Diplomacy

“Where is the king?” Farsight asked bluntly.

Arnya replied smoothly “unfortunately, my lord Farsight, when I returned home last night, I discovered the king had left suddenly to tour Lord Darkstrider’s territories.” It was kind of scary how easily she lied.

“How convenient. And I assume he left no word when he would return?”

“He did not,” Arnya answered with a touch of irony in her voice.

Farsight smirked again. “In that case, I suppose I have nothing to do but send a messenger to Lord Darkstrider’s estate in search of his ever-elusive Majesty. My business is really quite urgent.”

Arnya smiled so coldly I felt the temperature drop. “There is no need for his lordship to go that far. I would be more than happy to take a message.”

“No need for such a princess to put herself to such great distress.” He took another bite of the chicken leg in his hand. “I shall simply wait here for the return of my messenger or of His Majesty.” Farsight’s small army chose that moment to blow trumpets and begin something like a military inspection. I could only assume they had rehearsed this timing.

Arnya said, with the small pseudo-curtsey, “unfortunately, the castle is ill equipped to play host to such a large retinue on short notice. If you would give us some time to prepare—”

“Of course, of course,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “My men can camp outside. But surely you would not deny myself and a few servants a warm room?”

I wanted to tell Arnya that this was very, very obviously some kind of trap and that she should deny his entry. I could tell by the look on her face that she was thinking along the same lines, but there was no way to reasonably deny his request. He was a lord, after all. So after a moment of struggle, she did the curtsey-like thing again. “But of course. Please, come in.” She turned to the butler. “Alert the staff that Lord Farsight is here.”

“At once, Your Highness,” he said, bowing and slipping away into the castle, where, I knew, he would give orders to hide the king’s unconscious body.

As Farsight walked into the gate, he deliberately tossed his half-eaten chicken wing so it struck the front of my clothes. A dozen servants followed him, and Gwyn and I brought of the rear of the silent procession. He was shown to a spare set of rooms I had not seen before, where he wasted no time wiping his greasy hands on the sheets. “Those must be cleaned,” he said, pointing to the stains he just made. “It seems, princess, His Majesty has grown sloppy in managing his own home.”

The rest of the day was unproductive. I wanted to spend time with Arnya, but she was busy with affairs of state and the unwelcome guest the whole day, and Gwyn told me that my hanging around the throne room would just distract her, whatever that meant. So I spent time in the laboratory, apathetically checking that everything was in order for our grand experiment in two weeks—it was—and starting on potions that I just couldn’t get my heart into.

I wasn’t hungry for dinner when the evening came, but the butler informed me it was tradition to hold a feast when a lord visited and that my presence was politically necessary, so I reluctantly joined.

The whole dinner conversation, if you could call it that, amounted to Farsight making nonstop jabs at myself, Arnya, the king, Gwyn and Carina, and anything else that caught his eye. He never went far enough to give us a reason to take real offense, but he did make the meal very unpleasant. As soon as was polite, I exited the great hall and returned to my room for an early bedtime.

I slept badly, strange dreams making me toss and turn in bed. Several times I sat bolt upright, certain that a giant cooked chicken leg was about to knock down the castle walls before falling asleep again. I must have been on my fifth or sixth disturbance when I noticed something was different about this moment. I faintly smelled something burning. Were the cooks at work this late?

Straining my ears in the darkness, I thought I heard faint…shouting? Yes, that was definitely humans and dogmen calling out in alarm. Now that I was listening, I also heard metal on metal, very much like the sounds whenever Arnya sparred with Gwyn.

I rolled out of bed, pulling on clothes as fast as I could. On the way out the lab, I made sure to pocket the combat potions I had brewed. I considered grabbing the project I had taken from the castle smithy but quickly decided not to because it was too heavy and unwieldly.

In the hallway outside, I didn’t see anything strange, but the sounds of fighting and the burning smell were clearer. They led me outside into a moonlit night of utter chaos.

All around, in the courtyard, castle guards were fighting hooded figures. At first, I couldn’t figure out where the latter had come from, but a quick glance at the castle gate revealed it was wide open. It must have been opened from the inside since the gates showed no signs of being forced.

Even in the moment I stood staring, the guards lost ground. They were mostly dogmen, individually stronger than the human invaders, but the invaders had the advantage of numbers and coordination. On top of that, another wave of the hooded figures poured through the open gate, descending on the already overwhelmed castle guards.

As I watched this scene in horror, one hooded figure at the other end of the yard, the dirt around him littered with dogmen corpses, made eye contact with me. Or at least he would if I could have seen his eyes. But as his hood fell away, the moonlight glinted off a full metal mask with a grate over the mouth.

The Grand Hunter of the Witch Hunters raised twin blood-spattered shortswords, pointing them directly at me. Maybe it was my imagination, but despite the clamor, I thought I could just hear him say “the surgery table is set.”