Lingua Aeterna

Chapter 3

The Palace, Xalar

The soldier had been missing for four days and just as many of the forest villages had been razed in the Dark Army's search. On the second day, Burgomaster Hakes sent word to Evera requesting more soldiers to engage in both the search and in containing the outraged citizens of Clouri. Not one Clourian could name a single soldier in the Dark Army and yet their entire lives were being upended once more over one measly man. The first of three regiments sent from Evera arrived just after daybreak on the fourth day and most of the soldiers, save for a few of the younger type, still looked as fresh and ready for battle as ever—as if their leaders hadn't marched them overnight and through the day without much rest.
"Every time one of the Barons loses something, everyone else has to suffer," one of the laundresses huffed as she fed a long linen cloth through the mechanical wringer. Her face was red with the fury of her work and with the flush of the grain alcohol she kept dipping into from the flask in her apron. She had always been a less than pleasant woman to be around, but the others in the washroom always just let her rant.
This time, however, possibly because she was new and naive, the young washer-girl beside me chimed in with her own news.
"Not a Baron's son. A General's. Some up-and-up from Lord Xal's..."
She trailed off because she realized that the drunk laundress was scowling and had stopped her work entirely.
"Learned that from the kitchen wenches, did you?" the laundress scoffed.
The poor washer-girl stammered and I quietly bid her to keep her mouth shut.
"Let the laundress have her rant, girl," I begged.
She didn't hear me and she stammered out some explanation that she'd heard it from one of the maids that served in the hall. Every word she uttered made the laundress's face redder.
"You're digging yourself deeper, girl," I warned.
Again, she acted as though she couldn't hear me. But in good sense, she finally pressed her lips together in a tight seal and forced her eyes submissively back to her work at the tub.
Satisfied that she had the room under control again, the laundress continued her rant freely since she knew that no one of any importance ever came down as far as the wash-room.
"The general," she corrected, keeping her tone snide. "Well he can kiss a horse's ass for making everything stop for his oaf of a son. Getting lost in the Verisà. I know grown men who won't go there alone, I tell you."
The other washerwomen nodded along obediently. There wasn't much work left for the week, Lord Xal's  bedding having been sent down the day before, and I gathered that the washerwomen were more than eager to be free of the laundress's demands and ranting more than they usually would have been. Every movement of every citizen was being tracked by the extra soldiers in the city and most of the women had homes to get back to before dark.
"Why are you all washing the bedding anyway?" I asked. They ignored me, as usual. "He's not even in residence, didn't you know? He's hardly ever in residence."
I thought that I caught the washerwoman to my left rolling her eyes at me, but it might have been the woman's quiet scowling over the washing of already pristine linens. Lord Xal, when he was in residence and not lording over all of the other places he'd either taken over or had built in place of something he destroyed, was quite averse to anything dirty. It was an oddity among a people that traveled and worked in the dirt daily, but his mighty power allowed him the eccentricity. No one was brave enough to ask the powerful man why he was so particular over something that could have been magicked away but the rumor was that Lord Xal believed that even magic left an unseen stain. While he used and abused magic to gain power, he refused to let it touch his skin.
I knew all about magic and its different forms. The idea that magic could taint a person even by the simplest touch was the only one I shared with Lord Xal. I knew first-hand what it could do and I hated it. But I was still fascinated by it. I needed it. My hope that someone of some magical discipline would make their way down to my station has never wavered. Not even after the number of decades I'd spent in the washroom began outnumbering the number of decades I'd been alive.