The first of the killings was by my own hand. I thought about that often, as more and more people died, ghosts walked the streets, and the Dreamer’s Court hung the guilty from makeshift gibbets. I spilled the first blood. Slaedrin ordered me to, of course, but I didn’t argue with him. Strategically it made sense. We couldn’t risk having conspirators in our ranks as we were fleeing from the shrine. But that’s not why I didn’t object to his order. It was because of that moment by the tinker’s cart, when Dursehl spoke to Pertrahn and then lied to me about it. He had chosen my old rival. The man who had beaten and mocked my children. I could justify his death.

  But I didn’t feel good about it. You get all sorts of guff just for dismissing a member of the guard. The other guards don’t like it. It makes them feel insecure and undervalued. They’ll make excuses for their dismissed comrade. What’s a little bribery, after all? And drunkenness? No one should be dismissed for drunkenness. Everyone needs to get drunk occasionally. Venereal disease? Well, yes, it lays you up so that you’re no good to anyone, least of all your comrades. But nothing will get you sympathy quicker, since it could happen to anyone, and the cures the alchemists concoct are terrible.

  What could I say as my soldiers assembled in front of the shrine? That Slaedrin ordered me to execute Dursehl on the mere suspicion that he was a traitor? In their minds I was the traitor. Their loyalty to the guard was more powerful than their loyalty to the king. They were loyal to each other, and I wasn’t. I had betrayed them.

  Never mind. I was brusque and commanding, as we had little time. Setrabohst had ridden away, and Prince Chahsaeda wasn’t happy about it. He came blinking into the sunlight with his father. Iyedraeka and the king’s rejected women trailed after them. Slaedrin began talking urgently to the king. Prince Chahsaeda came up to me.

  “Captain,” he said, “has the city fallen?”

  “I don’t know, my lord,” I told him. Then I barked at one of the younger guards, a bucktoothed girl with the deepest dimples I’ve ever seen. She gave me a dark look and fell into line.

  “I should go there. Does my cousin have much of a head start?”

  “Prince, you can’t go there. If what we suspect is true, you would be playing right into their hands.”

  “And who are they, Captain?”

  I studied his face. I was angry, and I saw him flinch back from my anger. “Don’t make me utter treason.”

  He blanched. “My brother, then.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “What are your reasons for suspecting it?”

  “He asked the princess to meet him here. He was luring her here. Then he somehow got the king to believe that she was in danger. Ask your father.”

  “Someone else could have sent for Iyedraeka, while pretending to be Dasuekoh.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, but he could see that I didn’t believe it.

  The King’s Guard was in position, and I led my troops into the vanguard. Prince Chahsaeda came with me, and I was glad he did. His presence cowed my soldiers and prevented them from questioning my orders. A slave brought his horse and he mounted. He rode beside me to the bridge. The slave boy, Cloehen, was waiting for us in the middle of the stream, sitting astride the elephant.

  I squinted up at him. “They didn’t shoot him?” I asked.

  “Her,” Cloehen said, patting the elephant’s wide head.

  I shrugged. Elephants are very hard to sex, on account of their hair. “You should take her back to the canal,” I said. Meaning that he should take himself back there as well. I didn’t want his death on my conscience.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He nodded, and turned the elephant towards the opposite bank. A meaningless gesture, on my part, that trying to send him home. The road ran back to Doefrit’s Bend, so he would be with us the whole way. The vanguard to the vanguard. I imagined that we would hunker down at Doefrit’s Bend, as the rocks are very defensible. The Golden Fleet was waiting there, and could take us back into the city with great speed if we got word that it was safe. I glanced back. Half of the King’s Guard was behind me, the other half still up on the bluffs. Scouting and protecting our flanks. I had thirty in my guard. Well, twenty-nine, now that Dursehl was dead. There were a hundred in the King’s Guard. Perhaps it would be enough. It depended on the rangers. Was Pertrahn an aberration, or had the entire company gone over to the prince?

  “He has a new lover,” Chahsaeda said, once we had crossed the bridge and started up the incline to the top of the next hill. He was looking about, sharp-eyed and very commanding atop his horse. He had to duck occasionally to avoid a branch, but the elephant had shattered most of the tree canopy. “A bandit queen. He met her when he was hunting at the edge of Ordalamia.”

  I glanced back. Princess Iyedraeka was walking with Martiveht about twenty paces behind me. They were surrounded by the guard. Several of my people looked back at me with flat, angry expressions.

  “So he doesn’t need his wife, anymore,” I murmured.

  “Captain, he never needed her. Never wanted her. The night before his marriage he came to my house. He was very drunk. He complained into the wee hours of the morning.”

  “She seems to love him.”

  “Iyedraeka? No. She loves duty. And she’s convinced herself that life is a romance. She doesn’t have the slightest idea what love is.” This said with deep bitterness.

  I glanced up at the side of the prince’s face. One never really wants to hear the confidences of a royal. They don’t forgive you for knowing their secrets. I said nothing.

  Vaenahma was scouting out in front of the column, and Andraescav was at the back, as close to the king as he could be without insinuating himself into the King’s Guard. I looked back and saw his face bobbing along on the road below. He met my eye. His expression was muscular, efficient. He was excited. This was the moment he had been waiting for all of his life. His whole being had become a muscle and he was flexing it.

  I turned back to Chahsaeda. “Prince, what led you to accompany your father today?”

  He met my question with silence. He studied the woods. At last he said, “Are you suspicious of me, Captain?”

  “No, my lord, I am not. But it’s possible that we’ve all been tricked.”

  He gave a wry smile. “I didn’t think that I was accompanying my father. I wanted to accompany Iyedraeka. But she left too quickly, and caught us all unawares.”

  I grunted. “It’s good that she did. Could you imagine having a whole gaggle of duchesses and countesses to protect at this time? It’s bad enough as it is.”

  “That’s true,” he said. His smile softened. “She can be very impetuous.”

  Ah, love. He could be annoyed with her, angry with her even, and still find everything she did charming. No doubt Slaedrin was aware of all of these secret feelings within the court. He had to be. He kept guard over the royals’ emotions, as well as their persons. I was aware of the peccadillos of minor counts and baron’s daughters, but it was different. The love affair of a royal could change an entire kingdom.

  Vaenahma was coming back along the road, running at a brisk pace. He had three guards with him, and their cloaks were billowing out behind them. “There are horsemen on the road ahead,” he said. “They’re setting up a picket.”

  I nodded. “How far ahead?”

  “A quarter of a mile.”

  Which meant that we had room to bring all of our people onto the top of the rise. Our enemy had positioned themselves badly. “Run back and tell Slaedrin.” Then I looked up at the prince. “It would be best if you dismounted.”

  He nodded and slid down from the back of the horse. The elephant was ahead of us. I let it blunder on. It would confuse those who were waiting in ambush, and I told myself that they wouldn’t harm the boy. They already had to deal with all of the people who were fleeing the shrine ahead of us. They would think that the elephant was just one of their number. Unless Pertrahn was with them. I felt a moment of deep regret, and turned to send a guard forward to stop the boy. The man I turned to stared at me with an expression of such seething hatred that I desisted.

  “Does this mean that my cousin has been captured?” Chahsaeda asked. He was trying to be stoic, but there was a quiver in his voice.

  “Prince, we cannot know. I have found that some moments are just for living in. You can’t think about the future. Or the past.”

  “Very philosophical, Captain.”

  I glanced back. The king’s palanquin had come up onto the rise. I gave my people their orders. “Fan out,” I said. “We’ll make a defensive line and wait for Captain Slaedrin.”

  When Might a Hero Find His Rest. If you want to read the little world-building stories I'm writing as I go along, go to my Patreon page.

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025

  Sir Superstition

  From The Court Journals of Laincid Reest.

  Editor’s note: It is no doubt surprising that a man of Laincid Reest’s accomplishments should have begun his career as a simpering courtier in an insignificant river kingdom. And yet he did. A minor noble from Mahjalnaghar, he was part of a trade delegation that arrived in Rahasabahst in the year 1160, towards the end of King Poritifahr the Fourth’s reign. This extract is a good example of the great diplomat’s juvenilia.