Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Thank you, Satya,” Lyrian said. “In the future, please refrain from these… habits. Now if you’d please, guards, allow me to speak privately with His Divinity.”
The guards looked to Ethyr. He stared back at them, not realizing for a long second that they were waiting for his approval.
“Oh–uh–...yes. You’re dismissed.”
They bent in a slight bow and left with Satya.
“I apologize, Your Divinity, for overstepping my authority again.”
Ethyr turned back to Lyrian, trying to detect any hint of sarcasm or resentment in his tone and body language. There was none, only sincere regret.
“If you’d like, we can go over the options suitable for Head Attendant and I will remove Satya from the position.”
Ethyr set his jaw and watched him. Lyrian blinked back with expectant curiosity.
“Very well,” he said slowly, sinking into the chair opposite the man, still watching him for any sign of dishonesty.
He specifically left the door wide open.
Lyrian seemed to know better than to suggest closing it.
He presented Ethyr with various names, elaborating on their positions and experience and skill set.
When they’d exhausted any possible candidate in the palace, they moved to Lyrian’s estate.
Truly, Ethyr had no idea how to choose a Head Attendant, he just wanted to keep Lyrian occupied for the rest of the afternoon, and give himself more opportunity to notice anything amiss.
There was nothing. Lyrian treated him with the same polite familiarity as usual, listened intently to his questions, and paid serious consideration to his opinions.
Ethyr ended up selecting a senior attendant within the palace, and Lyrian accepted the choice without a glimmer of resistance or reluctance.
Ethyr ate supper alone in the dining room, mind turning.
When he was done, he wandered back downstairs, taking his time and appearing as innocuous as possible, especially when asking a servant about Lyrian’s whereabouts.
According to them, Lyrian had left the palace not long ago.
Ethyr tried the study door. It was locked.
He didn’t know what he had been expecting. Even Yorith locked the doors at night.
Most of the palace was settling down for the evening. Lamps were lit, the kitchen was quiet, and the only servants still wandering about were those setting fires in occupied rooms or retrieving something for one of their superiors.
If Ethyr had learned anything about the servants, it was which were the lowest—the ones no one listened to but everyone ordered about, who were always awake first and asleep last. Ethyr stopped one of them hurrying past him in the hall.
“Is there a servants’ door to the advisor’s study?” he asked. The girl stared at him like he’d asked her to slit her own throat. “Please,” he emphasized. “You won’t get in trouble. Just show me where it is and then you can continue on your way.”
The servants’ door opened on the opposite side of the study to the desk, with the fireplace to the left.
Ethyr looked around, as though anyone was going to be hiding in the room in the dark, before creeping over to the desk.
The lantern in his hand cast enough light to see, but not really to read.
He held it close to the desktop, glancing over the array of papers and scrolls laying open on it.
None of them looked particularly incriminating, just letters to other officials about permits and taxes and court cases.
Lyrian had dumped the scroll into one of the drawers on the right. He opened the top one, flinching as the sound of wood scraping against wood echoed in the large room.
There was nothing in the shallow drawer except pens, letter-sealing wax, and ink. The one below that had a bunch of blank paper. And the biggest one below that, was locked.
“Dammit,” Ethyr muttered. Before he could look for a key, the sound of one clicking in the entrance door filled the room.
He panicked. He snuffed out the lantern and dove under the desk, pulling the chair in close and curling up as small as he could into the corner. Another second and he heard the door open and two sets of feet walk inside.
“—after a certain point,” Lyrian was saying. Lamplight wavered against the walls, coming closer.
“I understand, sir,” Jessif replied. The footsteps came around the side of the desk. Ethyr scrunched even further in on himself, holding his breath as Lyrian’s feet stopped in front of him and a hand reached down.
It unlocked the bottom right drawer with a little key and pulled a scroll out, retreating back up.
“I’m running out of time. Malor has her filthy hands in everything and she’s cinching the noose.”
“I’ll leave tonight.”
“I need his unequivocal support, Jes. If he voices opposition you know half your regiment will vanish.”
“I know, sir. I’ll make sure he understands the stakes.”
The two retreated and the study doors closed.
Ethyr finally let his breath out and gasped for air.
He crawled out from under the desk, poking his head above it to be sure the room was empty before standing and looking futilely over its papers in case the scroll had been left there. Of course it hadn’t.
He was lucky Lyrian hadn’t noticed the cracked open servants’ door on the far wall. The lamplight likely hadn’t reached it. He slipped back into the passageway, feeling around in the dark to return to the main hall and set the lantern back on its hook, before hurrying up to his bedroom.
His heart was still pounding with adrenaline as he closed the door. He paced in front of the fire, thoughts whipping so fast they mostly just tangled together into useless knots. Until, finally, one stood out.
He halted. The room was quiet save for the usual rush of waterfall and the crackling fire.
“Kiaro,” he called into the room. His voice was convincingly confident for the fact that he felt like a mad man. “I know you’re there. I need your help.” Silence. He swallowed. “Please,” he whispered. He didn’t have any other options.
A fluttering turned him around to find Kiaro looming over him. Ethyr stepped back.
“You are here,” he said uncertainly. “You’re still following me.” Kiaro didn’t reply. “You saved me from those bandits, didn’t you?” He lifted the folded cloak from the top of a chest. “This is yours, isn’t it?”
Kiaro’s gaze flitted briefly to it before returning to his. “Did you call me here to confront me?”
Ethyr pressed his lips together. “You helped me then with no strings attached. Can you help me again? I think Lyrian gave a scroll to a guard captain—Jessif—and I think whatever is on it is information I need to know. Jessif said she’s leaving tonight, but she must still be in the city.
Could you get the scroll from her? Before she goes too far? ”
“I can,” Kiaro said slowly. He did not move.
“You’re the one who told me not to trust Lyrian,” Ethyr reminded him. “Are you so reluctant to go against him now?”
“Going with or against him means nothing to me. But once you read that letter, you will place yourself in the middle of this silly mortal squabble and the consequences could be worse.”
“Worse?” Ethyr huffed a humorless laugh. “Worse than what? I’m already in the middle of it!”
“You are not currently an obstacle to Lyrian. If you make yourself one, he will want to be rid of you. If you stay out of this dispute and let the pieces fall where they may, no one has any reason to hurt you.”
“Why do you care if I’m hurt?” Ethyr asked. Something immutable flickered across Kiaro’s face, but he did not reply. Ethyr sighed. “If I started all of this, I have the right to know what kind of plans I’ve provoked.”
Kiaro did not reply, his gaze drifting down to the floor.
“Will you help me or not?” Ethyr asked, exasperated.
Kiaro glanced up at him with an intensity that flipped Ethyr’s stomach, before he shrunk into a magpie and flew out from the balcony opening.
Ethyr had no idea if that was a yes or no. But it wasn’t like he had anything else he could do. He decided to wait and see, and resumed pacing.
Over the next hour, Ethyr convinced himself Kiaro wouldn’t return and that his hope of ever getting to the bottom of things was a lost cause.
Then a bird swooped into the room and in the next second it was Kiaro, holding a scroll out to him.
The string holding it closed was sealed with the Guard Master’s wax insignia. Ethyr broke it open and unrolled the paper.
Most Esteemed General,
I do not write to you lightly. Captain Jessif relayed your concerns and protests to me with care and I recognize your conflict withholds any pleasure at my correspondence.
I know the late High Priest was a close friend of yours, but I respectfully disagree that publicly supporting my endeavors is a betrayal to the legacy for which he fought.
Yorith understood better than most that the gods no longer have our best interests in mind, and that a king such as we have now is proof of this.
He simply did not complete the equation.
We can no longer rely on the gods to choose who is fit to rule a kingdom from which they are so detached.
Yorith was inhibited by his upbringing—dedication to tradition and a blind faith in the gods even in the stew of their neglect—and one cannot fault him for that.
But you and I became men in the harsh realities of a changing world, General.
We did not have the privilege of the high cushion from which priests view the world.
We toiled in the mud, in sweat and blood, to enact the wishes of our superiors.
How can we face our soldiers now and tell them in all solemnity to do the same when that “superior” is an uneducated peasant from a backwater village at the edge of the kingdom?