Chapter One
"I know that you all have served the crown for centuries with great honor. But times have changed, time have moved on. It is time for the great Heralds of Valdemar to do likewise." The Priest spoke with great geniality and persuasiveness. Or it would have been persuasive had his audience not been trained to hear it. Still, at that moment he was in the position of power.
He spoke from a bit of height in a balcony above the royal gardens. The priest was an older man, with well worn features that were not exactly handsome, but they weren't repulsive either. He dressed modestly, like most of his order had taken too in the recent years. Except that when you looked closely at his humble raiment's, they were silks dark red silks, almost the color of blood. He was a red robed priest of the Sun Lord Vkandis. He was a bit ponchy, even jowly compared to the somber young faces in the gardens looking up. His manicured smile was even and his teeth just a little too white.
"All Heralds on Circuit will be recalled. Your ranks will be transferred to the Guard, and your positions will be in the reserve. Any special privileges held are reduces as such to fit your new positions. Those of you who prefer to retire, will find themselves in an adequate pension. This is what your King wants to honor your tireless work on his behalf." The priest said with equal aplomb.
"AND WHAT ABOUT THE KING? WHO WILL PROTECT HIM NOW?" A rogue shout from the gather men and women in a white below reached the priest's ears.
"The Guard will have that honor now. Personally handpicked by myself to ensure the young King's safety." The smile would have made a snake uncertain and weary.
"Now, my fellow servants of the Crown, leave behind your coats and swords. You are hereto disbanded." There was a tense moment as the pepper haired priest watched from his balcony to the crowd below. The gathered people twitched. They looked like they would take arms, with the swords on their hips and charge the balcony of the Herald's wind of the Palace.
Instead, one of them, a ringleader of sorts, began to undo his jacket's clasps and walked up to a flaming torch barrel and threw the jacket in. It caught quickly, the acrid smell of grilling leather reaching the noses of those furthest back quickly. The dark haired man took his sword out of its scabbard and jabbed it into the turf. HE gave the priest a baleful glare, before leaving the garden courtyard to his rooms to pack. The priest simply gave a beatific smile.
To say that getting to the Herald's wing of the Palace was easy, would be untrue. It was after all, part of the Royal Palace, and the Collegiums attached to the Palace. This was the center of learning for the kingdom, and it showed. But as he was a young man, on a horse, he looked rather like a student, and with the added absence of the King, he was attending his bride to be at the border, it was easy to gain access to the former site of the Herald Head Quarters.
Moving through the too quiet halls searching for someone to talk to, all he found were servants who avoided his questions with hasty guilty glances. They usually left him before they had to answer anything.
"HELLLO!" He shouted once he reached what he suspected were offices. It was a rather nice corridor, marble floors, intricate carpets, large window with curtains, the kind of corridor found in a palace of a well to do kingdom. There were doors and stairs that lead to secretive places. The boy was sorely tempted to plunge the depths looking for answers.
Instead he came upon the dinner hall of the wing. It was empty of everything, and generally looked like it was looted. A signal man stood looking out over the gardens with a dark look in his light blue eyes. He drank from a leather flask, red wine dribbling into a well groomed beard. He looked rough despite his general well groomed looks, bleak even.
"Why didn't you answer me?" The boy demanded. The man flashed an ironic smile on his face briefly before taking another drink. "Its rude not to answer."
"And you're being rude interrupting me while I'm in thought." The blond man said sharply, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He wore buckskin colored leather pants that were fine and soft, with a linen shirt that had come untucked under a matching leather jacket. The sleeves were laced on but the laces were coming loose.
"Well your in a public place deep in thought, and I'm just looking for information." The boy snarled. "I've been traveling for days now, and I'm looking for the Heralds." He said tartly. "No one is answering my questions."
"The Heralds are gone." The man answered darkly, favoring the boy with a look. "Disbanded when they failed to protect the Queen."
"What- why would they do that, Heralds are an institution."
"Be that as it may, kid, they are gone." The man sighed. "And good riddance."
"What? How dare you say that about the Heralds! My father was a Herald and he died protecting the Queen. Take it back!" The boy squealed in a rather un-flattering tone of voice.
"Why its not like it matters anymore." The man smiled and started to leave the hall.
"No, my family honor demands that you take it back!" The boy followed after the man, reaching for his sword. Before he even pulled it out of the sheath, the blond man had a the sharp tip of a sword pointing just under his chin.
"Don't talk to me about honor, kid."
"That wasn't fair."
"Fair- I didn't have any warning?"
"You were pulling your sword on me." The older man pointed out with an ironic eyebrow raise and a flash of a charming smile.
"I wasn't going to hurt you with it."
"Who says I am." The man smiled. "But I understand your honor again?" The man said pulling back his sword to sheath it.
"It is."
"Fine, the old Chapel, just outside of town on the eastern road. Tomorrow at noon, we can satisfy your honor then." He said with a wink and a smile before he left the hall out a door that lead to the gardens.
At a rather nice tavern in the upper side of town, a pair of dashing men played with a lovely group of young women. Dressed in the fashions of the day, and well groomed in facial hair and hair.
"So, the Son of the Sun said to the people, know peace and know the Lord. Know war and know evil, do onto others as you would have done unto yourself." A dark haired man said to a rather lovely woman with her bosom bared low by her corset. She smiled at him, and licked her red lips as the man read from a book in the palm of his hands. He spoke the lines though with conviction and belief, even as rubbed his thigh with her hand, and crushed against his hip. He was thin, and tan. He wore loose shirt of black silk and brown linen pants. He looked like a culture courtier playing with bar maidens. Even handsome features, full lips and dark brown eyes that were very kind. He was a little on the thin side though, whip cord over bone.
His partner in crime was a seats down the long tavern table. He was entertaining several ladies, with some gallant tale. He was not handsome. He was too tall and too broad. His hair was an indeterminate color of blond that was closer to grey, and messy. It was a standard military cut, but too grown out to be regulation. He wore a stained rumpled shirt tucked into leather breeches. But he was clean, and charming. He laughed and charmed, and told wildly impossible stories about his past conquests. Sometimes he pulled out coins or flowers from ears or necks and gave them to their 'owners'.
The tavern was mostly empty aside from the one table. It hadn't always been like that, it was a recent turn. Still the men drank the fine southern style ale flirting outrageously with the ladies.
A dull thud at the door, and it burst open. The patron walked over to the blustery figure with heaving shoulders more out of anger than out of exertion.
"Oh no." The woman with the good looking man said with great alarm. Her large hazel eyes wide with fear for the man that had just come in. "That's my husband." She whispered, scurrying off his lap. "You have to go."
"Your husband?" The man asked with a crack to his voice. He looked at his partner who looked at him over the head of a blond.
"You have to go, he has a terrible temper!" She shoved him away, and his chair tipped a bit. He jumped out of it smoothly, pocketing his book into his coat and gave her a reproving look.
"Out the back Ulrich." The unhandsome man said with a jerk towards the door to the stables.
"Duh." The face that he shot his friend was harried and annoyed but he kissed the married woman fondly, and dashed out the back just as the man at the door realized he was there. He wore the blue and silver of a Guard. The man himself was a bull, and he charged into the tavern after the unfortunate good looking man. As the Guard in a rage charged past the not handsome man, he tripped and fell over a foot placed right in his path.
"You asshole!" But the unhandsome man was already out of the tavern behind his partner.
"Gemmie!" Ulrich shouted coming up with two cremello mounts. They were tap dancing on the ground to get going, and the taller man swung up on the mare of the two. Ulrich was already in the saddle of the stallion. They pounded into the road, and into a terrible mess of traffic. Behind them, the Guard was screaming bloody murder.
"Split up!" Ulrich said, and he dipped off his mount and slid into the general traffic on foot. Gemmie and Ulrich's Companion wheeled off down an alley for some goal already in their minds.
Ulrich moved through the switch back main streets. As soon as he broke the line of sight between him and his pursuer he cut down an alley himself. This was his city, and after all his life living in it and running the alleys, Ulrich knew where to go to lose some chasing him.
"STOP!" Except the chaser knew the city as well.
"Shit." The curse bit out and Ulrich started to run again, cutting through lawns and down alleys. The Guard had pulled in some bodies as well now, and it was turning inot a regular posse. Ulrich grimaced and climbed up a retaining wall.
Reaching the top the dark haired man stopped a moment and felt a flash of the briefest of fears. The retaining wall was twenty feet or so and the foot traffic below was mixed in with a market.
"HALT IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!" The Guards shouted at him. With a long sigh Ulrich jumped off the wall, and twisted about so that he landed butt side down into the awning of a market stall. Crashing through the fabric he landed right on top of a young man.
"DAMNIT GET OFF ME!" The boy shouted angrily shoving at Ulrich. "How-"
"You broke my fall wonderfully thank you." Ulrich said with a grin and pushed off the ground to stand up. With a glance to the wall he saw that his chasers had decided not to follow him down. It would take a few minutes for them to reach the market.
"How dare you fall on me!" The boy screamed, and stamped a foot like a petulant child.
"And I thanked you. It wasn't exactly planned." Ulrich said with a confused look.
"Well tell that to my dignity." The boy whipped out his sword and flicked it at the pious man.
"Really- I don't have time for this." Ulrich ran a hand through his hair dismissively.
"Tomorrow then- Say two o'clock?"
"At the chapel on the east end of town?" Ulrich suggested with a glance towards the side of the road that the Guards would come from.
"Sounds perfect." The boy bowed.
"Great." Ulrich rolled his eyes and limped off into the crowd.
The boy glared a moment before sheathing his sword and helping the vender to right her stall. The Guards went through at a run after Ulrich but by then the lean man was gone, vanished into the crowds.
"Thank you young man." The old woman with a face of a wintered apple said with a pinch for his cheeks. "I'll give you a discount on that shirt you were looking at. You said it was for your sister? "
"Uh yes, the pink one, its her favorite color." The young man pointed to the long pink length of silken scarf. It was embroidered with similar pink colored hibiscus.
"Well I think that maybe- uh two silvers then?" The original price had been twenty gold. The silvers were dear, but the young man paid it, with a gracious bob of his head and thanks.
The dark red haired young man moved through the crowds looking at this and that taking in the city sights. After a few hours of this, he was in the cheaper section of the city, near the edges. Here he decided to find a place to get a meal and a room for the night.
Inside it was a party already. There was a Bard playing a raucous dance reel, and a hearty unhandsome man with a flock of beauties tending to him. With a exaggerated roll of his eyes, the young man went to the counter and bought a room and a meal. Taking a bowl of stew and hunk of bread balanced on the bowl, and a cup of cider. The over full Inn was boisterous and it was a delicate walk to get to an empty spot behind the man with the ladies.
He was almost there when a stray elbow caught the youth in his short ribs and he spilt his meal on to the owner of the elbow.
"YOU IDIOT!" The boisterous man bellowed angrily. "THIS WAS A GIFT FROM THE IMPERIOR OF SEEJAY!" He sloped cider and stew off an already rumpled and stained shirt like he was mortally offended by another stain on it.
"I'm sorry." The boy apologized. "Tight-"
"Idiot… Your apologizes mean nothing." The man was tense, and hot already.
"IF my apologizes mean nothing then perhaps we should settle this like Gentlemen?" The boy asked.
"Wonderful."
"Ten tomorrow."
"I like to sleep late, one."
"Fine."
"Chapel down the street." He pointed east.
"Sounds perfect."
"See you tomorrow." The dismissal was clear, and the boy took his meal up to his room instead.