The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (12 page)

Mariealle put the dagger into the basket and then sat next to him.

“Foster brother? Foster mother?” she said with keen interest. “Most orphans wind up in the street and would do anything for a family that would take them in. You are blessed enough to have a family take you in and yet you still practically live in the street, thieving like an urchin? You are softer in the head than I imagined!”

Gully said vacantly, “You are right. My life is turned around and upside down. But it is more difficult for me than you know.” He realized his hand had reached for the pendant hanging under his tunic. He stopped it before it got there and said to Mariealle more directly, “Perhaps, if we knew each other better, I would be willing to explain it to you more fully.”

He looked up to her eyes, expecting to see victory blazing in them, but there was a gentleness there instead.

She said, “Well, you need not fret on my account, Snipe of the Gully. I have no strong desire to give away the secret shared by you and your foster brother, Roald.”

Gully stared at her in confusion, and wonder. “So... why follow me that day? Why gather this secret if not to put an end to my crimes? I’m sure I’ve stolen from your father at some point. He is one of the most successful merchants in Lohrdanwuld!” asked Gully, almost begging to understand why she would claim the secret and then not use it.

Mariealle rolled her eyes at him. “If taking from my father on occasion is a crime, then we are both guilty.”

“You’ve taken from your own father?” Gully’s despondence started to lift cautiously.

“You are not the only one who has pilfered before, although I am not nearly as accomplished as you, in truth,” she admitted. “My father treats our servants like insects when they’ve been more like family to us and cared for me more than either of my own parents. I sometimes give them a little extra to right that wrong. From my father’s pockets, that is. He never even misses it.”

Gully was liking Mariealle more and more with every word she spoke, with every glance from her eyes and with every smile that escaped her soft lips.

Mariealle said, with a gleam in her eye, “Besides, if he does miss it, I will tell him that the Gully Snipe has struck! So, in a certain fashion, I
need
for you to continue your career.”

Gully turned to the side to hide from her the blush he felt rise in his cheek at the thought. He said, “Then I’m sure you do me no more wrong than everyone else that has pinned to me every other theft which I did not commit! You have my blessing to do so.”

Mariealle giggled and then asked him shyly, like she did not expect an answer, “May I ask your real name?”

Gully sighed. She knew of Roald, so there was no point in hiding it from her. Besides, this was an opportunity not likely to come again, and he did not want to waste it. “I suppose my name is Bayle Delescer. At least, that’s what Astrehd, my foster mother, wanted for me. I seem to suffer from a surplus of names, in fact. But please feel free to call me Gully. Roald does, and I’m closer to him than anyone.”

He noticed the basket at Mariealle’s feet and asked her, “What brings you to the forest road? It’s not wise for a lady like yourself to be out here alone. There are highwaymen and wild animals. Even thieves, I hear. It’s dangerous.”

“I know a place not far from here where ambercrown mushrooms grow, and they are my favorite. I come here to gather them sometimes. And you needn’t worry about me. I am armed and quite capable of defending myself.”

Gully raised his eyebrow at her. “Oh, as you did today with the unarmed man that you caught completely by surprise?”

Mariealle blushed and did not respond.

Gully started to place his hand on her wrist to emphasize again the dangers in the woods, but drew it back at the last second before he overstepped the bounds of propriety with her. He said, quite sincerely, “Lady Mariealle, I am serious. You know of the disappearances, and the tales of the people, or creatures, who are responsible. The forest is
dangerous
, even for a heart as brave as yours.”

“I don’t go far, and I only go to the place with which I’m familiar. I tread cautiously, and if I hear anyone approach, I leave the road and hide.” She paused, and then proceeded, “Besides, I must keep myself safe so that we can talk again and I can hear the true reasons that motivate your delinquent ways. Perhaps I will even reform you one day, Gully Snipe!”

Gully’s heart gave a small leap at the words. He fought it back, but the smile that came to his face would not be kept down, despite his desire not to be toyed with.

He said, “Please, Mariealle, do not mock my concern. Return to the safety of the walls of Lohrdanwuld.” He started to say something else, stopped, but then said it anyway. “I have many worries, goodlady. I have no desire to add a new worry, one for your safety, to that list. That burden would be great.”

Mariealle seemed almost both shocked and touched by the sentiment as she watched Gully rise from the log to be on his way.

Gully pleaded again as he stepped away from her, “Please... be safe. Go home!”

Mariealle rose, too, as Gully took a few more backward steps away from her down the road. She called after him, “And what about you, Gully, sir? Am I to be left worrying about
your
welfare in this feral place?”

Gully laughed as he retrieved his shoulder sack and began walking, his face beaming as brightly as the laughing moon on a clear night. “I am a child born of this forest, Goodlady Mariealle! Its sounds are my heartbeat, the winds through it my very own breath. I know this wood better than anyone in the entirety of the Iisendom!”

That same morning, the Domo Regent stormed down the hallway of the Palace of the King, his boots echoing along the corridor and striking the polished stones in the floor hard enough to crack them open. He was in a rage, and the accursed, foolish behavior of the night before was going to be made up for if someone had to die in the process. His eyes saw more red than they did the carved beams and woodwork screens along the walls that had so fascinated him the first time he traveled to Maqara years earlier. The few servants that heard his commotion and peeked out at him ducked back down side passages or into adjoining rooms rather than face the coming storm, even one from a foreigner.

Krayell arrived at his destination at the end of the hall, shoving open the large pair of doors without waiting to be admitted or even announced. He shouted, “Have you lost your mind?”

King Azi looked up from the leg of grouse he was breakfasting upon, and said coolly, but with enough menace that the two servants attending him turned and left the room immediately, “You forget your place, Domo!”

The Domo Regent shoved an empty chair away from the table and threw himself into it. “What is
wrong
with you?!” he demanded of King Azi.

King Azi ignored Krayell’s effrontery and pointed a half-eaten leg of the game bird at him. “Why are you even still in my palace? I told you people to be gone at first light!”

Krayell closed his eyes for a moment and forced his anger down inside him, never losing it, but only stowing it away for use later. He said, with an unnaturally forced calm, “Honestly, King Azi, if you had but told me of this absurd custom of yours to serve up your own daughter to the prince as his dessert last night to test his virility, I could have at least warned him so he would have gone along with it and we wouldn’t be in this difficult position!”

“The custom is far from absurd! The fact that you even see it that way shows how weak you as a people are! Maqarans value strength, boldness, dominance, and unwillingness to shrink from what they can take! You Iisenors are all like women, shying away from every opportunity under the excuse of propriety or... whatever excuse pops into your heads. Any man that subjugates his manhood by not claiming his female when she is practically thrown at him will be no son-in-law of mine!”

Krayell sighed and rubbed his eyes in frustration. He would never see his goal attained for all the blundering buffoons that insisted on tripping into his path.

“Even if it ruins our carefully laid plans? Even if, within a year of his marriage, what Thaybrill did or did not do on his engagement night will be of no consequence to anyone across two kingdoms?” asked the Domo, trying to get the king to remember the true goal.

Azi had resumed his breakfast, and said with a mouthful, “It
is
of consequence! It is of consequence to myself
and
my court! All knew within minutes that your prince is more child than man and is unfit to claim my daughter! I will not endure the shame, your plans be damned!”

Krayell had moved on to rubbing his temples. What had started out as a profitable endeavor for a small handful of high ranking Iisenors a quarter century earlier was now on the verge of giving him what he had longed for his whole life. He had been tripped up before, early on, and now the king’s rashness and foolish pride was ruining the opportunity that both of them were looking forward to. But as it seemed with all royal blood, they wanted what they wanted, no matter how impossibly contradictory it was for those who were expected to deliver. The Maqaran sot of a monarch seemed perfectly content to pierce his own foot with an arrow from his own bow, to bungle the real prize, all over the minor quibble of Thaybrill’s qualifications as a suitable husband for his daughter, when she would be a widow within a year.

A bloodless method of placing Iisen in the hands of the Maqarans was all but impossible now, as was his own path to finally entering the ranks of nobility. The accursed line of veLohrdan had been nothing but one complication and aggravation after another for over twenty years now. And once again, they were thwarting everything, this time through an act of gallantry by the brat that was to take the throne. Krayell had been so looking forward to being rid of them, to personally ending the veLohrdan dynasty himself once and for all.

King Azi continued to smack his lips noisily as he dined while Krayell tried to think what to do next.

He asked the king, “Do you still wish the realm of Iisen for your own? Or have you decided you prefer your pride instead?”

Azi pulled the grouse bone from his mouth long enough to say, “I want both.”

The answer made Krayell grind his teeth together in spite of the fact that he knew what it would be before it was spoken. “It would have been better to have your daughter on the throne to assume control of Iisen when we got rid of Thaybrill, but that option is removed from the table because of your pointless tests. There is a
new
cost now because of last night, for both of us, Your Highness. Instead, here is what we are to do,” said the Domo. “You will send a contingent of soldiers through the pass, enough to take the capital city of Lohrdanwuld. I will eliminate the prince permanently and ensure that the Kingdom Guard will not trouble your path to the capital. I will ensure that they are thinned so desperately in Lohrdanwuld that it will fall into your hands readily. Once you have Lohrdanwuld, you have Iisen.”

King Azi nodded to show he understood.

“My price for this is double the size of the fief we previously agreed to,” continued Krayell. “And I get double my pick of the conquered Iisenors to begin my own noble line before I grow too old. Is that understood?”

King Azi reddened in the face and grew offended, “Don’t speak to me as if I’m your servant! How dare you!”

Krayell snapped at him and pounded on the table, “You value decisiveness?! I have a surplus to present to you! This is the price you pay for the plan we must now follow because
you
want both Iisen
and
a son-in-law that takes your daughter like a common trollop! Take this deal or leave it all behind, Your Majesty... those are the two paths last night has left you!”

Azi glared for a moment at the inlaid wood of the fine dining table where they sat, then grunted and said, “Fine. Double the land and title originally agreed.”

“Good,” said Krayell, finally feeling like he was getting somewhere. “How long before you can pull a regiment together and have them gathered at the pass to march on Lohrdanwuld?”

“A few weeks or so. An exact date is impossible to give without consultations.”

“Send a sealed message by one of veBasstrolle’s trusted men to me with the date when you have it, giving me enough advance warning that I can have things on my end set into motion. Remember not to let veBasstrolle or his men know the true plan or we’ll never have their support. They can only think we intend to continue and increase the trades in the same manner of the last twenty-odd years.” said Krayell.

Krayell waited for what he knew the king would insist on to officiate the new deal, but Azi continued his breakfast, now ignoring the Iisen Domo Regent.

“Are you not going to insist this be put to parchment as is your way?” grunted Krayell. “Or are you seeking an advantage by not allowing a record of our agreement?”

Azi frowned then waved at one of the servants nearby. “You know us well, Krayell. Very well. Ajidab, you heard the details of our agreement. Have them transcribed to official record and allow our Iisen... guest... to affirm it. Then it will be binding.”

The startlingly blond servant bowed low and scampered from the room to comply with the order.

Krayell left the king to finish his breakfast, keenly aware that the man did not have even the basic manners to offer him any before he left for Iisen. It made him long for the day when he would be a noble himself, finally, master of his own land and house, with his own dynasty and servants that answered to him and no one else.

No matter what the cost to the rest of the Iisendom.

~~~~~

In the carriage leaving the capital city of Daum Maqa, Krayell felt the bitter resentment almost ready to boil over. He shuffled a few parchments of random reports and directives, feigning occupation so he did not have to look at the prince across from him before it all became too much to bear. At least the little boil on his backside was staying quiet for once after having ruined the betrothal trip. He allowed his bitterness towards the last of the veLohrdans to be read as disappointment and frustration with what had happened the night before. With a new plan in place, what the prince thought of him mattered not, and letting the boy sense his true emotions towards him for once would keep him from being vexed by a barrage of questions that he did not feel like answering.