The Storm King

The entire office was quiet as the grave as they processed what the messenger had just relayed to them: Prince August had been arrested.

After a beat, Minerva rose to her feet and said half with anger and half with disbelief, “WHAT?!”

Her sixth-tier aura crashed down upon the second-tier messenger, and he almost found himself kissing the floor from its weight, and the auras of the rest of the knights in the room weren’t helping. However, he was one of Trajan’s own knights, and so he managed to stay on his feet, if barely.

“Just… just a few… minutes… ago!” he struggled to say.

Minerva just stared at him for a second or two more until she realized what she was doing and retracted her aura. Fortunately, the rest of the knights also lifted the pressure they were inadvertently exerting upon the messenger at about the same time.

“Explain!” Minerva succinctly demanded.

“The Sapphire Paladin showed up at his office about half an hour ago!” the messenger desperately said, almost tripping over his words in his rush. “She declared to everyone around that Prince August was being arrested for the murder of Prince Trajan!”

The news stunned the entire room. Jaws hung open, eyes went wide, and no one, not even Minerva or Leon, said a word.

After a moment, Minerva immediately made for the door, with Leon and the rest of Trajan’s remaining sixth-tier knights behind her. They wound their way through the palace making for Prince August’s office. Each one of them had murder in their eyes, and their killing intent alone practically left frost on the walls of their path. No one got in their way, not even the guards. The news was still making its way around the palace, but even those who hadn’t yet heard weren’t going to stand in the way of almost a dozen murderous sixth-tier knights when they looked like they were on the warpath.

That being said, many Royal Guards in the palace took notice, and if violence broke out, they readied themselves to put a stop to it.

Their journey slowed as they neared August’s office. Those close enough to hear or to see everything that had happened firsthand had congregated around the office to gawk, though it had been long enough that the crowds were starting to disperse, either to go home early or to return to work. Regardless, those who were still gathered around August’s office were little more than magically weak bureaucrats, and they couldn’t get out of Minerva, Leon, and the other’s way fast enough.

Their group was only stopped in the atrium outside of August’s office where his assistants and secretaries worked, none of whom were still at their desks. Only Roland and a few of his personal knights stood guard in the room. Leon recognized one of the knights as Dame Sheira, one of the knights who had come north during Roland’s search for Heartwood Amber, but he was in no mood for reunions, or even to speak.

“What happened?” Minerva demanded as she closed the distance with Roland. The Paladin had seen her and the rest coming, but their combined killing intent was so intense that even he hesitated before calling out to them, resulting in Minerva asking the first question.

“Prince August was placed under house arrest,” Roland said, quickly fighting off the fear the killing intent instilled in him.

“Why?!” Minerva continued, wanting to hear it from Roland and not just a messenger.

“He was accused of killing Prince Trajan,” Roland answered, “but we both know that’s not true, don’t we?”

The Paladin gave Minerva a knowing look, but she grimaced in response and seized a handful of his shirt. “Inside,” she growled, dragging him into Prince August’s office. For his part, Roland let this happen. Minerva still had command of two thousand of the finest—and nominally politically neutral—knights in the capital, and that was a force that couldn’t be ignored.

Leon and a couple other knights followed, including Dame Sheira, who gave Leon a quick nod of acknowledgment that Leon reluctantly returned.

As soon as everyone was in August’s office, Leon closed the door and Minerva asked Roland with a tone that could freeze an erupting volcano in seconds, “What in the name of all the Ancestors happened?”

Roland’s face twisted in frustration and anger as he relayed to Minerva what had happened, how Sapphire had burst in and declared that August was being arrested by the order of the High Arbiter and how he and Brimstone almost decided to fight the knights sent to carry out the arrest warrant.

Once his story was finished, he waited for Minerva to respond. However, what followed was an awkward silence as Minerva closed her eyes to think over what this would mean and how it would affect the matters that she cared about. On the one hand, it would prevent civil war if August were to be arrested and convicted, but on the other, Trajan’s real killers would get away.

After minutes of silence, Minerva opened her eyes to glare at Roland, and said, “We’ll speak of this later.” She then led Leon back outside and the rest of her knights back to Trajan’s old office. Roland didn’t try to stop them, and the knights moved without a word.

Their meeting resumed once they were back in the office and the door was closed, but now, the topic had moved from how to respond to August’s people being arrested to how to respond to August himself being arrested. The former could be recovered from, but the latter was a crippling blow to August’s efforts to claim the throne, and since they had tied their wagon to his, August’s arrest left them in a terrible position.

“So… what now?” one of the younger of the sixth-tier knights asked the group once the facts were laid out.

“It seems clear to me that Octavius has won,” another said. “There’s little point in supporting August now, he’ll likely be getting a one-way trip to the headsman’s block in the next couple of weeks, as I can’t imagine the trial for something like this will wait long.”

“We can’t let that happen!” a third knight passionately protested. “If we lose Prince August, then those who murdered Prince Trajan will be left unchallenged!”

“What if August really was responsible, though?” a fourth knight asked, an expression of doubt and uncertainty on his face. “We don’t know anything for certain, all we have is the word of a ghost that it was the Earthshaker Paladin that killed Trajan. We quite literally don’t know anything else!”

“Exactly,” agreed a fifth knight. “If this order truly comes from the High Arbiter herself, then surely they must have something on August if they’re willing to arrest him after so quick an investigation.”

“I don’t trust this,” Minerva disagreed. “We all know that Octavius has been stymied at nearly every turn by either Trajan or August, and now, in a matter of weeks, both Princes have been taken out of commission. Let’s make things clear; Earthshaker is Octavius’ maternal uncle, he would never support August’s claim to the throne, and what’s more, he’d never work with Trajan on anything, they hated each other far too much. Trajan and August were close, and Trajan’s support for August never faltered—there was never any cause for August to have Trajan assassinated. However, Octavius benefits greatly with Trajan gone, even more so if he can blame August for the deed, which it seems to me he somehow managed to do.”

“Trajan helped August to awaken his blood,” Leon softly stated, adding his voice to Minerva’s. “Neither would harm the other. This is Octavius’ work, with the Earthshaker and Sapphire Paladins as his tools.”

Many of the other knights nodded their heads in agreement with Minerva and Leon, but a couple were still hesitant and clearly full of doubt. Minerva and Leon both commanded their fair share of respect within the retinue, but the High Arbiter wasn’t a woman so easily dismissed. If she felt it necessary to arrest August, then it would be incredibly difficult to argue against that decision until the trial began.

“So… we’re still going to support August?” a knight asked.

“I think we should,” Minerva replied. “However, we shouldn’t come right out with it, we still need to keep our heads down until the right moment.”

“We can’t let him lose his head,” Leon said.

“We won’t…” Minerva said, a dark look on her face.

It took only a little bit more convincing, but the rest of the knights whose resolve had wavered with this nearly-cataclysmic setback were mollified, at least for the time being, and the retinue remained on course. The meeting was ended, and the knights left to see to their own subordinates, leaving Minerva and Leon alone in the office.

“What are you going to do?” Minerva asked Leon. Even now, he still didn’t have any official position in the retinue, with Minerva seeing more use coming from him as a loose agent rather than a member with a formal command, even if he acted as her de facto second-in-command. He was still only a twenty-year-old kid, and, in her opinion at least, he would be better utilized for his power and ferocity in battle and for his name recognition in Trajan’s retinue rather than planning and leading other knights or any tactical insights he may have. To that end, Leon was the freest person in the entire retinue—a member without a doubt, but one with few responsibilities and a great deal of autonomy, and so long as Minerva was in charge, that wasn’t going to change.

“I don’t know,” Leon said. Even without any formal position to fill, he wasn’t able to act as decisively as he wanted. “If it were up to me, I’d put my blade through the Earthshaker Paladin’s heart after he goes to sleep tonight, but I’d warrant you don’t want me doing something like that?”

“Ancestors no!” Minerva cried. “That would be foolish and reckless, and if it has to be done, then we’d be doing it as a retinue! Killing that cretin is not a pleasure for you to enjoy alone, and neither is it something that I think any one knight in this Kingdom is even capable of without help!”

Leon, despite this refusal, couldn’t help but smile. It wasn’t the act itself that Minerva had a problem with, it was how sudden it was and that he wanted to do it alone that she argued against, though he had to admit that her succinct statement about how realistic it was was hard to argue with.

“In that case, I think I’ll go and speak with Elise and Emilie. I don’t think there’s anything either can do for us in this situation given Heaven’s Eye’s usual position regarding local politics, but it can’t hurt to ask.”

“That might actually help, you should do that instead of something doomed to fail,” Minerva responded.

“How about you? What are you going to do?”

“I need to speak with all the other knights,” she responded. “The other sixth-tier knights will do their part, we can count on that, but keeping this retinue together without the resources of a Prince isn’t an easy thing to do. I can’t pay them as well as Trajan could, so I have to keep them going with promises of vengeance and backpay when August is made King. Now that August has been arrested, I think most of my time will be spent simply keeping all of us together.”

Leon nodded in sympathy. “… Need any help with that…?” he hesitantly asked. With his rather lacking social skills, he doubted he could be of any assistance, but he had to ask anyway; waiting at home for things to happen that he couldn’t respond to was truly grating.

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Minerva said with a sarcastic smile. “We need the retinue to stick together, and if you’re the one speaking to them, I don’t think that we’ll inspire the kind of confidence that we’ll need to keep everyone united.”

“I wouldn’t bet against that,” Leon smiled self-deprecatingly. “On that note, I should get going.”

“Right. Can we still use your villa as a place to meet?” Minerva asked, not wanting to impose. Leon had agreed to do this for her before, but she hadn’t invoked the agreement in the weeks since, so she needed to know that it was still on the table before she brought anyone around. “It’s still the most secure place I know of that isn’t in the Royal Palace, and that makes it an ideal place to meet with people in private.”

“Feel free, just try to let me know ahead of time,” Leon said.

With that, he departed the office, then the palace itself. There was nothing for him to do there anymore, and so he retrieved Anzu from the stables and made his way back across the bridge.

Again, despite everything, he couldn’t help but feel a rush of excitement as Anzu took off with Leon strapped into the griffin’s powerful back. Anzu was large enough that even fully armored, Leon didn’t even weigh a fifth of what the griffin did, which made carrying him terribly easy for the albino griffin.

Anzu’s pure white wings beat, summoning great gusts of wind that carried him and his rider into the sky and over the noble district below. The Heaven’s Eye Tower could be easily seen in the distance, and Leon steered Anzu in its direction. At the speed that Anzu flew, they arrived in a matter of minutes, where Leon was once more forced to leave Anzu in the nearby stables. Fortunately, with his connection to Elise, Anzu was at least led to much nicer stables than he’d been in at the palace, where he’d been forced to wait in a cell built to accommodate a horse where he couldn’t even stretch his wings properly.

However, once Leon walked inside the Tower, he was informed by the attendant that came forward to help him that Elise had already gone home for the day, despite it being barely noon.

What was more, she had been accompanied by Valeria Isynos.