When Hutherton would tear up his homework, scream at the top of his lungs, or writhe on the ground like an angry snake, he would take the tiny terror and lock him in the closet for a good hour or two beyond the cessation of shouting and banging on the walls.
For the really bad tantrums, the ones that lasted a day or more, he would pass food and water through a slot under the door like a zookeeper with a dangerous tiger.
In the end though, the result was always the same—a reasonably contrite Hutherton, who would not need a repeat dose for at least a month.
Needless to say, this childish punishment had long since ceased, but Robert, like any man faced with great adversity, fell back on old habits to resolve the trying situation. He grabbed the gaunt senator—whose bloodshot eyes with black splotches underneath looked at him furiously and indignantly while he threatened immediate termination and even death for the servant—and, ignoring the invective, hauled him off like a bratty child to The Calm Room and threw him in there like a dangerous serpent he feared being bitten by upon release.
He then shut the door and soon after pushed a chamber pot, a jar of water, and a tray of simple food underneath the door.
What ensued over the next twenty-four hours were threats so severe, and banging on the door and walls so violent, that the elderly senator feared death would befall everyone in the household if this thing were released. But, acting on a hunch, he decided maybe it wouldn’t be safe to separate the senator from his green friend too abruptly.
He knew more or less the size of the small mountains of powder his master sucked up his nose like an elephant with water, and he decided maybe he should provide something along the lines of half that amount.
When he did so, he did hear a momentary exclamation of gratitude, but later in the evening a furious tantrum recommenced.
He remained resolute in refusing to acquiesce to his master’s demands for more powder but did keep a constant vigil by the door, his ear ready for any sound that seemed more like a cry of genuine medical distress rather than a greedy demand for licentious pleasure.
Throughout the night, he was awakened many times by unnerving groans and shouts, but none quite seemed to convince Robert to give the senator more green powder.
He did some thinking through the night, however, and decided that going forward this would need to be a meticulous process. He obtained some measuring cups from the kitchen and inserted therein a quantity of green powder he was certain was just slightly less than what he had given the senator the day before. He then wrote down the exact quantity, with the plan of reducing it methodically.
As he shoved it underneath the door, he said to his master, “Use it wisely. It’s all you’re getting until tomorrow morning!”
He heard some quick sniffing ensue, followed by a meek “Thank you,” and was then rewarded by a stenchy chamber pot being shoved towards him.
Robert said with a smile, “You’re welcome, Senator Hutherton. We need you back in your five senses, or the lot of us are going to be without jobs!”
The senator rewarded him with a moderate chuckle but nothing more.
Threats resumed sporadically over the ensuing weeks while Robert kept the senator locked in The Calm Room, but it seemed enough sobriety had been obtained that the senator realized his faithful servant was doing him an immense favor.
Occasionally, the senator attempted guile, engaging Robert in pleasant conversation and then suggesting the two of them go horse-riding together.
Robert told the senator flatly, “When you go one full week without one sniff of that green poison, I’m going to let you out of here and not a day before. And then, when you’ve got all five of your senses back, I’ll let you out, and I’ll be at your mercy.”
This brought on a brief tantrum, but the tantrums were becoming smaller in intensity and shorter in duration.
Robert did acquiesce to providing the daily news to his master, and once the news about the police station burning came out, the senator had told Robert, “No more green powder! I’ve got to get out of here as quickly as possible!”
Robert had gladly acquiesced at first, but when, later in the day, he had heard horrible vomiting that sounded like a man in his last few minutes on earth, he had pushed a dose of Smokeless Green underneath the door, putting the senator back on the methodical taper.
“Some things just take time, Mr. Senator,” Robert said. He heard sniffing, and then the vomiting passed.
A major transformation was underway in Senator Hutherton’s mind. He had become aware of the dangerous hold Smokeless Green had acquired on him as he tiptoed slowly towards full sobriety, his daily dose now a mere line the thickness of his pinky.
He realized that, paradoxically, while he had begun taking Smokeless Green to acquire greater control of those around him through the enhanced alertness and energy he had with which to manipulate them, he had gradually become a shadow of his former self, weaker and less guileful, even with a large amount of green powder in him, than he had once been completely sober.
But even as his daily dose became the thickness of a sewing needle, this did not cause a change of heart with regards to SISA.
Gentlemen were simply a different breed. They had servants like Robert who would put them back in line when they lost self-control. The common man did not. And if even a man of Hutherton’s breeding could reach a nadir like the one he had reached several weeks ago, he shuddered to think of what would happen to a commoner addicted to this powerful substance.
His belief in SISA was reinvigorated, and he longed to escape his temporary cell so that he could introduce legislation pumping up the National Drug Police’s ranks now while the political climate would be right, after which he would flood that godless city of Sivingdel with federal agents who would get to the bottom of the recent crimes.
He was not going to rest easy while a mere governor concluded the case closed re the deaths of his two NDP agents. Not by a long shot.
Today, he had gone a week without any green powder, and he said to Robert calmly but authoritatively, “Robert, as your lord and master, I command you to open this door. I am free of my temporary addiction and hereby resume plenary command of my household.”
The door opened slowly, reflecting the apprehension of the man opening it.
Senator Hutherton looked at Robert soberly. “You have successfully discharged your duty,” he said coldly.
Then, in an act Robert wouldn’t have believed if he had heard it from a dozen witnesses, Hutherton hugged him tightly, and whispered, “Thank you, Robert.”
He then resumed his icy demeanor and said, “You may now catch up on your other duties, which you have most likely been forced to neglect on my account.”
He then headed towards his room, put on a fresh set of clothes, and headed to the senate.
In The Calm Room, a new bill had been drafted.
Chapter 47
When Governor Sehensberg picked up the day’s copy of The Sivingdel Times, which had been delivered to his countryside mansion by courier, he knew that within one or two seconds of gazing at the front page, he would know whether he had committed a calamitous mistake by following the instructions of the anonymous correspondent who had somehow delivered a letter to his private study in spite of guards surrounding the house, or acted wisely by seizing a valuable opportunity.
If he had made a mistake, at a minimum his legacy would be tarnished. At the worst, he could be looking at being impeached, indicted, and convicted for carrying out executions far beyond the constitutional scope of his authority, even during an emergency.
His heart beating rapidly, he took a deep sigh, and looked down:
GOVERNOR TAKES BOLD STEPS,
CRUSHES CRIMINALS RESPONSIBLE
FOR RECENT CRIME SPREE!
“Like a sick man on the operating table, our republic needed bold actions to recover from its nearly mortal wounds. The governor proved himself to be like those rare historical figures who,
when faced with crisis, took the steps necessary to stave off utter chaos and anarchy. By invoking his constitutional power to declare martial law, he used this valuable instrument to enable our brave police officers to catch and punish those guilty of some of the most heinous acts of criminal terrorism our city has ever seen.
“But the governor, showing a singular insight into the situation, realized that merely catching the ringleader of the terrorists and putting him and his accomplices on trial would not be enough to save our republic from the brink of disaster. Facing scoundrels so brazen as to burn a police station in broad daylight, murder the police chief in his own home, and attack a carriage full of statesmen on a public street, Governor Sehensberg wisely chose not to give the terrorists an opportunity to obtain liberty by means of some other dastardly criminal attack carried out by those fragments of their gang still at large.
“By public execution after obtaining a full confession from their ringleader, a vile rogue named Crabs, the governor brought a pulverizing hammer down onto their organization in front of the entire city, and sending a clear message: This is what will happen to those who threaten to plunge our city into fear and anarchy.
“But what will make Governor Sehensberg go down as perhaps one of the noblest statesman our city or state has ever seen was his bold act of ending martial law as soon as the guilty were justly punished, thus showing his confidence that order has been restored to our city and showing his respect for the rule of law.
“Other governors may have waited a month or two before terminating martial law, for fear of the criminals striking again. But that is what makes us cognizant we have no ordinary governor. Only those who truly revere the importance of executive restraint within a constitutional, republican government could so quickly relinquish the awesome power of martial law after having wielded it for so short a time.
“With the restoration of order, and with criminality battered into pieces, could it be that we find ourselves near the dawn of a golden age in Sivingdel?”
Governor Sehensberg cried tears of joy and relief as he finished the article and then looked at several other newspapers’ front pages for that day. At worst, they spoke with mild approbations of the governor’s actions, and most were near The Sivingdel Times in terms of their flattery.
So great was his relief that not even for a brief moment did he consider the ramifications of having made a bargain with the true mastermind of the recent attacks.
Chapter 48
When Zelven and his three comrades entered the outskirts of Sivingdel, they were met by fellow Varco agents, who warned them the city was under martial law and that the police were aggressively roaming the streets.
This was not exactly welcome news to Zelven. Things had been in a bit of a downward spiral as of late. Their wholesale distributor, Mr. Hoffmeyer, had been losing market share hand over fist, and Zelven dreaded to see how low it had plunged this time.
At one point, a convoy of twenty wagons laden with Smokeless Green had been necessary in each trip to supply the city’s insatiable demand, but after Mr. Hoffmeyer had expressed doubt about distributing the load of the two wagons they brought last time, Zelven decided to bring just one on the next trip, and he was worried whether even that would be too much for their impotent distributor.
He had asked the higher-ups for permission a long time ago to go after this Mr. Brass character but had been inexplicably denied. He had renewed his request several times but without achieving a different result except being warned never to ask again. His superior had then told him in a hushed voice that it was a matter of if, rather than when, they went after him, but the timing would come from the top.
He hoped that meant he couldn’t be held liable for the nearly complete loss of Metinvurian involvement in supplying Sivingdel’s Smokeless Green—at least he had heard a consensus amongst his fellow Varco agents that Mr. Brass was not being supplied by any of the Varco. If today’s delivery went as badly as he suspected it might, he was not going to look forward to going back to the outpost they had in Dachwald—which served as the midway warehouse between here and Metinvur—with the exact same cargo he had come with.
He was beginning to hate this entire operation with a passion, and he had never even been told what the point of it was, though he and his fellow agents had spent considerable time discussing it. It was clearly done with the intention of enriching the Metinvurs and possibly to wreak havoc in the affected areas, but whether it was being done as a precursor to invasion, as some personal act of vengeance against one or more rulers, simply as a long-term revenue booster, some combination, or something else entirely was unclear, since any one of these motives would have seemed logical to him.
As they entered the city, he saw what appeared to be checkpoints on some parallel streets, which was something entirely new to this city, though they were very common in his home country. Then, he realized he was heading straight towards a checkpoint, with no possibility of evading it without causing considerable hullabaloo. He gulped, not having the slightest idea what to expect in terms of the severity of the inspection.
“Hello, sir,” said a cop whose friendly tone was belied by his tough-looking face.
“Good day to you as well,” Zelven said with intentional coolness.
“What are we transporting today?”
“Lumber, nails, doors, carpets—sundry hardware and household items from Dachwald.”
“Do you have a bill of lading showing the goods?”
Zelven handed it to him immediately.
The cop looked it over and then looked at Zelven, appearing to be more interested in what he could learn from Zelven’s face than from the document. What he saw must have satisfied him because he said, with a softening of his stern expression, “Good day to you, sir.”
Then, he put a police stamp on the document, and added, “Just show this right away if you get stopped again, and you’ll breeze right through.”
“Thank you, sir,” Zelven said.
The officer nodded and then motioned for him to move along.
When Zelven arrived to Mr. Hoffmeyer’s warehouse, he felt uninspired as he got out of the wagon and approached the main office. This mundane courier work wasn’t exactly utilizing his training.
He walked in and calmly asked the secretary—who recognized him from his many deliveries—if he could go ahead and drop his goods off at the usual place.
“You can check and see if anyone is there, but people are beginning to simply stop showing up to work. Mr. Hoffmeyer hasn’t been seen here for about a week, and he left no word with anybody as to where he went or when he’ll be back or . . . if he’ll be back.”
Zelven heard the genuine concern in her voice and knew instinctively he was going to be hauling this load right back to Dachwald. And with the way things were going, he would probably meet up with the same cop, even if he was extra careful to take a different path out of the city, who would probably get one of those annoying hunches cops tend to get that it would be a good idea to check the back of Zelven’s wagon and see if there was anything there suspicious.
And then . . . things could get ugly.
But if he left the load here without being paid, that wasn’t exactly a pretty scenario either, as his bosses were not likely to be happy and might even suspect he made a side transaction as a passive-aggressive means of showing his discontent with the overall operation.
One thing at a time, Zelven.
“Yes, I’ll check,” he said calmly.
A frown in the direction of his colleagues was the only necessary communication as to the way in which things were heading, and he promptly slapped the reins against the horses and then directed them towards their usual warehouse delivery spot.
They went past several short, but large buildings, before arriving at the one on the end.
Zelven felt mild optimism as he saw several men in there busily unloading cargo from other wagons. He didn’t recognize them, but the arran
gement to date had been that every month Mr. Hoffmeyer provided them with a series of certified invoices on a per-wagon basis.
Mr. Hoffmeyer had always assured them that no worker in this building would be of the inquisitive type and would pay the amount on the invoice and unload the content without question or inspection of the cargo. So far, Mr. Hoffmeyer had always upheld his end of the bargain.
Zelven pulled the wagon in, but by the time he got out of the wagon he noticed several men coming towards him that did not look like workers in the slightest.
“Good afternoon,” said the man in front, pulling out a badge.
His name was Detective Hoffstedt, and he was no stranger to Mr. Hoffmeyer’s very profitable side business. Chief Benson had informed him he was to pay no heed to any reports of Mr. Hoffmeyer being involved in sales of contraband, which, given Hoffstedt’s knowledge of Chief Benson’s ways, was plain speak for, He’s a major contraband supplier who pays his quota on time and is consequently untouchable.
But Chief Benson had lost his head recently, and the police headquarters had been burned to the ground, and that slightly changed matters. There was a major vacuum of leadership in the police department due to almost all the brass having been lost in the fire and subsequent explosion, and that meant cops who stood out had a golden opportunity to get noticed and get promoted.
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