Valkyrie's Shadow

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 1, Chapter 6

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 1, Chapter 6

Chapter 6

“That’s good, right?” Remedios asked.

“It depends,” Liam answered

After their discussion the previous evening, they escorted the would-be spy to the Holy Order, reporting that he had fallen from a rooftop. Joaquín, the senior Paladin stationed at the Holy Order’s office in the Royal Palace of Hoburns, predictably came to the conclusion that the man was a drunkard. It helped that they poured a bit of wine on him. Remedios looked as if she would explode just from keeping her mouth shut and not correcting the man’s misconceptions.

Of course, the spy himself tacitly went along with it. He was tossed into a cell to sober up and the Paladins said he would be released in the morning.

Liam and Remedios came around again before dawn, following Joaquín’s suggestion that they should check the daily reports. Now, the old Paladin looked back and forth between them as they discussed their findings.

“Depends on what?” Remedios asked.

“Well,” Liam answered, “you said that the reports for crimes and stuff dropped to nearly nothing.”

“Which is good,” Remedios said.

“But the only incidents listed on the summary were ones that the Holy Order had to deal with directly because they were near the Royal Palace.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, ‘and?’” Liam frowned down at the documents he couldn’t read, “This stuff doesn’t just vanish. If it’s still happening around the Royal Palace, then it’s also still happening everywhere else. It’s the new guys that aren’t reporting it. That means we have no idea what’s going on in the city.”

Policing didn’t just involve things like theft and violent crime, but also stuff like accidents, altercations, false alarms or just helping the citizens with what they thought law enforcement was responsible for. The question now was what the royalists’ men were doing with their new authority and absence of oversight.

“The lack of reports might just be because the new guys haven’t gotten used to our procedures yet,” Joaquín suggested. “We’ll send some people out to remind them.”

“Didn’t they all serve in the Royal Army, once?”

“You’re not wrong, but it’s not as if everyone remembers how to do their old jobs perfectly. They probably never did them perfectly in the first place. In the army, you have groups of soldiers being cycled under career officers, and the career officers are the ones that provide oversight.”

“But those career officers got sent out of the country,” Liam said.

“Which is why I said what I did,” Joaquín replied.

Why are these people so damn positive about everything?

He once thought that it would be nice if people could be more like that, but it turned out that it also created all sorts of weaknesses. It was easy to get away with stuff when one was always given the benefit of the doubt. Problems like the ones that they were facing weren’t treated like things they expected people to be capable of – they were treated like monsters and only applied to people that they could consider equally monstrous.

It wasn’t as if saying so could change their minds, however, so Liam decided to leave it at that, walking out of the palace grounds with Remedios. He could almost feel her gaze boring a hole through the back of his head.

“I’m still doing it,” he said.

The streets were still empty and he couldn’t sense anyone watching from nearby, so he figured it was safe enough to talk. At least as long as Remedios didn’t start shouting.

“Why?” Remedios asked, “You heard Joaquín.”

Did she just conveniently forget that a man had crawled onto her roof to spy on them?

“I’ll be doing the same kind of thing anyway,” he answered. “It’s as good a start as any.”

“But I thought you were assigned to me.”

“I am,” Liam replied. “But…”

He stopped speaking when a wagon appeared around the corner, delivering fresh milk to the Prime Estates. The vehicle didn’t even stop as its crew offloaded a sealed jug at each gate.

“How much is milk these days?” Liam asked.

“I’d have to ask the household staff,” Remedios answered. “That wagon should have dropped a jug off at my place if you want some.”

“Sure,” Liam said. “Let’s have breakfast before the shift starts.”

Ever since he had gained an understanding of Remedios’ personality, Liam couldn’t decide whether it was prudent to let her know what he was doing or not. At first, he decided against saying anything because it would influence her actions and probably interfere with his work as a result. Not telling her anything, however, only led to an endless stream of questions, often in awkward situations.

It was annoying, but he couldn’t be angry about it because she wasn’t doing it to be nosy. She did it because she cared about what was happening and wanted to do something. That made her willing to work with him so long as he could prove that he was getting things going in the right direction. Liam couldn’t imagine what his life would be like if she decided to oppose him instead.

They settled down for a light breakfast of toast, cheese and broiled fish. A jug of fresh milk turned out to be two silver – which was ten times more expensive than it was in the Sorcerous Kingdom – but that had just been a prompt to get them back to the manor.

“Remedios,” Liam said, “the less I’m seen with you, the better.”

“Why?”

The Paladin’s expression shifted into something troublesome. Liam searched for words that would explain what he wanted to do without offending her.

“Because I’m basically a scout,” he said. “Reconnaissance. When you’re fighting Demihumans, you don’t send Paladins out to scout, do you?”

“Not if we have army scouts available,” Remedios replied. “I don’t see what that has to do with what you said before, though.”

“It has to do with what I said last night,” Liam said. “This country is under siege. We’re basically fighting a war where the armies are formed out of the citizens and the weapons are things like money and clout. Those armies aren’t nice and neat, either. Everyone belongs to multiple ‘armies’ at once because they need or owe something to a bunch of different people.”

“Then what is it that you plan on doing?” Remedios said, “All this talk about multiple armies only makes things more confusing.”

“I guess that part doesn’t matter for now,” Liam admitted. “What we’re aiming for are the ‘weapons’...or at least how the armies get their hands on them. Do you remember those people that we talked to yesterday while we were out shopping?”

“Yeah…”

“What they talked about was basically all about the same thing. Some people are taking control of essential goods like food and leather and it’s making everything crazy. We need to figure out how they’re doing it and what they’re doing with the power that they’ve gotten by doing it. Then, we need to find someone we can trust that can make sense out of that information.”

Remedios’ Maid, Carla, seemed like a good candidate for that, but he couldn’t tell what her motives were. She didn’t like the direction that the Holy Kingdom was going in, but that didn’t say anything about what she considered ideal. He could treat her as a resource, but not as an ally.

A big chunk of Ijaniya’s training was learning how to function as an operative with limited resources. Ninjas needed to know how to make use of anything, including their enemies, to create openings through which they could achieve their objectives. Admittedly, that training dealt with scenarios that were much smaller in scale, but Liam thought it could work in the Holy Kingdom if he could break the impossible-looking problem down into a lot of small, manageable ones.

“Liam.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s still something I can’t figure out,” Remedios said.

What is it now…

Liam looked expectantly across the table at the Paladin.

“All these ideas that you keep putting out,” she said. “You’re just fourteen. How can you know any of that? You don’t even talk like someone your age should.”

“…what were you doing when you were six?” Liam asked.

“Learning how to read and write, I guess,” Remedios answered. “I started learning how to fight around then, too.”

“What about when you were ten?”

“I was already a Squire for three years by then.”

“Is it the same for everyone in the Holy Kingdom?”

“Sort of,” Remedios replied. “Most work on their parents’ farm or apprentice as kids before serving their time in the army. I always wanted to be a Paladin, so I guess my ‘apprenticeship’ was uninterrupted. Why do you ask?”

Liam looked down at his half-eaten breakfast. Even when he and Saye still lived with their parents, they would be lucky to get as much in a day. Meat was out of the question.

“The Holy Kingdom is a nice place,” Liam said. “At least when we first arrived in Rimun. People were nice. They trusted each other and they shared what they had when others got in trouble. Living in the towns and cities of Re-Estize isn’t like that.”

“It’s not?”

“It’s not,” he shook his head. “I worked when I was six, too, but I didn’t work for my parents or apprentice to someone else. I did whatever I could just so we could eat. That’s why I’m a ‘Rogue’. I’m not proud of a lot of the things that I did, but it was never about doing things that were right or wrong – it was about living or dying. You might think that I don’t act or think like a kid should, but kids that act and think like you think they should aren’t kids where I come from: they’re corpses.”

The people of Re-Estize didn’t serve in the army together; nor did they have a great enemy to unify against. All they had was each other, and that turned out to be a terrible thing.

Remedios stared silently across the table at him for a long time. Then, she rose from her seat and came around the table, kneeling to place a hand on his head.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” she said in a comforting voice. “But you’re here, now. You don’t have to be like that anymore.”

“Don’t you get what I’m saying?” Liam said stiffly, “The Holy Kingdom isn’t the same anymore. It’s becoming more and more like Re-Estize. That’s why I can compare it to what I know about.”

“But you don’t have to stoop to that level–”

“I’m not!” Liam shoved her hand away, “Why do you always think that? You’re good with a sword, so does that mean you go around chopping people up all day? Do you threaten to kill people to get what you want?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you keep treating me like that?” Liam asked, “I can do a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that I will or even want to. And what I do do, I’m doing to help make things better.”

Remedios turned away, going back around the table with her arms crossed over her midriff. She didn’t stop at her chair, however, instead pacing back and forth over the stone floor tiles.

“We’re late for our shift,” Liam said.

The Paladin took two more steps before stopping to grab what remained of her toast.

“Fine,” she pointed the thing at him. “Do what you think you need to do. But I want to hear about it later.”

“You will,” Liam promised. “Just don’t expect anything crazy.”

“Thank the gods for that.”

With that, Remedios stuck the piece of toast in her mouth and ran out the door. He hoped that she wouldn’t run into anyone along the way to the palace.

“I haven’t heard an argument like that in a long time,” Carla said from where she was attending to them in the corner of the room.

“You could have said something,” Liam said between bites as he tried to finish breakfast.

“Servants are only visible when they need to be,” the Maid smiled mysteriously. “Most people are too scared to confront Miss Custodio or believe it’s just not worth the time and effort. They begrudgingly follow her instructions and talk behind her back.”

“That’s not very smart,” Liam frowned. “So they just let her do whatever?”

“No one’s been able to work with her properly since the Holy Queen and Kelart passed on,” Carla shrugged. “I suppose the current Grandmaster has tried a few times, but the man is too lukewarm to be an effective leader. Conviction is what drives Miss Custodio. One must be able to stand their ground against her if they’re to get anywhere.”

So her sister’s dead…

Since the previous day, he worried that someone who looked like Remedios would attack him in his sleep.

“What was Kelart like?” He asked.

“She shared her sister’s looks,” Carla answered, “but nearly everything else was different about them. Remedios is steadfast and forthright, but Kelart was shrewd and pragmatic. Together with the late Holy Queen, they made three parts of a whole. Now, two of those parts are gone. You’re very good for Remedios, in that sense. She works so desperately to make up for what the Holy Kingdom has lost, but she can only be herself.”

Liam mulled over the Maid’s words as he made his way to the main gate of the palace grounds. He ‘stood his ground’ because he was trying to make sure he could do his job. He never really considered Remedios’ situation.

Carla calling her an ‘unstoppable pain in the butt’ summed it up more neatly than he realised. Remedios was a ‘monster’ not only when it came to her physical strength, but also in terms of her moral integrity. The problem was that she was inflexible…no, that wasn’t the right way to put it. The problem was that she interpreted her beliefs in a very specific way and refused to budge on the positions that she took as a result.

People tended to see others as ‘for’ or ‘against’ them, so she represented an immovable obstacle at best and an implacable enemy at worst. It was way beyond the ‘a bit hard to get along with sometimes’ as Captain Montagnés had put it. The man was quite the con artist despite being a Paladin.

Liam arrived outside the palace gate just before the new shift assumed its duties. He could see Remedios giving the Paladins some sort of talk on the grounds inside the entrance. Concealing his presence, he strolled around a nearby building before entering the shadows of a hedge facing the gate.

The drunkards and vagrants that had been kept in the palace prison overnight were escorted out by the new shift. Liam located the ‘spy’ from the previous evening and followed him out into the common area of Hoburns. Despite not showing any signs of abuse during his stay, he looked eager to be on his way.

Liam yawned widely as he mingled with the morning crowds. The man showed absolutely no signs of wariness. He walked straight to a block of apartments halfway to the city wall and entered through its front door.

Well, that didn’t get us anywhere.

The shutters on the window above him shuddered as something heavy hit the wall nearby.

“Drinking, again?!”

Dozens of people looked up as a high-pitched shriek issued out over the street.

“I wasn’t drinking, ma!” A voice that sounded like the spy protested.

“Everyone’s struggling to keep up and here you are, pissing our money away!”

“I told you, I wasn’t–”

“Then what were you doing?”

Silence hung over the air for several moments. A few eavesdroppers picked up their steps again, shaking their heads.

“That’s what I thought,” the woman said. “Get out. Don’t show your face here ‘till you bring home some pay!”

A few minutes later, the man stumbled out of the apartment entrance, muttering darkly to himself.

Whoops.

Liam’s efforts to create a convincing cover story for when they brought the man in had caused some unexpected woes. He offered a silent apology to his mark as he followed him through the streets again.

Disappointingly, the man only ended up in a line of labourers waiting for work at the nearby warehouse district. Liam watched the man while listening to the labourers’ conversation, but it only seemed like a more desperate version of what he had heard in the eastern parts of the Holy Kingdom. He stuck around until a convoy of covered wagons trundled by, escorted by dozens of liveried men. They stopped at a warehouse not far from the growing line, where even more liveried men were awaiting them. The various apprentices trailing the wagons scattered in every direction once the destination was made clear.

The first of the wagons was uncovered, revealing its cargo of unmarked sacks. The first of the Merchants appeared shortly after.

“What’ve you got there?” He asked.

“Barley from Debonei,” one of the liveried men answered.

“How much?”

A more important-looking man hopped off the front seat of the wagon, coming forward to address the first Merchant.

“It’s a gold per bushel.”

“A gold?!”

“A gold trade coin.”

“What?! But that’s twice the old price!”

“Take it or leave it.”

More Merchants pressed in from behind the first. They should have heard the quote, but it didn’t look like they intended to return empty-handed.

“The prices are fixed, so no haggling!” The important-looking man shouted over the din of the growing crowd, “Line up all nice, ya hear?”

Liam worked his way around the back of the crowd, trying to locate a better vantage. According to the list of prices he was told to memorise before coming to the Holy Kingdom, the price of barley was around fifty Re-Estize silver per bushel in Re-Estize, which meant that a loaf of barley bread was about one copper.

The prices in Roble were similar before the war. More importantly, the new price was double what one had to pay out near the wall…at least the last time he had paid for anything out there.

That’s before these Merchants mark up the price, too…

He eyed the liveried men, wondering how they were being paid. There was a big difference in how well-fed they looked compared to the labourers waiting for work. It felt like the same strategy that the Fassetts used against their subjects, but he wasn’t certain that it had happened on purpose. The fact that food and materials were scarce in the wake of the war was irrefutable, which meant that people could expect rising prices. Without getting information on the southern Holy Kingdom, he couldn’t be sure what part of those increases was inevitable and what part was pure profiteering.

Liam slipped into an alley behind the warehouse, looking for a way inside. In the end, he settled on crawling through a narrow window just beneath the eaves, which had probably been opened to air out the building. He hopped onto the beams crisscrossing the ceiling, crouching low as he examined the cargo being brought in. The men said it had come from Debonei, but people commonly used the southern capital to refer to the southern Holy Kingdom as a whole.

A group of liveried men carrying sacks of grain over their shoulders crossed under him. The voice of the one at the head drifted up to the ceiling.

“I don’t get why those Merchants bitch about rising prices so much,” he said.

“‘Cause it’s expensive?” Another man replied.

“Why should it matter?” The first man said, “Those damn Merchants always make money no matter what. They should be happy that their numbers are goin’ up.”

“I still can’t understand that,” a man near the back of the group said.

“What’s there not to get? The first man grunted as he dumped his sack on a pallet, “The people that show the biggest numbers get recognised by the Holy King. That one that complained about doubling prices should be thanking us that we doubled his sales.”

“…but it’s not as if he’s selling twice as much stuff.”

“That don’t matter. What matters is what the people up top see. Merchants are measured by how much money they move. If we double the prices, that means their numbers double too.”

Liam frowned, trying to make sense of the argument. They made it sound as if the ‘people up top’ were woefully out of touch with reality.

“It can’t last for long,” the man in the back said as the group made its way back out. “People can’t pay what they don’t have.”

“Doesn’t need to,” the first man said. “The fleet’s comin’ into port in a month or two. We need to get as much gold as we can to clean ‘em out. Then we can send the fleet to import stuff from Re-Robel on the cheap.”

The conversation ended as the men approached the warehouse door. Liam stayed where he was while he waited for the cargo to finish offloading, enduring the growing heat as the sun beat down on the rooftop. Once the warehouse doors were finally shut, he hopped down to inspect the sacks of grain, finding nothing but the barley it was advertised to be. There was nothing else stored in the warehouse, but with grain being as expensive as it was, it wouldn’t be wrong to see it as a small treasure trove.

By the time Liam crawled out of the warehouse window, it was already midmorning. He rejoined the endlessly-moving crowds, wondering where he would go next.

The markets…or maybe the mills?

He settled on the markets first. How people reacted to the rising prices would give him a good idea of how desperate things were. To his surprise, however, he couldn’t find anyone selling grain in any of the markets he visited. He looked around for a Merchant that might know what was going on, eventually approaching a stand selling jars of pickled olives.

“Where do they sell grain?” He asked.

The Merchant gave him an odd look.

“They haven’t sold grain in the markets for a while.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The Merchant said, “Because people grinding flour and baking bread at home doesn’t help with the numbers.”

“I see.”

He didn’t. Grinding flour and baking bread at home were perfectly normal things to do. Liam scratched his head, looking around until his eyes settled on the familiar sign of a Merchant Guild office. The line was relatively short, so he figured that he could get away with asking some questions.

“What may I help you with, young man?” A kindly-looking woman smiled down at him from behind the front counter.

“Can you explain why they don’t sell grain in the market anymore?” Liam asked.

The woman blinked several times, her smile faltering for a moment.

“Why, because it’s more efficient to leave the processing of flour and production of bread to specialised facilities.”

“Is that why the Holy King wanted us to do things the way we’re doing them now?”

“That’s right,” the woman nodded. “It is ultimately cheaper for one baker to bake bread for one hundred tailors than it is for one hundred tailors to spend time baking bread for themselves. It’s better for those hundred tailors to use that time to produce more tailored goods. In times of great scarcity, such as our current situation, it is imperative that what resources we have are put to efficient use. Food and fuel are especially important.”

Liam nodded quietly as the woman spoke. She probably thought she was addressing a Merchant’s apprentice. He hoped he didn’t look too confused, but the woman seemed to pay him no mind at all as she continued.

“His Divine Grace’s economic imperatives are especially brilliant in the fact that they allow us to keep track of the flow of wealth and resources within the country. This way of measuring the country’s productivity at every level of society may very well be one of the greatest innovations of our time.”

“Thank you for the explanation, young miss,” Liam smiled.

“Of course,” the woman beamed brightly.

She looked like she was about to reach out and pat his head, so Liam made himself scarce. Now, he needed someone to explain her explanation.