The King's Servants

Chapter 9

The next two weeks were absolutely unbearable. The children were always working all of the time and had very little time to do anything else. The tiny breaks they had were mainly used to get rehydrated as they worked outside in the hot sun for most of the days. Due to this horrible work schedule, along with the fact that King Baritorin now despised them, (or so they thought) the six children all became terribly depressed. They didn't smile as much as they used to. They didn't have the same vim and vigour that they had grown up with and they all talked a lot less.

This made all the giant servants very worried about them. The main reason for all the worry was that the children were not eating. They stopped showing up for meals and this caused them to all lose weight, making them very weak and skinny. Every day, the maids would leave giant-sized snacks for them in their little room, like biscuits, scones and fruit, but the children never ate them. When the maids went to clear up the plate, they would still find the snacks completely untouched.

What was worse was that they weren't sleeping either. The huge workload required so many hours that the children would be awake till the early hours of the morning, slaving away. That meant that they only got about three to four hours of sleep each day.

Unknown to the children, King Baritorin had been searching for them everywhere. They had just stopped showing up to his room. Whenever, he got a break from Armana and her constant need to talk to him, he would try to find them. He was in the servants' quarters very often just so he could check if his little servants were there. He checked the kitchen, the dining room and all the other places that he had seen them working before, but they were never there.

"Are they actually making a conscious effort to avoid me", said the exasperated king. He wanted to find them so badly. If they weren't going to come to him, then he would go and look for them. He didn't care if it looked like he was desperate. He really wanted to properly apologise to them. The king only had about a month and a half left, so his time was running out. As much as he wanted to be as far away from Armana as possible, he didn't want to leave any grievances behind.

Now, the king was aware that on a certain Sunday in each month, Armana let the servants stay outside and enjoy their day. They didn't do any work until evening. It should have been like that every Sunday, but Armana was not that lenient and was of the opinion that her workers shouldn't get the same privileges as any other workers. They worked in the palace after all, that alone was privilege enough.

Baritorin knew that since they weren't working that day, it would be ten times easier to locate the children and talk to them. They would be free, relaxed and probably in the right mood to talk. The large man smiled to himself. This was another opportunity that he had to take, and the way he saw it, there was nothing that could prevent him from seeing them, whether they had been avoiding him on purpose or not.

On that Sunday, the weather was clear and warm. The queen's garden was alight with the beauty that was the sun and all the flowers bloomed in their full glory. After the church service had ended, all he servants gathered in the garden to relax, play games, chat and just enjoy the freedom that they had been given.

"Now where are those six sweet little teens?" whispered Baritorin as he scanned the ground for the children. As the king directed his blue eyes up and down the garden floor, his happy grin began to fade. There was no sign of them. "Maybe I'm not looking hard enough" thought Baritorin, as if to reassure himself that they were somewhere in the garden.

He decided to search a bit further. He walked through a large expanse of the beautiful garden, greeting many servants along the way. Still, he didn't see them. The large king was not happy. Where on earth could they be? The question throbbed in the king's mind as he began to ponder on the children's whereabouts.