* * *
It was late afternoon, the sun well on its way down the western side of the mountain, but still bathing the city of Lintesh in a fair golden light outside the grime-smeared West Guardhouse window. The day had turned excruciatingly hot, and Jherrick was looking forward to the end of his shift, to a cooling dip out in the Kingswood. It was a long way to Elhambria Falls, nearly a ten-league run, but Jherrick was craving the pummeling of the water to work out the knots in his shoulders. Carrying a dead lad for nearly three leagues this morning had only worsened his general tension. Its ancient frame cracked open to get what little breeze there was today, the window by his stout desk suddenly afforded Jherrick a view of his quarry, Olea den'Alrahel.
Striding across the flagstones in front of the main gates of the palace, Olea moved with elegant purpose. Jherrick sat up, tracking her. His Captain-General was a fascinating woman. Olea den'Alrahel's long and tousled curls caught the wind as she moved. Her hair was a shade of black so pure it gleamed blue in the hot afternoon light, and those grey-opal eyes gathered the sun as if she shone from within. She marched past, one hand upon her sword, purpose in her stride. Her cobalt jerkin was undone, and Jherrick caught a glimpse of the unmistakable star upon her chest. One of the Palace Guard marched past, saluting her, staring as most men did. Olea was hard to not stare at. A striking woman, she was clearly used to stares, and strode onward with a nod.
On her way to the West Guardhouse, the Captain-General would spend her evening drinking as she inspected the lists with Jherrick, and approve the payroll for the month before it was brought to Chancellor Evshein den’Lhamann. She had a few hours of reading ahead of her tonight, reports of behavior from her Guardsmen, considering promotions and demotions. Jherrick knew her schedule by heart, even though he couldn't follow her by day. But the Lothren kept Jherrick close to her every evening at his position here in the West Guardhouse, perfectly poised to gather everything the Guard-Captain knew, and whatever she let slip.
Jherrick watched her slender swordswoman's hips as she rounded the broad fountain, the market in the plaza nearly packed up for the day. She had picked up her stride and was about to make her usual leaping run up the steps of the guardhouse, when a brawny young man sauntered by. Jherrick saw the man's gaze flicker over Olea's Inkings, then narrow. He spit.
Olea rounded upon him. Jherrick saw her customarily blithe mood sour as she took the insult with her straight dark eyebrows pinched in a scowl. Jherrick slid from his desk with a grace he never exhibited in the guardhouse and slipped to the open door, watching their interaction from the shadows.
“Do you have something you’d like to say, fellow?” Olea den'Alrahel's bell-clear voice rang out like a duelist's challenge in the dusty heat.
The young man turned, challenging her. He was dressed in stonemason’s roughspun with the sleeves and ankles of his garb rolled up from a hard day’s labor. Blue byrunstone chalk covered his hands and smudged his clothes and face. He spit again near the Captain-General's boots. Drawing up before her like a bear, the stonemason was nearly a head taller, though Olea was not a short woman.
“Blackmark bitch.” The mason growled.
Jherrick saw his Captain-General step closer, saw her go deadly still. Jherrick had seen Olea put men in their place upon the practice grounds. A small smile stole over Jherrick’s lips, watching the show, knowing what was coming. The stonemason had chosen the wrong Blackmark to insult.
“That’s Guard-Captain-General Kingswoman Blackmark bitch to you, mason. Do we have a problem here?” Olea's voice was saccharine, her smile so sweet it burned.
The stonemason's thick lips screwed up, as if he might spit again, and on her this time. Olea’s sword was out faster than Jherrick could blink, the tip nicking the mason's stout neck.
“Give me a reason, fool.” She hissed, cold as a viper.
The mason flinched back, incredulous. “You can’t threaten a citizen!”
Olea’s dark eyebrows arched, those sweet berry-ripe lips set in a flat line. “An insult to me is an insult upon your Crown, fellow. Do you want to take that risk? I don’t have to kill you, you know. Only hamstring you and slice your wrist tendons and drag you down to the cells. You’ll never stand again, never work again. Never walk again.”
And though his beady eyes were furious like a raging bear, they also flinched. Olea was a ruthless bitch when she wanted to be. Jherrick's lips curled up further into an eager, dark-edged smile his Captain-General had never seen from him, and never would see.
“You got any family who call you son?” Olea's words wafted through the muggy thickness of the late afternoon heat, up the steps of the Guardhouse. The mason took a deep breath, but Jherrick and anyone else watching could see he was bested. Cowed. Such a big, thunderous man and Olea den'Alrahel had broken him, just like that.
Olea lowered her blade but didn’t sheathe it. “Go home.”
Jherrick's gaze flicked around, but few were in the plaza now, the market packed up for the day. Few had seen the stonemason's immense embarrassment. Without a word, the mason growled and turned, hulking back to whatever hovel he called home in the King’s City. Olea was putting her sword up when a man loitering just at the far edge of the byrunstone fountain caught her attention.
Olea halted, watching him. Jherrick stilled, eyeing the man also.
The brawny fellow had a casual appearance, sitting upon the lip of the wide fountain in the plaza. Broad arms were crossed over a muscular chest in a homespun flax shirt. He looked like a blacksmith, thick muscle with iron-hard hands, like he had spent a lifetime hammering iron or wielding it. And with his military-cropped dark curls and ragged scar down his face, he'd probably been discharged from serving in Valenghia, shoeing horses on the battlefield and wielding an axe on the side. The rugged fellow stared out towards a weaver’s shop across the way, but neither Olea nor Jherrick were fooled. Jherrick was certain that the big blacksmith had been staring at Olea not a moment before, watching her encounter with the stonemason.
Jherrick saw his Captain-General frown, narrowing her eyes upon the stout fellow at the fountain. He wondered if she knew the man. As Jherrick watched, the man's dark gaze flicked to Olea. He nodded once. It was a small movement, nearly imperceptible, but it filled Jherrick with a strange electricity.
Here was a piece of mystery.
Lounging casually at the fountain, the man put his palm to his chest, and his other hand dropped to his side, where a sword should have hung. He nodded again. A thrill passed through Jherrick. He saw Olea go very still. She gazed at the man another moment, as he settled back into his casual pose upon the lip of the fountain, staring off at nothing.
Jherrick knew the man was waiting for Olea. He'd performed the Kingsmen salute, plain as porridge. Something chill passed through Jherrick. Something clenched within him, thinking about reporting this to Castellan Lhaurent, his Lothren representative. He should report it. That’s what he’d been charged by the Lothren to do, bring back news of any oddities concerning Olea den’Alrahel.
But the dead boy’s face suddenly rose in Jherrick’s mind. Countless innocent faces replaced it, shuffling through like a deck of cards, bodies he had disposed of for Lhaurent. The Castellan was Jherrick's only touchstone within the Khehemni Lothren, as per the rules of hierarchy and secrecy within the organization, though he was aware of one other true Lothren member in the palace. Should he report this to someone else? What would Lhaurent do if he found he’d been side-stepped? Olea was a Kingsman. An Alrashemni. The enemy. She was of the clan who had killed Jherrick’s family.
But how many bodies had she asked Jherrick to dispose of?
Not a single one.
Jherrick slipped back into the dustmote-lit reaches of the Guardhouse before Olea could march up the steps. His mind was churning, his muscles clenched in thought as her bootfalls slapped stone. Each one caused a small thrill through Jherrick. She was an inspiring woman, and to be so close, so much of the day… But he had to report
it. When she finally shucked her baldric with a loud clatter at her scroll-strewn desk next to his, he had gotten composure of himself enough to look around.
His captain flopped into her wooden chair, boots up on her desk atop the pile of papers. She made an exasperated grumble, currying her elegant hands through her long tumble of blue-black curls, mussing it like she'd just been fucked.
“Aeon-damned bigots,” she sighed.
“I'm sorry?”
Jherrick played his regular affable, mousey alter ego as he turned from the stacks of tomes that chronicled supplies ordered and inventory costs. It was a ruse he was comfortable with, this bumbling, uncertain, weak-bodied personality. But Jherrick’s mind was sharp enough to work at the ledgers and lists, and that was no ruse. One of the reasons he was fit to maintain this post, both for the Lothren and for the Crown. Jherrick paused with an open tome near his nose, blinking owlishly as if he couldn’t read the text, because he'd neglected to grab his sham spectacles from his desk before his captain had entered the room.
Olea grinned at him. She swung her boots off her desk and rose, fetching Jherrick's wire-framed spectacles from his desktop. “Here. Don't ruin your bloody eyes. They're bad enough.”
She tossed the spectacles to him in a nice, slow arc. The kind of thing any lad of seven could catch. Jherrick fumbled the catch, dropping his tome with a thick slap of leather hitting stone, and bobbling the spectacles too. They fell to the stone with a clatter.
“Sorry...” He mumbled his words, allowing a scarlet blush to flame his cheeks as he hastily bent to retrieve both spectacles and tome, awkward.
Olea moved to him with a laugh, clapping him on the shoulder. “My fault. I should know better than to throw things at you. What have we got to do this evening, Jherrick?”
“The lists of the next batch of volunteers from all over Alrou-Mendera have come in.” Jherrick stepped into his usual ruse with fluid ease. Years of practice had given him an easy familiarity with Olea. One that he realized suddenly, was no longer feigned. “Plenty of families want to send starving children into the Palace Guard this year, Captain.”
Olea's smile turned into a grimace. “How many?”
“So far? One thousand and sixteen. And the consideration deadline is still two weeks away.”
He watched Olea's lovely face sadden, her full, merry lips fall. “So many. Aeon! I could use the men on the walls, but we can't take even a hundred of those. Not with the rations we’ve got. This war... everything's going to the Valenghian front. Every bushel of wheat. Every barrel of pears.”
“No one wants to send their sons to war, but all of them need the coin, Captain. The Palace Guard are the only faction not slated for border-holding against Valenghia or anywhere else. And we get three squares, plus extra coin to send home.”
Olea nodded, her bright demeanor covered in a thoughtful shroud. She heaved a sigh, then settled to her desk, boots up on a nearby footstool rather than her usual. She crossed her slender arms beneath her lovely breasts, a soft scowl upon her features.
“Read us the lists, Jherrick. We'll sort through those thousand and see if we can't find any with promise before they make a long trip here for the physical trials. I'll not have starving families spending more coin to get their sons to the capitol if we can't take them. Even if it takes all night, we'll make a decision on them before morning and start drafting the proper refusal documents.”
Jherrick moved to his own desk, fetching the thick vellum sheaves with the names and skills he had tabulated. He remembered to put on the spectacles he didn't need, then glanced over them at his Guard-Captain. She was gazing out the door into the wilting light of early dusk, arms crossed. Dustmotes swirled through the air, haloing her curls in a sliver of sunlight, making her hair shine like good obsidian. She mussed it absently. Jherrick's body tightened for her. He had the errant thought that if she ever pulled a blade on him, he might just take a sword in the gut to hold her. He pushed it away. He would report her movements. It was his duty. A duty he’d taken an oath to uphold. An oath inked in blood to the Khehemni Lothren.
“First candidate,” he read from the vellum, peering through his spectacles. “Otis Altshi of North Cathrae. Aged seventeen. Ploughman, leather-binder, woodsman...”
CHAPTER 8 – ELOHL
Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic Page 11
