Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162269 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 811(@200wpm)___ 649(@250wpm)___ 541(@300wpm)
“I can walk on my own,” Johan sniped. “And I wasn’t spying on Mars. I was keeping watch on my daughter.”
“Isn’t she the queen of an allied realm?” the first constable asked the second.
“Yup, heard she visited orphanages and rode in the royal wedding procession and everything,” the second constable answered. “I’d say that constitutes a ‘visiting monarch.’”
“I do not find this amusing,” Johan stated, trying to jerk his arm free.
He did not succeed.
Instead, the fingers around it tightened painfully and he was jerked to face the first constable. The one who had entered the room.
“We do not find this amusing either. And it is known wide our king particularly favors his cousin, Queen Silence. And thus, I also don’t think he will find it amusing. My advice, I would start being smart, and I would start being that right about now, milord.”
Johan gulped.
The man resumed guiding him down the hall, but it could be more described as dragging him.
His humiliation, he would find, was not yet complete.
This, when he was not taken out a back way, or similar.
But instead, he was paraded through the social parlor of the brothel.
And it was a busy night.
He kept his head held high even in the silence that descended when he entered the room, and through the attention he received as he was pulled through it.
However, before he was drawn through the front door, he saw a large, dark man in sandstone leathers, a black mantle edged in red falling from his shoulders, his black eyes homed in on Johan.
He was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed on his chest. And he was clearly not there to look over the girls and find one to use.
One side of that Firenz animal’s lips ticked before he pushed from his spot and then he walked through a door Johan had never used, but he knew it led to a back hall that would lead out a back door.
By the time he’d stepped up into the constabulary’s carriage, Johan was shaken.
Thus, he looked down at the officers and stated, “I believe there’s been a terrible mistake.”
“And his plight dawns on him,” one muttered.
“How about we let your solicitor sort that out, hmm?” the other one suggested.
And without another word, or allowing Johan to have one, they shut the carriage door right in his face.
And Johan Mattson’s blood turned to ice as he heard the bolt turn.
130
The Report
Sir Alfie Henriksson
The King’s Informal Study, Birchlire Castle, Notting Thicket
WODELL
Alfie did not like sitting behind True’s desk, though when he received reports like this one, both Tor and Apollo (Tor being a king himself, Apollo being head of a House in his land, that being titled gentry, with command of his queen’s army) advised him he should.
And True told him to make his study Alfie’s own when True was gone and Alfie was acting in his stead.
So he sat behind the desk and listened to the reports of the swiftly waning power of The Rising.
“Thus, there are only two priests still at large,” the sergeant sitting in front of him stated. His name was Holder Mikaelsson. He was a capable man, all business. So much so he reminded Alfie of himself, when he was whole. “We’ve concentrated our efforts on them and sent our best trackers after them. We’re confident they’ll be in Crittich Keep very shortly.”
Alfie nodded.
Mikaelsson shifted in his seat in a manner so unlike him, Alfie went alert, along with Tor and Apollo, both of whom were sitting opposite him, across from Mikaelsson, their attention on the sergeant.
“Is there more?” Alfie prompted.
“There has been…a massacre.”
Alfie straightened in his chair, Apollo leaned forward, Tor sat back.
“A massacre?” Alfie asked quietly.
“Women, thirty-two of them to be exact,” Mikaelsson stated.
“Bloody hell,” Tor swore.
“They had been debased, and then stabbed and finally had their throats slit. This in a remote area at the base of the Lesser Thicket Forest. There was another, found farther away from the area. She was discovered not wearing any clothes, stakes tied to her wrists and ankles. She perished of exposure, we’re assuming, during an attempt at escape. We, um…”
When Mikaelsson hesitated, Alfie impatiently rolled his hand at him to continue.
“We have had a message from the local constabulary. An irate one,” Mikaelsson shared. “Apparently, they sent repeated notices to the king over the years that women had gone missing with regularity, never to be found, and asked for investigators from the Keep to be dispatched. These notices were either downplayed or ignored by the crown.”
“Corporal!” Alfie bellowed the instant the man ceased speaking.
One of the soldiers standing outside the door opened it and stuck his head in.
“Request King Wilmer grant me an audience at his earliest possible convenience,” Alfie ordered tersely. “This being, please impress upon him, now.”
“Right away, sir,” the man said, then disappeared behind the closed door.