Chapter 3 - In Which We Meet Our King

And find out some other stuff. I'm enjoying this once a week chapter posting. I hope everyone else is too.

Additionally we have this awesome Lego pop up book (kind of), this awesome Star Wars Re-edited scene, and one of the strangest, oddly offensive, books ever, published in 1962 about marriage. What are the Swedish doing wrong in 1962?

Oh, well. On to Chapter 3.

***

King Otho was doing his regal pose, standing at the top of the stairs, the sun streaming in behind him through a stained glass window. Light glinted off his crown. His perfect white teeth beamed through his thick, rugged red beard. He was portrait-worthy. Looking down at his faithful advisor Sedrick he said, "Welcome to the life of a King! Women! I need more women!"

Sedrick sighed and said, "Yes, sire. Only it's payday, today, and you have to make at least a brief appearance."

"Payday?" King Otho descended the stairs. "Is it really?"

Sedrick said, "Not actual payday, sire, but, um, children's payday?"

"Oh." King Otho said. "Oh."

"Yes, and they're lined up in the vestibule outside the throne room, and we're paying them, but they wanted to see you. At least some of them did. Anyway, I thought I'd mention it."

"Say no more!" King Otho said. He hurried down the halls, and into the vestibule just off the main throne room to find a line of women and children, a large wooden table with a book and a quill, and each woman signed her name as she went past it, and a man on the other side of the book handed her a gold coin. King Otho's entry took everyone by surprise.

"My Lord!" Several of the women shouted. All of them young and attractive in different ways. Each of the children, a little regal in their bearings.

"My Lord!" This was Guard Captain Varin, who had been standing by the table. He put himself between the King and the line of women and children, who were starting to gravitate this way. The King was looking over the women in line and remembering each one.

"Varin, how are we today?" The King said, absent-mindedly.

"Fine, my Lord, but you should be more careful. This room isn't secure."

"The entire castle is secure." King Otho said.

A look passed between Sedrick and Varin. The king didn't catch it.

Varin said, "Perhaps we could bring some of the children by to visit with you, perhaps arrange for some sleepovers?"

King Otho smiled at the idea. "Yes. Yes, that is a good idea."

"Yes," Sedrick said, "A good idea for another time. For today, you do have a special visitor." Something about the way Sedrick said "special" caught the King's attention.

"Indeed?"

"A dark skinned exotic beauty. You remember the visit from Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan? His wife? The long dark hair?" Sedrick was leading the King back up the stairs, thinking to himself, look how easy it is. He moves towards the description of a woman, he's so lost in thought he could be stabbed in the back by his own guard captain, he'd never know it.

King Otho said, "Yes. Yes, I do remember her."

"You asked us to find a girl like her? I believe we've done well, my Lord."

King Otho looked into Sedrick's eyes. He said, "Where?"

"The red chamber, my Lord."

King Otho turned to give a good wave to the women and children. Most of them smiled, some of them cooed. Only one or two looked perturbed by the whole situation. And like that he was gone, leaving Sedrick standing on the top step to speak with Guard Captain Varin.

"Where the hell did you find a dark haired girl with features like Gahn-Jihan's wife?" Captain Varin asked.

"We didn't. We found a brunette. He'll be disappointed for roughly three seconds and then she'll drop her top and he'll forget why he went up their in the first place. The man's a lech." Sedrick didn't bother to hide his contempt.

Varin said, "I heard you were in town last night."

Sedrick gave him a wicked look.

"In a bar, no less." Varin continued. "Talking to suspected pirates."

"Your spies are very good, Varin, I'll give you that." Sedrick said. "I was converting pirates to privateers, though. We'll need more of a Naval presence after..." He let the sentence trail off, looked around the room to make sure no one was listening to them, and then said, "Well, you know. After."

Varin said, "How many children are there? Twenty? Thirty?"

The line of women and children just seemed to keep going. They came in, once a month, and were paid a gold coin, by executive order of the King, for, what he called, services rendered. Sedrick shook his head. This was the straw that broke the camel's back, he thought. This was what had finally pushed him over the edge.

Sedrick said, "Our last count was thirty-seven."

"Thirty-seven!" Varin could barely keep his voice down. Women and children, and even the guards assigned to make sure each woman signed her name and took her gold coin all looked over at him, surprised.

Sedrick said, "Calm down."

"Thirty-seven? That can't be right." Varin said, lowering his voice.

"Come on." Sedrick said. "Let's get out of here."

They walked up the steps and through a large wooden door back into the interior of the castle, and walked the halls, back towards Sedrick's office.

"Thirty-seven?" Varin kept saying.

"Why is it so much of a surprise? To be honest, I'm surprised it's not higher. What's he with, three, four women a week? There's bound to be ones out there we don't know about. And seriously, he's probably up there with thirty-eight right now!"

"It's staggering." Varin said.

"I agree. And it's costing us money. Thirty-seven gold a month, to be exact."

"We bring in more than that." Varin said, dismissively.

"It's good money we're just throwing away!" Sedrick looked pissed. Varin knew he'd hit a weak point. Sedrick was always worried about the money.

"Why do you care, Sedrick? Do you want a raise? Don't you have enough?" Varin decided to push Sedrick's buttons a little. See where he went.

"What could we do with that money?" Sedrick asked, returning the question. "Hire more guards? Make more weapons?"

"What do we need with those?" Varin replied, not letting Sedrick drag him in.

"Grandview is constantly over run with invading forces. But we never do anything about it!"

"If you mean Gandermere, they camped on our northern slopes for about a week while they were sieging the Northlander's capital."

"That's exactly what I mean." Sedrick said, his voice hissing like a snakes. "And don't tell me that doesn't bother you."

"I serve at the King's pleasure." Varin said.

"Don't play coy with me." Sedrick said. "You and I have been through this."

They went into Sedrick's office and he slammed the door shut.

Varin said, "Very well. We shouldn't let them do that. I agree. But what can I do? You know he doesn't care."

"That's just it." Sedrick said, sitting behind his desk and smiling. "He doesn't care. But I do. You do. And once he's gone, we're going to make sure Gandermere doesn't ever do that again."

"And we're going to stop paying all those women and children?" Varin asked.

"Trollops and bastards." Sedrick answered. "Yes, that money would be better spent on military matters."

"And a bigger office for you?"

"Bigger office?" Sedrick asked. "The biggest office in the land." He chuckled to himself.

"The king has lots of friends." Varin said.

Sedrick gave him a funny look. "I thought you were taking care of that."

Varin said, "As much as I can. I've done things I'm not proud of."

"Don't worry about that. History will forgive you. The man we serve is incompetent, and the whole Kingdom would do better to have someone else running things. Someone who thinks about how to keep an empire running for longer than it takes to bed a woman."

"Someone like you?" Varin asked.

"Someone like that, yes."

"What about the kids? The mothers? We're just done with them?" Varin asked.

"I'm taking care of that. Don't you worry."

"How?"

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to." Sedrick said, a dark look covering his face.

Varin stared him down for a couple of seconds, but decided he didn't really care. He said, "Fine." And exited the room.

Sedrick had already decided how to deal with the prostitutes who came begging at his door once a month. And that's really what they were, wasn't it? Hookers? Whores? Women who had slept with the king, and now were paid a monthly stipend? The idea of sleepovers had come to him just this morning, and he could see it to, the King making time with one of the women he'd already sired a child with, while the kid played next door with a nanny and a room full of toys.

Yes, Sedrick decided, that was never going to happen. The King would be dead soon, and he'd be taking over. Getting Varin on his side had been his stroke of genius. He just had to play to the man's military background. Make everything about the fighting, the soldiers. The war. He needed a war. It would ease the transition. Yes, when a King was assassinated a Kingdom went to war, and he would come out the other end of that war as a man of honor, worshiped by the people for guiding the country through the troubled times. And then, King for life. It wasn't a bad dream.

Gods, it was better than working for this man. This lecherous old idiot.

He couldn't die fast enough.

But he still needed to engineer a war. Who would be the best candidate for that? Gandermere? They were close by. And had used Grandview's lands too often without compensation. Yes. He thought he could just about pull that off. At least technically. But it wasn't enough, was it? No, there were complications.

For one thing, Gandermere was too close. Gods, the names actually sounded the same. Gandermere. Grandview. Was it any doubt that the two countries had been founded at the same time by a pair of friends.

No, he'd need something else. Something more exotic.

Ah.

Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan.

Yes. Emperor King of the land of Isterak.

A land halfway across the world.

That would make things easier.

Grandview and Gandermere? It would never work. Too many people had friends in one place or the other. Too many families spread across both lands. Pitting brother against brother wouldn't help him. People would just start asking questions, and that could get messy.

But a fight between King Otho and Shonin Lord Gahn-Jihan?

Of course that would work. No one would even ask questions. The cultures were so different, who'd even know why we were fighting them?

Another day, another great idea. Sedrick thought.

Gahn-Jihan had been here only a few weeks ago. And while that dinner with foreign dignitaries had gone all right, who was to know that besides himself and those who were inside the castle walls? All the people knew about the dinner, but would they know what was talked about?

No. It was perfect.

War with Isterak.

A grand idea.

Now, if only he could think of something, some reason to go to war, some slight that the Shonin Lord had made...anything to cause a war to break out.

Well, that brilliant idea could be left until tomorrow.