“Your Grace,” came the collective address from everyone within his immediate vicinity.
He acknowledged them with a nod and then ordered a nearby arcanite to go inquire as to the nature of the holdup up ahead, the middle-aged man dismounting from his horse and disappearing into the congested procession after assuring that he would do so in a timely fashion. Ignoring Arienne’s discreet glances—the female knight that Vestach had sent to keep an eye on him—he walked around to the head of the carriage where a sharp-eyed woman with handsome, finger-length strands of black hair sat quietly at the driver’s side, her thin frame leaning back in her seat in an aloof manner.
“Deena,” he said, meeting her sharp, dissecting gaze with a stern look. “Don’t forget your task.”
Dressed in hard leathers the same colour as her freshly-trimmed hair, the woman did a poor job of suppressing a snicker and then gave him an assuring nod. Subtly, her gaze drifted over to Arienne, who she was tasked with supervising for the duration of the trip.
“Worry not, Your Grace. I’ll keep my end of the bargain.” Meaningfully, she added, “Just don’t forget what you promised me.”
While she could be quite wild and difficult to control, Deena was his most capable follower and also the first person that had ever accepted his curse of compulsion. The daughter of a sinful and selfish noble, her father had been infamous throughout the empire for bringing shame to his house and then consigning it to ruin. Every member of his household had been sold off to pay back the massive amount of debt that he had accumulated in pursuit of satiating his ravenous desires, including his wife along with his one and only child, Deena.
It went without saying that Maels had purchased her freedom—largely because they had been acquainted during their childhood and he hadn’t liked the idea of her being sold off to a brothel as had been her mother’s fate—under the condition that she accept his curse of compulsion. He had promised her that so long as she served him loyally, he would return her freedom to her on her fortieth birthday, which was now only a few years away. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined that the young, angry girl would go on to become one of the most capable battle mages on the continent, though he had welcomed this development with open arms.
“Can you tell what’s going on up there?”
“They seem to have found someone,” came her cool reply. “Though I’m sure you already sensed that.”
He hadn’t, in all honesty, for in recent weeks he had been pouring large amounts of his inner energies into a certain magic crystal that was currently hidden away in an inner pocket of his white, silver-trimmed robes. His entire plan largely hinged upon the energy within this crystal, one of several power sources that he had brought along with him on this trip.
“Seven hells,” came a quiet curse from the far side of the tarped wagon. “Don’t think I won’t hurt you, little shits!”
One of his guards had caught his foot against the tarp in passing, which had caused it to rise up on the opposing end. The moment this happened, Maels had sensed a slim, pale hand reach out of the metal bars that had been covered up until then before it scratched at the nearest person with long, grimy fingernails.
Keeping a cool expression, Maels lifted the hems of his robes and walked around the wagon with calm steps, being sure to keep about an arm’s length of distance from the anxious draft horse that was pulling the vehicle.
“Your Grace!”
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He waved down the hasty bows and respectful words of the men that had been walking alongside the wagon, all of them dressed in travelling leathers beneath lengthy cloaks that partially covered the sheathed longswords at their hips. Noticing a thin stream of blood leaking from the wagon, he gazed inward to find a girl no older than fourteen hovering over an unconscious boy a few years her junior, her eyes malicious and her stance protective. Twenty such youths had been crammed into the wagon, within which space was so limited that the two were pressed right up against the iron bars that formed its cage.
“Who hit the boy?”
The man closest to the girl cast her a wary glance before he stepped forward and bowed his head. “I did, Your Grace.”
“Why?”
The man held up his left hand, showcasing the thin, bleeding cut on its backside. “One of them clawed at me, Your Grace. I acted without thinking.” After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “It…it won’t give me some disease, will it?”
Maels shook his head. “Which one did it?”
“I don’t know.”
Maels turned his gaze to meet the young girl’s, which was filled with hatred, the slave bracelet on her left wrist flaring up with bright, steely light as he took a step towards her.
Interesting.
When the men around him made to rush over, he held up a hand to keep them rooted in place. “Those are special limiters,” he assured them. “Worry not, for even they cannot use magic while wearing them.”
Only a small section of the tarp had been pulled back, which made it so that Maels could see just a handful of those inside. They were dressed in clean white clothes, simple yet comfortable, the group appearing much healthier than they had been when he’d summoned them to the Whitestone Palace from his original home. All of the eyes that looked up at him from within the unlit wagon shared the same pervasive blackness where whites should have been, their irises varying in colour just as any other person’s would. While all of those within eyeshot were trying their best to scurry back as they looked up at him in terror, only the young girl remained unshaken. If anything, palpable hatred seethed from her expression.
“Is he your brother?” he asked gently, unflinching when the girl spat a large glob of spit in his face. Hearing the hiss of swords being unsheathed, he waved the others down and then summoned a small globe of water with which to clean the saliva off of his cheek.
“Your Grace,” said the man he’d been speaking to earlier, a short and stocky fellow with thick eyebrows and pudgy, bearded cheeks. “Such blasphemy cannot be allowed to stand!”
“He’s right, Your Grace,” said the man at his side, who gave one of his shoulders an eager roll. “You only need to say the word and we’ll dispose of this heathen.”
Removing the few drops of moisture that had dripped onto his robes along with what little water remained on his face, Maels flicked the floating droplets into the forest with a lazy movement of his wrist.
“Stand down.”
One of the boy’s arms slipped out of the cage where it had been pressed up against a metallic bar. Seeing this, Maels touched a finger to his arm and activated an advanced mending spell. The girl pulled the boy’s arm back into the wagon before he could completely heal the gash on the back of his head, though she narrowed her eyes in confusion when her companion slowly began to stir. Before she could show any more reactions, Maels lowered the tarp and tucked it back in place, isolating those within in the same darkness that had characterized the majority of their trip.
“I told you,” he said quietly, with authority. “The contents of this tarp are not to be exposed.”
While most people in the delegation were fully aware that he had brought several Kets along with him for the journey, he didn’t want to advertise the actual number. On the surface, they were simply gifts for the highest ranking officials that he had met throughout his holy tour—which included King Glenden Civus Silverkin and his sons, Duke Antoine and Duke Daniel—so as far as anyone outside of his personal influence was aware, there were only three or four children left within the wagon. From an outsider’s perspective, he would likely gift them to Lord Caedmon and Bishop Rendel, as well as the Archbishop that oversaw all religious proceedings that took place within the Kingdom of Civus upon their return trip to the capital.
“Our apologies, Your Grace,” said the shorter man. “It won’t happen again.” The others followed suit as he bowed his head, all of them returning to their former positions in a straight line alongside the wagon’s outer perimeter. Unlike the other knights in the area, these guards had left their horses in the hands of the procession’s groomers so as to make room for more of their peers, as the cargo that they had been ordered to protect was indescribably precious.