The Mechanical Crown

Arranging the board

"Mags," Pent acknowledged. It had been a long day and the last thing he wanted was to engage someone like Mags in conversation.

"Going to have to myself a good bath tonight," Mags announced.

"That isn't a detail I needed to know."

"Saw this boy earlier. So dirty, just standing near him made me feel like I was being contaminated. Like I'd catch a disease or two off of him."

"Hygiene isn't a priority among the dockworkers." Pent's only aim was to leave the barracks and return home.

"Nah," Mags said, shaking his head and pulling off his tunic. "This kid was no docker. He was covered head to toe in muck. Stank like nothing else. Found him by a sewer grate which had been forced open, so I suppose that made sense of that."

That got Pent's attention. "The boy," he said, "where is he now?"

"Sent him on his way. Sooner he was out of my sight - and my nose - the better."

"So he'd prised open a grating, had been swimming about in excrement, and you caught him coming out?" Sewers were strictly off limits, accessible only with a royal permit which were only granted to vital engineers.

Mags shrugged and titled his head one way then the other. "I'm not sure, I got the sense that others had opened the grate to help him get out. There was a bit of a crowd when I arrived."

"Then how did he get in there?" Something didn't quite add up and it was making Pent nervous. "When was this?"

"Late afternoon. Perhaps four o'clock? Like I say, I sent him on his way."

"The people who opened the grate, did you arrest them for criminal damage?"

Another shrug from the other man. "They'd mostly already dispersed by the time I got there. I sealed it back up. Not much more to do than that."

Pent glared. "This boy, where did he go?"

"Headed off in the direction of the docks. I didn't follow him to check." Mags laughed as he pulled his boots off and stowed them in his locker. "You could probably still sniff him out and follow the scent if you wanted to track him down."

Not wanting to spend more time than was strictly necessary in Mags' company, Pent bid him goodnight and left the barracks. He paused next to a burning brazier and stared up into the night sky, considering his route. Home beckoned but he couldn't ignore what Mags had told him. With a weary sigh, he took a detour via an uptown drinking hole which attracted higher ranking officers. It was a place he visited despite not being of the correct rank but he knew the doorman and could usually talk his way in. It never hurt to show his face amongst men of such calibre. Pent regarded it as paving his way to the top; he'd belong there sooner or later.

"What do you have for me?" asked Pienya Martoc, King's Eye and bodyguard to Queen Anja. She took her job very seriously and once a week would always take a table at the back of The King's Bridge, nestled in the dark away from the lamps, and wait for information to present itself. Sometimes that would be from overhearing unfiltered banter between off-duty officers and guards, other times it would be brought directly to her, by fawning idiots like Gallen Pent. On other nights when she wasn't called upon to conduct official business at the queen's side, she would prowl the streets of Treydolain, absorbing its thoughts and screams. A city of its size was a living organism, driven by hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom mattered little individually but when combined formed a dangerous, temperamental force of undirected will. Pienya Martoc did not trust crowds and believed that gathering people together was a mistake; therefore Treydolain being the most populous settlement in the valley - in the whole of Evinden, as far as she was aware - was a disturbing reality that she had not failed to notice. She didn't trust the city but it was her responsibility to ensure it behaved itself.