Watching Duke Vorner’s skin crawl as the man tried to come to terms with the “impossible” surroundings in which the “Prince and Heir to the Kingdom'' lived, and Vorner himself, and his esteemed mother and their entourage now had to spend time was an amusing distraction for Myrl from his growing sense of unease. From where Myrl sat, straight backed in his chair at the head of the small dining room, the Duke and his mother, Duchess Kalenia, both looked like they were being served the worst meals of their lives, if their expressions were to be believed.
The two nobles had joined him in this small room three times a day for the last two days as the preparations for their departure were made. It was taking longer than anyone concerned was happy with, but the the elder nobles had assured Myrl, and his tutor and confidant, Lord Ashe, had agreed, he could not be expected to just hop onto his horse and hare off into the wild toward the Royal City of the Kingdom of Rhiada, Ghlow.
The journey to Ghlow would take them three days, at the very least, from Jibiril Keep. Riding hard, with mount changes for the carriages at every major Keep between here and the capital, they could just make the trip in three days. Vorner and his mother had come here in that same three day minimum. And now Myrl wanted to be on the road and on his way.
But for “preparations.”
The generally quiet and dour man was in his element. Organizing the Incipient King’s Household for a move from Jibiril Keep to Ghlow would have been a daunting task, and Myrl didn’t know half of the details Ashe was now arranging as he glided through the halls and yards in and around the keep. The man had a reputation for hardly ever sleeping. Though, Myrl knew his mentor slept just as often as any other man, but the gray man kept odd hours, and could be seen out and about the area at times scattered throughout the day and the night.
Lord Ashe’s knack for details, and his unyielding nature meant that a month’s worth of work had been compressed down now to barely more than two days.
It helped that Myrl had been making a set of very specific long-term plans to take back the throne from his ungrateful uncle, and so the outlines of moving their home had been laid out well beforehand. Lists and schedules had been planned for over these last five years, as they had made headway with their plans to remove the usurpers.
That first night after the Duke and Duchess had retired for the night had been a tense affair. Lord Ashe patiently explained to Myrl that many of the bargains he had made, plans he had worked out, alliances that had been leveraged by his power and his very blood to secure were now surplus to needs.
And that had been the term the tall, colorless man had used: Surplus to needs.
It was comical enough that Myrl wanted to laugh. It was serious enough that in the dim dawn light of the following morning, Myrl had realized the extent of his position.
He had made contracts and bargains with a notorious naval force, a mercenary army of otherworldly fae, and a Heart of the Void had taken a large measure of his blood as payment for no less than five deaths.
Myrl had even made a deal with Vlamus Graike, the Disputed King of Lornholdt, for his support.
It was ridiculous.
All of his planning to take back his kingdom from his uncle, completely undone by a quirk of fate. According to the Duke, Myrl’s Aunt, her husband, and their children died while eating breakfast on a decorated balcony overlooking the formal courtyard of the palace in Ghlow. The balcony collapsed, sending them, two servants, and their breakfast to the yard below.
And now Myrl had to deal with his own Coronation, as well as trying to get out of contracts and bargains he had made to do exactly what would have put him onto the very throne he was now about to ascend to.
Duke Vorner finally looked directly at Myrl, his own irritations forgotten for a moment. “You’re looking happy this morning, Sire. May I share in this wonderful glow?”
Save me from toad-eaters… Myrl thought to himself before answering. “My lord Duke, I am just happy to know that I will be on the road to Ghlow by noon. I haven’t been home since my parents were taken.”
The pause that Vorner now took was deliberately long. The older man was gauging how best to break bad news to the man who would be his new King. “Sire,” he inclined his head as he spoke, “If I may be blunt?”
Myrl saw Duchess Kalenia scowl slightly in his peripheral vision as he nodded his ascent. The Duke then continued; “Sire, I know you value m’Lord Ashe, but the man surely cannot think to have your entire household sorted and readied for travel by today? This Keep may not be as large as the Royal Palace, but surely there are more servants, and all of your personal belongings… how many carriages…?”
He interrupted the man at that. “My lord Duke, how many servants have you seen since coming here? You have been here almost three days now. I know you have chafed at the very small nature of this very room, much less the Receiving room, and your own guest quarters. You are practically itching to be seated more than a pace or two from me, as it is.”
The Duke looked flustered, so Myrl turned to the man’s stately mother. “Would you care to venture any guesses, Duchess Kalenia?”
The elderly woman gracefully put down her small, fine ceramic cup of steaming tea, gave a short seated bow to Myrl, then turned to her son. “Vorner, my dearest, this is an outpost keep, not a Summer Lodge. Nor is it a Games Manse. There is a military barracks attached, and at one time this keep would be the residence of the lower ranking general sent here to oversee it. Aside from guards, which I guess are soldiers of the garrison rotating through on a weekly basis, this keep has, possibly, twenty servants total.”
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Myrl smiled as she took a brief break to sip her tea. He could smell it from where he sat, something resinous, and harsh. She then sighed and continued.
“Of these servants, at least 15 are also soldiers from the garrison, whose duty is solely the upkeep of the keep itself. The remaining five or so servants are probably up from the small town by the enclosed bay. They would not even live here in the keep, due to the limited size of this building. They probably enter the keep for their work shift every day, and then leave come evening. I dare say that aside from the Royal Tutor, Lord Ashe, there may be one, or possibly two personal servants to his Majesty. At the most.”
“Oh, Mother…!” Vorner sounded horrified as he tried to object, turning back to Myrl with a look of mild horror on his pink, jowly face.
“Listen to your Lady Mother, my Duke. While some of the details she gave are off, they come close enough. I have a personal Armsman, Elbana, who doubles as my Master of Defense and also my Master of Horse, and I have a personal cook, Donchaminar. They, and my tutor, M’Lord Ashe, are my staff. Everyone else belongs to the town or the keep itself. As your mother pointed out, this is a military outpost.”
“This is barbaric!” Vorner was beginning to splutter in his anger. “Surely the Heir to the Kingdom would not be Housed in a BARRACKS?”
“Duke Vorner.”
The deep, cavernous voice came from the doorway behind the Duke, and made the man jump in sudden fear and surprise. Ashe stepped silently into the room, and gave Myrl a deep bow, followed by shallower bows to the other two nobles. He then turned to directly address the Duke, and to a lesser extent, the Duchess. “His Majesty had been sent here by his Aunt’s husband when the man took the throne, saying he would be the Regent to the Heir. And here we have stayed. We were not sent to Gherdene. We were not sent to Fastel. We certainly weren't sent to South Wall.” With that, both Vorner and his mother looked down at their plates, obviously suffering some embarrassment.
Ashe moved silently about the small dining chamber as he continued. “The Ducal Houses all agreed to the Regent’s Stewardship of the throne, yes?” HIs voice was now purring silk, a warm caress. “Your own House voiced no concerns with sending the young Heir to Jibiril Keep until his Majority, if I recall.”
His slate colored eyes turned from Vorner to the elder, Kalenia. “Or did you protest such a move, and I missed the declaration in the Great Court?” He raised an eyebrow a slightly darker gray color than the skin around it, giving his gray skinned face an inquisitive, almost innocent look. “Did the late Duke Tormuid offer an objection about which I did not hear?”
“Enough, Lord Ashe, you have made your point well enough without needing to bully my son, nor invoke the name of his father.” The Duchess huffed as she dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “The answer, and you well know it, is no. No one objected. Filian was regarded as a strong deterrent to foreign aggression, and his wife, Lurgetha, was King Myol’s own sister.” Myrl saw her face harden as she looked down at her hands in her lap.
When she looked up again, the Duchess Kalenia of South Wall was once again composed, serene. Her vivid blue eyes now fixed on Myrl, himself.
“Sire. I can only offer my most humble apologies. We, the Heads of the Houses of the Kingdom of Rhiada, were at one time convinced that your safety was paramount, and securing you here, in the best fortified, and naturally protected shelter of Jibiril, would be for the best. That once your majority had been reached, Filian and Lurgetha would step aside for you. There were even rumors your Aunt had intended to match you with one of her daughters, the Princesses Meolina, Caolia, or Unshedhni.”
Myrl hid a flinch at the mention of him possibly marrying one of his first cousins; he knew other kingdoms did such intermarrying of their Royals, but in Rhiada it was a rarity, and frowned upon. The idea of marrying anyone at this stage in his life was odd to him, but to suggest one of his close cousins was just repulsive to him.
“We had been assured that you were being kept in the luxury your status decreed, you were visited by the King Regent’s representatives regularly, and that every year the warm letters you wrote to your Aunt and Uncle were distributed to the Houses.” She had the good grace to look ashamed at that last detail.
Myrl sat. He stared at the Ducal visitors, who had come to his enclosed little world, with their ill news, and their misunderstandings about the state of his life here in Jibiril.
His expression unchanging, he asked, simply, “Letters?”
He could hear Ashe behind him inhale, as if he were about to yell. Myrl raised a hand, and he then felt the tension leaving his tutor. He didn’t hear the man exhale, but he could sense the calm demeanor envelope the tall gray man, who now waited for the word to be given for violence to be done in His own name.
Myrl stared, waiting.
The Duchess rose to her feet, and slowly bowed to her king, her son awkwardly following her example. “Sire,” she began. “Every New Year’s Day Feast was begun with a reading of the Letters to the Kingdom from the Heir-In-Waiting. We of the Great Houses were told these letters came from you, yourself, and were delivered by the Royal Envoy, sent by your Aunt and Uncle every year to assess your health and well being…”
Myrl raised his hand again. He didn’t think he had blinked the entire time the Duchess had spoken. His eyes had begun to hurt.
“Royal Envoy?”
“Sire.” She started, but her son verbally bumbled across her with his own “The Envoy who visited you here every year, Sire!”
He narrowed his now stinging eyes, afraid that if he blinked, they two might take the moment’s reprieve to flee. He simply asked “Who?”
“Lady Yggrel. Sire.”
Myrl slowly turned his head to see Ashe standing in the corner behind him. “Are the carriages ready, m’Lord Ashe?”
“Yes, Sire. And your personal staff is waiting, along with an honor guard, all in their shiniest armor from the garrison.” Ashe smiled as he inclined his head to Myrl. The man loved completing tasks, and the better done, the more satisfaction he took from the job.
“How far a ride is it to Fastel Castle, m’Lord Ashe?”
“Two days at speed, four with reasonable travel.”
Myrl turned to his guests, his bearers of ill news. “My Lord and Lady of South Wall, Please ready yourselves, and your staff, we leave for Fastel within the hour. There is a Lady Yggrel I wish to meet, and I believe she is the Lady of the House Fastel.”