The Mage Emperor Dregin

Chapter 54

He huffed at her words in sullen rebuke. Not a wonder his brother never returned her favors. Although, her work was meritable. She had a body he saw enough to lay judgment that it was admittingly beautiful, but was made to spring like a trap with claws. No thing of pleasure was she. He shook his head. Her flattery was poison, doubled with daggers. He told himself his refusal was not regrettable.

The trees collaged over blue skies. Red-pink light cast over the leaves, darkening their green. The natives were missing, as if an afternoon affected them overnight. She had said they wouldn't bother him anymore. Something dawned on him. He'd never guess, should had detected. So, he conjectured, she was partial to him. Patience seemed to reap its rewards. She was easy, too easy.

His methods were harmless, just useful. He'd like to think that way playing at power. But any power-plot was dangerous, more often lethal with the higher hands involved. He was the last-born son in his family. His background was so obscured, he was so insignificant, he moved more freely than those in public eyes. He stopped at a campfire, the flames dwindling in need of more wood. Not another soul within sight. They were hiding in those huts or behind the trees. He could smell their cook-fires. Seeing smoke billowing scatteredly proved his point. Kicking the dry logs into the pit, he squatted on his ankles, and began stoking the fire. His mind continued his thoughts.

The game among the Houses was taught bitterly in his childhood. He learned it well, especially how to be safe if he kept well within the shadows, the boundaries of a non-heir. Direct physical killing disgusted him, though he was partisan favorably to the necessity of murder from a third hand. The fire caught onto the fresh log, giving off adequate heat. The pot hanging over it from the tripod was bubbling last night's meal, some sort of thick stew smelling gravely of ginger. Rabbit drifted faintly to his nose. He scanned the surrounding as the savage women, the plain ones, stirred the village to life with their chores. Some were cleaning, sweeping the dry ferns away from the hut entrances and the paths. Others dragged pots to somewhere out of his sight.

He was glad about Trink's suggestion for amnesia, impossible it would seem, but so far, no one breathed about it. And they were avoiding him. The stew was burning beneath. How was he going to live this down after what had happened? Drifting, he let fall the stoking branch. The fire ravaged with a life of its own, growling and hissing at him in mockery. The sight of it was enchanting. Something in the black ash, a flavor in the burnt food after evaporation failed, the smell of clean and dirty smoke caught him. He was attracted to its destruction, how it consumed the wood abating pain in crackles. The logs should be screaming or writhing helplessly. They lay in the hearth, accepting fate, letting blackness seep into the grains layer by layer. Abruptly, he shoved the tripod forcefully, satisfied temporarily of the spill. His neighbors were giving him eccentric looks, whispering in clusters of two or three. With his hands spading earth and stones, he started smothering the fire.

Then, he had to stop, because a stranger appeared only some strides away. He heard the hoofbeats, but was too immersed in his problems to look up. The rider was clearly a woman, though turbaned in cascaded lace and veiled under a lavender sheer that hardly hid the face. Her entire garb was beige. A liveried tunic, gold-trimmed at the edges and hems, loose sleeves cuffed with silver wristlets and armlets. The skirt was divided for riding hemming the gold-brown suede boots with wooden soles, feet in plain stirrups. A long sword accompanied alongside the white mare's flank. The gloves were sewn gauntlet-style as the hands fiddled the reins resting on the animal's nape.

The stranger nudged the ride forward. He stood slowly, still entranced by the magnificence. This person was absolutely out of place comparatively to the crowd gathering around them. Redjay, among them, was attending at her side almost acting maiden to catch the train of her dress if she had worn an elaborate wardrobe. A good thing he came, otherwise, he would never have known such existence, that beside his people, aside from his arrogant gender, there was an entire order of the opposite powerful in its own right. He ought to thank Trink for such an enlightening experience. Although, he did learn much in the recent years from the Tarennei conquest. Life took new meanings—His mental philosophical moment ended as he realized he was staring stupidly for quite some time. And his freeze mattered insignificantly.