Chapter 4

6 Months Later...

Captain Vaelossa gritted his teeth from his perch overlooking the stables. He knew most of the enlisted men, including the sergeants, thought officers were oblivious to anything in which they did not find interest. This, however, was taking that assumption to idiotic heights. Heights he did not think Sergeant-Major Kola was in on, since his imposing form and stentorian voice were absent from the irregular activities he was witnessing from his office window. Granted, he did not think his men knew he observed them regularly through his looking glass, but still, this was more than he could or would keep from his superior, Colonel Paraezal. Sighing, he put the glass back in its case and donned his cape and helm against the harsh winter Ce’al Vra-Kor was having.

The Captain was unusual for male Ce’al in that he got to choose his career rather than being given to the Army when he was thirteen years old, as nearly all other noble males in the military were. His plain features meant his mother was not likely to find it easy to place him with another House and his oddly splotched green and brown skin, a birth defect, made the Army a likely place to send him to put his defect to use for the realm. He mused on another noble male who seemed to have chosen, young though he was. He did not have the story, as yet, of how the infamous Prince Sharn came to be in his compound and riding and training with his men, but it had better be a damned good story or there would be some very, very sorry delinquents making forced marches between the far southern Port of the Matriarchs and the far northern Ce’al Marches.

Those musings took him through the building and out into the bustling capital. In the middle of a winter squall, not too many non-Nultrites, -Gnathar, or -Gnomes were bustling in this part of town, however. The headquarters of the Tran Koran Army was in the same building as the Council. The thinking among the males was that the Matriarchs wanted the men who planned and fought right under their watch so that there was nothing untoward done by those very same males. In other words, the females did not trust the males to be able to think and walk at the same time and wanted to be sure everything was done where they could supervise. Especially this particular incarnation of the Council of the Goddess. Lady Shiena greatly disliked and mistrusted males, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that she had so many sons. Vaelossa shook those thoughts off and made his way through the city huddled in his cape. The wind was blowing spits of sleet through the streets and the stone buildings of the city were all well-shuttered against the weather. The street he walked funneled straight through the Merchants’ Quarter, the Nobles’ District, and right to the Palace of the Council. In keeping with their position in society, the General Staff’s headquarters were located in the basement of the grand structure made of pristine white marble and limestone veined with quartz which towered over the city in fanciful spires and towers of beauty unrivaled on the east coast of Titia-Lohr. It always took his breath away when he found himself forced to seek the counsel of his superiors.

The guards at the gate to the Palace, not regular Army but members of the Council’s Guard, glared at him as he approached. “What is your business here?”

Vaelossa stared intently at the corporal, waiting patiently.

The fully armored and visored guard swallowed audibly and restated, “What is your business here, Captain?”

Vaelossa waited patiently still.

The Corporal saluted lazily and the Captain returned the salute. “I am here to see Colonel Paraezal.”

The guard sulkily passed him through and Vaelossa shook his head irritably when he was out of sight of the arrogant puppy. Unlike the military, whose members were chosen at their thirteenth birthday and sent to the training academies usually several years later, members of the Council’s Guard were chosen by the time they were five and sent to secret camps in the southern or northern wilds to be trained and indoctrinated to be loyal only to the Council and its Matriarchs. This led to a certain arrogance and unwarranted superiority among even its lowliest members that rubbed regular military the wrong way. Only once was such loyalty tested in battle against real warriors or soldiers and that was when the Army staged a successful coup to topple a cabal of insane Matriarchs. Every single member of the Council’s Guard in the capital at the time was slaughtered along with twelve of the twenty-one Council members. It took decades for the Guard to rebuild its membership and the Army was relegated to the basement of the Palace thereafter, to be watched over by the Matriarchs and their spies. The former headquarters of the General Staff were turned into the new headquarters of the Guild of Mercenaries, as a pointed lesson.

Vaelossa shook those thoughts out of his head. Every time he had to come here he thought of that little bit of historical trivia. He wondered if it was so for all officers and if it was, was that the point those long dead Matriarchs wanted accomplished? Either way, he did not get the grand tour of the magnificent structure that housed the government of Tran Kor as other members of the government who came to consult with those superior to them did. Instead, he got to enter by a poorly lit door hidden by the landscaping maintained by the gardeners of the Council. The door opened up into a long, winding stairway that led several dozen feet beneath the Palace. These halls, unlike the ones above, were made of granite and were completely unadorned by tapestries or paintings or intricate carvings. The doors were plain, sturdy diamond oak wrapped with steel, unlike the carven masterpieces made of snow teak and black cherry in the halls of power upstairs. The low ceilings were plain and hung with iron chandeliers that held simple candles, instead of the crystal creations lit by mage glow lighting the vaulted ceilings above.

More than one outsider has walked through both sections of the Palace and wondered aloud how two so very different worlds could be held under the same roof.

Vaelossa’s first thought when he arrived as a lieutenant aid-de-camp several years ago was that the General Staff, banished to the basement, decided to make said basement as defensible as possible and so turned their new lair into a fortress beneath the Palace. The Captain knew from wandering the halls down here, that the Generals could probably hold out against attack from above for nearly a year.

Again, he shook his head to try to get such thoughts out of there and keep his mind on the business at hand. I must be worried about what the Matriarch of Jenni is going to do to us when she finds out where her son has been and what he has been doing, he thought grimly. He strode through the halls, nodding to those officers and enlisted men he recognized and bowed politely to the rare female sent down here on business by one Matriarch or another. The office he wanted was tucked into a short side hall that housed the offices of the few units of the Tran Koran Army that were not main infantry-focused. Things like shock troops, engineers, special operations, mountaineers, scouts, trackers, raiders, and cavalry were all relegated to an out of the way corridor. In the middle of said corridor was the office of the Commander of the Cavalry, Colonel Paraezal of House Ellagaunt.

The door was as plain and sturdy as all the others and was open. The outer office held the Colonel’s aid, a young lieutenant of House Ra’eva. The lieutenant smiled as he entered and waved him through to the Colonel’s closed office door. Vaelossa took off his helm and cape, gave them to the lieutenant, made sure his plain black uniform was in order, and knocked.

“Enter!” came the rough command from inside.

Vaelossa took a deep breath and opened the door. As would befit the office of a noble and a colonel, Paraezal’s office was plainly but elegantly decorated with weapons and emblazoned shield on the wall behind him and expensive but utilitarian items scattered around the room in a deliberate manner. The desk he worked from was hand carved black cherry with silver and rose quartz fittings. The man himself was as elegant and well-kept as the desk from which he worked. A shining star of House Ellagaunt, Colonel Paraezal was in line to take the next open generalship. His long bright green hair, olive skin, and blue-green eyes drew admiring looks from many a Matriarch and her minions. Lady Ellajyn of Ellagaunt had no trouble placing her youngest son with House Va’el, making Paraezal not only Vaelossa’s superior, but also his uncle-in-law. Paraezal’s grace had rubbed off on Vaelossa, adding to his abilities and assuring that Vaelossa would be promoted as soon as he was, making Vaelossa one of the youngest commanders in the Army and well on his way to taking Paraezal’s job some day in the not too distant future. Assuming certain more recent business did not stop those plans.

As soon as the door was closed, Paraezal looked up to see his wife’s nephew and grimaced wryly. “You know I like you a lot, young Va’el, but you have a habit of only visiting me here when something has gone horribly awry,” he said with mock despair as he returned his subordinate’s salute. “The last time you were here was to tell me we lost ten men in a training exercise to cutthroats out of the Barrens. I wound up spending the next six months in the saddle combing those fell moors and wading in more bandit blood than any three of my predecessors. Having said that, and acknowledging that it is probably a sign of your skill that nothing more trivial comes my way, what do you bring me today?”

Vaelossa grimaced just as wryly and smiled, shrugging. “Probably something the Matriarchs are going to want to sweep under the rug and hide the bodies over,” he replied with false bravado.

Paraezal’s eyebrows rose and he set his stylus down, leaning back in his padded chair with hooded eyes. “Hmm, that sounds ominous and strange, since you and the men have been stuck in winter quarters almost since this bloody winter descended.”

The Captain shrugged. “If I read the situation and the principals correctly, this has probably been going on a while. I just happen to have more opportunity to catch them at it since the weather turned.”

The Colonel inhaled deeply and nodded. “All right, you have properly prepared me. What have the boys been up to?”

Closing his eyes for a long moment and shaking his head, Vaelossa also took a deep breath and began, “I believe that they have been harboring Prince Sharn of Jenni within the stables somehow. From what I noticed today, they have that child riding a horse so fierce that only the stablemaster can go near her to exercise her. And from the way he was riding her, either House Jenni has been caring for their male children better than I have heard or the lads have been teaching him what they know.”

The older man looked at his nephew-in-law for nearly a minute before sighing and scrubbing his face with his large hands. “Would this be the same child rumor has it that Lady Shiena and at least one of her daughters gave serious thoughts to killing at birth? The one that was referred to as a ‘ball of flesh, ‘ according to sources who I know where there for the birth?”

“It would, sir.”

“And I take it you do not know how a child not even five years old managed to get safely from House Jenni all the way across the city, and through the worst district, to our doorstep?”

Vaelossa shook his head. “I cannot even begin to see a scenario that would account for it. I know I was watched over like a hawk by my sisters and aunts until I was thirteen,” he replied dubiously. “Even after my Day of Judgment and the Council’s decision to accede to my mother’s wishes to send me into the Army, my youngest sister was nearly my constant companion until they sent me to the Academy. I have never heard House Jenni being lax with males.”

“It is actually just the opposite,” Paraezal informed him grimly. “I know for a fact that Lady Shiena rejoiced when her third eldest son Jord was killed in battle during the Port War. He was a captain in an Infantry corps the Cavalry was assigned to and I was with the General who made the notification. She actually smiled joyously when she was told. That she would allow young Sharn to wander away from House Jenni is probably not what happened at all. She probably ordered one of her minions to leave him in the district in hopes he would either get himself killed or be taken. The other Matriarchs are already afraid of her and her sacrificing her son in the name of standing up to the criminal element in the city would appeal to her.”

“Why?! How could she be so ... so... ?”

“Callous? Calculating? Cruel?” Paraezal offered. Then his face turned grim. “I prefer evil. Lady Shiena of Jenni is a cold bitch whose heart shriveled and died years ago. She would gladly sacrifice young Sharn to show her strength to the other Matriarchs and at the same time rid her of another male. If it is Prince Sharn, I guess I must decide how we handle this. Officially. Come.”

The Colonel rose and accompanied his young captain to the outer office. “Get my cloak and helm, would you please Lieutenant Escheveri. I need to go out to the compound for a while. Please send word to General Zerel and Lady Ellajyn that I will need some time with them this afternoon on an important matter and clear the rest of the morning and early afternoon appointments I had. This could take some time to sort out.”

The Colonel and the Captain both spent the walk across the city in quiet contemplation, doing their best to be unobtrusive to the Council eyes they knew watched officers whenever they were seen in the city. The weather had turned worse in the time Vaelossa had spent in the Palace and now large snowflakes were accompanying the sleet raking the capital. Riding horses back to the Cavalry Compound would have been swifter, but most Tran Kor Ce’al were indifferent horsemen and more comfortable walking. Vaelossa and Paraezal were among them, despite their membership in the Cavalry. Neither officer started in the Cavalry and neither planned on being in it any longer than necessary for promotion. The Cavalry was a way to fast track one’s career, nothing more. Cavalry saw more action due to their role as border patrol and fast action units, and battle meant recognition of skill and talent and that assured promotion ... or career death. There was no in-between.

The city got meaner and meaner as they approached the Cavalry Compound, emphasizing how unlikely it was that a four year old boy, a noble, could get from House Jenni to there by himself without encountering trouble. This story will be fascinating, to say the least, thought Captain Vaelossa as the guards passed them through with sharp salutes, a great contrast from his reception at the Palace. Vaelossa led the Colonel in a dignified, though carefully skulking, way between the buildings and towards the stables. Once there, they saw that the horses were mostly out from their stalls, meaning everyone was in the paddock and in plain sight, despite the weather. Vaelossa grinned at the Colonel, both plainly liking that the men who were trying to hide young Sharn would not be able to hide him and deny what the Captain plainly saw before fetching Paraezal.