The Duchess Cannot Sleep || ONC 2021

16 | The Court

Tari may never have looked so scared as he did swiveling back to Reide and mouthing, "Your girlfriend is a criminal?"

Reide's gaze flicked several times between the door and Andreya, who was still unconscious. He swore under his breath.

The guard knocked again, more forcefully, and Reide launched to his feet, clicking Sauva's door shut behind him and shoving past Tari in a split-second. He swung the front door open and looked the Court guard square in the eyes. "Andreya is very sick and cannot travel. You aren't allowed to arrest her if doing so will endanger her life."

"What ails her?" The guard didn't miss a beat.

"Exposure."

"We have proper medical equipment at the Court," he said, and Reide clenched his jaw. "It is not far. She will be safer there."

Reide liked to think he had not just been cornered by the guard's argument, but his belief was becoming increasingly harder to maintain. If he denied her treatment, she was well enough to travel and would be arrested at once. If he accepted, she would be still be arrested and treated at the capital.

Either way, he lost, they would be separated, and Andreya would be charged with illegal immigration and sent back to Nasavte, the place that had convinced her she was a witch whose death would be retribution and not an unforgivable tyranny.

Reide's fists were clenched and his bow was right at his fingertips. In less than a second, he could tear an arrow through this man's throat. He could jam the wheels of the carriages that had parked outside the house and loose the horses with the arrows he had left.

Instead, he stepped back to let the guard in and cursed his own uselessness.

The guard signaled to the three Court carriages outside and two other guards joined him, a man and a woman, both dressed from head to foot in the same bright green that decorated their coaches. Tari, looking every part a child caught in the middle of an argument, scrambled over to Sauva's room to let them in.

Without thinking, Reide entered in front of them and slipped in front of Andreya. The guards paused.

"Take me with you," Reide said. "Arrest me, if you must, but I'm going."

"Please step aside," the first guard said.

Reide planted his feet. "If you need me to commit a crime first, I can do that."

"Reide!" Tari gasped, but Reide didn't break eye contact with the guards. Finally, the tallest of the three, a man with a mean scar on his upper lip, sighed and nodded, motioning Reide aside. He stared at the three guards for a moment longer, then grudgingly complied.

As soon as Reide stepped out of the room, Tari grabbed his arm and whispered, "What are you doing?"

Reide watched them wrap blankets around Andreya and pick her up like a kid, and he glanced at his brother with a ghost of a smile. "I'm saying goodbye for a while, Tari. Don't let Da get too mad at me." He removed Tari's grip and turned to go, but glanced back after a moment. "Maybe next time we'll finish the Mandy Reel."

Then he followed after the guards and climbed into a coach, and Tariben watched them go, returning Reide's half-smile and wishing he'd gotten to know who this girl really was to have stolen his brother away like that.

──── ❉ ❉ ❉ ────

Reide had only been in such an extravagant carriage a few times before, even with his job as an official hunter for the Isantad Court. He was one of the best archers in his branch, but he was young, and new, and he liked to wander too much to stay cooped up in the capital shooting targets to prove himself to his superiors.

Being part of the Hunter's Guild was all he wanted. It granted him passage anywhere in the country so long as he met his quota, and most times, he did. But no rule, law, or regulation in the world stood firm above the locks and keys keeping hold of the Isantad Court, and the only ones who held control of those locks and keys were the Judges themselves.

The carriage rolled to a stop outside the grand white wall surrounding the capital, and Reide listened vaguely to a conversation that took place between the guards outside before they started forward again. Now there was a great clammer of conversations outside, millions of words from thousands of people in hundreds of buildings and tens of districts, all within the huge conglomerate empire known as the Isantad Court. There were people, and shops, and houses, and brilliant glass statues atop brilliant glass fountains. The carriage passed them all and plowed onward to the center of the city: the Courthouse itself, two separate palaces with a three-tiered bell tower and many smaller structures between them. Reide had not seen it in person since he first joined the Guild several years ago.

Getting to the Courthouse required entrance through three more gates—one for each Judge—and Reide stared straight at his lap as they went, quiet as the two guards sitting on the bench across from him and grim as death.

When the clop of the horses came to a stop and the carriage door finally opened, Reide hopped out onto the paved-brick walkway before the guards could tell him to and embraced the bitter breeze through his still-damp hair.

And there stood waiting in front of him a thin man in floor-length robes, his thinning hair tied back with intricate braids and his beard short and sharp as his piercing blue eyes.

Reide staggered back a step and the man bowed. "Reide Hafiless. This way, please."

"An escort?" Reide swiveled incredulously to the guards who had emerged from the carriages, but it was the escort himself who answered.

"There is a room awaiting you and Duchess Marivatan, when she recovers." The man gestured to the left palace for a second time. "This way, please."

Reide's mouth opened and closed again in short order. Had they been expecting him?

And Andreya was a duchess?

When the escort turned on his heel and started toward the palace, Reide stumbled after him. "What—what about the whole being arrested part? Aren't we going to prison?"

The elderly man cast him a side look. "Do you want to go to prison?"

"No, no, but—a room for Miss Andreya, too?" Reide glanced up at the towering pillars lining the walkway, connecting ten feet above them in decorative arches from which lush vines hung, resisting the cold with surprising vitality. The escort nodded, not breaking his attention from the path ahead, where the arches wove into the wall of the palace and two elegant doors and their respective guards awaited them, bowing when they approached.

Reide had never once been inside either of the two Courthouse palaces. He almost forgot his worry for Andreya in the midst of the building's grandiosity. Even still, the beauty of the palace was laced with a rainbow of unease.

The escort led him down a long carpeted hallway, the walls made of smooth ivory with windows three times Reide's height and ceilings taller yet. In the empty space, the escort's polite words echoed. "Up these stairs, please. Your room will be to the right, and Duchess Marivatan's will be several doors down to the left."

The stairs were, of course, massive and spectacularly clean. The old man still kept pace up each of the marble steps and beat Reide to the top, where another smaller hallway stretched, dozens of mahogany doors set to each side in perfect symmetry. The escort brought him up to one door particularly, opened it for him, and gestured with a swirl of his wrist for Reide to enter.

"Wow..." Reide stood in the doorway for a moment, looking on at the double canopy bed and the immaculate window with its immaculate drapes and its immaculate matching trim. Had Andreya once lived like this in Nasavte?

The escort bowed again and Reide had the mind to thank him as he closed the door and the click of the lock assured his privacy.

And then he realized the lock was on the outside, and he was now trapped within.

──── xxx ────

Heyo, peoples!! Any thoughts on this most recent development? Reide's really done it this time, lol. All critiques, suggestions, and maybe even compliments are welcome, and don't forget to vote if you enjoyed!

Approx. current wordcount: 26k. :0