“That’s not so bad.”
“We’ve been here for three days!”
Garran blinked several times, trying to recollect the lost time but failed. “That’s not good. You should have gotten me up sooner.”
“I tried! When you weren’t busy fornicating, you were in a self-induced catatonic state!”
“Oh yeah. For such a middling town, it has a surprisingly robust drug trade.” He turned to the woman who was still sitting on the floor looking bewildered. “Get out. I’ll settle up with the proprietor downstairs in a minute.”
The woman nodded dumbly and left, not bothering to locate and don her clothing before staggering out into the hall. Garran began pulling on his clothes and shoes.
“What have you been doing all this time?” Garran asked.
“I rented another room and bought a book.”
“Too loud for you?”
“That also, but it was ultimately the smell that drove me from the room.”
“You shouldn’t have stayed by yourself. How much did that book cost? We don’t exactly have the coin to spend on useless frivolities.”
Adam sputtered, “Useless frivolities? But you can afford to buy opium and prostitutes?”
Garran draped a leg over the windowsill and began edging his way through it. “Nope, I certainly cannot—not both anyway. If there anything in your room, I suggest you grab it and follow me in a swift and undignified exit.”
He tried to curse at Garran, but the agent was already through the window and gone. Adam departed through the door and spotted the proprietor of the establishment near the foot of the stairs directing two large men wielding cudgels up toward their rooms. He darted into his room, locked the door behind him, and grabbed his few belongings.
The doorknob rattled, and the door shook from something heavy crashing into it, likely one of the brutes’ shoulders. Adam, his arms clutching his travel pack and new book, draped a leg over the sill and ducked his head beneath the raised window. He looked out onto the street and spotted Garran’s rapidly retreating form in the distance.
“You bastard!” Adam shouted.
He cast a glance behind him when the door burst inward, sending bits of wood and pieces of the locking mechanism skittering across the floor. Adam heaved himself through the window, fell, bounced and rolled onto the small eave, and felt a moment of sickening weightlessness until he struck the street below.
Air exploded from his lungs, but he forced them to inflate and ran in the direction in which Garran had sped off. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two men, one looking out of his window, the other through Garran’s.
Adam ignored the shouts coming from the inn and the questioning looks of the pedestrians he sprinted past. His fall left him with a slight limp, but he refused to let it slow his escape. Severely winded and sweating profusely, Adam found Garran hiding behind the small building of a stableyard near the edge of town.
Garran waved him into the shadows. “You made it!”
Adam dropped his book and satchel and braced his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “You sonofabitch! It was the bear all over again!”
“Naw, I don’t see any teeth marks on your head.”
“You left me, and now I have a limp!”
“You’re lucky. I’m still stiff as a board. I really need to quit blending rapture root into my opium.”
Adam turned his head toward Garran and scowled. “Are you freaking serious?”
Garran laughed and nudged Adam’s shoulder. “Naw, I’ll never quit. Speaking of never quitting, we best get a move on. If that whoremaster of an innkeeper is a real prick, he might send his goons after us.”
“Right, because he’s the prick…”
“I’m glad you agree. Grab your crap and let’s go.”
***
It took two more days of unflagging walking to reach Arnao’s capital of Brolla, a jaunt made particularly unpleasant by the unceasing rain. Brolla was Arnao’s largest city, but it was nowhere near as vast as Leva, but then, few cities in the realm were.
“How long are you going to continue to pout?” Garran asked Adam as the sloshed through the streets.
“I am not pouting.”
“I see. Your bottom lip is just creating an awning for your chin against the rain I guess.”
Adam unconsciously sucked in his lip. “I am not pouting, I am vexed.”
“Do you need to see physic for that? We can’t really afford one.”
“It means I am angry—with you!”
“Would you like to see a prostitute then? Always helps me when I’m mad. A little sexing for the vexing? Although, we can’t really afford that either unless you are up for some back alley…back alleying.”
“Why must you always be so crude?”
“It’s a defensive mechanism I use to prevent an emotional bond between me and another person because said person will invariably betray me.”
Adam stopped and stared. He had not expected such a forthright answer from Garran. “Really?”
Garran shrugged. “If you believe all the crap in my psychological profile. Me, I just think it’s part of my roguish personality.”
Adam grunted. “More like rapacious personality.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced roguish. I thought you priests were learned?”
Adam sighed. “What do we do now? We cannot present ourselves to King Anton looking like a couple of vagabonds.”
“We’ll need to get a room at an inn and clean up. I’ll scare up some proper clothing when I go out and petition an audience with the King.”
“Do you think you can even get in looking like this?”
“I can always get in. It’s pulling out that I often have a problem with.”
Adam stared blankly at Garran’s grinning face for a moment, but his resolve failed and he laughed.
“There you go!” Garran exclaimed. “That stick is at least halfway out of your ass.” He reached toward Adam’s backside. “Here, let me grab the end and help pull it the rest of the way out.”
Adam scampered aside and pushed Garran away. “Just find us an inn that will take beggars on credit.”
Garran spotted one a few blocks away that looked nice enough to have a bath but poor enough that the owner would not immediately balk at the promise of future payment.
“Yeah?” the proprietor said with a frown as they walked in, leaving a trail of muddy footprints.
“We need a room,” Garran answered.
“Two argats each per night,” the innkeeper said.
Garran leaned onto the counter and flashed his agent pin. “Do you know what this is?”
“Yeah. You don’t look much like an agent.”
“What is an agent supposed to look like?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t know, taller, less smelly.”
“Smelly isn’t a look.”
“If it’s bad enough…”
“I am escorting an important dignitary to see King Anton, but I obviously cannot present him looking like this. We had a bit of trouble on the road, and we need the help of a true patriot willing to accept a promissory note.”
“You look like you had more than a bit of trouble.”
“A bit for me is enough to destroy most any mortal man. It is all relative.”
“I wouldn’t take an IOU even from a relative, and I’m pretty sure we ain’t kin.”
Garran scowled. “Not that kind of relative. Look, I’ll give you five argats in promissory.”
“I want ten.”
“Ten! I’ll give you six and promise not to cut your throat in your sleep for insulting an agent and interfering in the performance of his duty.”
“You got no legal authority outside Anatolia. Eight.”
Garran was seething, and in one swift motion, buried the head of one of his reaping blades into the countertop. “Some authority knows no jurisdiction.”
The man stared at the odd weapon and blinked stupidly severa
l times. “Seven.”
“Just take it, Garran,” Adam said.
Garran glared at the contrary innkeeper. “Fine, but I want food, and the bathwater better be hot.”
The innkeeper did not reply, took a key from a pegboard, and dropped it on the counter next to Garran’s reaping blade. “Third door on the left. I’ll have my boys heat some water.”
Garran turned to Adam. “Write him the promissory note and get cleaned up. I’ll head straight to the castle and make an appointment.”
“Do you think it is safe leaving me here alone?”
“Should be fine.” He tugged at his belt and handed Adam his weapons. “Keep these close. If I need them, we’re screwed anyway.”
“I don’t know how to use them.”
Garran pointed at the blade. “That’s the dangerous end. Swing it at the bad guys.”
Garran left Adam standing at the counter holding his weapons in one hand and the key to their room in the other. Adam trudged upstairs, removed his sodden clothing, and wrapped himself in a blanket from the bed. He sighed as warmth finally began to return to his body.
It took an hour before three boys aged twelve to sixteen hauled up a copper tub and began filling it with buckets of water brought up from the kitchen. Adam felt the hot water draw the miles of arduous walking from his exhausted muscles as his sense of humanity slowly returned. Despite a population of more than a thousand, the Hillman steading boasted not a single washtub, and a bucket and rag could only get one so clean.
He had been too nervous to let his guard down long enough to take a proper bath in the previous town with Garran being completely out of commission. He felt safe enough being lost amongst tens of thousands in the capital, a place where he hoped to find an ally, to enjoy a long soak.
He surrendered the tub as the water cooled and began taking back the warmth it had provided. Thoughts of his family returned with the chill and sent an even deeper wave of cold through him. His clothes still sodden and filthy, Adam wrapped himself in the blanket once more.
***
Adam was not sure when he had fallen asleep and was equally unaware of the hour when Garran finally returned. He startled awake when Garran dropped a bundled parcel onto the bed. He glanced at the window and saw only darkness beyond the glass.
“What’s this?” Adam asked groggily as he sat up and reached for the parcel.
“Clothes,” Garran answered. “I convinced Anton’s seneschal that you were in no way presentable to the King as you are.”
“What about you?” Adam sniffed the air. “God, you are even less presentable than when you left! Have you been drinking?”
“I will not dignify that with an answer.”
“Because I’m right.”
“Because it’s a stupid question. It’s like asking if you need an umbrella when you know it’s raining outside. You damn well know the answer.”
Adam shook his head. “When are we supposed to meet?”
“Less than an hour.”
Adam tilted his chin toward the tub. “I left the water in. At least take a bath before we leave.”
“You have an unhealthy obsession with my hygiene. I’m starting to think you just want to see me naked.”
“I have seen you in various forms of undress far too many times already. It is the thing that haunts my nightmares. The least you could do is make my waking life just a bit more bearable.”
“Fine,” Garran grumbled, stripped, and slipped into the tub. “Bah, the damn water is cold.”
“That is what you get when you spend the entire day and half the night out carousing. If we had more time, I could ask the kitchen to bring up more hot water, but you pissed that away.”
“Good idea.” Garran closed his eyes and sighed. “There, that’s a little better.”
“Did you just pee on yourself?”
“No, I peed in the water.”
“You are soaking in your own urine, and that does not bother you in the slightest?”
“Bah, I’ve drank a higher concentration of my own piss than this. Besides, it’s not like stewing in my own waste is exactly an unusual state for me.”
“You are hopelessly disgusting.”
Garran leaned forward, slurped up a mouthful of water, and gargled.
“Unbelievable.”
Garran had a second bundle of clothing sitting on the small table and donned them. Neither of them was dressed in the height of fashion, but at least their clothes were clean and they no longer looked like vagrants. People would consider them underdressed for a formal meeting with the King, but they were presentable for a private audience.
Adam noticed Garran pushing his belt bearing his reaping blades beneath the bed with his foot. “You aren’t taking them with you?”
“They won’t let me go armed before the King anyway. Besides, if I actually need them, we’ll be in the heart of the castle surrounded by soldiers where they won’t do me much good anyway.”
“But you’re transcended.”
“Yeah,” Garran answered slowly, “I try not to rely on that as much as possible. It can be pretty finicky at times.”
“Great, not only do I get the most disgusting transcended in the kingdom, it turns out he’s retarded too.”
“Hey! Neither my skill nor I is retarded. We’re just a bit complicated is all.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m just getting nervous. I am not used to any of this.”
“I don’t know anyone who is. Do you think this is a typical weekend for me?”
“No, but at least you are familiar with intrigue and people wanting to hurt you. How do you manage it?”
“Easy; I drink, and when that doesn’t do the trick, I enjoy something more powerful.”
“That’s the reason?”
Garran shrugged. “It’s on the list. You know, being an agent isn’t what most people think. There is a lot of just sitting around talking to people. It’s not like everyone is out to get me all the time.”
“I knew you for less than an hour and I wanted to hurt you.”
“I think you are suppressing some real anger issues, and they have nothing to do with me.”
“I am pretty sure they do.”
“Not all of them. Maybe the ones on the surface, but you have been angry long before you met me. We need to find a way to get that out of you before you explode. Holding things in like that clouds your thinking. It’s how you make mistakes.”
“I am fine with my issues. If there is something wrong, then I will seek out a physic, not a drunken, lecherous, deviant.”
“That’s called deflecting.”
“Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 19
Unlike the palace in Leva, Castle Brolla was a true castle harkening back hundreds of years. It was a truly fortified bastion housing Arnao’s royal family and much of the nation’s government. It had undergone many renovations over the decades to make it appear more modern, but its plastered and painted walls could not hide the fortress it was.
Anton’s seneschal, who Garran had met earlier in the day, led them to a stately but private dining room. Anton stood when they entered the room and smiled welcomingly.
“Your Majesty, may I present Prince Adam Altena and Agent Garran Holt,” the seneschal declared.
“Thank you, Brennan,” Anton replied and gestured toward two chairs sitting at his right at the head of the table. “You must be exhausted as well as famished.”
“Thank you, Highness,” Adam said and sat to the King’s immediate right.
“Please, call me Anton.”
“Is it just us for supper, Anton?”
“I am afraid so. My wife, as usual, took the children to our summer chateau the moment the passes cleared enough for her baggage train to cross. Of course, it will be twice the size upon her return as she does her best to bankrupt me when she visits Leva. You are lucky to have caught me as this is one of the times I chose not to accompany her. The mosquitoes are particularly awful at the lake this
time of year. First hatching or some such thing. At least we have a fabulous new road through the Highland Range, thanks to your father.”
“I am glad we were able to meet,” Adam said. “The road is what we came her to talk to you about, that and my father’s throne.”
King Anton frowned and his face grew solemn. “Yes, I only recently heard of the tragedy before the passes closed for the winter. You have my deepest condolences. Your father and I were not what most would consider friends, but I respected him a great deal. Let us talk of business after we eat. It is something of a custom here in Arnao. Serious talk often spoils the taste of an otherwise delectable dinner.”
A steward entered bearing a crystal decanter of red wine and began filling their glasses.
“This is a local vintage brewed from the elden berry. It is the only fruit we have in our northern climes that makes a proper wine. It is not as sweet as the more famous Southlean vintages, but it is quite good if your palate appreciates a dry wine.”
“My palate is about as discerning as the plague,” Garran quipped before he downed the glass and stripped the carafe from the steward’s hand when he tried to pull away.
Adam tucked his chin and glared. “Perhaps you should slow down.”
Anton smiled politely. “Come now, Adam, let the man enjoy himself. You are all in safe company now.”
“I trust in your hospitality, Anton, but Garran got an early start on the day already, and I would hate for him act like himself and embarrass us both.”
“Ah, not a good habit for a bodyguard, Agent Holt. When did you start?”
Garran emptied his glass again and refilled it. “About twelve years ago, but I didn’t really catch my stride until about nine years back when my mother sold me into slavery.”
“Such an unfortunate event would test any man, to be sure. I find it interesting that you now protect the son of the man who is ultimately responsible for your indenture.”
Garran shrugged. “I took some stupid oath. I figured that I had mastered the art of self-abuse, so why not try something truly challenging.”
“Adam, do you not care for the wine?” Anton asked, noticing that the Anatolian prince had only taken a token sip.
“I have taken vows to only imbibe alcohol during religious services.”
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