Chapter 6

Let There Be No Rest

A mysterious and gentle sympathy
already binds me to you like a living bond;


Everything was set—from the position of the guards, to the precarious placement of dinner napkins. Nary a thread of hair was out of place as Alanna crept up the sewerage of the Palace.

George was mightily impressed, slinking through the shadows beside Alanna. He had thought that the lady would immediately abandon the mission when she saw—and smelled—the sewers, even if she had been the one to adamantly fight for her role in this ambush. He had to admit though, she was good at this. Beside simply not balking, the lass took up her sword like a natural, and did not make a sound when her boots fell.

It was a serious moment on a life-or-death mission, but all that George could focus on was how her hair was like the reflection of a fiery sun on the canvas of some aspiring artist. George was not a naturally poetic man, and he frowned upon useless frivolities. But in that moment, he understood why some men were poets, and all men were fools.

When she looked at him, nervous and excited, her eyes were as sharp and bright as any shard of amethyst. When he reached out for her hand—under the guise of practicing stealth and ignoring his own beating heart—he found that her hands were small and cold and sweaty, and reminded him of little girls who woke up from nightmares and didn't know what to do.

Ironically, he had never seen somebody who was so sure of what they were meant to do.

Even she knew it, as she controlled her breathing and her heart beat quickly out of the thrill of danger—this, this was what she was born to do. Leave all the planning to Gareth—that was his calling in life, that and getting fat by dining with politicians and foreign ambassadors—but Alanna belonged to the world of clashing steel and quick spells.

George shook his head, and gave Alanna an easy grin to soothe her nerves.

This night was going to be too bloody for idle thoughts.


Both the stars and the moon were bright, shining softly to the ground and gently caressing the earth. The silvery moonlight and milky starlight streamed through the windows and threw the shadows of two shapes onto the marble floor, almost merging them into one.

By the time the two crossed the ground floor hallway though, Geroge knew something was wrong.

The guards slithered away before they could knock them unconscious, and they did not encounter a single obstacle—and that was what was wrong. A plan never carried itself out perfectly, and while Alanna was caught up in the elation of her first live-action adventure, George had been thieving and murdering since the tender age of six. He knew when something was too smooth to be real.

And lo and behold, the moment they stepped inside the royal chamber, instead of finding a sleeping, defenseless Roger, they found the senior advisory board, standing in a line, in robes and grim faces. Jonathan was bowed before them, a face carefully trained to be shamed and not furious.

"What were you thinking?" Advisor A berated.

"You must learn to have judgment, Your Majesty," Advisor B said, adding the honorific at the end as an afterthought.

"To think, the Royal Family turning against itself, oh the horror," Advisor C fainted in a timely fashion.

From where Alanna was standing, she could see Jonathan's fist clenching and unclenching behind his back, as the all these people took Roger's side.

"We must punish Sir Gareth—what an terrible influence he has upon you, Your Majesty!"

"Now, now," Roger spoke with great condescension, "I'm sure His Majesty only wanted to pull a prank—such is the way young boys think."

"Young boys indeed. The nation falls upon his shoulders," Advisor A scoffed.

"It is my fault entirely," Gareth admitted falsely. "I had thought—I did not think. I am sorry, to have dragged Your Majesty up."

"It is," Jonathan said through gritted teeth, "An utmost disgrace. I was fortunate to have been woken up to stop this madness."

And so Gareth took the fall, faithfully.


In the ostentatious palace of Corus, the King of Tortall lay on his velvet bed, fidgeting with a bottle of aged wine in his hands, and half a dozen more of empty ones on the floor. The perks of being a King before one's time, it seemed, lied within the endless bottles of the King's private cellars.

In the state of drunkenness, Jonathan felt no pain, no joy; there was no past, nor future, not even the present, for the mind was void. He thought neither of others, nor of himself, for nobody seemed particularly relevant.

He had failed, more than any King had before him.

That was not an easy thought to bear, and the young Jonathan—for although he was a King, he was still a boy barely into his adulthood—could not shoulder it. Reality was hard to shoulder, at the best and worst of times.

Queen Alanna burst into the room like a whirlwind of fire. She had heard of the maids talking, and invaded King Jonathan's private study chamber in a fit of desperate fury. But the sight before her was so despairing—to see the beautiful young prince reduced to the drunken slobbering mess… But Alanna steeled her heart, and reached out a hand to slap him forcefully.

Jonathan looked up at the impact, as if in his numbed state it was a light caress instead of a full-blown attack. "Why must it all be so hard," he slurred.

"Because it's always harder to live than to die," Alanna snapped.

"Then let me die already, you miserable wench," he snapped back at her.

Alanna only looked at him with sadness, and a frustration that he was not more than he was. "If you cannot do justice to this kingdom, then I will do it for you, as the Queen."

She exited the room in the same whirlwind, leaving Jonathan alone with his bottle of Sauvignon. (He always hated Sauvignon.)

In the distance, he could hear a man-at-arms ask his Queen—Corus, Corum? Something like that, his name was—"Guards?" before quickly rectifying his mistake, "No, of course not, since when do our beloved Queen actually take use of guards?"

She was probably going out with that George, he thought vehemently. A plebian. A common thief. A man who would never understand the burdens of a King, and therefore be all the happier for it.

Oh but wait, he was the King of Thieves.

Jonathan sighed. He wished he could forget more of reality, and let himself sink into this spiteful, ignorant rage against his fortunes. But reality was there no matter what he thought of it, Jonathan realized in a burst of epiphany.

So he rolled out of bed, flew down the hallways, hastily grabbed his horse from the stables, and rode after Alanna.


Author's Note: I don't think there is an advisory board to the King, but suspend your beliefs for a moment.

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