by JF Smith
Soudern Jahnstlerr smoothed out his moustache and greeted the prince. There was an exchange of dark glances between the Domo Regent and the Lord Marshal, and then the Lord Marshal began to pace while he deferred to the Domo Regent to begin the explanation.
Krayell paused and Thaybrill could wait no longer. “Can you please explain yourself, Krayell? Soudern? What is this danger you need to discuss with me?”
The Domo took a deep breath and said gravely, “Do not be alarmed, as it is being handled personally by the Lord Marshal... but there is a threat against you, Your Highness.”
“What?!” exclaimed Thaybrill. He had not even been crowned and now someone sought to harm him? “Who would want to seek my harm?”
Thaybrill stared at the Domo standing stiffly next to him and awaited an answer. Before any answer could come, though, there was the dull sound of a violent “crack.” Thaybrill jumped back as the Domo Regent collapsed forward onto his knees. Thaybrill looked on in horror as the Domo Regent of Iisen struggled to recover from the blow and stand up. Blood began to seep from a wound in the back of Krayell’s head where he had been struck.
Thaybrill’s heart pounded in his chest from the shock and he was utterly speechless. He turned to face the Lord Marshal, who had paced behind them as they spoke. In his hand was a cudgel smeared with the blood of the Domo Regent, and the Lord Marshal’s mouth was twisted into a sneer.
Thaybrill’s mouth dropped open in horror at what he was witnessing. He stepped back, away from the Lord Marshal, and panted, “What is the meaning—”
The Domo interrupted as he recovered himself and stood, however. He said, “Was it absolutely necessary to strike me with that great a force, Soudern?”
The Lord Marshal’s eye sparkled maliciously and he replied, “You requested a believable wound, Krayell, and that is what you received.”
The Domo Regent winced as he felt the back of his head. When he drew back his hand, it was covered in blood. He glared at the Lord Marshal, but did not argue further with him.
Thaybrill was still staring agape at them, utterly confused by what he was seeing and their conversation. He demanded of Soudern, more loudly this time, “What am I witnessing? It is unbelievable that you would act violence upon one of my most senior advisors, Lord Marshal! Explain yourself immediately!”
The Lord Marshal shrugged and snarled, “Enjoy it while it lasts, prince.”
“You may calm yourself, Prince Thaybrill, he does so at my specific request,” said the Domo Regent. He added with a sour glance at the Lord Marshal, who still wielded the cudgel in his hand, “Although with more zeal than is necessary.”
“What?” said the prince, growing more confused. “I do not understand. At your request?”
“Of course, Highness,” said Krayell and his face contorted. Thaybrill wasn’t sure if the expression was due to the blow to the man’s head or something else.
Thaybrill took it as something else when he heard the Domo Regent’s next words, and he was stunned by them.
“For the first time in your insufferable, privileged life, I can let you see the truth. I can let you feel the bitter fury that has boiled in me for your family since long before you were born!” spat Krayell, his cold eyes burning with a sudden fire. “You can see before you the servant, the steward, the glorified valet, the one barely worth your consideration, yet who has held this kingdom together more than any of your family has! How fitting that I, the subordinate in the shadows, will be the one to send you into a life of rank slavery in return, and thus, finally, end the stain that is the line of veLohrdan!”
The bile spewing from the Domo’s mouth was so shocking and so foreign to Thaybrill that he could almost make no sense of it. Thaybrill’s words were barely more than a whisper of disbelief. “What are you talking about?! You speak madness!”
“We’ll see who is mad before this all ends, Highness! It almost has been as if your accursed ancestral stars have indeed watched over you, but today their protection ends! You will be a borethorn in my side no longer!” snapped the Domo Regent, fighting to keep from shrieking at the prince.
Thaybrill’s confusion finally began to clear enough that he started to understand the truth of what was happening, of why he had been called to the orchards. “You?! You are the threat that aims to murder me? How can that bring what you want? You cannot be king!”
Krayell laughed out loud. “Even now you listen poorly! Have no fear about being murdered, although you’ll wish for the sweet darkness of a life ended instead of where you are going! I’ve killed enough members of your family that one more would matter not, but you fetch too high a price to simply become the victim of an accident. As for being king,” said Krayell condescendingly, “at least enough of the law stuck in your head to understand that. I do not wish to be king, prince. What I do wish for is to be able to continue a profitable trade that you would never allow!”
Thaybrill shook his head and begged, “Why are you doing this? What trade?”
“For never being seen for what I am to the Iisendom! For always being forced to follow at the heel of your damned family! But I learned to accept that and now I simply want to ensure the trade I’ve started with Maqara will continue!”
“Trade? Of what? What are you talking about?”
Krayell’s lips pulled into a malicious, victorious smile. “You’ll see. You’ll see, like all the others for years and years now!”
Thaybrill knew he should run, flee, escape. But what he saw in Krayell’s eyes was both terrible and familiar at the same time, and he was unable to turn away from the sight. It was the same burning loathing he had always sensed, but which the Domo Regent had always kept controlled, checked, and presented as mere disappointment. The man might not have been able to keep it from seeping out, so instead he had managed to deliver it as no more than stern guardianship, as constant dissatisfaction with Thaybrill’s efforts and progress towards the throne. It was only now that Thaybrill saw it naked and unfettered, and it was not a prodding whip to see him succeed, it was a hatred that would see him dead. Thaybrill saw it for what it was, a hatred that would sooner destroy a kingdom than allow another veLohrdan to wear the crown.
Thaybrill pulled himself out of his shock and sensed that the Lord Marshal, who was obviously in on this coup, had positioned himself behind him, preparing to strike. Instead of turning to run, only to find the Lord Marshal waiting there, Thaybrill threw himself directly forward, running headlong into the Domo Regent and knocking him down.
His strategy worked, and he heard the Lord Marshal grunt with an attempt to strike him, only missing barely so that the prince felt the brush of air against his neck from the cudgel. Thaybrill jumped over the Domo Regent and ran forward as fast as he could, hoping to make it to the gardeners working by the apple trees and seeking their assistance.
As he ran, he dared not look back, but he could hear the footfalls of the Lord Marshal close behind. Thaybrill called to the gardeners in a panic, who came running to meet him. He ran fast, and would have run right past them if they had not grabbed hold of his arms to prevent him from running wildly in to the apple trees. Thaybrill said, breathlessly, “You... must help... me! The Lord Marshal... Domo Regent... seeking to kill me!”
The gardeners held him tightly, and Thaybrill barely noticed one of them nod towards the Lord Marshal coming up behind him when he was struck in the back of the head.
His vision exploded into stars and then turned red for a second. He fell to his knees. Then everything went gray. As he fell forward, he heard the Domo Regent call out behind him, “He will fetch a high price from Azi, but I can’t imagine he will last long. At least a hot knife will finally end his incessant questions!”
Thaybrill’s whole world went black.
Chapter 16 — The Apple Cart’s Secret
The crowd was thick, but Gully felt reluctant to make someone’s pocket a brief home to his hand so that he could lighten it from the burden of its coinpurse. Normally, he would have
found someone wealthy enough so he would not fear that they would go hungry, and then he would have had them involuntarily share their wealth with him so that he too would not go hungry. It was something he had done scores of times. Yet this time, he held back.
He was hungry, for sure, and had no money of his own with which to purchase a meal. When he had last been in Lohrdanwuld a few days earlier, to tell Roald of the soldiers disguised as robbers and of freeing the two men, he had also hidden all the money he had stolen from them in Roald’s coinpurse. He had assumed he’d be in the woods longer than he was and would live off of what the Ghellerweald offered him.
He had not counted on also meeting Gallun and Gellen and then having a sudden pang of guilt over his thieving ways.
Gully thought, peevishly, how this was Roald’s fault. If Roald had been home when he had arrived back in the city, he would be attempting to convince his foster brother of the truth of the Mercher clan, of balmors, and of his father by now, all over a decent dinner. Instead, he had paced to and fro for several hours in the empty apartment, while he listened to this stomach complain, before giving up on waiting for him to return from his watch.
He wandered to the King’s Market, where he watched longingly at the large pot of rabbit stew with potatoes that one of the merchants was cooking up. And that was near the baker’s stall that had some very delicious looking braided dark bread sitting out. Gully grew even hungrier and yet was not quite able to choose from the veritable field of ripe coinpurses that would allow him to sate his appetite.
He gave up and threaded through the crowd to the edge of the market. Overhead, the afternoon sun had peaked hours earlier and Vasahle had already made her daytime trip. Now, the heat and smells of the city were beginning to loosen a little. A few puffs of cloud added to the relief from the heat as they passed across the sun at intervals.
Away from the King’s Market, and along the edge of a poorer neighborhood, Gully had half made up his mind to go see if he could find Mariealle. The desire to see her again and confirm her safety was great. But counterbalancing that, he would be sorely tempted to tell her about his trip into the woods and the unbelievable things he had found there, and he knew it would be better not to give the temptation any opportunity at all.
As he tried to decide his next step, a cart driven by a couple of farmers stopped not far from an alehouse. The cart was full of a mounded up load of fresh apples at the peak of their ripeness. The cart was pulled by a half-mule, which meant they were probably taking the fruit to another city to be traded instead of to a market in Lohrdanwuld.
One of the farmers took an empty wineskin from underneath his seat and went into the alehouse. Gully assumed the man wanted to fill it for the trip.
He stared at the cart and made up his mind to prove to himself that he could readily steal whenever he wanted, despite his sudden aversion. He decided he would make a dash past the cart, grab a few apples, and be off down the street before the other farmer knew what had happened. He normally wouldn’t steal from farmers such as these, but he was getting angry at himself, and hungry, and he wanted to prove a point to himself. And there were a lot of apples in the cart.
He crept closer, watching the remaining farmer closely to catch him being inattentive for a brief moment. It turned out to be unnecessary, though, as his companion stuck his head out of the alehouse door and called to him to bring along the other wineskin.
The farmer still on the cart felt under his seat and fished out a second wineskin, and the farmer in the alehouse doorway nodded his approval. He followed the first into the alehouse. Gully thought it strange for a moment since farmers were usually much more watchful over their crop than this, but he put it out of his mind. A good opportunity was a good opportunity, and mulling them over only wasted them.
He ran up to the cart to grab a few apples, but just as he did so, he spotted one of the drivers of the cart exit the alehouse again. Too close to the cart to not be suspicious, Gully cursed under his breath and dropped down and rolled under the wagon where he could not be seen unless the farmers stooped down and looked there. It was risky, but if he didn’t move, they would not take notice of him and would drive off, leaving him behind. He could probably still nick a few of the apples as they drove away.
Gully bit at his lip as the first of the farmers climbed back up on the cart and sat down. He looked up, the bottom of the cart only a finger-length from his eyes, and remained silent so as to not draw any attention. His eyes slid past the boards of the cart’s bottom and instead looked at the gap between them.
What he saw almost made him cry out. There, between the boards, a frightened eyeball was looking back at him. Gully covered his mouth to keep from shouting in surprise. He looked more closely and saw a dark hazel eye staring back at him, open wide. He listened and heard a muffled noise coming from a person there, buried beneath the apples, but could hear nothing distinct enough to make out. He shifted slightly so that he could see through the gap at a different angle, and found that the person in the cart had some canvas pushed into his mouth. The gag was tied tight to prevent him from making any noise.
At first, he did not understand what he was seeing, but then Gully almost cried out a second time when he realized to what he was witness. The men driving the cart weren’t farmers at all. He was willing to wager good money, a lot of it, that they were crooked swordsmen, stealing away another person from the city to sell to Maqara. These carts came and went all the time, in and out of the city, with no one giving them a thought. He had come face to face, quite literally, with how these criminals had managed to abduct people and make them disappear from the city with no trace.
Watching the poor soul under the apples, eye to eye, Gully became furious. He would not sit by and let these men get away with this. Here was his perfect opportunity to expose it publicly to everyone in the street, and he resolved himself to do exactly that.
He whispered to the man who was silently pleading with him for help with a single, frantic eye, “Do not fear! I will not let them take you!”
Gully turned to wiggle out from under the cart, but his heart sank when he looked across the road.
A swordsman of the Kingdom Guard was pointing at him and grabbing a fellow guard by the arm. Gully heard him say to the other, “Who’s that under there?”
And as luck would have it, he recognized this guard as one he had had a run-in with before.
The guard recognized the thief under the cart and yelled loudly, “Blast! It’s him! Stop him! Stop him now!”
The commotion that erupted on the street was terrific! Gully rolled the other direction, to the far side of the cart, and jumped up from beneath it. The two guards had run across the road and were closing hard around both ends of the cart to cut off Gully’s escape from either direction. Gully had only one direction left that he could go, so he jumped up on one edge of the cart, leapt across the apples, then down onto the street again. He dashed off as hard as he could down the side street from which the guards had emerged.
He glanced behind him, the two swordsmen yelling and closing the distance. He cursed his luck to have a guard recognize him at the worst possible moment, and simultaneously had to dodge around a wash woman carrying a large basket of laundry that had appeared in his way. The dodge slowed him just enough that he felt a hand of one of the soldiers grabbing for his surcoat. He spun around a third swordsman that had appeared in his path — one totally unaware of the chase going on. The guard that had almost grabbed Gully ran headlong into the swordsman that Gully had avoided, knocking both to the ground.
Gully took the opportunity to pull his surcoat tighter around him and to put even more distance between himself and the now three guards chasing him. He hoped there were no more guards nearby that would hear the racket and come to aid the ones already on his tail.
He fled out into the Chalk Market, but the crowd was thin enough that he could still be easily spotted there, so he kept running. He crossed through the market, the guards s
till no more than a couple of cart-lengths behind him, shouting and jostling and pushing people roughly out of the way. He ran towards a narrow alleyway next to a basket-maker’s stall. The stall was tall and piled very high with large baskets of all sorts. As Gully ran past, he pulled on the stall, tipping it over. All of the baskets came tumbling down in front of the alleyway and the owner of the stall began cursing loudly at Gully, who ignored the angry shouts and kept running.
It wasn’t much of an obstacle, but it was good enough to purchase himself an extra moment of time. Rather than continue running, Gully spotted an empty and unattended wagon with a few filthy oilskin blankets in the back. He threw himself into the wagon and pulled an oilskin over himself, then waited until he heard the swordsmen storm by as they still gave chase.
It was barely a second later that he heard the shouts of the soldiers, and he held his breath so they would not see any tell-tale motion in the cart where he hid. As soon as the soldiers had passed, Gully did not wait. He stood up out of the wagon to run a different way.
He was confronted by a very large man, whose face was turning from confused to upset.
“What yeh doing hiding in me wagon there?” asked the man gruffly. His whiskered cheeks puffed in and out in anger.
Gully couldn’t afford to argue with the man and certainly didn’t want the soldiers to hear him shouting.
He said to the man, calmly, but with his heart beating fiercely, “These blankets are far too stiff to make quality bedding linens, good man! And they are scratchy, as well! You won’t sell a one of them, even for no more than a spitcoin or two. You’d best rethink your business, sir! Quality sells itself!”
Gully turned and walked off in a feigned huff, trying to catch his breath and hoping against hope that his comment confused the man just enough.
Fortunately, he turned a corner without the wagon-owner coming after him. He stopped long enough to turn his surcoat inside out to give it a different color from what the swordsmen were looking for. He was off running again as soon as he had accomplished that, back towards the alehouse where he had found the cart with the abducted man. He had no intention of letting this person be taken, or allowing to pass this opportunity to unmask these men and make public their crimes.