Queen in the Mud: Book 2, Chapter 11

Chapter 11

~ Kaleb ~

Kaleb Mel-vu Reinarr strode through a street swaddled in a filthy, tan-and-white cloth, the ruddy light of his lantern making up for the absence of moonlight.

The commoner stink of this place seeped into his lungs. The commoner filth seeped into his boots. In the daylight, and among the moldering, leather-faced commoner masses, this place would be festooned with beasts dressed in metal necklaces. Even now, a few of those slitted eyes watched him from the dark places where his lantern light failed to reach.

He unconsciously moved his hand to where his purse would be, forgetting for a moment that it was hidden under his full plate armor.

Kaleb knew of some men of eccentric taste who had a proclivity to these sorts of creatures, but he himself had never understood the attraction. He’d been raised to think of these beasts as unsightly, so he did. He’d been raised to think of them as less than human, so he did.

Kaleb spared only a passing consideration for this as he stubbornly struggled to keep up his pace under the heavy weight of metal armor. He had stayed a half dozen steps ahead of his platoon, not wanting to associate with the common soldiers, but unwilling to risk the captain’s wrath for straying too far from the formation.

The beating to his ass and upper thighs from the other day still ached horribly, and had left his entire lower half a mass of throbbing purple bruises. Sitting was agony, and walking in heavy plate armor was just nearly as miserable.

Kaleb had abandoned his post to go drinking with friends. At the time, and even now, he’d considered himself to be in the right; it was a clearly misinformed assignment that should have gone to a common soldier rather than himself. The captain, upon discovering Kaleb’s dereliction of duty, had set the men on him with sticks to beat his ass until he cried. His face burned in affronted rage and embarrassment at the memory.

He had brought the matter to his father, who had promptly summoned the captain to his manor. Kaleb, smoldering with fury at the indignity of his treatment, felt certain that his father would have the captain’s head, or at the very least divest him of his position in the city guard. The captain was only a commoner, and he had ordered the assault of a nobleman.

Instead, Kaleb listened in throbbing pain, dread and bewilderment as his own father voiced approval and even gratitude to a kneeling Captain Hobbes. Even worse than the betrayal itself, his father had given license to continue dispensing punishment as the captain saw fit.

The reality of his situation filled Kaleb with an inarticulate horror at the prospect of arduous service to Belshaad’s city guard, and the many more beatings that were sure to come.

“Kaleb,” called out the gravelly voice of Captain Hobbes.

Kaleb came to a grudging halt and cast a wary glance over his shoulder. The platoon had paused to question one of the few commoners who were still on the street at this hour. He heard one of them ask about the strange and monstrous creature they had been tasked with finding.

They said, “Have you seen a creature with an animal skull for its head?”

~ Naomi ~

Maps, as it turned out, were expensive. This was particularly true regarding detailed maps of the northern realms, a place for which few people who could afford such a map would actually want to visit. I considered it a worthy investment, though, and had purchased a high quality map of the tribal lands which was unfurled in front of me and illuminated under the warm light of the inn’s hearth.

It stretched from coast to coast, depicting the lands between the unclaimed northern forests and the civilized kingdoms at the southern border. Belshaad made an appearance at the very southwestern corner on the coast.

Aside from the established kingdoms at the southern edge, there were no clear borders drawn in between the holdings that dotted the map. This was ostensibly due to the fundamental instability of the tribal governments that ruled this region of the world, and the frequency with which territory was gained and lost. It was a real accomplishment for a ruler in this area to unify even three holdings under their banner due to the fickle, aggressive nature of the native populace. Often, those lands would be lost to succession, leaving most of the holdings as insular entities with strained regional politics.

Further complicating the mess were the kleptocracies; governments that held banditry and raiding as core to their economic philosophy. These represented the most dangerous, most organized and most aggressive forces of the northern realms. Worse, no map could definitively say which holding was or was not one of these raider states, as all of them had the capability of turning aggressive should the right upstart seize power.

I tapped one of my claws against the wood of the table as I considered all of this. It was a headache, but it was one I needed to navigate if I wanted to be a real ruler in this world, rather than playing monarch in a tree fort to the north. These were our closest neighbors. I needed to take careful stock of them.

“What’s she doing?” Myrin asked.

“She’s been staring at that map for the last ten minutes.” Carter observed.

“Sounds spectacularly boring,” Myrin noted, waving his tankard in the air dramatically. A little liquid sloshed over the side.

“I don’t know,” Carter shrugged his broad shoulders with a smile. “Maybe it’s a really interesting map?”

“You know I can hear you, right? You’re sitting right next to me.” I gave the pair of them a reproachful look and they both laughed over tankards of amber liquid. A little smile found its way to my face, too.

These two were Myrin and Carter, a pair of cat-eared youths who had made the long journey with us from Enzirus. They were twins, though you couldn’t tell from looking at them. Myrin was tall and lanky, with a fox-like grin that took up permanent residence on his face. Quick, agile and with sharp eyes, Myrin had promptly established himself as the best archer out of everyone in our new village, able to hit a choko-choko from almost twice the distance as anyone else.

Carter was a little shorter, but a good bit wider and more muscular than his brother. He had all the rough features of a brute, but in reality, he was as kind and patient a soul as you could find. He liked helping Sib gather flowers and herbs, and had even asked to learn the Elsian sign language so that he could better communicate with her.

“Thaddius has been telling us his war stories,” Myrin said through a lopsided grin. “I think some of them might even be true.”

“Is that so?” I rested my elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Thaddius, what are you filling their heads with?”

“The truth!” He mirthfully exclaimed from the other side of the table, face red from drink. “It’s not my fault that my exploits are so exceptional that they strain belief.”

“Exceptional exploits?” I repeated, chuckling lightly. Curious, and willing to entertain a brief distraction from my coveted map, I decided to prod him on. “Such as?”

“Right,” Thaddius nodded soberly for a second, and I could tell he was thinking. He straightened up a moment later. “Did I tell you about the time I fought a beetle the size of a house,” He paused, his wooden chair creaking as he leaned forward, “While completely naked?”

Myrin choked on his drink and managed a surprised, “What!”

“Why were you naked?” Carter asked, leaning away from his coughing brother.

“Ah, that,” Thaddius airily continued, waving his hand dismissively, “A girl, the middle of the woods, such and such. It’s a long story. Anyway, so I’m naked, fighting this giant beetle--”

“Did you at least have a sword?”

“Oh he had his sword out, alright,” Myrin cackled.

I thumped him lightly on the arm chidingly while everyone laughed. Myrin bobbed his head in a lax apology while wearing his usual fox-like grin.
“So anyway! I’m fighting this house of a beetle, my midnight lover has just absconded with my clothing, no sword, no weapons but my own two fists. I’m having it out with this big bastard, but his shell is too tough and my punches aren’t landing with enough force.”

Thaddius paused to take a swig of his drink. “I have to try something new, and I figure maybe it’s got less armor on its underside. I rolled between its legs, thick as tree trunks and sharp as spears. This thing’s trying to stomp me out the whole time, so I just start punching. And I keep punching. Beetle’s screaming, thrashing around, blood and guts everywhere. I keep punching, but this thing just won’t die. So I start looking for weak points.”

Carter cut in with a quick question. “Weak points?”

“Organs, eyes, arteries, that kind of thing. I’ve got the Critical Eye skill, it shows me where the weak spots are, places where I can do the most damage.” Thaddius leaned forward to demonstrate, pointing to his right eye. A moment later, his eye turned a bright, blood red. He held it for a second, looking between everyone at the table, before letting it fade back to his usual blue eyes. Even Sib curiously glanced up from her work.

“What! I want that skill!” Myrin said, voice full of envy. Honestly, I agreed with him. It sounded like an extremely useful skill.

“It’s a rare one. Tricky to get, need to study a lot of monster anatomy,” Thaddius explained.

“You were looking for weak points on the beetle,” I said, prompting the story on.

“Right. So by now I’ve made a pretty good crater in its underbelly, so I just climb right in and start looking for organs.”

Carter’s expression was somewhere between awestruck and disgusted. “You climbed into the beetle?”

“I don’t think you appreciate just how big this beetle was - I was basically just tickling him until I went and climbed in. So I’m in there, punching my way through a good stretch of beetle guts, naked as the day I was born, and I finally reach one of its organs. I crush the slimy thing and the beetle goes completely still. Then it started vibrating.”

“Now, my danger sense is going off like crazy, so I fight my way free, slide out in a waterfall of green goo and just start running. Good thing, too, because a minute later?” Thaddius slammed a fist into the table. “Boom! This mountain of a beetle explodes, sending slimy meat, chitin, legs flying everywhere. Knocks over trees, sends me flying.”

“You punched a beetle until it exploded.” Myrin shook his head in amused disbelief. “No way. I don’t buy it.”

“Best part of it all?” Thaddius continued in steadfast disregard of Myrin’s commentary. “When I made it home, naked and covered in stinking green beetle guts, my very proper, high society mother took one look at me and nearly fainted.” He leaned back, a proud smile stretching across his bearded face. “First time I ever washed myself in an animal trough.”

“What about the girl?” Carter asked, looking hopeful. “Did you get to meet with her again?”

“...Get to?” Myrin repeated after his brother, giving him a sidelong glance. “What would he want with a girl who steals his clothes?”

“Maybe it was just a little prank,” Carter innocently replied. “Could be she didn’t know there was a monster out there, then got scared off when it showed up.”

Myrin rolled his eyes and waved a hand dismissively. “She just wanted his stuff.”

“You’re both wrong,” announced Thaddius as he folded his arms. “Whole thing turned out to be a botched political assassination. Those are pretty standard fare in my corner of the world, but I need to give them credit. Never had someone try to kill me with a beetle before. The girl was a nice touch, too.”

“Oh, I’m sure she was.” Myrin grinned impishly as another bout of laughter swept over our table.

Thaddius, still with an easy smile on his face, abruptly stood up and casually moved to sit next to me. I gave him a questioning look and he just shrugged. “Call it intuition,” he said.

There was a loud bang as the door to the inn flew open. An armored soldier in the livery of Belshaad’s city guard stepped inside. He was surprisingly young, at maybe eighteen, and looked over the inn’s patrons with an ill-tempered scowl. That, and the fact that he was rhythmically rapping his fingers against the hilt of his sword helped sell the image of someone spoiling for a fight.

“Something I can help you with, sir?” The portly innkeeper called out, a hint of worry in his voice.

“We’re looking for someone,” The armored young man nearly spat the words out, his voice thick with disdain. “Just stay there and let us go about our business.”

A couple more armored soldiers filed into the inn, all in the same uniform of shining plate and cloth tabard. One of which was an older, balding man with a gray mustache who frowned at the jumped up younger soldier.

“With our luck…” I said to Thaddius.

He nodded, whispering back to me. “Rumors travelled faster than we thought. Go for the stairs, blow a hole in the roof, and vault our people to safety. I’ll hold them off.”

“Can you?”

“I can.”

I looked at the concerningly large squad of heavily armored soldiers, but Thaddius’s expression was unwavering. The young soldier finally spotted us and, as expected, immediately began marching towards our table. He had a kind of funny way of walking.

“Okay,” I whispered in reply, “but I want to try talking, first.”

Thaddius gave a small nod of understanding.

“You!” The soldier said as he approached our table. He was glaring at Sib, of all people. She calmly set down what she’d been working on and turned one green eye to peer at him.

“Is there some sort of problem?” I asked, looking between him and Sib.

The young man shot me a contemptuous glance and flicked his hand in my direction dismissively. “I’ve no business with you, lizard.” He jabbed his chin towards Sib. “You! Leave your garbage and get up. You’re coming with me.”

Thaddius and I shared a puzzled look. “Uh, can we ask what this is about?”

“I said to be quiet, lizard!” He nearly shouted at me. Behind him, the balding gray haired guardsman with the mustache ran a hand over his face in clear exasperation.

“Why is it always lizard this, lizard that. It’s like no one’s ever heard of a salamander before,” I lamented to Thaddius, who gave me a conciliatory look.

“Kaleb, I think you’ve done enough for one night,” came the enervated voice of the armored older man with the mustache. He walked to our table with the casual ease of someone who had been wearing that armor for decades. Unlike his younger companion, he didn’t look at all like he had the world’s worst wedgie. “Go wait outside the inn.”

The young man turned his sneer on the mustached old soldier. “I’m doing the stupid job, aren’t I? I’m following my orders!”

“Well,” the older man said in the tone of someone talking to a slow-witted child, “Now your orders are to go wait outside the inn. Are you refusing to follow your orders?”

The color drained out of the younger man’s face and he quickly bowed his head. “N-no. I’ll go,” he stammered out before quickly retreating for the inn’s door, stepping around the old soldier as he went. More of a waddle, really.

“Apologies about the boy,” the mustache man said with a small bow of his head. “The kid’s got spirit, but he’s something of a…” He looked up at the ceiling, swirling his hand in a lazy circle as though trying to conjure the right word out of the air.

“Witless knob?” Thaddius offered.

“Eloquently put,” the old soldier agreed. “This is what you get when a nobleman shoves his son into the local military in the hopes that the sneering brat learns some discipline. Ends up dragging the flag through the mud.”

“Condolences,” Thaddius replied.

“Mmm,” he nodded gratefully.

“Uh,” I deftly said, drawing the attention of both men. “What’s all this about?”

“Right, right. Your friend here,” he said, nodding to Sib, “has received a court summons from Duke Callister, ruler of Belshaad. We’re to deliver… this individual, to the palace grounds.”

Thaddius and I shared another bewildered look. Even Sib looked confused in her own mildly disturbing way. “A court summons? Why?”

“Haven’t the faintest.”

“You don’t know?”

“No,” and he actually looked a little peeved as he said this, “They wouldn’t say.”

“...Okay. And if we refuse?”

He shook his head. “There’s no we. The summons only includes one person, the one with the skull mask. Attendance is compulsory.”

“So you’re arresting her,” Thaddius said, folding his arms.

“No, no.” The old soldier gave a tired smile. “If this was an arrest, we would be having a very different conversation. This is an invitation. It just happens to be mandatory.”

I looked at Sib in concern, and she shook her head. “It’s alright. I’ll go,” she signed to me. Sib stood up and the mustached man gave an approving nod. He turned to head for the door. Just like that, they were going to take away one of my people.

“Wait.” I called out, standing up as the two of them started walking. “She can’t speak. If you want them to be able to talk to her, they’ll need an interpreter. Let me go with you.”

This, strictly speaking, wasn’t actually true. Sib was perfectly capable of writing - It was how she had been selling her concoctions to the city alchemists and healers. She even kept a slate on her person for that very purpose. That, however, wasn’t something that they needed to know. I wasn’t about to let them steal one of my people right out from under my nose.

“...Naomi,” Thaddius said in a low, warning tone next to me.

“You don’t want to have to come back here when they realize she can’t talk, do you?” I quickly added, heading off Thaddius’s objections. He looked concerned.

The older man looked at Sib, frowning. She, for her part, let out a little hissing blurble in her native language. He let out a deep sigh. “Fine, you win. But no one else. Let’s go.”

Thaddius stood up next to me, but I held up a hand to him, then pointed to my tail.

My transmitter tail ability, in addition to enabling long distance communication, had the tertiary benefit of being completely silent. I could have a conversation with someone with the people around me none the wiser. The tip of my tail wiggled up into the air until I got a lock, then I spoke directly into Thaddius’s mind.

Stand by until I give the order. I’m not letting her go alone.

Thaddius replied: We know nothing about this ‘Duke Callister,’ nor what his motivations for taking Sib might be. You could be throwing yourself into a pit of snakes for all we know.

I grinned at him. I’ve fought some pretty big snakes. I think I can handle it. Plus, I’ve got you as backup. When I say the word, I’m counting on you to come running.

“I hate to interrupt your silent staring contest, but could we move this along?” The old soldier called out from the other side of the inn, cutting through the chatter of activity that had started back up among the inn’s patrons. I spotted the freckled waitress from before shooting worried looks between us and the soldiers.

Thaddius frowned, but finally conceded. “Be careful.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “I will. Take care of things here,” I told him. His frown deepened. Then, before turning to leave, I gave both Myrin and Carter a reassuring smile. Neither of them looked reassured, but they both wished me well.

“What did you do?” I asked Sib in a whisper as we left the inn with the soldiers.

She didn’t know.

~~~

During the day, the market streets of Belshaad were a vibrant and clamorous bustle of life, barter and industry.

At night, these same streets transformed into an uneasy, winding network of moving shadows as lantern light played along the edges of foreign architecture. Flashing eyes peered out from the gaps between buildings, only to retreat into darkness a moment later. We walked in relative silence, only the rustle of metal armor marking the quiet of night.

Ahead was a metal gate, manned by a number of soldiers in the same regalia of those who had accompanied us. There was a slight confusion as the mustached captain explained why he had brought two people when only one was expected. They sent someone ahead of us to inform the palace staff while they opened the gates to permit our entry.

The palace itself mirrored the same irregular and sloping shapes as the other buildings of Belshaad. The difference was one of magnitude and sloping, irregular height. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was grandiose; remarkable in its strangeness.

There was a man in sharp and colorful noble vestments standing before a set of massive, ostentatious double doors set in a mantle laced with golden filigree of vines and leaves. The nobleman went pale when he saw the two of us, and I had a hard time blaming him. Sib was creepy enough to look at during the day, let alone in the darkness of night.

All the same, he swept into a reserved bow, speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear in a tone rich with practiced decorum. “Welcome, honored guests, to the palace of Belshaad.”