Now, of course, I was faced with a conundrum. There were at least a dozen armed men between me and my lieutenant, and a good third of my guard was made up of old timers like Dursehl, who remembered Pertrahn well and probably thought of him as a friend. I had been their friend once, too, but now I was their captain, and some of them thought of that as a betrayal. Me putting on airs by daring to order them around, when we had once caught rats together in the streets of Etraedanda District. Half my guard was in the shrine itself, which meant that I was left with only fifteen men out in the open air. Men who had some talents for catching thieves and surviving bar fights, but who had lost something of their edge over the years, as most of their duties consisted of standing around waiting for a duchess to finish dressing. No match for the King’s Rangers, who spend their days riding through the forests and farmlands battling monsters and bandits.

  We could retreat into the shrine. It was the strategically necessary thing to do. But Vaenahma and the slave boy would be cut off from us, and probably killed. Not much of an ending for the last surviving champion of the Prince of Kemestmahlae’s revolt. And the boy was awfully young. I squinted down the road at them. Perhaps the elephant would protect them.

  Then there was a commotion on the other side of the stream, and the boy was looking beyond the elephant, to the opposite bank. A line of soldiers was coming down the hill and onto the bridge. The King’s Guard. They were wearing their red helmets and carrying their ceremonial shields, and I wondered, for one dizzying moment, whether Pertrahn had run off to fetch them. I got a flush along the back of my neck, thinking that I was in trouble for some unknown reason. The toughs in the marketplace didn’t really fade away, but they seemed to become smaller, somehow, to rearrange themselves into ordinary men who were just there to help their old grannies visit the shrine. They stepped aside as the King’s Guard came clumping up the road, followed by palanquins and a few of the gentry on horseback. The king himself, coming to visit the shrine, as he said he would. He must have left Rahasabahst in a hurry, to arrive so soon after we did. It accounted for the paucity of his noble retinue.

  At my side, Martiveht visibly relaxed. But she said, “The princess is going to be so disappointed.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “Prince Dasuekoh didn’t come.”

  I goggled at her. “You were hoping that it might not be a trap?”

  Tears came into her gray eyes. “When you love someone, you want what they want. Even if it’s foolish.”

  It so perfectly encapsulated the way I felt about my sons that I didn’t argue. But it was time to pull myself together and present myself to the king. We citizens of Rahasabahst don’t exactly bow. We are only a few generations away from banditry, and we have firm opinions about our relative freedom. Still, the vendors and the old grannies and their dubious sons and grandsons were making little displays of obsequiousness, falling silently, doffing their caps, looking humbly at the ground. Few of them would have recognized Poritifahr if they met him on the street. I saw many of them looking at the fine horseman who rode just behind the vanguard. But this was Prince Chahsaeda, not his father. Poritifahr was in the enclosed palanquin in the middle of the column. I could tell, because Captain Slaedrin was walking beside it.

  I saw Slaedrin see me, and knew that I was going to get a dressing down. But I had my cover story, and I wasn’t very worried. Still, I stood straight, and all of my guards straightened beside me. I was uncomfortably aware of the curry stains on my fingers, knowing that I would have to salute when the king came up to me.

  But Chahsaeda came first, and he was accompanied by his cousin, Setrabohst, the second son of the Duke of Nhadtereyba. Chahsaeda was a friendly lad, and his cousin was a very popular man. They rode right up to me and the prince smiled down. “Captain Haendil,” he said. “It seems that you’ve developed a talent for boat-leaping.”

  “It seems I have, highness. And I will tell you that it is hard to develop new talents at my age.”

  “Oh pish,” he said, “you are a man of parts, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you suddenly learned to paint or became a contortionist. Why is your lieutenant cosseting that elephant?”

  I stepped close, wanting him to hear my suspicions before anyone else. “It was wounded, highness, by one of the King’s Rangers.” The humor dropped from his eyes and he inclined his head, to show that he was listening. “I believe that there are a number of men in among the market stalls who are up to no good. My lieutenant has ascertained that they are carrying weapons.”

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  “How is that unusual, Captain?” Chahsaeda asked. “Half the populace goes armed.”

  “Not to the shrine. Not ordinarily. And not when there’s a corvee going on.”

  He regarded me, then nodded. “I see your point. And what does the ranger have to do with it?”

  “I don’t know, my prince.”

  He might have said more, but the column was stopped behind him, and Captain Slaedrin was striding forward. “Captain Haendil,” he said in his brusque voice. He was wearing short battle robes, but there was still a dainty filigree at the sleeve cuffs.

  “Here and present,” I said, saluting with my yellow-stained hand.

  “You were to travel with us in the Golden Flotilla.”

  “I am afraid that the princess had already embarked by the time I arrived at her house. I had to leap across the water to join her and my guard.”

  “And you stole an elephant from the river authority.”

  “I requisitioned it. We will return it when we return to Doefrit’s Bend.”

  He leaned in and spoke quietly. “Really, Haendil, I expected better of you. Shouldn’t a man of your age exercise more restraint?”

  Prince Chahsaeda saved me from the need to reply by drawing Slaedrin away. I heard him repeating my warning in an undertone. In a moment, Slaedrin turned back to me. “Well, it seems like you’ve had some excitement. No worries now. We are here.”

  I knew better than to offer a tart remark. His pockmarks were flushed red, as if his aged skin wanted to erupt in annoyed acne. “Yes, Captain,” I said. “The princess is in the shrine, with half of my guard.”

  He nodded. “The king will join her.”

  King Poritifahr was already stepping from his palanquin. Several matrons of the court were fussing about him. These were the same women who had sat with him at breakfast and tried to catch his eye when they were all younger, and it saddened me to see that they had never quite surrendered the hope that he could love them. I was learning that the withholding of love was a powerful thing, at least among nobles. Aged feminine hands smoothed his robes and combed his long hair out. He stood still, allowing their ministrations. You could tell from his posture and his expression that this cost him something. He was not a man who liked to be touched.

  Yaendrid was there, coming up from the back of the procession. No doubt she had been arranging for flowers petals to be strewn along the way, or for even more ribbons to be tied to the tree branches that overhung the road. She would be responsible for the picnic that would inevitably come after the shrine visit, and I could see that she had collected some singers to provide entertainment. They were the usual lot, experts in courtly song and verse, and therefore stultifyingly boring. She saw me and we shared a secret smile. I nodded back down the road, but there was no way to convey my sense of danger to her.

  Then the king was sweeping forward, past me and my guard, and leading his court into the shrine. Setrabohst gave me a wink as he went by and leaned over to whisper “Have you any drink, Haendil?”

  “I’m sure that some can be found,” I reassured him.

  He gave a comic shiver. “A few moments among the dead, and then I’ll be out to sip from the nectar of the living.”

  I watched them disappear into the glittering maw of the shrine, the high oracle bowing deeply as they passed her. Then I turned to Martiveht with the question that had been forming in my mind. “How did the king know?” I asked her.

  “Know what?”

  “That the princess would need an escort to the shrine?”

  She frowned. “I don’t understand your meaning.”

  “It is becoming obvious that he has only come along to keep her safe. But how did he know that she was in danger?”

  Martiveht studied me cooly. “I didn’t inform him, if that’s what you’re asking.” All of the friendliness had evaporated from between us, even if we both had fingers stained from the curry.

  “Well someone did,” I told her, and then resumed the posture of a guard, staring out at the little market with attentive eyes. That’s when I noticed that the tinker had disappeared, although his cart was still there.

  When Might a Hero Find His Rest. If you want to read the little world-building stories I'm writing as I go along, go to my Patreon page.

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025

  The Abandoned Maidens

  from The Letters of Mahrmets Buefol