He had left four of his guards back at the reinforced door that separated the northern wing of the palace from the Unfortunate Necessity.

Every palace had one of these. Every castle he had ever been in, visited, read about, seen the designs for had possessed a dungeon. It was what one of his grandfathers had written about in their private journals, these “Unfortunate Necessities” of the Kingdoms of Humanity. People would commit offenses against the Crown, inevitably, and the Crown needed a place to hold those offenders when they were caught.

In the best of Kingdoms, during those best of reigns, those held in these dungeons would have committed actual crimes for which they could be charged and tried. Let the Wheel’s of Justice turn for the benefit of the People of the Kingdom. Huzzah…! In those lesser reigns, people would be thrown into these dark depths for whatever reasons those in charge deemed… necessary.

And now King Myrl, …and well may I reign… he thought, walking between the two of his guardsmen of whom he could not convince to stay behind at the entrance of these poorly lit halls. The corridor down which Myrl walked was lit by torches, there being few windows to light the way of anyone who walked here.

Myrl knew there were few windows in any of the cells, either. Most of the cells would have been for the detainment of criminals for very brief periods. There was no need to make a prisoner’s life more miserable by showing them the outside world through a set of bars. Weather conditions outside would quickly become weather conditions inside. While not being able to see the sky might be just as cruel as letting those in containment see the sky…

Well, Myrl knew some arguments were as circular as they were useless. Shutters meant either having hinged openings that discontented souls would abuse and break, or that some member of the palace guard would have to regularly open, and then regularly close. Glass windows were expensive, and just led to broken panes of glass, and either opened wrists by those poor souls who had given up all hope, or attempts by the confined at escape with little improvised broken shards of menace.

His pace slowed as he noticed they had come to the crossing of the two halls that denoted what kind of prisoner one was; either by how lavish or how bare the accommodations were. The solemn faced guards who stood at loose attention at each of the corners where the walls intersected watched impassively as their liege approached.

Myrl nodded to the guards.

The Guards both snapped a salute to the king.

Myrl was gratified to notice through the pulses sent to him by his ring that the two guards were “feeling” alert, calm, but also mildly curious as to why their king had sauntered down to these dark halls today.

Were Myrl and his escort to turn left, they would find themselves in the bare stone walled hall of cells meant for the average criminal the Crown would deem worthy to hold in the palace dungeon. Mostly reserved for those rare middle and lower class cases of sedition, and the even rarer cases of trespass upon the palace grounds. Unadorned cells with a built-in stone bed or bench, a thick wooden door and heavy locks. Wall mounted sconces lit the way, and he had been told by Lord Ashe that those cells had illumination filtering down through semi transparent blocks of ceramics in their ceilings that trickled in daylight from the widowed rooms in the hall above this one.

The sounds of disgruntled conversations came from the left hallway.

With a graceful turn to the right, Myrl made his way toward the “more refined” cells. Fewer rooms, and built to a slightly larger floor plan than those along the other, darker, corridor, these cells were for the wealthy, the influential, and those who had connections. Lighter colored stone, cut smoothly and fitted with an eye toward the more refined tastes of a better class of criminal.

The majority of these cells, prettier and better lit though they may have been, were empty, thankfully.

Myrl and his guards slowly walked down the hall past a large door on the right with the name “Akek Beesin, Baron” was written in a fine hand in chalk on the oak bordered slate plaque mounted upon it. As he passed that door, Myrl thought he could hear crying. A high pitched litany of indistinct gibbering punctuated by sobs drifted out from the beautifully carved, thick door.

Across the hall, a matching door with a matching plaque noted “Mormahrick Feesin, Maester.” This brought Myrl up short. He did not know, or if he had been told he did not remember that Feesin’s portly younger son who had run screaming at him with a sword had been named “Mormahrick.” Also that the young man had a degree of Maester from a university. From what Myrl remembered from the coronation, the young Feesin had been his own age or younger. Having achieved the rank of Maester at such a young age was quite the accomplishment.

“Milo, Benya, hold here a moment.” Both guards had stopped when Myrl had pulled up short without needing the verbal prompt. Noticing their attentive stance at a proper post to either side of himself, Myrl felt embarrassed for a moment. He had yet to become accustomed to the guards and how closely they watched everything that the young king did.

Tilting his head, and briefly clicking his tongue, Myrl reached out and knocked on the door near a carving of wheat being threshed. He had had no intent of interviewing the younger Feesin today, but it was on his list of concerns. And that list grew every day, he knew.

Stolen story; please report.

But with this latest attempt on his life, Myrl knew he needed to look into and interview several members of the diplomatic mission from Parthique. He just didn’t want to.

Not at the moment.

He knocked once more.

Before an answer came, he unlatched the wooden shutter that blocked the top of the door to reveal steel bars blocking off the top half of the door but allowing a view into the cell.

“Mormahrick” sat reclined in a large chair on the opposite side of the cell from the door with his broken leg in a bulky cast elevated upon a small table, as he read a heavy tome that sat propped on his chest. HIs clothing looked clean, if rumpled. And from his general healthy pallor, he was being fed decently and allowed exposure to the sun.

Do the guards carry him out? And to where, exactly, do they carry him, if they do? he wondered.

The florid face of the young scholar turned to Myrl, and flushed a brighter pink as he noticed his visitor. “Oh! Sire! My apologies!”

He then floundered, and foundered in his overstuffed chair, as he sought to stand, which he eventually managed, though much waving of arms and grunting was involved.

“Apologies, again, Sire! THe guards only allow me crutches or a cane when we go for our daily walks to the Harbor Gardens. The Leeches insist I walk every day now. Something about regaining mobility.” The man gestured at his girth, slapping at the sides of his stomach with both hands, and made a pucker-lipped face. “I never had much mobility before, I doubt I really will ever have any more mobility than I ever had. Not built for mobility.” He then looked down at his belly where his hands grasped it, and chuckled.

The ring pulsed at Myrl that the man was lying. And despite his self deprecating smile, he was angry. Red, itchy, jittery waves worked their way up his arm from the ring, making Myrl uncomfortable.

“You certainly managed to run at me with a sword, the last time I saw you, Maester.”

With that simple sentence, Mormahrick dropped his pretense, and scowled up at Myrl. “ I ran. Yes. Toward you. Also yes. But only because you stood near a worthless man you should have but did not kill.” He exhaled through his nose loudly at that. and then dropped his eyes from Myrl.

The itchy feeling left the red pulses Myrl’s ring was sending up his arm now. Still mad… not lying, though…

Myrl took a moment before asking, “You wanted me to kill your father?”

“My king…” the young man didn’t look up. “Someone should have. Someone should have done it long ago. Even not so long ago would have sufficed. But, as long ago never happened, and neither did any of the more recent options, I would have gladly settled for that day. Your coronation. Or any day since, really... but, I hear him crying in the room across the hall every time the guards take me for my morning perambulations. It’s been two and a half months, Sire! Please!”

Myrl was taken aback by this. his own feelings about how badly he missed his own father were warring with what he was now witnessing. “Why would you want your father dead? It cannot be undone, once done. Ever.”

He stared at Mormahrick.

Mormahrick stared at the floor of his beautifully appointed cell.

Myrl waited as the man in the cell roiled in emotion, and each new flash of conflicting emotion rode over Myrl like an out of control horse. He waited.

Finally the young maester asked his majesty, “May I sit?”

“Please do.”

As he lowered himself back into his chair, the young Feesin bit his upper lip nervously.

My father has three legitimate children, sire. His first son, he adores. My brother, Faiste, is tall and good at sports. He fights in professional rings, with swords, knives of all sorts, even with his fists. He is learning the various Ghorma ‘Foot Fighting’ styles, and I have no doubt he will master them all, in time.”

“Faiste is the man our father wanted to be himself. He is infinitely likable, and makes friends easy. While he is not a handsome man, he is better looking than our father, and that little edge makes our father even more proud.”

Mormahrick pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “I, however, look more like our mother, and cannot run to save my life, or as you observed, cannot run to take my father’s life.” He chuckled lightly at that, a light titter almost. “I am weak, short, and according to my father, an embarrassment. But, he had claimed me as legitimate when I was a babe, expecting I would be like Faiste. When I turned out to not be another athlete who makes friends easily, he let me know I was useless. Every day. Not always with words.”

Myrl waited. He wouldn’t interrupt. Not only was he curious, but he was also horrified at this outpouring of personal information. He didn’t know this man, but he was opening up to Myrl like they were the closest of friends. It was making Myrl more uncomfortable than he wanted to admit.

“And then our sister was born.” The young maester sighed then, sadly. “Our father made it clear from the first day of her life that she would marry well, and make good connections for our family. That was her only value. As she grew, it was obvious to anyone who met Annaisyla that she was…off. She is as lovely as anyone could wish their daughter to be, but … she’s…” Here he struggled with the proper way to phrase what he wanted to convey. It was not going well. “...off.”

“I hear from Faiste, when he had been allowed to visit last month, that not being paraded uselessly, pointlessly, in front of possible suitors every week has improved her moods. I asked him to stop father’s practice of trying to wed her off to some unsuspecting noble house, and he agreed.”

Staring sadly into the distance, Mormahrick continued. “We have a score or so of illegitimate siblings from my father’s mistresses. Most of them serve our family. My father loves to make jokes about ‘breeding our own retainers.’ He laughs at dinner about how inexpensive it is to have an in-house stable of readily available servants. He used to beat them for the smallest infractions. Children… HIS children…”

The ring was pulsing with fear, despair, and a low, simmering anger now. But not a single itchy wave ran up his arm.