Amelia Merlin and the Game for Okamila

Part 96: Long Live the King

Koal Lattantio, Warden of Kalishterya, lounged in the throne meant for monarchs. He smirked as the lords and ladies of the court avoided eye contact with him at all costs. The Crow stood to the right of him as his counselor. The room was warmer, much warmer than it had to be but Koal liked it that way, he loved watching the people sweat as they stuttered their complaints at him.

"My lord," the lord bowed so deeply his body folded in half. "There have been some-some worries about the new addition to the public square."

"Yes?" Koal laughed. "What's the issue? Come on now, speak so the whole room can hear."

He kept his eyes on the floor and to his delight, Koal saw beads of sweat running down his face. "The guillotine and the flogging post seem a little dramatic. The people don't like the public violence-"

"No, they prefer it to be private?" he chuckled. "Should we put it in their homes instead?"

"They would prefer no public punishment at all, my lord." the man suddenly gained courage and looked him in the eye. Koal preferred him staring at his feet, but he could work with this as well.

"Does anyone know why I implemented public punishment?" he could see the lizard woman, Sapana watching him from the side of the room. He grinned at her but she stayed frozen and silent like the rest of them. "Does no one know?" he called out again. "I made it public so people can see the consequence of their actions. They need to see the power of the crown and respect it! I will not allow another uprising to happen like it almost did only months ago. Which is why I'm opening the Colosseum once more!" he spread his arms as if to embrace the lot of them. Whispers broke out among the crowd and people shifted in their positions.

"My lord," the Crow leaned in and spoke quietly to him. "You should use caution. The Colosseum was closed for good reason, as well as public punishment, by your father. The people may not like this."

"I don't give a damn what they like. And I'm not my father." He snapped. Breathing heavily, he motioned for the lord who had the complaints, to come forwards. "My lord," he said so the whole room could now hear. "Since you have so much to say about my new laws, I'll give you a choice. The guillotine or the Colosseum."

"My-my lord?" he stuttered.

"Choose or we cut your tongue out and you do both." he snarled. Before the silence and been in fear but now it was in cowardice, not a soul moved to vouch for the man.

"M-m-my l-lord-" he blinked and stammered.

Koal smirked, "Guards? Give this man what he's asking for."

Everyone looked away, eyes turned to the ground and hands pressed over ears as the tongue was ripped out of the lord with hot knives. But Koal, out of respect and intrigue, watched viciously. He clapped his hands slowly as the guards dragged the lord from the throne room.

"Well I have to say I'm glad that's over." he huffed. "People can be so melodramatic these days." Koal waited for a response but everyone remained quiet so he laughed. "I'm joking!" and his tone switched back to serious in a second. "I know how awful that must have been for all of you. But you have to understand, we live in dangerous times which calls for dangerous measures. As some of you may know, the Lord of Dreams has entered the city and we have welcomed him and his lizards with open arms. My family stands behind him, and against the Girl Queen. That foreign bitch will not take the throne from us, from the people who have been here all along."

Again Koal waited for the response, this time determined to get one. The Crow who still stood behind him cleared his throat.

"Long live the King." he said dryly.

Nobody responded, they were all cowards. So Koal Lattantio stood up and turned to the Crow with narrowed eyes. "What a wonderful idea. The coronation happens in a week and a day."

If the room had been still before it was nothing compared to the atmosphere now. Not a soul dared to breathe, the passive motionless people stood there and watched the young lord declare himself king and nobody moved. He looked around to the mercenaries he paid as guards and waited for one of them to get the hint.

"Long live the king!" they started to say.

"Long live the king!" the high lords of Okamila joined in.

"Long live the king!" the chorus echoed through the walls and swept across the kingdom. It took only days for the news to reach every corner of Kalishterya, Koal Lattantio was King.

...............

Far away, at the same moment he became king, Amelia Merlin was writing a letter to her love while the friends around her teased her about the way she smiled when she wrote his name. Her face glowed in the fire of the common room, she leaned back into the squashy couches and wrote down how wonderful she was doing, how everything seemed to be okay for the moment, how for once, it was all going to plan. 

It would be two days before she received not only the news of a new king, but of her brother dying as well.

...............

In a stuffy corner of a library thousands of miles from Okamila, Brice Gorodetsky sat in the dark talking to a boy with blonde hair. They whispered and when the news came to them of the new monarch, they grinned to each other and drank silent toasts to the fortune and genius of a well designed plan.