy Book 1) Page 30