Aeben Marstell
by Malachi Baird
Copyright© 2025 by Malachi Baird
He glanced around the room from the stool he now sat in. The King’s Banner certainly wasn’t an establishment he would normally set foot in, at least not on his own time. The owner had spared no coin on the furnishings. The bar, the chairs, the tables, all of it made with the finest mountain maple from the forests in the foothills of the Krastuval Peaks. Their glossy finish dripped like syrup down each piece. It was one of the reasons the wood merchants there could charge what they did. The cushions were rich blue velvet as were the curtains that hung at the edges of each private dining area, undoubtedly imported from the south. Brass fittings and chandeliers completed the opulent interior of the inn.
It was all befitting the clientele he could see seated at the bar or dining nearby. All quite well to do, merchant kings and queens of some sort, some of the landless nobility. They were the sort with so much coin they lacked for means with which to dispense of it. Hence they frequented places like this even though the stew they served in The Five Barrels near the north gate was every bit as good and half the price. Fortunately for him, it was not a problem he would need to worry about. For Aeben Marstell, there had rarely been a day when he had too much gold. There were some when he didn’t quite have enough, and about that many when he did. But too much? No, that didn’t happen often. Even with his promotion in the city watch from town guard to deputy.
“What can I get you?” the attractive young barmaid asked pleasantly.
“Just an ale will be fine,” the lawman replied. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Coming right up,” she smiled before turning away.
Standing a little under six feet, broader across the chest in hardened leather armour than without, the 28 year old was handsome in his own right. Short brown hair, a beard he found time to shave off once a week, green eyes on an angular face that sported a small scar above the right one, he’d seen enough glances in his direction by women to know his worth. He pushed his coin across the bar as she slid his mug towards him. In another time or place maybe, but this wasn’t the reason he was here tonight.
No, the reason for his presence here started 18 years ago. That’s when he met Maldrik Jommury for the first time. He had only been 12, called random sheds and alleys home, and depended on quick hands and faster feet to feed himself. But even that was a step up from where he had fled from. His father Anvur, once an honest farmer, had become an abusive alcoholic when his mother had died a few years back. Their fields had turned fallow, the others in their village outside of Halvernice had started avoiding him, and what little coin they did make at market he spent trying to forget her. No, there had been nothing keeping him there when he fled in the night a few months prior to the streets of the nearby city. And it was there in a dead end alley, huddling beneath a stolen horse blanket in the nearly winter, stuffing a stolen sweet bun in his mouth that the deputy had found him.
There was nothing for it really. There was no getting around the man. He thought for certain he had seen his last day of freedom. He’d heard the stories of prisoners been chained to a bench to row for the fleet that was moored in the coastal trading city and thought that this was his end for sure. But the large jowled man had other plans, plans for which he was thankful to this day. He didn’t turn him in, he didn’t even put him in manacles. No, he invited him home to stay with him and his wife Verla. It was the first memory of something good happening to him he’d had since his mother had passed away.
He had a bed of his own in the small flat the pair possessed. It was at the far end of a loft ladder, but it was a vast improvement of his previous sleeping arrangements. There was porridge in the morning and a hot meal every evening. In between there was the odd piece of produce from the market stall the stocky blonde haired woman worked at each day or a piece of bread from the booth next to theirs. When they weren’t busy selling vegetables the lawman’s wife taught him his letters and numbers. It was only a matter of time before he was doing sums in his head and by his 16th birthday he could read better than most at his age. And it was on that day that life had set him upon the path to his current circumstance.
“So, I’ve had an opportunity to speak Eneth Waldoorn, the Captain of the Watch,” the husky detective began spooning some stew into his bowl. “He’s always looking for more men, especially now with the war and all that came after. Some of our number left to serve and many of those that did failed to return.” He paused to fill the bowl of his wife and the boy he had rescued from the streets. “This on top of the usual turnover, you know men moving on to better paying jobs as mercenaries or leaving for other reasons. Long story short,” he continued ripping a piece of bread from the loaf on the table, “I mentioned the fact that I knew someone I thought had it in them to be a good town guard.”
“What did he say?” he remembered asking eagerly. The lawman had spoken to him about his work in the past, had explained what he did and why he did it. He was only too aware of the fact that becoming a town guard was the first step in becoming a deputy much like the figure sitting at the dinner table with him.
“Well, he wanted to know some of your background. I wasn’t going to lie to the man. After I’d finished I could tell he had questions about allowing a miscreant with no known family into his ranks to be honest,” the middle aged deputy revealed. “But I asked him then ‘What if he was the son of one of your officers?’ and this seemed to nudge him some.”
Jommury reached behind him for his leather satchel which he was never without and pulled out several documents. “You’ve probably wondered at some point why I brought you home to Verla and why we took you in, haven’t you?” the older man speculated. “Why there are no other children in our home?”
“Yes sir.”
“You weren’t old enough for me to tell you then, but you are old enough now,” he noted sorting through the papers. “Verla and I, we are not able to have children. We’ve tried most everything, talked to physicians and fortunetellers alike. We did everything they asked of us but we have never been so blessed. That is, until I happened upon you in that alley just after the rainy season started. You were a prayer answered Aeben. Verla and I are both agreed on that. You’re old enough to make decisions for yourself now,” he declared pulling out one sheet in particular and pushing it in from of him. “It is only right that you be allowed to do so. Read this.”
And so he had. It was a letter from the bailiff of the manor near the village he has been born in addressed to the one who had given it to him. It confirmed that one Anvur Marstell had been found dead face down in a muddy field after the rain some four months ago.
“I know that by the time you left, you had little to no love for the man,” he sympathized as his wife reached out and rubbed his arm. “Still the death of a parent is never easy. You have our condolences.”
Aeben remembered not knowing exactly how to feel at the news. The time when his father had been whole was all but a fog to him. Really all there had been left of him in his mind was the bullying drunkard he had fled from. And somehow, even though he knew he should feel more, he didn’t. It confused him.
“Whether or not you loved this man deep down Aeben only you can say,” he stated pulling out a second page from the pile. “What I do know however, is that both Verla and I love you very much. You have completed our home. You have been that which we had always wished for but never been granted.” Another document was given to him. “That is a petition for adoption. I had the magistrate draw it up for me earlier today. Signing it would make you part of our family in the eyes of the laws and the lords. It would allow Captain Waldoorn to look more favourably on your application. This plus my recommendation would likely gain you a place among us.”
“More importantly though,” he emphasized sitting back in his chair and drawing his eye, “It would allow Verla and I to call you son, and you to call us Ma and Pa. Many children, much younger than you are, have had this signed for them by others. But you are old enough now to make this decision for yourself. You do not have to take our name if you do not wish to, but we would be honoured if you would count us as family.”
He barely hesitated. He took the proffered quill and put his name to the document. And in that moment he became Aeben Marstell, son of Maldrik and Verla Jommury.
The deputy sipped on his tankard once more and observed the occupants of the establishment from his perch. Each was ensorcelled in their little dramas either by themselves or with others. He put himself in the shoes of a well dressed man sitting with an attractive woman some 20 feet away. It was likely not his wife but she was definitely aware that he had one. He wore a ring, she did not and the latter seemed none too bothered by that. An exchange of smiles, of looks, each watched the other in affection over goblets and fine food.
He was not from Halvernice. His jacket spoke of elsewhere, likely closer to the capital. It was the kind of thing they wore there. She set down her wine and idly fingered a jeweled bracelet on her wrist as she gazed into his eyes. He’d likely bought that for her and unless he missed his guess, she picked it out. It was no trinket she wore the 28 year old judged. He was a man of means though not to the extent the jewelry might make him seem by the rest of his attire. But she had nonetheless convinced him to part with the necessary coin to buy it. Oh there was no doubt the two were enamoured with the other, but that one, she was more in love with his money than with him.
Gold flowed easily in a place such as this and somehow it wasn’t surprising that the one who he had business with had suggested meeting here. He had never met the man himself, but his father had. That first day after he got promoted, he had said as much. “Listen son, now that you’re a deputy, you need to understand something,” he confided while they sat in a corner booth at the Pike and Shield. “People in power, they’re different than you and me. You play nice with them, you’ll live long enough to keep their secrets. You don’t...”
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