She turned to Geoffrey, a questioning look on her face, and he gave her a knowing smile. “Go,” he said, shooing her with his hands, “Just try to have some fun while you’re off following him around.”
Esther smiled, then turned and began threading her way through the crowd towards Harun. She needed to remain as inconspicuous as possible, but close enough to overhear his conversations. As she got closer, the crowd thinned and she started to think that it might have been better if Geoffrey had remained with her—that way, she could at least pretend to be talking to someone while listening to the King’s Uncle. Thankfully, the musicians had just finished playing a song and the couples that had been dancing began to fill in the crowd again. Just as she was getting close enough to overhear Harun’s conversation, someone tapped her gently on the shoulder.
She turned and, for the second time, was startled to see the young King standing behind her. She had been so focused on making her way to Harun that she had not been keeping track of the where the King had gone. “I…uh…Your Majesty!” stammered Esther, curtsying.
She must have looked quite shocked because the King raised his hand apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just you were moving so swiftly through the crowd, I was afraid I was going to lose you.”
“Oh,” replied Esther, “I…uh. Sorry.”
“I must say, I was surprised to see you here,” said the King, “although I almost didn’t recognize you without a knife to my guardsmen’s throat.”
Esther blushed deeply, her hands playing nervously with her skirt. “Well, I’m afraid that your guardsmen do not allow weapons to enter the palace, other than their own.”
The King smiled. “Very true, but if you’d care to dance with me, I’d love to hear how you came to possess such a magnificent weapon as the dagger that you had in the market, Miss…”
“My name is Esther, My Lord,” she replied, her heart beating furiously in her chest as her mind wrapped around the fact that the King of Hadiq had just asked her to dance.
“Esther. What a lovely name. My name is Utana Asserius,” he said, holding out his hand. She placed her hand in his and he led her out onto the dance floor just as the music began again. This time, the music was more even tempered, and much slower, and he held her in the classical grip that Geoffrey had first tried to use.
“I’m surprised you recognized me, My Lord,” said Esther, looking up into his eyes.
“It’s hard to forget a woman who gets the drop on one of your elite guardsmen, and has eyes as exotically beautiful as your own.”
Esther blushed even more deeply than before. “My Lord, you flatter me.”
The King only smiled as they continued to dance. “In the market the other day, you told me that you took that dagger from a Madrausan. Was that true?”
For a brief moment, Esther thought about sharing her whole tale with him, including the part about the assassination plot. She quickly realized, however, that they were no closer to discovering how the King’s Uncle planned on assassinating him than they were when they first arrived. And with no evidence other than the Madrausan High Priests tale, she would only discredit herself. She didn’t even have Malachi here—one of Asserius’ own guardsmen—to back her story up. No, she thought, now was not the time.
“It’s a rather long story, My Lord, but given that the song—and thus our time dancing—is relatively short, I will try and give you a condensed version.”
The King nodded, and then, just as Esther was about to continue, he quickly said, “You’re not Hadiqan, are you?”
Esther thought about lying to him for a moment, given that she was posing as Dr. Scott’s assistant from Deyr, but knew that would be a mistake. Hopefully he wouldn’t cross-check who she was with the Wisemen. Perhaps it had been a mistake to fabricate the identity, but it was much too late to change any of that now.
“No, My Lord. I’m Ardmorran.”
“Yes, I thought as much. Your Hadiqan accent is flawless, and your ancestry obviously originates from the southern continents, though I’m not at all sure about those eyes,” he said, suddenly studying her face so intensely that it made her to blush again, “But your speech patterns and the words you use—they give you away. Why do you tell everyone that you are from Deyr if you are Ardmorran?”
Esther’s mind turned furiously. It seemed that he was even better informed than she had thought. He obviously knew that she was working for Dr. Scott in the Hall of Scholars. She wondered what else he knew. Obviously not too much, otherwise she wouldn’t be standing here right now. She decided to skirt around as much of the truth as she could. “We were afraid that if both of Dr. Scott’s assistants were Ardmorran, they wouldn’t see him as interesting enough to allow him to study at the Hall.”
“I thought so,” said Asserius, “and told my Uncle as much. He’s much too suspicious for his own good.”
Esther’s heart froze in her chest—it felt like it had skipped a beat. If Harun had suspicions about who they were and what they were doing here, then they were all in very deep trouble.
The King laughed at the look on her face. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve already told my Uncle to let it be—but if you want to pass as Hadiqan, you’re going to need to use different vocabulary and word choices.”
“Thank you, My Lord.”
“Please, call me Asserius. Now, tell me about the dagger, if you please,” he said as he spun her about.
“Well My Lord, I mean…Asserius, I was onboard an airship that was attacked by Madrausan raiders. One of the raiders was about to kill our Captain. I took his dagger from his belt and killed him with it instead.”
The King’s eyes widened in shock.
“Don’t think poorly of me, My Lord,” said Esther, lowering her eyes to the floor after seeing the shock in his eyes. She wasn’t familiar enough with Hadiqan culture to know if killing a man was seen as an unclean thing for a woman to do, but knew that some cultures in the world thought as much. “Current events have forced me to do many deeds for which I am not proud of,” Esther continued, her eyes still focused on the ground, “I do not regret them, and would do them again if necessary, but they do not make me proud.”
The King lifted her chin. The shock in his eyes was gone, replaced with compassion. “I do not think poorly of you, Esther,” he said, “I was only surprised. I had expected that you had robbed him or something like that. It is a rare woman indeed who can kill a Madrausan warrior, and an even rarer one who feels loss at the death of an enemy. It is good that you find it hard to take a man’s life. Too many think nothing of it.”
“Thank you for your kind words, My Lord Asserius,” she said.
The song was coming to an end. “You are a very interesting person, Esther of Deyr. I hope we meet again,” said the King, stepping back as the song finished. He bowed slightly, then turned and walked away to greet his other guests. Esther stood there a moment staring after him. Her thoughts were interrupted by Marigold and Geoffrey.
“What was that all about?” Marigold asked, her voice filled with wonder.
“That was the King,” Esther replied simply.
“Well, yeah,” said Geoffrey, “but…he knew you. I could tell. Where in the world did you meet the King before?”
Esther turned and looked at them with and smiled. “A woman must have her secrets, otherwise she would lose her sense of mystery, don’t you think?” She turned and walked away to trail after Harun, leaving them to wonder.
CHAPTER 30
Daniyah
Joel stifled a yawn as he leaned against the wall of a building, waiting while Mizar—a small-time thief that Malachi’s informant had put them in contact with—picked the lock of a small warehouse owned by a wealthy merchant. The moonless night was perfect cover for their clandestine activity.
Joel may be a bit coarse and unrefined, allowing him to work among the criminal elements in the city without suspicion, but his Navy background had given him a
severe prejudice against smugglers and thieves. Over the past two weeks working alongside some of the ‘milder’ elements in Al Farnaka’s underbelly had altered his perspective somewhat. While Joel still had great difficulty accepting some of the decisions his new ‘friends’ made, and how they justified their actions, he understood some of them much better now, and what motivated them to make those choices. With some, like young Mizar here, it was all they knew, and the only way they could survive. While lying, stealing, and cheating wasn’t ethical in Joel’s book, he had never had to survive on the streets, or go hungry for more than a few days because he couldn’t get any work. And most of these types of criminals held to a code of honor amongst themselves and targeted wealthier ‘marks’ not only because the ‘take’ was greater, but because of their own standards as well.
Joel would have preferred to be assisting with a job against one of those arrogant Hadiqan nobles rather than a wealthy merchant who might have actually earned his money. It eased his conscience somewhat that Mizar had casually mentioned one of his reasons for picking this particular merchant was because he kept his profits from his illegal activities on-site, and these illegal activities involved smuggling young women into the city as part of the illegal human trafficking trade.
In addition to the low-level thieves and smugglers, there was a much more sinister element to the criminal underbelly in Al Farnaka that used the ‘working class’ criminals to their advantage by exploiting their sense of being oppressed for their own purposes. A bright jewel like Al Farnaka attracted the best and the worst, and there were definitely rotten elements doing awful things. Human trafficking, extortion, and more. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was little cohesion amongst the various factions.
The lock clicked and Joel pushed himself off the wall. Mizar gently pushed the door open and he, Joel, and Baird slipped inside, quickly closing the door behind them. He and Baird were here to provide extra muscle if there were any guards, and extra lifting capacity if there weren’t. Fortunately, the place looked vacant.
It had been two weeks now since Malachi had inserted them into the criminal underbelly and they hadn’t heard a thing about any plot to assassinate the King—other than the normal general rumbling of discontent. No active recruitment appeared to be occurring. However, Joel now realized that Malachi’s original plan wasn’t going to work the way that he had wanted it to. Two weeks just wasn’t long enough to build trust with these people. It took months or years for them to truly come to trust you enough to invite you to their secret councils. Joel was sure that Harun was careful enough not to recruit openly, and he and Baird were just too new to be privy to any of those types of meetings or conversations. Still, he’d have thought that they might have heard at least something. He hoped Esther, Dr. Scott, and Marigold were having better luck.
His thoughts turned to the young, dark haired woman who had started them all on this crazy journey to Al Farnaka instead of going immediately home from Deyr, like they should have. He smiled. The way she’d stood up for what she believed in and the way that her duty drove her filled Joel with a sense of pride for her. She still intimidated him, just like he’d told her back in Deyr, but that was just because he found her to be so capable. It made him want to be like her. She had her flaws, sure, everyone did. She was a bit naïve at times, and saw things in black and white when to Joel, it all appeared a little gray. And she was way too trusting and lenient with Marigold’s dress and behavior, but that was also what endeared her to him. She cared about everyone and everything. She felt like a little sister to him.
“Joel!” whispered Mizar harshly, “come on, we don’t have much time.”
Joel’s thoughts whipped back to the present and he frowned. The only reason he was willing to participate in these activities, was because he trusted Esther, and would follow wherever she went. He stepped forward further into the building to help Mizar load up several sacks with various valuable items that they could transport easily.
It was then that he heard a noise coming through an open doorway on the right, where a very narrow set of stairs led downward. He waved at the other two to be quiet and they froze listening. He heard it again. “Baird,” he whispered, nodding his head toward the stairs. Baird hefted his blackjack—a small club with a leather wrapped weight on one end—and walked over to stand next to Joel at the top of the narrow stairs. Joel stepped lightly on the first stair and winced as it creaked beneath his weight. He continued carefully down the stairs. Baird followed him.
The room at the bottom was tiny, with roughhewn stone walls. The sound of movement came from a door set in the wall just ahead. It was barred and latched from the outside. Whoever, or whatever, was in there, the owner didn’t it want getting out. Given what Mizar had already said about the merchant who owned the place, Joel had a pretty good idea at what they might find, but just in case, he looked over at Baird with a nod and Baird positioned himself just to the right of the door, with his blackjack raised, in a position to intercept whatever came out.
Joel carefully unlatched the door, trying to be as quiet as possible, then hefted the large wooden bar out of the way. He pulled open the door. Inside, sitting on the floor of a tiny room that was little more than a closet, was a young woman. She looked to be about nineteen or twenty, and, other than a thick layer of dirt and grime, was completely naked. Joel muttered a curse, but Baird was much more vocal with his expletives. The young woman’s eyes filled with fear and pushed herself up against the back of the tiny room to get as far away from them as possible.
“Baird, go grab a blanket or some clothes, if you can find some,” Joel said. Baird nodded and headed back up the stairs. Joel turned back to the young woman and held up his hands, trying to appear non-threatening. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said in Hadiqan. “I want to help you if you’ll let me.”
Tears suddenly formed in the girl’s eyes, spilling over onto her dirt stained cheeks, leaving pale tracks as they rolled down her face. She stood and a sob escaped her lips as she leapt forward and wrapped her arms around Joel’s torso. It happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that he just stood frozen in place for several seconds. As she began sobbing against his chest, compassion filled him, however, and he gently wrapped his arms around her, patting her hair. “Shh, shh, it’s okay…it’s alright,” he said, trying to soothe and console her. “It’s okay.”
After a few minutes, Baird came pounding down the stairs. He took in the scene, his eyes wide with surprise. “Well, I found both a blanket and this dress. It’s pretty worn, but I think it’ll fit. It’s all I could find.”
Joel looked at the dress and wondered if it used to belong to the young woman. Slowly, and with quite a bit of reluctance, she let go of Joel and stepped back. She took the dress from Baird’s hands and held it against her chest. Joel turned his back and saw Baird do the same as she pulled it on over her head. A moment later, he heard her clear her throat and he turned back around. He felt much more comfortable now that she was clothed.
“My name is Joel Mowbray, and this is Baird Fendrel.”
The girl kept her eyes on the ground and wouldn’t look him in the eye. She spoke in a quiet voice. “My name is Daniyah.”
“How old are you, Daniyah?”
“Nineteen.”
Joel nodded. “Well, Daniyah, my colleage and I were just in the process of robbing this place.” She must have thought his comment was funny, because she raised a hand to her mouth as a small laugh escaped her lips. Good, thought Joel. He’d been afraid that she would be so traumatized by her ordeal that maybe she wouldn’t be able to recover, or that it would be years before she could smile again. She must be a very tough person indeed, if she could smile already. Of course, the joy of being rescued might have something to do with that too. He did sense a strength from within her, however. “We’ll get you out of here and back to your family,” he continued.
Her momentary smile disappeared completely. “They’re all dead,” she said, continuing to s
tare down at her bare feet.
“Do you have any family left at all?” asked Joel. The young woman shook her head.
Baird cursed again. “Malachi’s not going to be happy taking in another stray,” he said.
“No,” agreed Joel, “but Esther will insist that we do.” He turned to the young woman. “Come with me,” he said, “Let’s get you out of here.”
Joel led her up the stairs, with Baird following up behind them. When they reached the top of the stairs, however, men in the uniform of the Imperial Guard stood in a semi-circle around them. Mizar stood bound by cords off the side, held by one of the guardsmen. A nasty bruise was starting to form on his cheek.
“You are all under arrest for treason against the Crown of Hadiq and plotting with conspirator Malachi Mehin to assassinate his Majesty, King Asserius,” said one of the guards with a sneer, a Captain’s insignia prominent on his shoulder.
Baird swore again, and this time, Joel fully shared the sentiment.
- - -
After several hours of surveilling Harun—trying to listen to his conversations, and being constantly interrupted by young men with whom she felt obliged to dance—Esther hadn’t learned anything more than she knew a few hours ago, and she felt even more helpless and frustrated than before. The ball would only continue for another hour, maybe two, and they had come as close to Harun as they were likely to get with nothing to show for it.
I guess it had been a bit much to expect him to reveal his deep, dark assassination plot here at the ball, she thought. She had hoped that he would at least act suspicious when he met certain people, but he was either an excellent liar, or none of his co-conspirators were at the ball. The King and Queen were walking toward the dais and Harun was heading over there as well. Fear that she and her companions wouldn’t be able to stop the assassination began to replace Esther’s sense of frustration.
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