House of Lust (58 page)

Argan gripped his upper arm in gratitude.  “You’re doing a magnificent job here, Governor, and I am learning so much from you, but there are perhaps one or two things I may be able to teach you.”

Thetos smiled ruefully.  “Indeed, sire.  I forget sometimes you are a prince of the imperial family; you’re so young.”

“But learning all the time.  So, Governor, shall we put this unfortunate in the cells below, and begin our plan to find where this parchment came from?”

Thetos agreed and they strode back to the middle of the room, the governor calling Metila to rejoin them.  Argan felt a thrill run through him, this was something worth getting involved with.

It did, however, take a while to get the results, and autumn was beginning to change towards the early stages of winter.  The Storma Valley was usually free of frost due to its temperate climate and geographical location, and Metila rode out with Argan and Kerrin and a squad of tough looking soldiers to search the reed beds along the river banks.  Metila took her time, excitedly picking a plant at random and chattering about its properties, sticking it in a small bag and then putting it in turn into her saddlebags.  She was renewing her stock of some of her medicines and potions.

“
Lakhani
, look,” she pointed to a clump of thin but jagged stalks protruding from a grassy bank near a large tree.  “Healing bark.”

“Healing bark?” Argan echoed, translating from Bragalese to Kastanian in his head.  The Bragalese word had been zugalam.  Zu was the word for bark, galam the word for healing.

“Yes, I used some of that to cure you when you were gravely ill.”  She dismounted and broke off a few sticks, snapped them into small lengths and slipped them into a bag.  “Very strong medicine, but dangerous if you have too much.  Poisonous.  I have to mix it with other herbs to make it digestible.”

Argan shook his head.  “How do you know all this?  It would take a lifetime to learn!”

“I was brought up learning all this from my own personal healing tutor, like you learn from your Mr. Sen.  I have used plants all my life,” she said, looking around at the falling leaves from the trees, “and this is my classroom.”

“But – all that knowledge, it’ll be lost once you go.”

Metila shrugged.  “Others in Bragal know.  People outside Bragal fear our knowledge and seek to destroy it.”

“That is because witches use bad magic,” Kerrin said in his halting Bragalese.

Metila pointed at Argan.  “He is a prince, there have been bad princes, there have been good princes, but people do not destroy all princes.  So why destroy all witches because of the actions of a few?  You want to destroy a bad witch, get another witch to do it.  You destroy all good witches, who then can fight a bad witch?  There will always be witches.”

Kerrin glanced at Argan; he hadn’t expected Metila to use such logic on him.  Argan nodded thoughtfully.  “Can you give some of your wisdom to Amal?”

“I am already,” Metila said, “but carefully; she is not naturally
Okloka
.  The more powerful potions I will not teach her, but when I come out to collect plants, she will come with me and I will teach her what to seek and why.”

Argan smiled gratefully.  Kerrin frowned and switched to Kastanian.  “But won’t that make her life hazardous?  Others could be frightened of someone they see as a witch and – well, burn her!”

Argan shook his head and kept speaking in Bragalese.  “Not if we remain quiet about it, and I can’t see any of us telling anyone, can you?”

Metila nodded in agreement.  “It will be done very carefully, and I will only have her for another year or two before you are sent elsewhere so she will not know a great deal, but I will show her how to heal and keep you healthy.”

“Thank you, Metila, you’re wonderful.”  Argan beamed at the witch who bowed in response.  Kerrin looked away, clearly uncomfortable with the entire conversation.  Metila’s expression changed as she switched her attention to Kerrin.  One last look at Argan and she sighed and remounted.

The search went on and finally, on the third day, they discovered a swathe of cut reeds.  It was the fourth patch they came to that Metila finally looked satisfied with.  “Yes, these are the ones.  Same blue veins in that pattern that is in the parchment of the message from Slavis.  Very distinctive pattern as you can see,” she flicked her fingernail at the stub by the water’s edge.

Argan swung round in the saddle.  “So who owns this patch of land?” he asked of the official from the Turslenkan council offices who was with them.

The man consulted a thick bound book, a ledger, that he had brought with him.  After a few moments of careful examining, he looked up at a collection of houses on the top of the right hand slope leading away from the valley floor.  “Sire, there is a parchment seller living up there who has the cutting rights leased from the imperial crown who owns this land.  His family has harvested the reeds for generations.”

Argan made a sound of triumph.  “Then there is where we shall go immediately.  Come on, up!”

They rode up, all thirty of them, galloping around the small village, making sure nobody got in or out.  Argan, Kerrin, Metila, the official and four men made their way to the house the official identified and one of the guards got off his mount and hammered on the door.  “Open up in the name of Prince Argan Koros!”

Argan grinned at the title, then composed himself.  A woman opened the door hesitantly, looking at the figures before her, more than a little fearfully.  It was markedly colder up in this spot, halfway up the slope on the level patch of land the village was sited on.  A small brook trickled through it before plunging down to the valley in a small but picturesque waterfall.  Mud lay about, a residue of the people making their way from their homes to places of work or to places where they grew their food.  Animals shuffled about in pens to the rear of the the properties and the smell of them permeated about.

Higher up just before the rim of the valley there could be seen a frost on the ground.  Up there the wind cut across the top.

“Yes?” the woman asked, “who, did you say?”

Argan dismounted and stepped into her line of sight.  “I am Prince Argan Koros.  I wish to speak with the parchment maker.”

“Oh, your majesty!  He is inside – do you wish to come in?”

“No, I shall speak with him here.  We shall not intrude into your home, good lady.”

The woman curtseyed awkwardly, and vanished.  They heard a loud voice and an answering one, and a man of middle age appeared, a slightly scared look in his eyes.  “M-Majesty?”

“You are the reed cutter and parchment maker Alnar Wykas?”

Wykas asserted he was.  Kerrin came to stand alongside Argan, while the guards stood back, two still mounted, with the official and Metila in between them.

“You sold this autumn’s parchment already?”

“Sire,” Wykas bowed.  “Is there something wrong?”

“To whom?”

“Uh, most of them to the council in Turslenka, sire.  A few were purchased by the local nobility for their use.  The rest, apart from a few I use myself, went to locals here, sire.”

Argan handed a torn off portion of the message that had been sent to Blek.  There was no writing on this section.  “This is one of yours?”

Wykas examined it critically in the light of the late autumn day.  “Hmmm, yes.  This is the best quality.  The council in Turslenka had this.”

“Are you absolutely sure of this?  This is very important.”

Wykas pondered for a moment.  “Sire, I am absolutely certain of this.”

Argan took the torn parchment back.  “Thank you.  Kerrin, throw him a coin for his trouble.  You will tell nobody about this, of course.”

“No sire, and thank you!” he took the coin Kerrin tossed him.

Argan mounted up, followed by Kerrin and the two guards.  They turned away and made their way out to the edge of the village where the others were waiting.  The other guards dutifully fell in behind the two fifteen year olds and the foreign witch.  They were regulars, professional armoured cavalrymen, the elite of the Kastanian armed forces, and loyal to the House of Koros.  They had been ‘loaned’ to Argan but it was almost accepted that they would continue to serve under him with Kerrin as their commander for the rest of their serving lives, which in the empire was generally twenty years, with another fifteen after that voluntarily if they both survived and wished to go on.

Kerrin was now training with these men full time, getting to know them and their tactics.  They knew their duty was to ensure the young warrior knew how to command and lead them by the time he reached sixteen.  He was progressing, but not as fast as he would have liked.  Argan was already comfortable giving commands to the group; they were faithful, strong and knew their art which helped a lot.  Argan would flesh out their numbers once he reached his sixteenth birthday which was still most part of a year away.

“We return to Turslenka,” he said, “and continue our search there.  We should reach it by nightfall if we are swift enough.  Let’s ride,” he said, waving them to follow.

Metila kept close to the young prince.  She leaned over towards him as they got to the valley bottom.  “You command well,
Lakhani
.”

He looked over to her and grinned.  “Like Thetos?”

“Hah!  You are not yet that comfortable.  A few years and yes, but you must still grow into your role.”

She said little else on the way back, and as Argan had promised, they reached the Eprosian Gate by nightfall.  The guards saluted smartly as they thundered past, then the gates were closed as per regulations.  Kastania was at war and all town and city gates were to be closed at night.

Thetos was waiting as they arrived at the residence, the guards going to their quarters, and to see to their mounts.  Argan, Metila, Kerrin and the official were shown into Thetos’ quarters, still wearing their riding clothes.  Drinks were called for and chairs found, dragged out from obscure alcoves or from under piles of papers.  Thetos was not known for his tidy office.

There was little room around his desk but Amal managed to weave herself around those seated and deposit mugs on surfaces without spilling anything.  She then stood uncertainly by Argan, almost getting in the way of Kerrin and the prince.  “Amal, thank you,” Thetos said.  “You may go.”

She curtseyed and turned to go, but Argan took hold of her arm.   “I hear from the Governor you were asking about me every day?”

“Yes, my lord.  I was anxious as to your wellbeing.”

Thetos snorted.  “Hah!  She was climbing the walls with worry, I can tell you!  I’m as glad to see you for that reason as any other.”  He pulled Metila onto his lap.  “This is a better reason.”  The two exchanged smiles.

Argan, not wishing to be outdone, pulled Amal onto his.  She squealed in surprise, then happily settled on his lap.  Kerrin looked at them with disapproval and Argan gestured to Thetos and Metila.  “I outrank him, so if he can do that, why not I?”

“Well said, sire,” Thetos said approvingly.  “And space was tight with you all there together.  But I’d caution against you doing that in other places with other company.  You may cause a scandal.  So, what did you discover?”

Argan nodded to the official who was sitting quietly with his ledger and paperwork.  “You may advise the Governor.”

“Sire.  The reeds were on land owned by the Crown, but leased to a Makenian family business who regularly supply the Council here.  From what Metila here had said, it would appear the message came from that very supply, sent to our offices a mere moon’s phase ago.”

“As recently as that?  Careless,” Thetos said, his hand out of sight, stroking Metila between her legs.  She was pushing against his fingers, eyes shut, biting her lower lip.  She was oblivious of most of what was being said.  If Thetos was not careful she would drag him to her room and rape him.

“Careless, Governor?” Kerrin asked, not entirely comfortable with the familiarity being shown between the two pairs.

“Someone must have taken a new batch and used one of those sheets to send the message.  It’ll be a simple case of finding out who was working that day in a section that received the new parchment sheets.  Then we’ve got him.  Hah!  Nobody outside this room is to know – and you will keep your mouth shut.  In fact, I’m assigning you termporarily to this very room to process the paperwork for this little task,” he waved his hook in the direction of the official.

“Sire.”

“Now you can all go and change – this room smells like a stables.”

They filed out, and Thetos called for the guards to bar anyone from coming in.  Then he threw Metila over his desk and hauled her underclothing down and kicked her legs apart.  “Now, witch, you’re going to get three days’ worth of my loving.”

“Oooh yes, you do now!” she purred and spread herself over the furnishing, scattering paperwork.

Amal meanwhile, led Argan to his room.  “He was right,” she said to him, leading him into the room.  “You do smell like a stables.  Three days away and you go all messy on me.”  She laughed to rob any offence from her words.  “And you’re dirty.  You still playing in mud pools?”

Argan studied his hands.  “Well there was this big river with lots of muddy banks on the way,” he said.