The Royal Thief

Chapter Forty-eight: Certus Livine

It's not as long as I would have hoped after last time, but I really like this chapter. Let me know what you think!

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I was sinking further into the rebellion with every step. I could feel it like quicksand sucking me in, and I was almost certain it would never let me go. But it wasn't terrifying, or if it was, it was also exhilarating. Last night Nali pulled me up to the little meeting room for a while, reluctant as Luca seemed to stay by himself downstairs. 

They had plans, she told me. Lots of them. And she was right. In the space of maybe half an hour Aiden revealed just how deeply the revolution had sunk its claws. They had maps and diagrams and lists all in a code I couldn't fathom that Dell read as easily as our native language. They were deciding if they should try and expand their reach to merchants, they were planning more exploits to get money for bribes and other necessities, they were discussing in hushed voices whether a certain quantity of such-and-such could could be hidden here or there, whether So-and-so could be trusted to keep his mouth shut, when they should begin giving the king "something more to be frightened of than phantoms and shadows".

Xalva was there, a silent mass in the corner with crossed arms and no expression, an ax hanging from his belt looking like a toy next to his huge hands. Every once in a while he would finger its handle, or touch a long knife hidden beneath his vest. Only once did he speak, when Aiden said, "The Sage is a problem, as we have known all along. There is no way to sway his loyalty. We will only have to work around him."

"Or he could simply be disappearing some dark night."

The master of the revolution scrutinized his henchman-- his assassin, his hit man?-- and shook his head. "The blood of a Guardian is not something we can afford on our hands."

"Ah. I had been forgetting that for a while. But that is not to say he couldn't really disappear."

"At some point, yes. But to do that we would have to infiltrate the castle, not to a remote and un-watched corner as before but to the most guarded wing, true royal territory if anything is. If we could pull it off, yes, we would. But if we could find a way to do that, there are other people who sleep in the royal wing we would do well to target even before My Lord Sage. Rest easy, and trust me, eventually we will get there."

Yes, I was certainly in the rebellion now, sinking deeper with every breath. It was a secret I carried with me as I stepped through the halls of the castle, stronghold of the royals, and knew that I was plotting against them, that I would be a part of their last and final fall. 

In the city the rebels at that moment might have been planning  even more. But I was stepping silently over polished marble blocks laid side by side in gleaming halls towards the royal apartments of Princess Magali the second, Heir of Solangia, daughter of a tyrant, somehow no more than a little squeaking mouse.

The guards standing at the raised threshold of the great arch to the royal wing lifted their glaives in unison and crossed them. The movement was so swift and effortless that I almost didn't make myself stop walking. There had been no swoosh of air off their eighteen inches of polished steel blades, not even a clink of them knocking together. It was a movement practiced to be completed in a single fluid gesture of one second's length. 

There were two of them, dressed in the royal green with black trim, uniforms unassuming, equipped with little more than their glaives, which were all they needed. They could be used in tandem to block entrance to the hall, or singly to hook one unwanted visitor and keep them back while others passed. Their blades were long and slightly curved and though gleaming, hardly decorative. They were the third class of the Royal Guard-- the second class being the Heir's Guard, and the first the King's. The Sovereign's Guard, it should really have been called, as it had always been, but Queen Jolane had never once raised a murmur about this slight. She wasn't really one of us, this silent, stiff queen. Solangian by birth, of a southern noble family, but had spent so much time in the lesser country of Glenstone that it was hardly surprising they called her the Foreign Queen.