Bandaging the corporal would have gone more smoothly if the craptacular asshat who Elbana was currently trying to hold down on the rough wooden table of the barrack’s mess hall would just stop struggling and squirming at her ministrations. The man had three broken ribs that she knew of, a badly broken left arm, and a broken nose. She suspected the corporal, possibly “Mayhew,” might have more extensive damage, but with his worming about on the broad table, covering his face with his hands, and making an uncomfortably high pitched and repetitive squeaking noise, all worked to keep Elbana and the two Under Captain’s on duty this morning from being effective in discerning the extent of the injuries.

Elbana, Lady of the Court, Captain of the Palace Guard, and Master of Horse to King Myrl of Rhiada, was getting tired of this kind of bullshit. She had now been in command of the Palace Guard, the City Garrison, had oversight duty on the City Watch, and was one of five Command Officers who made up the King’s Military Circle, for three months.

And for the bulk of those three months, she spent the Lion’s Share of her daylight hours doing paperwork, and signing forms brought to her by every functionary who thought they had a Gods given mandate to oversee and nitpick everything in which she had been put in charge of. On the brief mornings or afternoons when she could put on her REAL armor and go out to the practice yards to drill the troops specifically under her direct command, she wound up dealing with a constant barrage of soldiers getting injured either through equipment failure, or incompetence.

Corporal Possibly-Mathew had been working with his mount on riding pell practice. This would usually entail a soldier on horseback riding a zigzag pattern through a slalom of posts, using a blunt sword to knock targets from off the top of each post as they rode past. Today, apparently, it meant a soldier, Possibly-Mayhew, riding for a possibly twenty strides before swinging wildly at the first sandbag target, missing, losing his grip on the sword, and falling to the ground as he overextended… only to be trodden upon by his own mount.

Elbana worked to hold the man down now as she and two of the Guard Captains worked to bandage the man up enough so that he wouldn’t die of shock or blood loss before the actual doctors could make their way to this mess hall.

“...weeeeb…!” The idiot squealed at Elbana as she tied another strip of clean cloth around his profusely bleeding forearm where it was bent at almost a right angle a hand-width below the elbow.

She looked down at the idiot, and with the hand she had just freed up from tying the knots in the absorbent cloth, tilted his head so that his snot dripping visage faced her and said, “Come on, now, Guardsman. You can do this.”

She was a decent liar, when she gave herself permission.

“Breath through the pain. We have the leeches on their way, and they will get your arm set. And your nose…uhm …set.” Maybe not a decent liar. “And once they have your ribs bound, they can give you a sleeping draught. That’s going to be nice, right?”

“...weeeebweebweebweeb…!” Possibly-Mayhew was not the best conversationalist at the moment. Blood and mucus covered the man’s face, tunic and tabard.

She turned to one of the stable hands who had helped to carry him into the mess hall at her orders. “Boney Pete, if you would please. Go. Get the doctors here. …Now.”

Just before lunch, a freshly scrubbed and redressed Elbana had walked into the Royal Receiving Room to deliver her weekly reports to Myrl where he was supposedly receiving a delegation from the eastern city state of Parthique. She had planned to use the excuse of delivering the reports for the dual purposes of seeing that the Guard were performing their jobs properly, and to see what kind of delegation Parthique had sent.

The grandly decorated room she had entered was now littered with broken furniture, and utterly lacking in a King, his retinue, and a delegation from a foreign power seeking to establish a grain trade. What it did have, however, was several very solemn palace servants cleaning up several broken chairs, what looked like a feast table’s worth of broken crockery and plates, and several large bloodstains.

“Who is in charge here?” She demanded. Elbana thought she should be commended for her calm and utterly level tone.

One of the women who stood against the wall to her left stepped forward and curtsied to the Master of Horse and Sword. With a slight clearing of her throat, the woman softly said “I am, Mistress.” She bobbed again, not wanting to meet the imposing Lady Elbana eye to eye. “Lady, M’Lord Ashe said to clear this mess up before the dinner hour, Ma’am.” Another bobbed curtsy and a half bow was added for emphasis.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Your name, please?”

The woman looked horrified, but answered in a clear if forced voice all the while keeping her eyes on Elbana’s boots. “I‘m Verna, Lady. I am in charge of the cleaning staff on this floor of this wing of the palace, Mistress.”

Taking a slow breath before she started, “Miss Verna, Please tell me what happened here?”

“I don’t know, Mistress. I was summoned by a page. Oh, and he looked a fright, Mistress. Yohan was holding a… uhm, a hand over his eye,” and here Verna pantomimed those actions. “And he told me to gather the staff. That M’Lord Ashe wanted to see us. And then when we arrived it was as you see it now. Only worse. And there was almost half a Guardsman, off there in’ta corner. And he bade me and my staff to see to this room. He spoke so calm to us, and his voice was so smooth. Like he was pouring sunlight from his mouth with every word. He was so kind.”

Elbana was taken aback. Words like “Kind” and “smooth” and “”sunlight” were not a set of words she would have ever used to describe Ashe. Ashe was more the kind of man that people would describe as “Darkly Horrifying,” “Sepulchral,” and, most often “dour.”

Maybe Verna was smitten…? With… Lord Ashe.

Huh. There’s a type for all kinds, I guess. Even Ashe. How odd.

She wanted to scream. This was getting her nowhere. Talking involved too much “talking” and not nearly enough stabbing. It was the inherent flaw with talking.

“Miss Verna, if you please, what caused this mess? What caused Lord Ashe to …summon you and your staff? And where is the King now?” She let a smile stretch itself slowly and with leisurely purpose across her face. “What can you tell me about what made this mess? And what was the name of the guardsman?”

“...guardsman, Mistress?”

“The ‘half of the guardsman’ you say was left in that corner?” She said, and pointed to the blood soaked corner Verna had previously indicated.

“Oh, I’m sorry Mistress. I don’t know any of that. We were summoned after all of this happened.”

“And the Guardsman?”

Verna looked very sad, and a little confused as she said, “I’m sorry, Mistress, but the half that were here didn’t have a face I could have put a name to.”

“You didn’t recognise him…?”

“Well, no. There just wasn’t the recognizable bits there to…ah..recognize. Uhm. Mistress.” Another bobbing curtsy. “Just the hosen, and the boots, and the parts in them. Oh, and Lord Ashe and the King have gone on to the Great Hall.”

“I see.” Elbana took in the carnage for another breath, and then turned to leave, saying simply, “Thank you, Miss Verna.”

Moving swiftly, Elbana found herself in the Great Hall more quickly than she had anticipated. She realized with a start that she was getting used to the layout of this grand heap of a palace. It had taken a few months to happen. She would have to admit that her concern for Myrl at the moment did add some speed to her movements from the Royal Receiving Room to where she now stood in the southern end of the Great Hall.

Entering the cavernous room, she found a collection of the Royal Navy’s Admiralty, two of whom were also on the King’s Military Circle of Advisors with Elbana, and they were all now standing at attention before the throne. Upon which sat…

A cat.

Cleaning itself.

On the throne.

“Gentlemen.” She snapped as she approached.

All of the Admirals, four in all, stiffly spun to watch her as she approached.

Two of the Admirals looked embarrassed. The youngest of the group, Meesens, addressed Elbana. “Good afternoon, Master Elbana, We were told to await the King here by royal page.” He looked sheepish as he tried to justify their group’s staring at the spotted cat as it cleaned itself.

“And the cat?” she asked.

Admiral Kurz said, softly in his western accented burr, “Some of us were speculating about yon cat possibly being the King himself.”

One of the other admirals, an elderly woman who looked perpetually sour. “We did nothing of the sort, Beltram.” She coughed, and then turned her angry face to Elbana. “Master Elbana, we were simply awaiting the King, and waited here at his command. This cat has just joined us here. A few days ago, someone kicked one of the palace ratcatchers in his majesty’s view. He then had the man kicked from the room by four of his guards, and told the man to never be so unkind to an animal again, or he would have the man skinned and his meat fed to the palace dogs.” Her wrinkled old lips curled up into an approximation of a smile. “Do you know where he is now? the King, I mean, not Lord Garza. Garza is nursing his bruised ass in the Leeches’ ”

“Admiral Thea,” she acknowledged, and nodded respectfully to the irritable old bat. “I was just looking for him, myself, and was told he would be here.”

She took her place in line with the other four officers, and settled in to wait.

And, she guessed, to watch the cat. As it cleaned itself.