Pithadia was struggling to make her way through the vast city, having been within its walls just once before. She would have loved to make it for the King's burial, but by last evening it was already too late, and she had lost several hours on the road because she'd been either too proud or too afraid to ask for directions. But an old farmer and his wife had invited her onto their transport without her request, and now here she was. She had enough kori coins to pay a market boy to ride her to the palace, and once she spotted one who wouldn't overcharge her, she mounted that one's horse. The great palace's light towers were burning again, and the flag between them was flying high again.
But they hadn't come to within a hundred meters of the majestic gates of the palace when they encountered a loud enthusiastic crowd of men and women. A loud enthusiastic crowd wasn't the last thing to come across in this city. This was an infidelity march, and they were headed in straight-line speed toward the gate. Pithadia couldn't see the infidels being marched. But Lady Esella saw her, and she smiled to herself. She could have screamed to call her in unbridled joy, but she knew that the mission had been saved by her appearance here, and calling her name would alert the dogs. They had successfully pulled her leg in the end. But the only miscalculation in their plan had just galloped on horseback past them. She would get there first. The letter with the General's own seal would be her ticket through the Royal Guard Squadron at the gate.
K'rar had just finished consulting with his mother, Ashdud and other palace officials about the three regent rulers. They had come up with a three-person shortlist, and one of them was his mother. She would be her son's Executor, but also the first woman to hold such a high position of power in Korazin. Now they were writing down the notice to be propagated in all of Korazin so that the people knew who held their King's powers. It would also be communicated to six other nations except Rabier and Shona, whose King and Queen were still in Korazin. They would attend K'rar's coronation as well as the ceremonial inauguration of the regents.
When Pithadia came to the entrance of the wide gate of the palace, the guards there were already preparing to deal with the approaching hooligans in the distance, so she wasn't hurt by their brusque treatment. Two of the tallest guards—there were 10 of them—came forward from the small room under the watchtower on the wall, and planted themselves before her. Her driver had already vanished from the gate.
'You one of that rowdy crowd?' one of them said. He dwarfed Pithadia by almost a meter, 'the king is a bit busy right now to entertain—'
'I'm a messenger from the Southern Frontier,' she held up the correspondence with Garrera's seal on it.
The two men exchanged a look.
'Let's have a look first,' said the same man.
'Are you mad?' was Pithadia's reply off the cuff.
'Messengers from the south are usually soldiers. You're not a soldier.'
'What the hell, Mouse, just let her in,' another man bungled between the tall dudes, 'you trying to fraternize with her too?'
Pithadia looked away. The men unblocked her way and let her pass. The third man escorted her.
'You've come in from the General?' the man asked, almost breathing on her neck. Pithadia was about to speak when it occurred to her that saying a thing could be dangerous. In fact, she replaced the sealed letter into her garments, and attempted to increase her pace.
'It's confidential,' she said.
'I'll take you up then,' said the man. He was so close it looked rude. Pithadia reassured herself because there was movement on the compound that would prevent the man from making a silly move.
'I can take myself up, thanks,' she said.
'Really, because…'
'Shit, why don't you leave me alone!' she was intentionally loud. The three nearest bodies in the courtyard, including a gardener and a uniformed male servant, didn't miss her alarm.
'Alright, there's no need to be rude. I'll leave you alone,' said the guard. He was clearly agitated, and was slightly biting his lip as if he'd been mortified in public. Pithadia raced ahead, until she encountered one of the many stewards in the main building's portico. He was stationed there to receive the King's visitors only, and Pithadia knew this, so she accepted his offer to escort her up. Since she carried correspondence from the southern frontier, she was an important guest and would survive the bureaucracies involved in getting the king's audience. They went up the first empty staircase, and straight into a long hallway that harbored the entrance to two closed rooms. At the end they went up yet again, then into another corridor to the left. This one culminated into a side entrance to the throne room from behind the throne. Stewards were setting up three ornamental chairs to the left of the King's throne. Pithadia didn't need a prophet to understand what this meant. But that's not why she was here. The boy king and his mother were alone, talking at the other end of the throne's stage, and the steward walked there to whisper to K'rar that he had a visitor. Mom heard it too, so both of them turned around and shot Pithadia a curt look.
'Come over here, girl,' the steward said. Pithadia curtsied and obliged.
'Why did Garrera send a servant girl to the city?' Regent Noor-shan wanted to know. She knew that Garrera always worked with soldiers, or at least a male messenger.
'I am not from Garrera, ma'am,' said Pithadia after making an obsequious bow, 'I am from his wife.'
'His wife?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
She took the letter, and was about to read it, but she hesitated and handed it to K'rar, who also declined to read it, saying it was her business. Nonetheless he watched as her face went white with terror a minute into the reading. The paper was violently shaking in her fingers, either out of anger or out of fear. K'rar didn't ask until she revealed the letter's contents indirectly by saying,
'That son of a bitch!' she cried, 'General Garrera? General Garrera is plotting to kill you! It was him!'
K'rar knew that this meant the poisoning of his father. He was horrified, but not as much as his mother, who understood the bigger picture of this revelation. So when the boy suggested a Royal Forces deployment to arrest the traitor, she completely ignored it, and said aloud with a shaking voice,
'Son did you not say that Garrera requested the deployment of General Hatto's garrison?'
'Yes, why?'
The Queen Mother's face melted, and her jaw sagged. She snatched the boy's hand and pulled him away from the other bodies, so she could whisper a bone-crushing observation,
'K'rar, this is not a one-man plot. It's a coup against you,' she said.
Now K'rar was seriously shaken. He fully understood what this meant. And if the dominoes fell it meant that the Goldoran attack was a fabrication, but that would have been useless to say. Which left only one option. General Garrera was plotting with Goldora. He was still swallowing that bitter pill when he was informed that Lady Esella, the General's wife, had been brought for an infidelity trial.
'Explain,' both he and the Queen Mother turned to Pithadia. She said she was convinced that this was an elaborate scheme by Garrera to plant goat ears on his wife so the wolves could eat her. The Queen Mother was immediately inclined to agree with this version.
'Bring them in,' said Lady Noor-shan.
The throne room would be filled by revelers watching the quick trial, and these would be handpicked by guards to fill the room first, then the parties to the case, the complainant and the defendant, would come in last. The judge to oversee the proceedings didn't need to be fetched from chambers at the main justice building in the south of the city next to the Constabulary. He was already a resident of the palace and a member of the last King's Council. But there would be no judge today. Lady Noor-shan was to preside by herself. K'rar had stationed three guards by the last stair, all of them with their hands by their sheaths. The procession came in. Four Southern Frontier Division guards manhandled the Lady and her alleged adulterous partner, and made them kneel in the center of the hall. Pithadia had been removed from the hall intentionally.
'Good health to you, O King,' said the leader of the four man squad, 'and to you too, my lady.'
Lady Noor-shan was sitting in her chair next to the young king.
'Bring up the papers,' she skipped the idiosyncrasies. The names of all parties involved would be in the papers as well as the complaint details, but usually the complainant would be present here. There was no need to ask why Garrera wasn't here, so all the squad leader had to do was introduce himself. His name was Homshi. He was high in the ranks, a sergeant.
'It's been long since we had an infidelity trial here,' said Noor-shan, 'but I have to say, this makes a good case against her.'
'She's a whore indeed, ma'am. Will you be the judge?'
'Yes. A whore, you say,' came the reply, 'but it seems you have already judged her by dragging her around like this.' This was the custom, so the crowd were not sure what she was talking about. She now arose from her seat, and raised her voice for the 30 people in the hall to hear, 'Let it be known that with effect from today, infidelity marches will be allowed after conviction, and not before. Contravention of this decree will carry heavy sanctions.'
The revelers weren't used to this. The soldiers shared bewildered looks, but this was none of their concern anyway. Conventional infidelity trials had an order of proceedings, and it was time for the conductor-judge to invite the woman and her co-accused to defend themselves or to call their defenders, who would have come with them. But Regent Noor-shan continued the decree,
'Let it be known too, that from here on out, by the King's signet, the option to arraign before a court for infidelity will also extend to wives,' she raised the royal decree, which was made up of less than 100 words and sealed by K'rar. It would have been written quickly before the trial had begun. Rubi, her cousin, was in the balcony overhead with Rukh-shana the queen of Shona. The latter had just endorsed this method of justice, and had ordered her steward to write it down and remind her to implement it immediately once she returned home to Thermos.
'Now,' Noor-shan went on, 'Lady Esella Garrera. Have you anything to say for yourself? If so, arise and do so.'
Lady Esella did rise. The sergeant was disrespectfully sneering at her, to remind her how unlikely it was that her defense would be allowed. She began to speak her honors to the court when Pithadia walked into the room from the door at the back of this stage. Her eyes lit up. She coughed up a delighted smile, and cast a quick glance at her accuser. Sergeant Homshi knew Pithadia, and his haughty temperament quickly disappeared.
'It's alright Lady Esella. You may not say anything.' She made a face gesture to the three royal guards closest to her, who immediately drew their swords and subdued Homshi and his men. They intended to simply disable them, but one of them got a good shot that drew blood, and he was killed. The throne room was shaken. Everyone was looking this way and that and sharing horrified faces. But Noor-shan would explain,
'Listen, all those here today,' said she, 'these men have no case against this lady.' She retrieved Lady Esella's letter, and descended two stairs down, 'This is a letter from this lady that she sent in distress through her attendant. She overheard the plans of the man whom these men work for—to assassinate your king.'
Another shockwave reverberated around the throne room. Even the two monarchs on the balcony didn't expect that one. The Rabian king Gaixa immediately drew closer to Queen Rukh-shana to express his concern, and found the Queen still struggling to come to terms with the declaration. To assassinate the king?
'We know them now. General Garrera, a man we all loved and revered, has turned bad, and as we speak, is amassing a force to attack Chaldea. He's got allies, and one of them is General Hatto, who is among us in this great city. So go tell the tidings, and let everyone know that Korazin is facing dark times.'
She hadn't finished speaking when Ashdud stormed into the room with a horde of guards on his tail. Above, the security detail of the Hone and Rabian monarchs had arrived to snatch them away simultaneously. K'rar knew what was going on. Outside the hall, the clash of swords was loud and clear, as well as groans and screams.
Ashdud was pointing to the other exit,
'We need to go, now!' he was shouting. A hullabaloo was ensuing. The crowd in the throne room would try to exit from there too, so Ashdud wanted to know if they should allow them.
'Who are we running from?' K'rar wanted to confirm the details. Whether the attack on him had begun wasn't in dispute, but how it had begun here at the palace was impossible to determine.
'They infiltrated the palace too. At least 55 men in the Royal Forces are hostiles,' said Ashdud, 'you were right not to trust them.' That number was shockingly large, because the Royal Forces comprised just over 100 men, and they were supposed to protect the King from rare civilian, not military, hostility.
That was true, and General Hatto knew it. He also knew that it was impossible to breach the palace fortress and execute the assassination with an external force, so he had begun working on planting moles almost two years ago. He had recommended new Royal Forces recruits to the head of recruitment, one of the Crown-friendly captains in the military. He had died last year in mysterious circumstances, with a mutilated body and a look of fear on his corpse's face. He had discovered something that he shouldn't have, and General Hatto had accordingly dealt with him. Now the man who had welcomed Pithadia into the palace, who was his lead lapdog, was conducting this palace attack. He was a man with Goldoran roots. He was not General Hatto's choice by error. He had instructed him to carry out the murder as soon as any wind of the plot reached the palace, and had given him leadership of the "home wing" of the attack plan. No one but he and Garrera knew about this. They had installed it as a last ditch effort to achieve the endgame of this whole business, but greatly disliked it for fear of the giant chance it carried of compromising the whole plan. Besides, they had hoped that both king and crown prince would be dispatched by the poison, but out of desperation their mole had had to kill just the king because K'rar just happened to not have appetite on one night, and to be visiting his little girlfriend the other. All this was plan B and its components.
General Hatto was close by. He had arrived this morning, but kept this intelligence from the King. He was the first wave of the attack on the palace. He and his forces, about 400 men, had snuck into the city in small paragraphs to conceal their arrival, and had reassembled near the palace. General Hatto had met up with Parrela, his lead mole in the palace. He was to open the gate for the men from the back, and lock up the palace to prevent any escapes. The 400 men would station themselves in and around the palace, with only one thing on their mind: kill the boy and anyone with his blood. Parrela had directed his own goons to open the gates, and the clash had started immediately. But it was a foregone conclusion. The palace guards fought well, but only for a few minutes. Hatto and his men were seasoned fighters. He kept them busy in constant drills other than just sitting around waiting for a rare confrontation with alien forces or from homegrown skirmishes. His boss' men were better employed, he thought, because a clash with Goldora or its proxies wasn't impossible. In under ten minutes, Hatto's men had overrun the palace grounds, and were almost assembled in the first courtyard, facing the palace entrance.
'No one leaves!' Hatto bellowed the command, 'I want as many men inside the palace now. Find him, and bring him to me.' He wanted the honor of being the man to end the ruling dynasty and planting the seeds for his senior, Garrera, to take over. The men rounded up all non-hostile inmates of the palace into the courtyard and assigned very bellicose soldiers to make sure they didn't get any heroic ideas. 64 men then invaded the palace's main building. The boy and his mother could not have gone far. The men had surrounded the first of three main structures that made up the palace, and were dead sure that no one had passed them. But after almost half an hour, the group inside the palace, including Hatto, had not yet returned. This building did not have such a large surface area nor several rooms to keep them that long. And, there was no way the Royal Forces were mounting a sustained resistance.
There was indeed no resistance. It is not what was making General Hatto apoplectic. What was pissing him off was that in all the two years of putting this grand plan in motion, they had missed a crucial aspect. The palace had an escape route. Of course it did. And General Hatto and his men were standing over it, a hatch that led to a subterranean tunnel, trying to concoct an explanation to Garrera for this. Also, Hatto had 400 men with him, but this newest revelation rendered their numbers moot because they did not know where the tunnel led. Neither could they reopen the hatch leading into it.
'Everyone, out. I want eyes in all places around the palace. Search the city drainage, search the nearest houses, the council ministers' villa, and scour every nook and cranny north of the city,' he bellowed, 'you, go to the courtyard and bring the chief steward to me,' the recipient of the last order went to his inside man, Parrela. That one exited the place with three of his own men. He was just as angry as Hatto for his failure to foresee the possibility of an escape tunnel, but his countenance revealed this better. Being freckled all over his face, he looked like a toad when he got angry.
He found the chief steward, a eunuch, trying to negotiate with the guards to let one maidservant go. One man was holding the maid by the hem of her skirt while she was sobbing on the ground, almost revealing her naked body.
'What is this?!' Parrela hissed. The man released her and stepped aside and said,
'It's nothing, sir. Just some disturbance.'
Parrela signaled his men with a nod to take the steward. The latter didn't resist, but he made sure to stop as he was being dragged past Parrela, to shoot him a furious look. The steward and Parrela had become friends well enough to instill the burning hatred now because of this betrayal.
'Don't take it personal,' was all Parrela said.
The escape hatch was locked from under, so the steward's job was to tell Hatto where it led. The steward's first answer was an obvious denial of the knowledge of its existence.
'You've been in this palace for decades,' Hatto puffed at the steward, 'where does this hatch lead?' Hatto knew the steward from over 20 years ago. That time, the steward was young and happy and had a full head of hair. Now he was a bitter baldheaded old man. He was an odd ten years his senior, but in the room now, Hatto would make sure the old man knew that he was less than an insect. He warned, 'I'm not going to ask again.'
'I don't know.' He had hardly completed the sentence when Hatto's sword flew out of its sheath and landed on his jugular, but only that.
'Don't test my patience old man.'
'Go ahead and do it,' the steward taunted, 'kill me.'
Hatto thought for a moment and then lowered his weapon, letting out a sinister chuckle.
'Pin him down on a chair,' he ordered. Once this was done he added, 'bring three more staff and have them smash a hole beside the hatch.'
The steward's face lit up. Hatto caught it.
'I'll gore a hole through. Then I will take you down and leave you there to rot.'
'Sir,' Parrela was happier, 'that is a marvelous plan. Why did we not think of it earlier?'
But the thought was futile. The concrete was more than three feet thick. This stifled Hatto so greatly that he began to shake and sweat in indignation. When the chief steward laughed loud intentionally, Hatto slit his throat without hesitation.
'We must find them,' he said.
'Sir, we already have the palace,' Parrela inputted, 'there should be…'
'Shut up!' snapped Hatto, 'even if General Garrera has the palace and that boy is living in a pigsty, the pigsty is grander than the palace.' And he stormed out.
Chief Magistrate Maldab was a 71 year old man who had presided over the second highest court in the land for 30 years. Maldab was also very rich, living on a nine-acre ranch just outside the city. He had outgrown the villas. Either that or he had chosen to extract himself from the buzz of aristocracy and prepare for his retirement. He was a family man. His parents, who died in the same year 11 years ago, had been the opposite. They constantly fought, even in old age, and at some point both of them had left the family, and his eldest sister had to take care of them. The years that followed contained constant crises, until the Magistrate's big break came when he participated in a fugitive manhunt and helped capture a criminal who had gone on a killing spree. It had been an upward curve since, and through his decades in law enforcement he had made friends and enemies. One friend of his was Garrera, who hailed from the same village and who had been his friend since childhood. They had struggled together, and he had in fact spent several years in the care of Garrera's family. Their paths eventually parted when Garrera pursued a military career as opposed to his political one. But Maldab also made enemies, and they just happened to be in the confines of the Korazin palace. And that made him a crucial part of Garrera's sinister plan. Although Garrera, in the old days, simply wanted to establish himself as a mighty warrior, he now took Maldab's disposition somehow and wanted a seat of power. Maldab didn't oppose him. He joined forces immediately, and was tasked with preparing the political or administrative atmosphere, while Garrera dealt with the military requirements. It was Maldab who had in fact given the last signal to start the operation, because by the time Garrera was done preparing the forces and brokering a deal with the enemy, Maldab was a long way from completion of his ministerial infiltration. In the end they had outlasted the king, and by the time the ruler became aware of something rotten, it was too late. But he had managed to save his son, and now the boy was already causing problems to the plotters.
Tonight, Maldab was out in the dark with a small force of 24 men. He had received correspondence that the king had managed to give the invaders of the palace the slip through a secret escape hatch. Maldab knew about it, but knew more than Hatto and his men. He knew where the tunnel led, so he was out racing toward the city's northeastern gate, one of the smaller gates on the wall apart from the four main ones. This part of the city was quiet, made up of carefree small scale merchants and some bourgeoisie and pauper residences. It was a race against time for both the king, underground, and Maldab's 24 men. But Maldab's men were on horseback, and the distance was short enough for them to get there at least in time to prevent the king from leaving the city. One of the men was a courier, who was to detach from the group and race to inform Hatto of this operation.
The king arrived at the end of the long tunnel about 2 hours later. The tunnel was old and laden with cobwebs and rodents, and by the time they had come to the end of it, K'rar was thinking this was one of his worst nights. The orifice through which they exited it was a perfectly camouflaged door in the back of a small waterfall of the Abishec rivulet. They had had to climb the rock to the surface, so they all paused to catch a break in the cavern behind the waterfall. K'rar had 18 men with him apart from Pithadia, Lady Esella and Queen Mother Noor-shan. Ashdud and another man walked to the mouth of the cave and peeped. The descent was not deep at all. It was navigable if they climbed down, then up again into the silent city. They still had some way to travel to the gate.
'Your Majesty,' Ashdud announced, 'we can climb down and head to the wall on foot.'
They had to help down the women first, and then K'rar. The rocks were slippery and precarious. One of them slipped and drenched himself in the shallow drink beneath. He was hurt, but that was the least of their concerns. He had hardly received his mocking laugh from his colleagues when this was cut short by the sound of approaching footsteps.
'Quick, this way!' Ashdud said in a loud whisper, and they moved up to the bank. The footsteps were on the opposite bank, but nothing was visible in the dark. They successfully scaled up the bank and onto a thin road behind some small houses, and then it happened. First, one horseman rode from in front of the houses, carrying a torch. K'rar's men surrounded him to conceal his presence, a moot point, as their uniforms identified them anyway.
'Who are you?' the horseman demanded, moving the torch this way and that to see if he could recognize the faces. K'rar knew this question was a little more than just a formality before the conflict begun. Everyone knew that these were King's Guard, there was no need to ask.
'Who's asking?' Ashdud shot back the question. The horseman rode closer.
'I'm a resident constable here. I am assigned tonight's watch,' said the man, 'and I am a bit concerned that a large group of armed soldiers is skulking around my area this late at night.'
'As you can see, Constable, all of us here outrank you. So why don't you cut the crap and explain this insolence?'
The horseman did cut the small talk. He nodded mildly, smirked and chuckled nonchalantly, and yelled into the night,
'We found them!'
Several horses suddenly appeared from the darkness, and about 7 of the riders held torches so that the place was illuminated. One rider came last, and this one looked different from the others. He was their master, Maldab the Chief Magistrate.
'Maldab,' cried Ashdud. And he drew his sword, encouraging the rest of his team to do so.
'I see you have chosen the hard way,' said the Chief Magistrate. His men jumped off their horses into the narrow space, and drew, 'take His Majesty and the Queen Mother alive. Kill the rest.'
Ashdud's men were few, but were armored and war-trained men in contrast to Maldab's band of paid mercenaries.
Ashdud and three others surrounded the king, and the battle ensued. Being surrounded in a narrow space, they were on the defensive for the larger period of the fight, and most of them were killed, until it was eight against twelve. But this was advantageous to Ashdud and his men. There were less horses to deal with, and the eight remaining were the best fighters in the whole Guard Brigade. It was by design that it was them who went with the king everywhere.
'Stay directly behind me, Your Majesty,' he bellowed, and lunged. He was known for feinting his approach, for striking the second man before the first. The two fighters in front of him stood no chance. But the defense was opened, and one exceptional opponent managed to snatch Queen Mother Noor-shan, and put a knife to her neck.
'Stand down, or I will kill her!'
Everything stopped. His master had ordered him to take her alive of course, but it was his knife that would make the final decision. Still, Ashdud used the pause to cut open his nearest opponent.
'I said, drop your weapons!'
The king was still by Ashdud's side. He, too, wielded a weapon. He knew how to use one, quite well actually, but only just in case. He was only 13 and could not hope to fell a grown man. Lady Esella and Pithadia were flanked by three enemies and one friend, but the former were all interested in the latter, pointing his weapons at him.
'My son,' the Queen Mother was saying this as if they were her final words, with a soft, weeping voice, 'you have to go even if they kill me. Ashdud, take him away!'
Ashdud was about to resume fighting when Maldab yelled,
'If you run away, Your Majesty, I can't guarantee your mother's safety!'
Two men advanced toward K'rar. Ashdud dismissed them quickly.
'Mother, I can't do that,' a weepy K'rar protested.
'It is you they want, not me,' Noor-shan explained, still being held by the soldier, 'you are the only one who can stop this, even by just being alive.'
There were nine men left to the magistrate now, but against Ashdud's best eight they were no match, and they knew this. They became reluctant to attack. The one pinning the Queen Mother dragged her from the fray, and now it was evenly matched.
'Listen carefully Your Majesty,' said Maldab, 'I wouldn't kill your mother at any time, but if you don't come, I will have to take her to my masters, who aren't very merciful.'
'You traitor,' Ashdud hissed, 'you will pay for this.'
'Chief guard, you are in no position to make threats.' The title "Chief Guard" was an offensive title, not a title at all.
'Your Majesty,' said Ashdud to K'rar, 'we must leave this place, with or without Her Highness.'
'They will kill her,' said K'rar softly.
'K'rar, you must go. Hatto and his men could be here soon,' the Queen Mother urged her son. She was now shedding a tear.
They fought off four other men without casualties on their side, so that the rest began to retreat.
'Let them go.' Maldab ordered. 'Don't say you weren't warned, Your Majesty!'
Ashdud and his men took eleven horses, although Pithadia had to share with one of the men because she couldn't ride.
'If you come after us, I will kill you,' Ashdud warned the magistrate.
'You can run,' the magistrate spat back, calmly, 'but there's nowhere you can hide that we can't find you. Our men are all over the country.'
The horses turned and galloped away.
'What shall we do now?' one of Maldab's remnants asked him.
'Do nothing,' he said to the soldier, 'this wasn't a desirable outcome, but it was accounted for.'