Marela

Idiots. The lot of em. She didn’t even have to pour the wine into her own cup.

On her second glance at the table of faces planted on their plates, she might have gone overboard with the poison.

The truth was it was so fun for her to experiment. It was like a game to see how deadly she could make a tree.

Marela had heard of a tree that only grew in the southernmost islands of the kingdom. The Manchineel tree. If you concentrated its fruit juices it became caustic. She remembered the day they killed a pig by mixing the poison with applesauce. Its squeals were nothing compared to the noises the family made as they felt their insides burn and sizzle away.

Idiots.

She got up from the dinner table and immediately lifted her pipe from her pocket. She lit it with one of the gaudy silver candelabras cluttering the table.

She heard running from the other side of the banquet hall. The band was escaping. She gave a sharp whistle and her sailors came in from the corridor and cut them down. Their screams and pleas were brief.

Marela: “Olifer?” she said bluntly.

Lucern was already by her side.

Lucern: “No word. The servants say he usually rides in with half a dozen squires and twice that many bannermen”.

Marela: “Late to his engagement party. Guy really knows how to charm his betrothed”.

Lucern: “The keep will hold,” he said with his chest high.

Marela: “Secret entrances?”.

Lucern paused.

He then found an open palm strike his face.

Marela: “Fucking amateurs.” She walked into the center of the room speaking to no one directly. “I spend top fucking coin to The Tide and they give me gods damned amateurs”. She began laughing to herself. “We are so fucked”.

Lucern: “We ca— “.

Marela: “No. You lost your speaking privileges”. A wooden serving spoon shot into Lucern’s mouth; food still dangled from one end.

Marela: “I am the only person allowed to think right now”. She started to snap.

Marela: “We’ve locked the keep down?”, she pointed at Lucern. The spoon was still in his mouth. He looked like a dog gnawing on a bone.

He nodded his head slowly. She pointed at the spoon and his nods got faster.

Marela: “Good”.

She was riding on a wave right now. The business hadn’t been this fun since she was “promoted” and became the owner of her lumber company. This was her element. She would give away every tree and plank to her name to never attend a trade federation meeting again. This is how business was meant to be.

She dropped the spoon out of Lucern’s mouth.

Marela: “Alright I’ve made my decision”.

Lucern and the rest of the “sailors” circled around her.

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Marela: “Who here has ever killed a knight before?”.

How do you take over a well-fortified, well-guarded, and well-staffed stronghold? You pay the surfs running the place lots of coin. Nobles don’t care about money. So they can’t be paid off. But a surf will do whatever the fuck you want for coin. Map guard routes. Get sick or injured to let one of your spies fill in their position. They would probably do the murdering for you, if you didn’t like doing it yourself so much. The point is, it’s not hard to do, it just takes patience, coin, and good timing. Marela had two of those three things right now.

She stood at one of the stone crenelations above the entrance of the keep.

Marela: “Nothing?” she said with a long drag of her pipe.

Lucern: “Not a thing in sight”. It was approaching midday. That was bad news. Lucern was at least happy the bad info came from his boss and not himself this time.

Marela: “Damn. I just want this to be over now. The fun is over. Can’t I just count trees and come up with labor estimates already?”. She sat on the battlements and puffed her pipe more. “Round up the remaining staff”.

Lucern: “Most of the staff are ours,” he said in shock.

Marela: “Precisely. Most. You never explained what happened in the kitchen today?”

Lucern: “It was minor”.

Marela: “Tell me!”. She was getting tired of this clown.

Lucern: “It was one of the cooks. Olliff, that fat fuck, came and congratulated her for being pregnant. It was a sweet and personal gesture. Nothing I’ve ever seen from a noble before. She broke down crying in front of him and he got in a huff about it. It was de-escalated before he could get suspicious”.

Marela: “Where is she now?”.

Lucern: “Olliff sent her home to rest. It got the problem out of our way”.

Marela just stood there staring at him. She had to do something about The Tide when she got back to Sol. This was ridiculous.

Marela got closer to Lucern and patted him on the shoulder.

Marela: “You did a good job. You certainly did a good job”.

He turned to accept her unexpected praise. He only saw the keep walls flash by him. Then he saw the keeps moat and jagged rocks. Then, nothing.

Marela looked over the ledge to check he was dead. She had to be sure, the drop wasn’t high enough to outright kill, and if he landed in the water he would have been fine.

She saw his body smeared on the rocks that dotted the bottom of the moat. Several stuck out of his body making large holes in his flesh.

Marela: “That solves my biggest problem. On to problem number two”.

She called for the remaining servants to come to the battlements. They were gathered in quickly by her crew.

It was a sorry lot of old farts and their middle-aged children. All had been paid off months in advance. Only eight servants remained. The rest had been infiltrated by spies.

Marela: “Explain,” she commanded. No reply.

Marela: “I want everyone to come to the edge with me”. They all looked at her confused. She snapped her finger and pointed at the edge. “We don’t have all day”.

The eight shuffled to the other side of the battlements. They were just commoners. They had been paid to keep their mouth shut. Most were shaking in fear of Marela.

Marela: “What do you see?”.

Staff 4: “By the gods. Dead. Lucerns dead”.

Marela: “Wrong!” she shouted. “That my friends is someone who doesn’t do their job properly. Now”. She started to wring her hands together. “Can anyone tell me why Olifer hasn’t shown up yet?”.

The group just shook. They held each other. Finally, an older man. Wobbled in front of the group.

Staff 8: “Meredith. She be pregnant with his child. No amount of coin could pay off her. She had more heart than any of us. Yur disgustin”. The old man then spat at her feet.

Marela “Finally some answers. Thank you. You all can go now”. She waved them away.

The group quickly escaped down the battlements. Marela now stood alone at the top of the keep. She raised her hand to touch the leaves that rested on her shoulder. Something she only did when she was stressed. They were small and prickly, but the leaves always had an unnatural softness.

Marcela: “All this for some trees”. She laughed to herself. “What have you gotten yourself into Mar”. She stood there and took in the breezy fall air. She then swore and began to run down the stairs.

In minutes she made it back to her shop. On the deck, she had several knee-high clay pots. Each had a tree sapling inside. White Oak, was her favorite species. She lugged the pot and tree with her. She looked around the rocky docks.

A small patch of soil and grass spread between a nice-sized gap in the cliffs. She sat the pot down and stood back. With her crown, she raised the sapling in the air from the pot. Most of the soil still clung to the roots. She moved the sapling to the center of the grassy patch. Its roots began to twist and cling to the grass. It quickly dug deep into the ground. The soul from the pot creates a nice round mount it laid in.

She looked at the tree and touched its budding leaves. Her god required each follower to plant one tree a day. If you kept up you got a boon, which in her case was improved skills in botany and woodworking.

Her god was the Carpenter after all.