Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 5

Saye had no idea why Hoburns existed where it did. The capital of the Holy Kingdom had the odd distinction of being the only seat of national power in the region that was not also the largest city in the country. That crown went to the city of Debonei in the southern Holy Kingdom, which was supposedly half again as large as Hoburns before the war.

Hoburns was on the wrong side of a small range of hills that stood between the city and the Holy Kingdom’s central bay. No major rivers flowed through it and there weren’t any notable resources that might have turned it into a centre of trade. The only things that stood out about the city were that both the royal palace and the great cathedral were located there, making Hoburns the seat of political and religious power in the Holy Kingdom.

But cities weren’t supposed to work that way. At least not according to her studies as she prepared for her future career as an inspector for the Ministry of Transportation. There was absolutely no sense in its location. It was as if someone decided to stick the palace and the cathedral there first, then expected people to come and live there for no other reason.

The main line of reasoning that Saye encountered was that Hoburns served as a logistical hub for the northern Holy Kingdom, forming one point in a line of major cities that straddled the inland transportation corridor that ran from Rimun to the Great Wall. People regurgitated that reasoning as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, but it was logic that would only be accepted by civilisations that existed in land-locked regions, which the Holy Kingdom was not.

Unlike those civilisations in land-locked regions, the Holy Kingdom had this amazing thing called the ‘sea’. With another amazing thing called a ‘ship’, the Holy Kingdom could transport cargo – be it goods or soldiers – from Rimun, the port city on the western end of the northern Holy Kingdom, to the Great Wall. That route was a tenth of the cost and twice as fast as going overland from Kalinsha – the closest city to the Great Wall – to the Great Wall.

On top of that, the Holy Kingdom’s long-time allies all lived in the sea while their greatest enemies dwelt on land. Being on the coast ensured a safe and quick escape route for their civilians during invasions and made for easier communication and coordination with their friends.

Thus, Hoburns should have been on the other side of the hills, on the coast a mere day away. If the Holy Kingdom wanted something to protect their inland transportation corridor and serve as a mustering location for the army, they could have just built a castle or something near the town that would have existed where Hoburns currently was.

Like the Great Wall itself, the city of Hoburns was indicative of the sort of nonsense that the Holy Kingdom’s collective cultural imagination was filled with. They took action based on what they considered attractive or aesthetically pleasing without first making sure that the ideas they had latched onto were the best use of their time and resources.

They never learned their lesson, either. Instead, they clung to those completed ideas with all of their problems, permanently saddling themselves with logistical and economic inefficiencies that sapped away a huge chunk of their country’s power. Just as bad was the fact that they had immersed themselves in those ideas, crippling their thinking.

The sour thoughts behind Saye’s pleasant mask remained unchanged as she bit into a juicy nectarine. She had eaten so much fruit since arriving in the Holy Kingdom that it all tasted the same to her. All of the other food was so expensive that she refused to buy any out of principle.

She left the street to wait at the entrance of a narrow alley as a convoy of wagons escorted by liveried men went by. It smelled like another shipment of fruit from the countryside. They should have been using most of it to make jam and preserves, but the Holy Kingdom was short on what they needed for that. All they could do was keep dumping food into the city. Most of the citizens didn’t mind, however – they saw it as a reprieve from the ever-increasing prices of food and other commodities.

Once the convoy passed, she resumed her stroll to the Water Gardens. An annoyed sigh left her lips as she crossed into the covered walkways with their bright signs and flowing fountains. Yet another afternoon had gone by and she hadn’t located her target.

“Ara, Saye, welcome back.”

A tall, darkly handsome man greeted her as she approached one of the district’s luxury establishments. Saye returned his greeting with a smile.

“Thanks, Orlando. How busy are we?”

“Some of the regulars appeared early,” Orlando replied, “but you shouldn’t need to come in until the evening. By the way, did you manage to spot what I asked about while you were out there?”

Saye shook her head.

“It’s all fresh fruit and the usual stuff.”

Orlando clicked his tongue, crossing his arms and rubbing his chin.

“How much do you have left?” Saye asked.

“A month’s supply, at most. With all of the new faces showing up, probably less. Hmm…”

What he had asked her to keep an eye out for were liquors and wines made from fruit. They didn’t take long to make and should have started appearing shortly after the beginning of the fruit harvest.

“Want me to figure out what’s going on?” Saye asked.

“I wouldn’t want to ask anything unreasonable of you…”

“I’m a Bard,” Saye said. “We’re not just about arts and entertainment, you know?”

“Well, if you insist that it’s alright…if you can secure us a supply, I’ll make sure to add something extra to your pay!”

“Thanks!” Saye grinned, “I’m going to rest for a bit before tonight.”

She walked around the building and went in through the employee entrance, ascending the narrow stairwell to her room on the fourth storey. A wave of heat washed over her as she opened the door – the room was built into the building’s attic – but it wouldn’t affect her so long as she kept her brooch on. She tossed her things on the floor, sitting down on her small bed to pull off her boots and stretch her legs.

Something moved between the beams of the ceiling. Saye retrieved a palm-sized crystal from her bag, activating it to create a bubble of silence around the room. As the other presence in the room drew close, she turned and grabbed it by the shoulders, shaking it as she spoke.

“What’s going on here?! I’ve been looking for the target for three days and I can’t find her anywhere!”

After the Shadow Demon’s glowing amber eyes stopped swirling, it produced a folded piece of paper. Saye frowned as she scanned through the encrypted content.

Subject released from holding pattern. Entered city four days ago. Attempt at reobtaining gainful employment rejected due to problematic official record. Started altercations on the palace grounds, leaving several noblewomen unconscious before fleeing. Last seen headed into pleasure district.

“I know all that,” Saye muttered.

That was why she was where she was, after all.

Much like the Elder Liches at home, many of the agents that worked for foreign affairs were exhaustive in their reporting. This was because Lord Demiurge recognised that information was interpreted by different people in different ways. Bards had a broad, knowledge-based skill set, so Saye was well-suited to working as a ‘handler’ for the Sorcerous Kingdom’s assets in the Holy Kingdom. Most of them were combat oriented and couldn’t make any sense out of Human society, so they just ended up telling her every little bit of information that they came across.

Queries conducted on behalf of victims suggest subject is no longer in Hoburns. Two accounts describe woman bearing similarities to subject departing north.

“She’s not even in the city?” Saye bit her lip, then looked over at the Shadow Demon, “We’re going to have to brute force this. Is the Hanzo doing anything?”

The Shadow Demon shook its head.

“Send him out to search the communities north of the city,” Saye said. “The target probably went looking for a job. Once you find her, don’t do anything to get her back. I’ll go to her.”

Her shadowy counterpart flickered away. Saye folded the piece of paper and stuck it inside a coat pocket. Once she returned to the alley, she tossed it into the brazier lighting the alley entrance.

Orlando was still at the front, welcoming a stream of guests. Saye frowned at the suddenly-crowded streets for a moment before going back to the employee entrance. She walked past the stairs and into the corridor that ran behind the guest chambers. Afonso, one of the establishment’s managers, waved her over to the entrance of the staff room.

“Saye!” He said, “Thank the gods you showed up. We’ve got a full house!”

“So early?” Saye pressed herself against the wall to stay out of the way.

“Some Nobles came in from another city. Their men are swarming the entire district!”

“Which houses?”

“Guests of House Cohen,” Afonso told her. “From what I can gather, they’re scions overseeing the area around Prart. We’re hosting their top people.”

If that was the case, what music was appropriate? Her mind raced through her repertoire of popular scores.

“What’s the atmosphere like?” Saye asked.

“They just started coming in,” Afonso answered. “The VIPs brought women with them, but most of the retainers are on the prowl. Things are calm for now, but we need to finish our preparations quickly. Once you’re done helping here, head to the Throne Room.”

She nodded and Afonso rushed off. Saye turned to regard the chaos of the staff room. Dozens of women in various states of dress hurried about and clothing literally flew through the air as they frantically tried to coordinate their appearances. Saye went over to a booth with a polished brass mirror, where Lita, a buxom brunette with big doe eyes was desperately trying to pull up her top.

“Help!” She cried.

Saye spent all of three seconds trying to adjust Lita’s corselette before giving up.

“This is way too small,” Saye told her as she undid the strings. “Are you trying to faint five minutes into work?”

Lita’s only reply was a whimper. Saye walked off, looking for something that would fit. The Queen of Thorns was thriving, but the influx of new staff combined with the lack of tailoring materials made its available wardrobe sorely lacking. She returned with something better a minute later.

“I wish I was nice and slender like you,” Lita sighed. “I wouldn’t have so much trouble finding something that fits.”

“I’m sure most of our customers prefer you the way that you are,” Saye replied. “Do Nobles come around with their men like this often?”

“Once in a while. It always catches us off guard. Nobles don’t make reservations with us like they would with one of their fancy restaurants – they just pop up whenever they feel like it.”

“If they came from another city,” Saye said, “there has to be a reason.”

“I-I don’t know!” Lita said, “I’m not smart like you. I’m just paid to smother men with my tits!”

Saye wasn’t sure whether it was a matter of being smart or not. If a Goblin could become an Engineer, then Lita could at least strive to improve herself while smothering men with her tits. The only thing that was stopping her was herself.

After combing out Lita’s hair and painting her lips, Saye handed the woman a domino mask before kneeling to rummage through a box filled with props. She returned to her feet with a coiled whip in hand.

“Eh? The whip?” Lita’s eyes went wide behind her mask, “I’m still scared of that thing…what if one of the Nobles wants me to hit them?”

“Then they have to pay extra,” Saye said.

Lita had a point, though. As far as her work went, she kept men company and poured them drinks. She let people get handsy with her and her shy response tickled the fancy of many customers, making her a high earner. Her premium service was knocking people out with her giant knockers, so it would be a problem if people mistook her carrying a whip as a new option.

Saye put the whip back and picked up an oversized corsage of woven black roses instead. After a last-minute check, Saye turned Lita around and smacked her butt. Lita squeaked and scurried off, a light blush colouring her cheeks. Another woman came to take her place.

“You’re a real natural at this, you know?” The fiery-haired woman, who went by the name of ‘Carmen’, told her, “If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought you’ve been around for years.”

“I had a job at another place like this before,” Saye said. “It wasn’t in this country, though.”

That much wasn’t a lie. As a part of her training as an intelligence agent, she had been sent to work at the Purple Apothecary and the other brothels in E-Rantel. What she did there wasn’t much different from what she was doing now aside from the fact that her skills as a Bard had vastly improved since then.

“Guess men are the same everywhere,” Carmen snorted.

“This place is a lot more specialised,” Saye said. “Where I worked before was in a small city, so they had everything in a few establishments. Oh, do you know anything about tonight’s customers? They sound like they’re here for a celebration.”

“Who knows?” Carmen shrugged, “That sort of thing’s too big for smallfolk like us.”

These people…

They were so obsessed with protecting their ‘place’. That got in the way of understanding what they were and what they were capable of. In their minds, the minds of their clients, and the minds of everyone that spared a thought for them, they were the lowest of the low and were probably even considered subhuman. Stranger still was the fact that the Faith of the Four, with its perverse and heretical system of values, somehow also shunned them for merely existing.

Orlando had been granted a knighthood, so maybe the seeds of change had already been planted. For the time being, however, Saye could only be annoyed by everything.

Once the staff room emptied, Saye picked up her lute and went through the service corridor to the ‘Throne Room’ – the largest hall in The Queen of Thorns. The crowd within could be heard long before she ascended to the musician’s booth, which overlooked the entire chamber. The ceiling had a simple design crafted to convey sound from the booth to every part of the hall, meaning that anyone sitting in the booth could also hear everything that was going on.

Bards used the feature to read the mood of the crowd and keep track of the ‘events’ going on around them. Normally, this was done in order to figure out what performances were appropriate at any given time. As a spy, however, Saye also used it to collect a mountain of information from the customers. With the economic conditions of the Holy Kingdom being what they were, it meant that everyone that she spied on was a Noble, someone important who worked for a Noble, or someone of substantial means and influence.

In other words, it was an ideal place for Saye to work – one where she could refine her craft in many ways while also doing things that would help her out in her job.

Mmh…just how many houses are present?

Her eyes went to the dais at the head of the hall as she lightly plucked out a tune. As expected, a man in the colours of House Cohen – one of the major houses managing things in the east – sat at the head of the table there. Beside the man was a woman who looked like she was in her teens, though Saye couldn’t be sure whether she was his wife, mistress, or something else. Considering that they were in what was basically a brothel in the Holy Kingdom, it probably wasn’t his wife.

Seated at the table to either side of him were men of other houses and their women. Their glasses were still full and they appeared to be focused on watching the other guests filter into the hall. Saye switched to the upbeat chords of The Wind of Rimun – a popular song that heralded the coming of prosperity in the Holy Kingdom.

In response, the guests grew more lively and mingled more openly. Saye kept an eye on what they were doing while sorting out the countless conversations that reached her ears. Many of them were brief, congratulatory exchanges. Sets of men took turns presenting themselves to the people seated at the dais, offering their praise to the guests seated there before joining the merrymaking.

So it is a celebration…

The man seated at the head of the main table was Eduardo Cohen, the heir apparent of House Cohen. Seated at his table were the sons of houses allied to his own. Despite the festive atmosphere below them, the lordlings maintained an air of dignity and proper decorum…at least until the last of the guests came by to pay their respects.

“I still can’t believe that worked,” the man to Eduardo’s immediate right said.

“Of course it worked,” Eduardo scoffed. “That man recognises nothing but those silly numbers of his. My Lord Father was right to start with Prart. The fools squabbling over Hoburns will never catch up, now.”

“It’s not so much that as the fact it went through so easily. Shouldn’t the court have been more…stringent in their assessment?”

“You can’t be serious, Aquino,” the lordling on the other side of Eduardo Cohen said. “The fleet will arrive soon. Duke Debonei and his allies are all but guaranteed to side with Caspond’s brother. Caspond cannot risk angering his closest supporters until all challenges to his rule are settled. This game is ours to play as we see fit until then.”

“You’re wrong,” Eduardo said.

The smiles all along the table vanished as the assembled scions turned their heads curiously at Eduardo’s denial.

“Not ‘until then’,” Eduardo told them. “Indefinitely. Over these past few months, how much of the country’s gold has fallen into our hands? How much of its land? How many of its people do we hold under our sway? Who owns their debts? When the fleet returns, we will dominate the country’s trade and undermine the power of the Admiralty. So long as we play things right, the entire Holy Kingdom is ours for the taking.”

Saye looked away from the main table as the smiles returned. Eduardo’s voice could probably be heard halfway across the hall, yet no one showed any sign of being disturbed by his words. If anything, the men seemed to draw confidence from them, growing proud and ever more boisterous.

“So,” Aquino leaned in on his elbow, “what’s our next move? Kalinsha and Prart already belong to us. The passage of the Royal Army caused some disruptions in the east, but things are back in order now. Should we prepare to seize the northern frontier once it’s conquered?”

“No,” Eduardo shook his head, “let the fools spend a lifetime taming those savage lands. We’ve–”

“Noooooo!!!”

The corner of Saye’s eyelid twitched as a distressed cry interrupted the lordling. Near the centre of the hall, Lita was trying to escape from the clutches of a man twice her size. Her top had been ripped off and the man’s hands squeezed her huge breasts as if they were lumps of dough.

“Come to Gaspar,” the man said as he ran his tongue over her shoulder. “The Lion of Prart will show you such passion that you have never experienced!”

Lita’s only reply was another scream. Her tormentor sounded – and looked – so lame to Saye, but he must have been terrifying to Lita. The flesh of her breasts squeezing out from between the man’s fingers was turning a painful shade of purple. Behind a leather chaise a few metres away, Carmen looked like she wanted to club the man in the back of his head with the giant bottle of wine in her hands. The nearby guests laughed at the scene while those further away ignored it entirely, engrossed in their own activities.

Saye clicked her tongue.

You interrupted that discussion for this?

She sent a discordant strain from her lute, bouncing it off of the ceiling to strike the Lion of Prart in the back of the head. The spectators hushed as he flopped to the ground. Lita wasted no time fleeing from the hall, leaving behind her top and a trail of sobs. Carmen held up the bottle in her hands, peering at its contents as the man’s snores rose from the floor.

“One…?” She frowned.

The silence lasted for exactly two seconds more before the crowd burst into laughter.

“One?!”

“One drink?!”

“So much for the ‘Lion of Prart’!”

Saye resumed her song and the guests returned to their pursuit of alcohol, feminine company, and fleshly pleasures. The musician’s booth wasn’t just a discrete stage and a convenient place to spy from: it was also an artillery platform. She wasn’t sure how many Bards used them that way, though.

“I believe that was one of your men, Belmonte,” Eduardo said.

A lordling two seats to Eduardo’s right swallowed.

“He’ll be disposed of before we return to Prart, Lord Eduardo.”

“Good. Retainers of that calibre do nothing but reflect poorly on us. As I was saying before we were interrupted…ah, we’ll be spreading our influence west.”

“West?” Aquino furrowed his brow, “But didn’t you just say that we shouldn’t waste our time with Hoburns?”

“I did,” Eduardo nodded, “and we won’t. We’ll ignore the capital in favour of working on Lloyds Prefecture.”

One of the lordlings thumped his fist against the table, a gleam of excitement in his eye.

“So we’re finally doing it,” he said. “We’re moving against those hidebound traditionalists.”

“Don’t they call themselves the conservatives, now? They can hardly be the traditionalists if they’re not on the side of the Temples and the Holy King.”

“However you dress them, they’re still the same houses – ones that are long past due for a lesson in humility.”

“But how?” Aquino asked, “If we act with open aggression, it will only cause headaches for our parents at court.”

“We’ll employ the same methods that we used to seize Kalinsha and Prart. We’re much stronger than we were back then. By comparison, the idiots managing the lands in the west have barely made any gains.”

“But some of the men they’ve been supporting have.”

“Indeed. About that…we’ve received a request to deal with one particularly problematic fellow. Iago Lousa.”

“Lousa…you mean the new ‘Black’?”

“The same,” Eduardo nodded.

“But isn’t Restelo his patron? He should be an ally…”

“Restelo is the one who made the request. It seems that Lousa has been doing business with both sides.”

“That scum,” Belmonte spat. “And here I thought he was doing something befitting a Noble.”

“Lukewarm associates should be spat out,” Aquino fingered his wine glass. “Has a replacement been prepared?”

“Restelo will take care of that part,” Eduardo said. “We’re just here so that none of the rest can be traced back to him.”

Several of the lordlings nodded with looks of understanding.

“So that’s why you had us bring so many of our retainers along with us,” Belmonte said.

“Convenient, no?” Eduardo smirked, “But we will not move until we are good and ready. Anyone who attempts to move before that, I will personally drown in the bay.”

Well, that was juicier than I expected.

By and large, the average person in the Holy Kingdom was far more ‘decent’ than the average person in Re-Estize, so coming across such an aggressive plot was a pleasant surprise in her otherwise-uneventful experience so far. She thought that she would have to shake everything up by herself.

When the last of the guests finally cleared out just before dawn, Saye returned to her room, humming happily over her hefty haul of interesting information. Once she closed the door, a Shadow Demon drifted down again from the ceiling. It produced a folded slip of paper and wordlessly handed it over.

Subject has been located twenty kilometres northwest of Hoburns. Appears to have found employment patrolling the holdings of one Iago Lousa.

She folded the paper again and handed it back to the Shadow Demon.

“Well,” Saye smiled, “that’s just perfect.”

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