28. The Medallion #2
It wasn’t as if he could send her back inside like a child. He was learning that Dola was as stubborn as Almatra, although she smiled rather than scowled. “In that case.” He pulled the strap’s buckle tighter on his shoulder. “I’m definitely bringing the sword.”
He meant it as reassurance, but Dola bit her lip. “Please don’t.” Her dark eyes were beseeching. “It suggests we’re hostile, or at the very least, we don’t trust him.”
“We don’t.”
“But he doesn’t need to have that shoved in his face. Please, Imalroc. We need the Medallion to listen to us if we want a chance of unifying the camp.”
Something about this conversation put his hackles up, but he couldn’t quite pin down why. Grudgingly, he stowed the sword just inside the tent’s entrance and rejoined her.
Together, they set out for the soldier’s side of camp.
“Tell me more about the problem with Morbank?” he asked Dola as they passed into the lines of orderly green tents.
She sighed. “Where to begin? He’s an ineffective military leader.
That’s the most significant part. But he’s also...
just... He has regrettable habits? His captains may be inexperienced and thoughtless, but at least they’re not nobility.
Edim Morbank is the firstborn heir to one of the wealthiest feld families in the South, and he acts like it. ”
“Wonderful,” Imalroc said. A question sat on the tip of his tongue like an ulcer, but he was uncertain he wanted the answer. “He didn’t—” Imalroc forced the words out. “He didn’t ever own battleboxers, did he?”
“No,” Dola said, and he heard his own relief echoed in her voice.
“The Southern nobility turned away from battleboxing long ago. But until the Advocate, they never protested it anywhere else in the country. When I first came here, one of the Southern gentry told me she found battleboxing distasteful.”
“I agree.” He lifted his chin and clipped his syllables with all the disdain of a Kirinoll courtier. “Nothing more distasteful than watching someone forced to rip someone else’s throat out while you’re trying to enjoy a lemon tart. And the blood is just impossible to get out of good linen.”
Dola laughed loudly enough to startle a few birds from the nearest trees. Sometimes he could hardly believe he had found these people. They didn’t even seem to mind his morbid jokes.
He walked with Dola through the camp, ignoring the stares he got from the soldiers up early enough to see him pass. He rolled his shoulders, missing the Draalish sword.
Medallion Edim Morbank’s tent, when they reached it at last, was unmistakable.
It sprawled directly in front of the soldiers’ parade grounds and looked like the wind-swollen sails of an enormous ship.
When the breeze lifted, the green tents that flanked it rattled like leaves on a spindly tree, but the heavy white and gold fabric of Morbank’s tent hardly stirred.
A pair of yawning guards stood beside the flowering shrubs that formed a pathway to the entrance. Both looked as though they had just stumbled out of their rumpled bedrolls. The pikes they leaned on glinted as Imalroc started forward.
The guards didn’t seem to recognize who neared them until he and Dola were almost under their noses. Horror unfolded across their faces in a realization so slow it was somewhat comical.
“Fair morning!” Dola blasted them with her gap-toothed smile. The guards quailed, but she kept going with determined cheer. “We’re here with an important delivery for Medallion Morbank.”
The soldiers exchanged a panicked look. Imalroc nearly rolled his eyes, but he waited for them to speak.
The twig of a girl in a too-baggy uniform recovered first. “His Lordship is still... um... he is not yet ready to receive reports. I can deliver it to him when he has time.”
“We have strict orders to deliver it to him immediately. In person,” Imalroc lied smoothly. He flicked his gaze between the two women. “One of you will have to wake him up.”
The older woman swallowed, and the girl looked as though she would rather stab her own eye out with the pike. There was a sweating silence.
“Or I can do it,” Imalroc offered.
The older woman nearly dropped her weapon, waving her hands. “No, no, that’s quite unnecessary. I’ll... fetch him.” She turned toward the tent and gingerly drew back the entry flap.
They waited outside, an awkward trio. The girl seemed as though she tried not to stare, but she did a fucking poor job of it.
Even with his attention mostly directed at the entryway, he could practically feel her tracing the scar that wound across his jaw and down his neck.
He imagined himself carved from the rock of a mountain, unmoving and oblivious to everything around him but the passing of time.
And so very much of it was passing. Edim Morbank was clearly in no hurry to find out what information awaited him. The sun warmed Imalroc’s shoulders, and the fabric of the white tent grew blindingly bright.
When the other woman finally appeared, she held the covering of the entrance back for them and nodded. Imalroc stepped into the shadowy interior with Dola on his heels.
The tent was utterly absurd for an army encampment hidden in the wild jungle.
Overhead, billows of colored silk filtered the light, and carpets muted their footsteps.
Tasseled pillows lay scattered over every surface.
In one corner, Imalroc glimpsed what looked like a harp, and above it, an enormous painting of a glowering old man who looked as though he hadn’t been able to take a shit for several days.