The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 02 - The Yellow Palace

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “What exactly have you been doing, Kestrel?” the commander of the elven spy efforts asked Kestrel.

  “What happened to Colonel Silvan?” Kestrel asked.

  Strab studied him carefully. “You don’t know? How long have you been out on the field?”

  Kestrel hesitated. He’d seen Alicia just a few weeks ago, when she’d saved him after the deadly beating he’d suffered in Graylee. But that visit had been thanks to the magic of the sprites, something he was sure Strab didn’t know about, and something Kestrel wasn’t ready to reveal.

  “I left on assignment last year,” he replied simply.

  “Last year? I thought some reports indicated you’d been on the base since then,” Strab probed.

  “I went up to Estone in the fall, and shipped out from there. My vessel foundered in a storm and I spent the winter in the Water Mountains, then entered Graylee last spring and spent the summer mostly there. I just came across Hydrotaz on my way back here,” Kestrel summed up his trip.

  “You spent the winter in the Water Mountains? That’s a claim not many people make, and very few of them are believable. But you may be the one in a thousand,” Strab responded. “Well, the sad truth is that Colonel Silvan got caught up in an embarrassing scandal: his wife and his guard were found to be consorting, and the revelation of their indiscretion left his judgment in a poor light for having trusted them. The king was terribly disappointed. Silvan and the guard were exiled together to Oaktown, while the wife is in jail here, awaiting trial.

  “I’ve been asked to try to fill the giant shoes Silvan left behind, and it’s been a bigger challenge than anyone realized. But there’s been no bigger mystery than who you are and what your mission has been. I’ll probably need days to find out everything you’ve been doing and what you’re capable of doing to help the kingdom,” Strab told him. He stood up. “Let’s start talking tomorrow. You come by whenever you’re ready, and we’ll start sorting out all the intelligence you have to offer.”

  “There’s one thing I’d like to mention tonight,” Kestrel decided to start his defense immediately. “I came through Elmheng, where I used to be stationed. I wanted to ask the paymaster about collecting my back pay, since I haven’t been there in a year to collect anything. The commander got mad and accused me of treason for being in the human lands, but I think he’s been secretly pocketing my pay packet all these months and didn’t want to get caught.”

  “You haven’t committed treason, have you?” Strab asked with a charming grin.

  “No!” Kestrel said. “I’ve been on assignment in the human lands, doing what I was supposed to, finding out about their plans to attack us. That’s not treason, but taking someone else’s money is definitely stealing.”

  “I don’t think a local yokel will make many charges stick against our finest spy,” Strab assured Kestrel. “You go grab a meal and get something to eat, then find some quarters.”

  “I’ve got a horse,” Kestrel blurted out.

  “A what?” Strab was taken by surprise.

  “A horse. I rode it from Hydrotaz. I need to find a place to keep it and a way to feed it,” Kestrel explained.

  “That’s beyond me. Is it here?” Strab asked. “I’d like to come see it,” he said in response to Kestrel’s nod. “I’ve heard of horses, but never seen one.” Together they walked downstairs and Strab joined the small circle of observers who were around the horse, looking at it curiously.

  “This is Thunder,” Kestrel said proudly.

  “That’s what the humans ride?” someone in the crowd asked.

  “Yes it is,” Kestrel agreed. “Is there a barn or a warehouse I could keep him in safely for the night?”

  I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Strab said as he went back inside, while Kestrel received directions to an empty warehouse on the base, where he took the horse, a building not far from where he had first met Vinetia and Lucretia and all the rest the previous summer, when he had competed one day in the archery competition. There was a lawn nearby, a place where the horse could graze, he was glad to see.

  Kestrel decided to sleep with his horse in the empty building that night, in case anyone came to investigate the strange animal’s presence. Both he and the horse rested without incident, Kestrel up in the rafters above the floor, and when he awoke at dawn he felt refreshed, glad to be in a place where, despite the worrisome changes of circumstance for Silvan and Alicia, he felt there was at last an opportunity to cautiously make his report on his observations. He needed to figure out his path through the new environment in the capitol, and then find out what assignment he could create for himself, hopefully one that would take him quickly back to Graylee– if Alicia or someone with her skills could operate on his ears again.

  He climbed down from the rafters, and walked Thunder out to the grassy space, where he let the horse graze peacefully, as he thought about Alicia and Silvan and Giandell. He knew them all, he knew they were all complex people who he respected, people who had foolishly tangled their relationships together in a tragically painful manner. But he wondered whether dismissal of them all was really the best way to handlethe scandal they had fallen into. It didn’t make sense to Kestrel to dismiss Silvan at a time when there was so much happening in the outside world, the human world, when Silvan seemed to be the only elf leader who knew what was happening.

  Perhaps, he thought to himself, he could make the others, Strab and his fellow officers, realize how important it was to bring Silvan back. He would start to reveal to Strab some of the things he had seen and learned in Graylee, to let the man know how abominable the southern gods and the Uniontown forces were in their promoting violence and mayhem, and plead for the return of Silvan in order to facilitate an effective strategy to oppose the southerners.

  He gathered up Thunder’s lead and placed the horse back in his improvised stable, then went to the food hall for a bite of breakfast for himself. He got a tray of food and looked for a spot to sit down, then recognized one of the guard members he had met on his first morning in Center Trunk.

  “You’re Hitchens, aren’t you?” he asked as he walked over and sat down across the table.

  The man looked up from his meal and studied Kestrel. “You’re the one who Lucretia was sweet on, the part human,” he recollected. “Let me remember – it’s Kestrel?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Kestrel agreed with a smile.

  “You disappeared in a hurry, I remember now. Started out like a bear in the archery competition last year,” Hitchens’s memories came back quickly. “What happened?”

  “I got posted to Firheng, and even went up to Estone,” Kestrel said. “Saw the human city up there.”

  “It’s good to know there’s one set of humans that won’t attack us,” Hitchens said. “What with all the tension at court I’m not even sure we won’t have elves fighting each other one of these days.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kestrel asked, surprised by the comment.

  “You know,” Hitchens looked at Kestrel. “I guess you don’t,” he concluded, seeing the look of confusion on Kestrel’s face. “Well, some of the king’s ministers want to go to war with the humans, send an invasion into Hydrotaz and teach them a lesson. Others say we need to stay back in the forest and wait to ambush them if they come at us again.

  “I’m not sure going out and fighting on an open field is a good idea. I wouldn’t feel safe without trees around me,” Hitchens continued, voicing the opinion that Kestrel was sure most guard members in the army shared. And there was good reason for their concern, as Kestrel knew, and as the battle at the forest fire had shown; the stronger arms of the humans would launch long arrow flights that would devastate an elven army in the open field, and the horsemounted cavalry the humans used would give them a mobility to match the foot speed of the elves.

  “Who wants to send elves out into the open?” he asked scornfully.

  “The new ministers who the king listens too, including the one the princess is sweet o
n,” Hitchens answered.

  “They don’t know what they’re talking about, do they? That wouldn’t be good for anyone,” Kestrel spoke what both of them felt.

  “Is Vinetia around?” Kestrel asked, “Or Lucretia?” he added carefully.

  “Viny is out on the western front, keeping an eye out for trouble, and hoping it comes to her so she can tear it apart,” Hitchens said. He looked at Kestrel speculatively. “Lucretia’s here on the base, lonely as a skunk and mean as a bear, living on her own. I figured you knew that.”

  “I do now,” Kestrel answered. “Where would I find her?”

  “She’s in the quarters on the southwest side of the base. She doesn’t come out very much. I think she’s never going to be the same person,” the other guard said. “She keeps to herself.”

  Kestrel ate the last bite of his breakfast and stood. “Nice to see you again,” he told Hitchens. “I hope I’ll get to stick around here a few days and see you before I get sent out on assignment.”

  “Oh, you roving types like being footloose and free to move around. Don’t give me that cry for sympathy,” the elf grinned back.

  Kestrel left the mess hall and went to check on his horse, then went back to the office building, he still thought of it as Silvan’s building, and climbed the stairs to the third floor, where a guard let him enter without comment, and another guard knocked on a door as soon as he saw Kestrel reach the hall.

  “Go on in,” the guard said. “They’re waiting for you.”

  Something in the tone, and the use of the plural term made Kestrel uneasy, and he regretted that he hadn’t carried his staff with him on his jaunt around the base.

  Kestrel entered the outer office and was shown into Strab’s office, where the Major and two others were waiting. “Kestrel, it’s good to see you again. I’ve invited a pair of assistants in to take notes so that we catch everything you have to tell us,” Strab said in a friendly fashion, putting Kestrel at ease.

  “Have a seat and just tell us about whatever you think is of greatest importance first,” the major said.

  “When I began, I was supposed to go to Hydrotaz and find out if they were going to launch another invasion and forest fire attack,” Kestrel started. He thought about his plan the night before, to try to use this debriefing to explain how vital Silvan was to the spying program for the elves. It was odd, he realized, that after his anger and distrust over being manipulated by Silvan and Alicia, he had come to trust them and believe they were needed to run the spying underway.

  “It was Colonel Silvan’s idea. He knew I looked sort of like a human,” one of the note takers snorted, and Kestrel looked at him for a moment, but the man kept his head down. “So he persuaded me to let my ears be cut down to human size,” he observed the face of the other note taker wince, “and he had me trained in the human language, then he sent me out.”

  “I was supposed to sail to Hydrotaz, but my ship from Estone went down in a storm, and I had to cross the mountains to get from the North Sea to the kingdoms of the Inner Seas,” he explained.

  “So you were in Estone? When was that?” Strab asked.

  “Last summer and fall, on and off,” Kestrel answered. “I was supposed to just go there to get used to human language and people and cities at first, but there were some complications.”

  “Such as?” Strab asked.

  Kestrel thought about the yeti, and Merilla, and the auction, as well as the intervention of the human goddess Kai – they were topics he didn’t want to share with this man – some he didn’t want to share at all. So Kestrel carefully edited his explanation to discuss the ambassador from Uniontown, against whom he’d been provoked to battle to save his life.

  “You fought the ambassador in Estone? And you beat him?” Strab’s eyes were wide with admiration. Kestrel nodded. “Did you use magic? Did he use magic against you?”

  They were perceptive questions, and they caught Kestrel by surprise. Did Strab know some of the details about his work in Estone already, he wondered? “I’m not a magical creature,” he answered, hoping it was close enough to an answer to satisfy the question.

  There was a pause. And Kestrel continued. “When I left Estone and the ship wrecked in a North Sea storm, a sailor and I survived and made it to shore, but then a lion killed him, so I was alone. I crossed the mountains,” no need to mention the gnomes or the yeti, he knew, “and in the spring I came to the south side of the mountains, but I was in Graylee instead of Hydrotaz.

  “I met some of the nobility there, and I was injured when some Uniontown guards came to the countryside and attacked me,” he said.

  “They came hunting for you?” Strab asked.

  “That doesn’t seem likely, but they attacked me, and I defeated them,” Kestrel told him.

  “Just you, alone, beat two armed attackers?” Strab seemed to want to pin him down.

  “Well, I was out riding horses with a human girl, and they caught the two of us together,” Kestrel reluctantly replied.

  “What are they like in bed, the human girls, compared to our own ladies?” Strab asked a question that shocked Kestrel.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Kestrel answered. “We were just riding horses.”

  “But you liked her, this girl? What is her name?” Strab probed.

  “She’s a nice enough girl. Her name is Picco,” Kestrel told him.

  “We rode down to Graylee City,” he started to go on.

  “And just one more question – where was this place you met the nobles and this girl? Where in Graylee?” Strab surprised Kestrel with the question.

  “It was a manor house that belonged to a baron, up close to the mountains. I went back there later and fought anotherbattle,” Kestrel answered.

  There was a pause as he waited for the next question, and he listened to the pens of the scribes scratching across their papers.

  “Go on,” Strab finally told him.

  “Well, we went to Graylee City, and there was a Uniontown ambassador there too. He was an evil man as well,” Kestrel started to say.

  “Excuse me, if your assignment was to go to Hydrotaz to learn about their possible attacks on the Forest, why did you go to Graylee City?” Strab asked a good question, Kestrel thought.

  I found out that Graylee had taken Hydrotaz over, and was running the war, and so it turned out that the best place to find out Hydrotaz’s plans might be in Graylee City, where the decisions were being made. Plus I knew that Uniontown had been an evil force in Estone, and they seemed to be an evil force in Graylee and Hydrotaz,” Kestrel explained. “It seemed to me that it was pretty important to learn more about all this Uniontown activity.”

  “And the girl, Picco, did she go to Graylee City too?” one of the note takers blurted out the question.

  Strab shot a look at the man that made him hang his head.

  “You don’t have to answer that; it’s not relevant,” he directed Kestrel.

  “She did go, for what it’s worth,” Kestrel saw nothing to hide. He and Picco hadn’t ever been romantic with one another.

  “Well, I was in Graylee for a few weeks, and I found out there were leaders in the city unhappy with the prince’s wars against Hydrotaz and Channelport. Uniontown is conquering most of the Inner Seas kingdoms, and Graylee’s trying to control the rest,” Kestrel said. “It’s a danger to the elves if Uniontown controls the Inner Seas. They have awful gods, and giant lizard monsters,” he noticed both the note takers look at Strab.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “One of the members of the king’s court,” Strab answered, then paused as he seemedto search for words. “He has giant monster lizards. He keeps them as pets, of a sort.”

  “Is he associated with Uniontown? Is he a spy in the court?” Kestrel realized his own voice had dramatically lowered to a near whisper.

  Strab smiled. “He’s eccentric, but hardly evil. He may marry Princess Elwean, and sit on the throne himself one of these days. He’s from down south, clos
e to the Great Swamp, and he caught the animals himself – keeps them as trophies of a sort.”

  “I wouldn’t keep them alive. I’ve killed a couple of them,” Kestrel interjected. “I’d kill them all if I could.” Strab’s face looked strained at the thought of the monsters, he saw.

  “I ended up fighting against some of the Prince’s supporters in Graylee City,” Kestrel said. He was about to say more, when there was a knock at the door, and Strab’s assistant stuck his head in the room with a meaningful look at the Major.

  “I’m sorry Kestrel, but we’ll need to stop there. We can talk more tomorrow, though this is a lot of information already,” the officer said. The two note takers rose to stand at attention, as Strab rose, and Kestrel stood up too.

  “Come to the palace tonight, just after sunset,” Strab surprised Kestrel by saying. “There’s going to be an event for the guard leaders, put on by the king. I’d like to introduce you to some of the folks there. I think everyone will be very interested.”

  “Yes sir, I’ll be there,” Kestrel replied automatically.

  “Bring a guest if you want,” Strab added, as the note takers started to leave. Kestrel followed them out the door and promptly left the building.

  He stood on the street. The sun was high overhead; he’d been in the room talking to Strab for longer than he realized. Now, other than checking on his horse, he had no obligations for the rest of the day, until he went to the palace. He knew he would be completely out of place at the palace, an ugly, half-human soldier dressed in weatherbeaten clothes. But he would have the chance to make his case on behalf of Silvan, perhaps.