John accepted the sheath from the serving-man. His name was Hoorn, and he was amoung the most respected of the servants here with them in Tomel, and noone in the place matched his skill with a forge, at least according the Lady Bickaa and the Lord Koreil.
John was dressed in a dark green tunic that the Lord Ian Varina had recently discovered himself to have outgrown, along with a belt borrowed from the Lord Nocoz. The sheath buckled to the belt easily, and it looked proper with the tunic.
Three days had come and gone, which John had mostly spent in swordplay, since apparently he was expected to fight with everyone else once they reached Teka. He secretly suspected they were hoping he'd get killed, and they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. Which he was getting the sinking feeling he would be.
"Claire, she is only 12!" John's ears perked up with interest as he heard the Lord Nocoz and the Lady Bickaa approach in the thick of an argument.
"Bennett's only 13, and he's fighting."
"That's still a year older, plus as a boy, he's much stronger then her. Besides, he's been working with swords for years, like all boys from Cumpf do. And his father encourages it a lot, which Lord Ailkimi does not."
"Lord Alex-" As Hoorn was respected enough to be informal with the courtiers, John could only assume they'd become aware of his existence, and abruptly left the room without listening any more.
At first the constant uses of honorifics around him hadn't bothered John any. But he'd officially lost count the previous evening of the number of times people had hastily adopted formality into their conversation even when he walked by, as if they were terrified of him seeing them with their hair down. While he had had no more threats like the one from the Lord Koreil, a number of the courtiers shunned him. The only one who was truly friendly was the Lady Rated, and she was beginning to frighten John. He'd heard that Rated was one of the more historically violent provinces, and that definitely applied to her. She hadn't actually attacked anyone yet, but she had given so many people the impression she was going to, that John was beginning to wonder if the Lord Koreil would have hurt him, or killed him even, if she hadn't been there, and he had only retreated because she had taken him under her wing.
He had taken to wandering around without looking where his feet were taking him, and so after some time he found himself outside, where he was surprised to find a large crowd. Most of them were wearing cloaks, carrying things, and all in all looked like they were going somewhere.
He spotted the Lady Rated in the crowd, and began threading his way over to her. But no matter how many times he pleaded with people to excuse him, he found a number of people who would not move aside to let him through, until the Lady Rated spotted him and began glaring at people to move out of her way, which they did quickly, until they were finally face to face.
"What's going on?" He asked immediately.
"You didn't hear the Lord Amane's orders? We're out of here! Or at least you’d better be. The Lord Amane's disenchanted with you, and he might leave you behind otherwise."
"How did he get-" John started, but he was interrupted by a call for silence.
Looking back at the doors for the building they'd been staying in, he saw the Lord Amane and the Princess Karen standing there, flanked by Hoorn and two other servants, also prepared to travel.
"We have just received notice via wiret that the army remaining loyal to Stephen III has been partly routed, but unfortunately not to extent that we hoped. Therefore, I have decided that the first stage of our attack will be covert. We will need two people who will not be recognized to bring in a volunteer as a prisoner. The three of them together will sabotage the city's artificial energy system. Meanwhile, Hoorn here will slip into the palace by special routes only the servants know about, taking with him a small group of people to wreck havoc. With the palace in confusion and the remnants of the army distracted, we will gather the army we have and strike!" There was cheering.
"The biggest problem," he explained further, “are the two escorts for our prisoner. We will need both of them to sabotage the system successfully."
By now, plenty of eyes had traveled to John, and he said, "If my services are wanted, I will provide them." he said.
"Very good. But I am not sure we have anyone else amoung us that the King would not recognize."
"Lord Dexter," John recognized the voice before its owner stepped out of the crowd. The Lady Herlo. "In the past, I proved to have an ability to disguise myself as a Jardinaf noblewoman to the point that I fooled Stephen III."
"And you would be able to fool him for at least a number of hours, probably longer."
"Yes."
"Very well. Do we have a volunteer?"
"Me!" yelled the Lady Rated.
Several people looked amused, but the Lord Amane merely nodded. "I have reserved a gol, and the three of you will depart when ready."
It wasn't an hour later that John was in heavy breeches, robes, and hood, the Lady Herlo was in something similar, the Lady Rated had discarded her sword, but was still in black, and they were all in a covered gol, speeding on what was known as The Triangle. Teka was located where the Zigella, Minoru, Varina, and Istis provinces met, and all four provinces had their own capitals fairly near Teka. The Triangle was a set of railroad tracks that connected all five cities.
"How far off is Teka?" John asked.
"Two hours, possibly more," the driver answered.
After spending some time gazing out at the landscape something occurred to him about the company. "Lady Herlo, what do you think of me?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"Because you seemed to believe at first that I'm the King."
"Thought it couldn't hurt. Besides, you struck me as being honest."
John wasn't sure how to take that. Then the Lady Rated asked, "And you didn't view him as a threat?"
The Lady Herlo laughed. "Not especially. I don't know why the Princess Karen is all nervous about him."
"The Princess is nervous? Why didn't anyone tell me that?" John demanded.
"You think we're going to say such a thing within her hearing range?"
"Is she that kind of royalty?"
"Well..." the two women looked at each other. "Be honest." he urged. "If you've been this far, I'll keep my mouth shut, and we'll bribe the driver."
"Oh, we would be honest," said the Lady Herlo, "except we don't know what is honest. She's behaved all right so far, but you do realize that she's much of the reason the Lord Amane lost interest in you, which is a bad sign. I told you that Stephen III was very decent when he first took the throne, and now look at him."
"She's nothing to fear from me," said John softly. "She can have her country. I wouldn't know what to do with it. At all."
"What?" the women demanded together. Mentally, John slapped himself. Of course. He could have mentioned a long time ago that even with the title of King, he was no ruler, and his life would have been considerably easier.
"Belor's changed a lot since your ancestors left," he explained. "We got a wonderful idea known as democracy, which meant the people choose their own rulers. Hereditary people like me only exist to perform ceremonies and entertain diplomats until the Prime Minister's ready to deal with them."
He turned his gaze back to the countryside while he waited for this piece of news to sink in. But the Lady Rated's response wasn't the one he expected. "So you have a title, and no doubt more then enough sustenance, without earning your keep?"
"Well, I don't know about that, those diplomats can be pretty hard to deal with..." He could help but grin as the Lady Herlo's snooty gasp and her, "You don't work nearly as hard us then, even! And I think you've lived better."
"That's probably true," he admitted.
"What's a Prime Minister?" The Lady Herlo asked.
This led to John explaining out the whole Parliamentary system. Both Ladies seemed quite interested in the fact that the Parliament could remove the ruler, though John insisted they didn't do so too often. "I can't remember the last time they did."
"The last time the monarch was deposed was..." The Lady Herlo tapped her fingers. "I think it was Morgen IV."
"Yes, unless you count Bru VIII. And I don't anyone on the throne could have survived the war. So that's forty years ago. Woah, that's no time! I think it had been a century when they overthrew Morgen."
"Well, it's been a rough era." This was true. Aside from the religious civil war, there had been constant tension with Hozan, which was a natural enemy of Lin as far as the inhabitants of both countries were concerned. John had now talked with countless people who believed open war with Hozan could be put off for decades, but was still inevitable. He’d told more then one of them that this was idiotic, but they always insisted that he couldn’t understand. Actually, John thought he could understand perfectly well, but there was no convincing anyone of that.
People *really* hated Hozan. It was a hatred John just couldn’t comprehend. It was as if Hozan had personally hurt every last inhabitant of Lin. But even if he couldn’t understand *why* they hated Hozan so much, he’d heard the whole “inevitable” speech back home, though not argued by Belor, thankfully. He was beginning to believe Stephen III had encouraged people to think this to distract them from him, and while that hadn’t worked, he’d actually succeeded.
But there was an instant difference in the air. Things were very tense. Everyone seemed suspicious of everyone else, and John was just realizing that the city was probably under martial law when a pair of rough-looking men in black uniforms stopped them and all but confirmed his beliefs.
“Who are you?” demanded the bigger one. “What are you doing here? Why are you leading a Lady?”
“To present her as a gift to His Majesty Stephen III,” answered the Lady Herlo, her voice as cloaked as the rest of her. “We are Alyssa and Yael of Epwinch.”
“Something so valuable cannot be carried through the streets of Teka unguarded.” They took the Lady Rated roughly by either arm and began dragging her off. The Lady Herlo followed uncomplaining, making John think he should do the same.
He started to wonder, however, just when the Lady Herlo was going to explain to him how they were going to go about sabotaging the electricity of the city. He somehow doubted the guards would leave them alone, and it seemed quite reckless on the Lady Herlo’s part to try to communicate anything to him under their eyes, when she could have just given him instructions in the gol.
The guards led them to a great walled area in the middle of the city, and they stopped at a great gate. Someone from up above yelled down, “Why do you want to come in?”
“We’re escorting a prisoner for the King,” one of the guards yelled back. “The Lady Nancy Rated, in fact.”
“Well then,” said the voice above, “I think I’ll call Marina to let you in.”
His emphasized the name Marina, and the Lady Rated got a very dark expression on her face at this. The gate swung open, and more guards emerged, and with them a girl with a large smirk that had to be Marina.
“Put your hand on my person,” the Lady Rated growled, “and you’ll be lucky if I let you live to see the gallows!”
“Dignity, Lady Rated,” and she spoke with such deliberate sauciness that even John, who was more or less trying to consider himself an observer in this mess, just in case Stephen III wasn’t dethroned and he had to plead for his life, couldn’t help but think very little of her. The Lady Herlo was not attempting to keep her scorn hidden, though it was a detached sort of scorn, a general sense of disapproval of someone else’s murderer.
Inside the wall they were separated from the Lady Rated, and led along the length of the wall for quite some time. The Lady Herlo walked very upright, gazing straight ahead, and giving John the impression that he should do the same, but he couldn’t help but let his eyes travel slightly to the side, to take a look at the contents of what seemed to be some sort of fort.
There were a good number of small buildings that he thought might be houses, perhaps for the guards. Then a large open space with a raised platform at one end where the grass looked trod-on and what might have been leaves or might have been pieces of wood or might have been anything were scattered all over the place-John couldn’t tell what they were from the distance. Then what looked like some sort of large church or small cathedral. At it they stopped walking along the wall and went on a diagonal path towards a tiny house which had two wires coming out of each corner. One pair of wires headed towards the wall and out of the fort, the other three headed inwards.
John followed the wires with his eyes, and one of the guards noticed this and chuckled. “You Jardinaf don’t have our little wire systems, do you? That, my friend, is artificial energy, and that is instant communication. It’s all handled in that house. We’re going to contact the King from there.”
John kept expecting Lindsey to suddenly snap and try to break a wire. But they made their way to the house without incident and went inside.
It was a one-room house, covered from floor to ceiling with primitive switchboards. They were made of metal and rock(John didn’t think Lin had discovered plastic yet), and put John in mind of the Flintstones. Nor had Lin discovered embedded lights; each switchboard had a set of light-bulbs pinned to it by a complicated mesh of wires. Or at least he assumed they were light-bulbs, as in they were glass around tungsten, though there were cubic in shape.
One guard began tapping at the biggest switchboard, while a second set up a speaker and receiver which reminded John of the more old-fashioned phones of the world. One square light bulb lit up, then another, then there was a loud burst of static, and a voice saying, “Ming. Who is this?”
“This is Zal. You have heard we’ve got the Lady Rated in chains thanks to a couple of Jardinaf traders, right?”
“Jardinaf, is it? That I didn’t know.” Ming sounded impressed. “Don’t suppose I’ll get to see them?”
Zal chuckled. “If the King pleases.”
“Well, I’ll tell him and wire you back.” There was another loud burst of static, and Zal tapped the switchboard again. “What part of Jardinaf are you from?” he asked John conversationally.
John had no answer to this question. He didn’t even know what any of the parts of Jardinaf were called. He momentarily thought the Lady Herlo ought to have straightened that out with him when she heaved a sigh and said, “You rabble of Lin! We are Alyssa and Yael of Epwinch.”
Well, that explained why the Lady Herlo hadn’t felt the need to explain where they were from.
“Where is Epwinch?” Okay, that the Lady Herlo hadn’t told him, but thankfully this question was addressed to her.
The Lady Herlo had a real talent for dramatic flair, but John could tell when people, especially guards, were suspicious, and these were not, so he supposed either the Jardinaf really did heave huge offended sighs like the one the Lady Herlo was heaving and cry, “Do you know anything? Your ignorance is matched only by the arrogance of your country!” in a voice too high-pitched to be normal, or, more likely, most people in Lin believed that they did. She then added that Epwinch was near the their border(“near your border” emphasized, of course) not too far from the coast. “Of course, I assume you know where the coast is.”
By this time the guards were looking at the Lady Herlo with a clear “Is she crazy?” glare, and one of them said, “Of course we know where the coast is. Down south of here, two provinces.”
This was turning into a very amusing conversation, but unfortunately just then the soundboard let out more static and the guards turned back to it. Ming’s voice said, “I’ve spoken with the King. He will be too busy occupied with the Lady Rated tonight to see those who brought her to him.”
This caused John some concern. He didn’t much care yet what happened to anyone else at the court, but he liked the Lady Rated a lot. The idea of her being the first one to die in this political intrigue was one which would reinforce his belief of the likeable people always being the ones that fell victim to the struggles of the powerful. Even when they were technically amoung the powerful themselves.
“Shall I take them to the guest house?”
“Do so. The King will likely send for them in the morning.” Another burst of static, and Zal fiddled with more knobs, turning off the board, John thought.
The guest house was conveniently close, and was one of a whole line of houses with a similar basic structure of two floors and four windows per floor per side, except for the window replaced by the door. However, each was painted a different colour, except for the guest house, which was unpainted. John wondered what their purpose was, but the Lady Herlo didn’t ask and the guards didn’t say.
The interior was simple but comfortable. A parlour lit by cubes hanging on chains and wires, a large black table, comfy-looking brown chairs, white-washed walls. A staircase leading up to a white-washed landing, grey doors on the second floor.
“As you can see,” said Zal, “the wiret is on the table, and the advantage of being in the guest house is your line is never cut off by the too many of the other houses using their wirets. Yours is in the bedroom. You will be served up to two meals at whatever time you request them.”
They were left alone, and the Lady Herlo laughed and suddenly threw herself into John’s arms. He opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, but she kissed him hard.
Before John could recover from his astonishment, she pulled away and murmured, “Don’t worry, dear. These simple people will never spy on what goes on in the bedroom.”
Getting the point, John kissed her back, and murmuring something into her ear, scooped her up and carried her up the stairs as she laughed and applied a liberal amount of kisses to his face. “But they’ll still be able to hear us,” he said, stopping suddenly.
“Oh we’ll be quiet,” the Lady Herlo replied, and with a big grin, she swung the door open, and swung it closed after he carried her in. “Not to mention after that display, they’ll probably turn the downstairs inview off all together.”
Assuming the inview to be some sort of camera, John put her down into an overlarge armless chair, and made sure to stand over her to ask, “Okay, please tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do.”
She hastily moved out of the chair and around so quickly John felt the loss of physical advantage as if it had been brought on by his being shoved down onto the floor. Then she spoke.
“You are to wait until midnight, by which time I will have gone out in accordance with a Jardinaf custom that I’ll explain later-”
“You’ll explain later?” John exploded. “Will you all quit treating me like a-”
The Lady Herlo clamped her hand to his mouth before he could go on with an angry whisper of, “I thought you realized we had to be quiet! There’s no guarantee they turned off the inview down there!”
“Seriously,” she continued, letting John go, “the custom takes a very long time to explain. I want to get the plan clear first, and then I’ll tell you anything you like. At all.”
“All right.” But John couldn’t help sitting back on the bed and folding his arms in an obvious sulk.
he Lady Herlo overlooked this. “At midnight you are to take the wiret and call someone. Anyone. Just detach the two handles and enter any number between one and thirty-five. Wait a split second, then take your sword and cut the line immediately. You will hear a loud buzz, at which point you may run through the downstairs and out of the house with your hands on your ears. Make a show of it, but don’t take too long. I should have the energy off within a minute or so, which means most of the streetlamps will go out. There are a few that don’t run on the energy signal, so try to avoid them. In the dark, go forward four rows of houses, then turn left and keep going until you reach the palace. It’s the biggest building in here; it’ll be obvious. Go all the way around the back until you reach a door at the far back corner. Knock four times. Hopefully, the Lady Rated will be there, with Cordi Dester, a woman friendly to us.”
“And if they’re not?” John asked.
She grinned wickedly. “Then you just stand there until I come to rescue you, but really that’s a situation where you’re unlikely to come out alive.”
“I see. And what then?”
“Oh then we just lie low in the servants’ area while Hoorn does his thing until the army arrives. Plain and simple.”
“It doesn’t sound so to me!”
But she just laughed, and said, “Well, it’s the plan, and unless you have a better one, I’m out of here after dark with my ink in my hands.”
“Your ink in your hands? Is that part of the ritual?”
“Yes, as it happens,” she grinned. “You want to hear the whole sordid affair?”
“You think I wouldn’t after you called it that?”
“Men,” she groaned. “From Belor or from Lin, you’re all the same. Okay, it goes something like this...”
It was time. He picked up the wiret handle and placed it next to the small machine. He was mildly disconcerted at the lack of any sound, but there was no time for dwelling on that, it seemed. He pressed a random number on the dialing pad and brought the sword down on the cord as hard as he could.
There was ear-splitting buzzing that filled the room, bounced off the walls, and sent John running all right, charging down the stairs and out of the house, into the street where he stood panting and rubbing his ears, the buzz audible even from outside. He stood there, rubbing his ears, feeling all too conspicuous, waiting for the people in the other identical-looking houses that lined the street to poke their heads out of their windows in confusion. But before anyone did, the lamps blinked out.
For a moment, everything seemed pitch black. Of course the moon was new. They’d probably planned it that way.
Go forward four rows of houses. It had sounded like perfectly reasonable directions at the time. But how was he to do so when he couldn’t see?
“Don’t panic,” he muttered to himself. “Think. Which end of the block am I closest to?”
The guest house was near the end of the row, he now seemed to remember. So which way had they come in?
“Why can’t I remember?” Then it came to him-right. He turned right.
By the time he reached the end of the block, his eyesight had adjusted as much as it could to the dim starlight. It was enough to avoid bumping into anything, at least.
It was not enough, though, to dispel the cold sensation slowly creeping up John’s spine and crawling about the back of his neck, making him feel colder and colder with each echo of his boots on the hardened gravel-pavement. In this world of darker skies than you saw in modern-day Belor and the silhouettes of perfectly rectangular building after perfectly rectangular building, one right after the other like a line of machines, so different from the discombobulation of Belor, he would have given anything for a map, or really, any directions more concrete than those he had.
It probably wasn’t safe to speak out loud, but John did it anyway, counting off the rows as he passed them. By the time he reached row four, his voice was trembling and he hoped the palace wasn’t too far off.
This was the darkest street by far; not one lamp here, it seemed, ran on gas, or whatever their liquid was supposed to be. He didn’t run, because he was too scared to, but he wanted to more than anything.
How far away the palace really was he couldn’t tell at all. But at least the Lady Herlo had gotten one thing right in all that she’d said to him: there was no mistaking the palace. Even in the darkness, it was a structure that grabbed the eye, simply by its sheer size. For something so big, though, it was very boring in shape, or at least looked so in the lack of light. Not much more than a huge rectangle.
Standing at one corner, John reached out until his hands touched cold, rough stone bricks. He pressed himself again them, unable to see them even up close. Then he began to inch himself towards the back of the building.
He wondered where the Lady Herlo was. Had she reached the servants’ quarters already? She probably wasn’t as scared as him; she knew this place, after all.
The texture of the wall did vary a little, as John soon found out. He nearly screamed when his hip bumped into something roundish and mostly smooth, but with one sharp edge pressing into him like a razor blade. Not wanting to know, he pulled back from the wall, stepped sideways for a few feet, then pressed back against the wall, right into something very sharp that was sticking out of the wall there.
John let out an audible yelp as he leapt back again, then whirled around and flattened himself back against the wall for fear that he’d been heard. It was several agonizing minutes before he again started inching his way down again, this time keeping all the but the backs of his shoulders away from the rough wall.
When he finally reached the back of the palace, he abruptly decided that enough was enough. John pulled himself up into a standing position and several feet away from the wall. “I am going to walk upright or I am not going to go at all,” he declared. Under his breath. He wasn’t an idiot, after all.
And that was just what he did. Mostly, anyway. Halfway to the far side he thought he heard footsteps and flattened himself back against the wall, but when he decided that it had been a trick of his mind he stubbornly set himself away from the wall again, and thus walked until he stood at the far corner.
He could barely see the door, a huge mass slightly darker than the surrounding wall. Heavy and wooden too, he thought. He slammed his fist against it four times, counting as he went.
The door creaked open, and then John saw the outline of the most beautiful face in the universe. She had pale skin and hair, hair which framed her eyes and ears and fell gracefully on her perfectly sculpted bare shoulders. Those eyes were the brightest blue John had ever seen. Underneath her tiny nose were also the most perfectly-coloured pair of lips that could possibly exist.
“Cordi Dester?” he asked through a mouth gone dry.
She nodded timidly and beckoned before vanishing into the darkness behind her. John followed still dazed.