“Nothing here.”

  The scribe and I had spent all

  evening searching through the royal archives for any sign of the

  agreement that hamstrung my right to ascend to the throne. We had

  opened protective cases that had a key that hadn’t been seen for

  generations and disturbed enough dust to leave the room hazy, but

  still nothing seemed like it had been touched or added since my

  father’s death.

  “It makes no sense,” the

  scribe mused, his hand under his chin and his eyes glassy and

  distant, “the safest place in the castle would be for it to be

  housed here, especially if she had simply stolen one of the old keys.

  No one but me would have even known these boxes and cases are here.

  However, it looks like nothing has been moved or touched since the

  last time I was here and all the keys are accounted for.”

  “Shouldn’t it have been in

  your care from the beginning?” I asked. “It doesn’t feel very

  on the level if our own royal scribe didn’t have access to the

  document.”

  The scribe gave a wan smile

  and ran his free hand over his balding head and gave the back of his

  neck a scratch. “In better days I would have thrown a fit until

  something so egregious would be rectified, but it was made very clear

  that the full weight of the Church would be brought down upon me if I

  questioned what was happening and that is not something I could

  afford to challenge.”

  “Why would you care what the

  Church thinks?” I plopped into the overstuffed, dust filled

  armchair positioned in the corner of the archive. I was exhausted

  from stretching my magic earlier, the boost of energy from the sheer

  joy of my discovery had only carried me so far. “You answer to the

  royal family, not them.”

  “If only it were so simple,”

  he said with a dry laugh. He leaned back against the dusty bookcase

  we had just rifled through and gave me an inquisitive look. “I

  suppose I have never had a chance prior to now to discuss my purpose

  in this castle. After working with your father for so long I grew

  accustomed to him being largely uninterested in the details of my

  duty. He did not seem to care much what I did or why, only that I did

  what he required of me when necessary. The fine points were

  unimportant in his mind.”

  “I am not my father,” I

  said, careful to keep my voice light and even, I did not want some

  rumor going around that I despised my father. Servants were inclined

  to idle gossip and any hint of something like that could be overblown

  and be the talk of the castle and maybe even the kingdom for months.

  If my father had been unpopular that could have been a positive way

  to set myself apart from him and gain trust, but since he was seen as

  a mostly benevolent, if sometimes volatile, king, it would cause a

  danger to anyone who may still feel an excess of fealty to my late

  father. “I want to know what all my subjects are tasked to do,

  besides, I am particularly interested in history and books, both of

  those I feel we must have in common.”

  The older man’s eyes lit up

  and he nodded with a small grin on his lips. “I assume you have

  been taught to write?”

  “Of course,” I chuckled,

  “what kind of monarch would I be if I could not?”

  His lips tightened sharply

  into a thin line as he held in a laugh, though the sound did catch in

  his throat. “Pardon, my lord, it is only mildly amusing to me how

  much is kept from a future king sometimes. You are to know everything

  about the kingdom, but it seems like great lengths have been taken to

  keep you in the dark about many things.”

  “Then enlighten me,” I

  challenged, “that I assume is part of your job.”

  “Indeed it is and may I say

  how refreshing it is.” He turned his head to the side slightly and

  glanced to the door briefly. “I have caught on that you are at

  least aware that books, writings, and such related things were not

  something your father particularly cared about.”

  “Of course, we’ve already

  said as much.”

  “Forgive me if I hesitate,

  this is a secret I have kept since I was but a young man. I have kept

  my lips tightly sealed all these decades out of both respect and fear

  of your father.”

  “You have nothing to fear

  from him now,” I assured, “I only want to know the things that

  have been kept from me. It is my right to know.”

  “Yes, of course,” he

  agreed with a nod, “I was merely explaining my hesitation. You see,

  the secret is about the departed king and if it had ever gotten out

  during his reign, it would have been the talk of not only this

  kingdom, but all of our allies and enemies as well. As refined and

  noble as your father was, he did not know how to read or write. He

  was so indifferent to the whole affair due to his inability to

  understand any of it.”

  I raised my eyebrow and stared

  at the scribe, my first inclination was to question the validity of

  what he was telling me, though it would not make sense for him to

  make a potential enemy out of the person who should be ruling over

  him. Instead, I kept my initial thoughts to myself and felt pieces of

  past memories slowly fall into place. All the indifference towards

  anything being presented to him in the form of written word, the fact

  he refused to read anything to me that he had not already memorized

  to heart, the little flashes of anger any time I would bring him

  something to read to me when I was very young. I had always just

  assumed he was stuck in his ways and was unwilling to try anything

  new or different, but it made much more sense that he was instead

  incapable.

  “A king who cannot read or

  write?” I asked aloud. It felt like a rhetorical question, though I

  did desire a logical answer.

  “I did not quite believe it

  at first myself,” the scribe answered. “I thought surely it had

  to be just a misunderstanding on my part, that perhaps I was

  presenting him with too many or too difficult documents to go over,

  then it eventually dawned on me that he simply could not. We never

  spoke of it directly, it just became an expectation of my duties to

  spend my evenings in his chamber reading out any important news to

  him and showing him where to sign ahead of any public signatures.”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “He used to read some to me

  as a young child,” I weakly countered.

  “Ah, yes I saw him doing

  that once or twice, took me by surprise until I realized that what he

  was saying was not how an author would write. He was simply telling

  you stories he remembered or came up with and turned the pages when

  he thought it seemed right.”

  “I see,” I said, not

  helping a frown from forming on my face.

  “I sincerely tried to help

  him learn, my majesty. He simply… could not. It’s a hard thing to

  understand, he just lacked some aspect that allows people to read and

  it was just ink smudges on parchment to him. He tried for a while

  early on, before he had even taken your mother as a bride and it

  always ended up with him tipping over the ink bottle and storming off

  to the training grounds to hit things very angrily with swords.

  Eventually we worked out that it was just better if I took care of

  those aspects of kingship for him and filled him in on the minutia

  later.”

  “In some ways you ran the

  kingdom.”

  He let out a lilting laugh and

  shrugged. “I suppose that’s true, though I never really thought

  of it like that, that’s a dangerous thing to think around a king

  with a temper. I merely saw it as I was a special liaison who liked

  to keep their head attached to their shoulders so I was trustworthy.

  It was likely easier for him to trust me having the Church vouching

  for my training and credibility. They had me on a very short leash,

  still do.”

  I frowned at the mention of

  the Church again, it seemed that they had much more of a grip on the

  people of my kingdom without my knowledge. That even included myself.

  “Ah yes, let me explain

  that,” he said, noting my expression. “I was but a very young

  lad, probably no more than eight years when my father died, leaving

  myself, my mother, and my two younger sisters. We were not a noble

  family by any means, but we were better off than many. My father had

  inherited very rich, fertile farmland just on the edges of the

  kingdom in one of the most productive regions for wheat. Rich was not

  a word we would use, but we always had food on the table and mother

  had enough household money to make new clothes for us every year. It

  was actually a small event in the local village when it was time to

  trade out our clothing. My mother would go around handing out our old

  pieces for other women who were not to lucky in being able to clothe

  their children.” He went quiet, a soft smile forming on his lips

  and his eyes glistening like tears were threatening to grow. “When

  my father died we had assumed that the farm could go on much like it

  always had, perhaps we would need to hire a bit of help until I came

  of age, but the land had been in the family for generations so it

  should have just gone to my mother, then to me without issue, but my

  father had secrets.”

  “Much like mine,” I

  muttered softly.

  He gave me a sympathetic look

  and gently placed a hand on my shoulder for a moment, before removing

  it and continuing his story. “My father had always been one to

  visit the local tavern fairly often, not unusual for working men who

  make enough to have coin to throw around some here and there.

  Unfortunately he had found that gambling and bets were a bit of fun

  for him and at some point he must have sat in on one too many games

  of chance, because it turned out he owed a few other farmers and even

  a noble a bit of coin that he had promised to pay off with the next

  harvest. I don’t know how much it was, my mother tried to shield me

  from the worst of it, but I know it was enough that it was infeasible

  to hire the help to tend the field to make the money, then pay them

  and the debts. We were in a lose-lose situation and it was pretty

  assured that we were going to have to give up the farm and become

  destitute. I’m not sure how exactly the Church caught wind of the

  situation, but a few nights before we would have to pack our things

  and leave for an uncertain future, a priest knocked on the door and

  presented a solution. They were willing to pay off the debt as long

  as they were signed over the deed to the farm and my mother and

  sisters could live on and work the land like they always hand and I

  would be sent to them to be trained as they saw fit.”

  “So you were exchanged to

  keep your family’s farm?”

  “That’s the gist of it, I

  gladly accepted knowing that my mother and sisters would have a much

  better life that way and I was right, my mother was able to live out

  a long and happy life with my sisters and their eventual spouses in

  the house they grew up in. The younger of my sisters still lives in

  the house with her husband and numerous children, the Church makes

  sure I get her letters regularly still.”

  “And they trained you to be

  a scribe.”

  “They taught me absolutely

  everything I know and it led me to a sort of dream position with much

  stability and power. I would have never been able to have this fine

  of a life back on the farm. However, though they have never been

  outright in telling me, I knew that if I ever upset them or did

  something counter to what they have taught me that they are able to

  claim the deed and throw my family off of the land at a moment’s

  notice. I don’t like the idea of my young sister being tossed with

  all her children into the street, so I’m inclined to not fight the

  flow of the river, even if I don’t like where it’s going.”

  I felt like I was really

  beginning to understand how the Church worked. It seemed like it

  operated on the appearance of doing good deeds, but those deeds came

  with complications and contingencies that were not always agreeable.

  My mind wandered back to the words of my late religious tutor, that

  bad people hide in the disguising cloak of good.

  “I hope that with that brief

  explanation you can find it in your heart to forgive me for not

  standing up and fighting when perhaps others would,” he said with a

  deep sigh. “I was well aware of the… turmoil you were

  experiencing, but every time I thought I had to say or do something I

  imagined my family being turned out into the street to become beggars

  and I refrained.”

  “Yes, I understand,” I

  said with a nod, “I am well aware of what the cleric is capable of

  anyway. I would not have necessarily condemned you based on just how

  foreboding she is to deal with. She is someone who does not mince

  words or care about the length or quality of another’s life.”

  The scribe’s shoulders

  relaxed a bit and he let out a long breath. “Well, I suppose that

  the next step then is to perhaps think about where else she may have

  hidden the document. Logic says that her room would be the next place

  to look.”

  “I already had some servants

  look through her room,” I said. “They were unsuccessful in

  finding anything.”

  “I’m glad you thought of

  that already, but I’m not sure if most of the servants in this

  castle can even spell their own names. I’d be shocked if any of

  them would recognize the document for what it is apart from any other

  letters or correspondence she might have kept. I think it’s smart

  if we go have a look ourselves, plus I know a few inside tricks of

  the Church that might be of use. There is, well…” He glanced to

  the door, perhaps expecting a nosy servant to be eavesdropping.

  “There is a lot of secrets floating around those involved in the

  Church and if you have any ability to rise in hierarchy you learn how

  to hide things to keep them safe. I’m almost certain that something

  much be hidden in that room, even if it’s not exactly what we’re

  looking for, it may be helpful.”