Told In Stone Chapter 10: Incognito

The crashing noise that came from the chamber was followed by chorus of high pitched laughter. Halfway down the hallway, two young chambermaids who had been arranging the same vase of flowers for half an hour erupted into another fit of silent giggles.

Riot stood guard, glaring at the crack in the plaster of the wall in front of him. The young Faelen Prince seemed the type to hump anything that moved, and the bottomless purse to secure it. Riot couldn’t blame him, war was filled with dull moments made better by a tumble and a warm body by your side.

He let the memory of Natalia’s last visit carry him away from the dingy hallway. She had come to him three nights ago, and left in the blue hour before dawn, not before scolding him on his lack of progress with the leypower.

Riot tried the technique once again, drawing the leypower not out of the rutted scars on his forearms, but out of his skin. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he willed the grey light to bleed from his skin. After half an hour his reserves were gone, and the empty channels in his body burned with a warning that he would not be able to touch the leylines again for at least a day.

Natalia Quinn, could fade into an ally on a dark night, but all Riot managed was a thumb that seemed slightly more darkened than the rest of his skin, through it was more likely just the shadow thrown by the cheap oil lamps.

The door to the Princes rooms flew open and his tutor emerged, her face flushed as she pulled her dress straight. “Lieutenant,” she said with a prim nod. “The Prince has indicated that he wishes to speak with you.”

“Lesson over is it?” Riot asked.

She threw him a haughty glare and strode off down the hall, past the still giggling chambermaids.

“Nate, Nate!” Called the high pitched voice from inside.

Prince Gwilhelm, the first of his name, heir to the throne of a powerful Faelen house, lounged on a long sofa plucking grapes from a silver tray. At least he had bothered to put on a robe this time. It was blue silk, covered with exotic birds.

“Your highness?” Riot asked.

Gwilhelm rolled his eyes. “Please will you cease to be so formal?” He stood to attention, saluting and marching on the spot. “Yes sir, no sir!” He barked as the giggling from the hallway turned into fully fledged hysterics.

Riot coughed. “Your robe, your highness,” he said, pushing the door closed.

Gwilhelm snatched the flimsy garment closed with a pout and threw himself back down on the sofa. “Paulie!” He shrilled.

The prices ancient valet entered from a side door, back bent with age, his long Faelen ears tufted with wiry white hair. “Yes, your highness?”

“Fire Isabel, the woman is an infernal distraction. Go and find me a new tutor, an old one, the uglier the better, someone who looks like their face has been staved in with a fire poker.”

“Yes, your highness.”

This was the boys third tutor in as many weeks. They could try to find ugly, but Riot thought that the boy would likely hump a half blind swamp hag.

The Prince pouted and threw a grape back into the bowl. “I wish my old tutor Hemler were here, he smelled like a barrel of old turnips, but he had a singular mind.” The Prince reached for a small note book and delicately touched the nib of a thin pencil to his tongue. “Now Nate, tell me, how many intimate partners have you had would you say?” He looked up expectantly, pencil hovering over the page. “Less than fifty?”

“Your highness, I really don’t–”

“Come now, Nathan. I owe you my life and you will let me repay you. I know you are self conscious about your weak command of the leypower and my technique will help you plumb their mysterious depths.”

“My lord, when I said I would like the same power as the Faelen I didn’t mean–”

The prince cut him off with a gesture. “I know what you meant, and I will make you great. Haha! Nate the Great!”

There was a neat rap on the door and Riot pulled it open to reveal the innkeeper, a portly man with his remaining hair gently teased over his sweating pate. He bowed and scraped, presenting two crisp letters before backing out, still in a half bow and pulling the door closed.

Gwilhelm threw the note pad aside and seized the letters, ripping them open. “Our invitations to the ball! I hope you have found something better to wear than those rags.”

“At the menders, your highness, needed more brocade,” Riot said automatically.

The Prince watched him carefully, resting a long finger on his lips. “Roveran is hosting a ball tonight Nate, as you well know. You also know that I wish you to join me as my equerry. Ritta Kerne said that you had to follow my orders, did she not?”

“She said I was to stand guard,” Riot corrected.

Gwilhelm threw open a chest and started to pull out items of clothing, making noises of distaste and flinging them across the room. “Then you can guard me into this miserable town to find you something decent to wear.”

“Don’t you have enough to choose from in there?” Riot asked.

“You know Nate, there is a well known saying,” Gwilhelm rattled of a stream of syllables in the lilting Faelen tounge as he held a florid shirt with a drooping lace collar to his chest. “Roughly translated to ‘Choice is ever the curse of the Faelen’.”

Riot’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll have the carriage brought around.” The Prince would just wear him down anyway and if he was honest he liked him. Gwilhelm didn’t have any of the stuffy arrogance of the aristocracy, and genuinely seemed to want to enjoy life.

“No carriages,” Gwilhelm exclaimed, pulling a nondescript cloak with a deep hood from the chest and flinging it around his bony shoulders. “We are going incognito. I want to mix with the common man, feel the beating heart of the Arcanum regiments.”

“You’re wearing enough gold to keep half a battalion sodden in ale for a month, it’s too dangerous.” Riot said.

The pout returned, pulling soft lines in the young princes face. “How can I be in danger when I have you, Nate the great?”

They passed close to the gateway to the Faelen Echo on their way into the town of Gravetree. A hundred paces wide and fifty yards high, its tattered edges fluttering between the living world and the red land that had served as a Faelen prison for over a thousand years.

Now that the battle was over, ranks and ranks of uniformed figures marched through the gateway, alongside platoons of cavalry and a seemingly unending line of wagons and carriages. Horses snorted and drivers yelled at each other. Guards shouted for order and officers rode through it all, demanding that their regiments be allowed to pass first.

Another crowd waited sullenly to the side of the road. Wagons of timber, tools, merchants caravans, entire families sat miserably huddled under waxed tarpaulins. These were the frontiers people, the pioneers, and opportunists, miners and prospectors, merchants and crooks, pimps and whores. The red land was open and full of Faelen gold.

“I wish to go to an alehouse, a real soldiers alehouse, with straw on the floor, and a bard playing the lute, common soldiers arm in arm singing songs of glorious victories,” Gwilhelm declared.

In the town of Gravetree, the straw on the floor of the ale houses would be rotten, the only bards were the wounded playing battered flutes for a few coppers, and if ever common soldier were arm in arm, it was because one was trying to kill the other.

“Let’s just get what we need and go,” Riot replied.

“Excuse me, sir, are you an officer?” came a woman’s voice from behind.

She wore a simple sensible dress tied with a belt, and threads of blond hair escaped the white bonnet on her head. Riot was never good at ages, but at best he would guess she was only a few years younger than him, that would put her around thirty, certainly no young maiden anymore but he certainly didn’t need the jab in the ribs from the Prince to tell that she was pretty.

“Ask her if she teaches. Any subject at all it doesn’t matter,” Gwilhelm hissed.

“I’m a Lieutenant,” Riot replied with a slight inclination of his head. “Can I help you miss?”

“We are trying to get into the Echo, but the guards won’t let us through, is there anything you can do?”

Riot followed her gaze to a sturdy wagon that had been pulled out of the line. Two uniformed Erudoran guards were talking with a man who gesticulated wildly. He wore a rough brown cassock tied with string at the waist, and the top of his head was shaved in a circle, leaving a crown of hair all around his head. “You’re missionaries?”

“Yes, from the Lost Coast. This wagon was blessed by the first priest of the Prior herself, we are on a mission to provide enlightenment to the heathens of the Echo,” the woman said.

The Erudoran guards watched Riot warily. “I’m sorry, there’s not much I can do. You’d best do what they say and wait. The army will be through in a day, I’m sure you can go through then.”

Instead of the quiet acceptance he expected, he saw a flash of anger on the girls face and felt the same tension he felt when someone drew a weapon on him. But in a moment it was gone and he wasn’t sure that he saw it at all.

“I have to go miss, my companion is waiting for me,” Riot said.

“What companion?” The woman asked, peering past Riot.

The muddy street behind them was almost empty, with no sign of Gwilhelm.

“Damn it,” Riot cursed.