Chapter 48: Taking too Much
Yvette, up ahead, side-stepped to avoid the falling contents of a chamber pot.
'You know what bothers me so much?' Sypha asked.
'No.' Trevor swept up his cloak. 'It's just another lovely day in shit town!'
'The fact that Zamfir is taking too much?' Yvette responded.
'That too,' Sypha said. 'Three things.'
'Oh, good, a list,' Trevor deadpanned.
'One,' Sypha said. 'You're still a terrible human being.'
Trevor stuck his nose in the air. 'Never claimed to be anything else.'
Sypha looked at him, annoyed. 'That doesn't make it better. Two: you're right.'
'I may faint dead away,' Trevor drawled.
'Shut up.' Sypha lightly elbowed him. 'We've been running from event to event, reacting instead of planting our feet and just acting. But I've also been caught up in the adventure. And it's making me forget things.'
'Such as?' Trevor asked.
Sypha then stopped and moved onto her next point. 'Third.'
The two Belmonts stopped with her.
'This mess!'
Trevor and Yvette looked around.
'Well,' Trevor said, 'they're doing what they can. If Yvette is right, then what they have for themselves is minimal at best.'
'No, they're not thinking!' Sypha argued.
'Well, thinking is very hard when you don't have food.' Yvette pointed to illustrate her point.
Trevor and Sypha looked.
At the foot of a set of stone stairway, Zamfir was standing there and looking increasingly angry. Her neck veins could even be seen from the distance they were at. There were three other guards around her, all with hard faces. And she was yelling. Now that Yvette had pointed her out, they could all hear what was going on.
'We need to maintain Targoviste for the rulers!'
'They're fucking dead!' one of the guards yelled back at her. 'For God's sake, all you do is take and take and take and if we're out of food, it's because you let everything you take go bad!'
'Your rulers are just sleeping!' Zamfir snapped. 'They will wake up and they will rescue this city!'
'So they hardly can give orders for the food to be collected, can they?' the guy demanded.
Sypha glowered. 'You've got to be joking!' Her hand curled into a fist. 'Do they really have to argue with her to stop her taking food from these people?'
'Looks that way.' Trevor stepped up to her. He wound his right arm around her waist and enclosed her clenched fist in his hand. 'Easy. Look, it's not like those men are going to let her just walk off with the food.'
'Enough of this insubordination!' Zamfir barked. 'I am your superior! You obey me or I'll have you all killed!'
'Are you sure?' Sypha growled.
'I think they're fine,' Yvette said. 'Zamfir's obviously overlooking the main issue with underlings.'
'What's that?' Sypha asked.
At that moment, the other two stepped over and seized her upper arms. She looked between them in shock and demanded to know what they thought they were doing. The two men dragged her off, to the quiet and tired-sounding applause of the civilians standing around and watching the whole thing play out.
Yvette smiled. 'There are more of them than there is of you.'
Trevor smiled as he relaxed his grip on Sypha and rubbed her back as he addressed his ancestor. 'And you always said nutjobs were easy to get overthrown.'
'Well, they are,' Yvette said. 'I only talked to those guys this morning.'
At that moment, the guard in charge of the mutiny saw them. He visibly gave a sigh and made his way down to meet them. Trevor, Yvette, and Sypha stayed where they were and waited for him to make his way over to them. The man waited until he was close enough to speak before he addressed them.
'I'm just going to start off by saying I'm glad you people came into town.'
Yvette nodded. 'I take it you looked into the "royal chamber" then?'
'We did.'
'And what did you see?' Trevor asked.
The new head guard shook his head. His answer was bitter. 'The place is piled with gold and jewels. It's set up like a throne room but there are a couple of corpses in finery propped up in a couple of shiny chairs.'
Sypha frowned. 'So, in other words she's not only taking everything from these people but she's wasting it.'
'I'm afraid so.' He sighed. 'We got one of the few physicians left to look at the corpses. He's sure they're the king and queen.'
Yvette folded her arms. 'Well, there's a Death Sentence waiting to happen.'
Sypha looked at her in surprise. 'What do you mean?'
Trevor answered that one. 'The rulers of Targoviste would have relatives in other countries – brothers, sisters, cousins. Maybe even daughters and sons. Once those people hear how the bodies were treated after death, they'll be incensed. Zamfir will be put right on the chopping block. People have been executed by royalty for less.'
The guard shrugged. 'I can't see too many people shedding tears over it.'
Suddenly a screech caught their attention. They all spun around to see a Night Creature diving down. With no hesitation, they all turned and ran. Sypha launched herself up with her fire while the rest of them ran over to where the Night Creature was. By the time they arrived, the two guards carting Zamfir away were dead.
Sypha had planted in ice shard straight through the Night Creature's head.
Zamfir was just pushing herself up.
The new Head Guard froze and then stared mournfully as his fallen comrades. Trevor immediately went over to Sypha. Yvette ran over the Zamfir. She roughly grabbed the other woman's shoulders and yanked her upright. She felt like something still wasn't right, but she couldn't see anything and just dragged Zamfir over.
'Let go of me at once!' Zamfir barked.
The new Head Guard glared at her. 'You don't give the orders anymore.'
Zamfir glared at him. 'This is mutiny!'
He gave her a tired look and went to say something, but Yvette shook her head.
'Mama always said: never argue with lunatics.' Yvette ignored Zamfir's enraged spluttering. 'Now, what were you about to say before you were so rudely interrupted?'
The new Head Guard nodded. 'Right. Well, we didn't know about the salt. We didn't know about the symmetrical shapes, but you knew all that. So we actually looked up who you were.'
'I see.' Yvette cocked her head. 'You didn't know that before?'
'I'd heard your name, but I'd never seen your family crest,' he said. 'And since it came out why Dracula went on a rampage, more than a few people have pointed out that your excision from the church probably wasn't justified.'
Trevor scoffed and folded his arms. 'Probably?'
Sypha looked up at him in amusement.
'He was a kid at the time,' Yvette said brightly. 'Go on.'
'So, it's been decided to ask you to come down and see what can be done.'
'I never agreed to this!' Zamfir insisted, and was firmly ignored.
Trevor nodded. 'We'll see what we can do.'
