096 – Meet Karen

  Skarg. The capitol city of the kingdom of Krogg. Like many cities on Tywacomb, Skarg had started out as a fortress village next to a river. Over the centuries the city grew. Four sets of fortress walls ringed the central city at increasing and irregular distances and connecting walls divided the internal areas into various districts. The walls demarcated where the city had grown to when the next series had been built over the centuries. The newest walls were a double set of low outer and high inner walls five centuries old, many miles around, on both sides of the river, and the city had out grown them. Some sections of wall snaked out to the current limits of the city proper, and guarded some districts from whatever was beyond. Fortress gates straddled the main roads into the city, regardless of whether there was a fortress wall to be built upon. While stone was the primary construction material for martial and government structures, much of the civil and merchant society preferred timber, plaster, slate, and brick and mortar. As with older cities, construction age and style could tell a careful observer where fires had destroyed individual buildings, whole blocks and a few districts over the centuries.

  Farm lands fronted much of the city’s circumference, but a significant portion was also timbered, with villas for the cities wealthy tucked into the meadows and hills. The area was not very high in elevation, despite being three days travel inland from the coast. As such, the humid air did get cold and there were snow and ice storms in the winter, but snow did not accumulate on the ground for very long.

  A road ringed the city at between one and five days foot travel depending on which direction one traveled. This road anchored various towns that further demarcated the highway system of and through the kingdom, leading off to the duchies that subdivided the kingdom. These duchies each boasted their own capitol cities, and stretched west to the coast, and east past the tallest mountain range in this area; north to the next river and its seaport, and south to fertile grasslands.

  Where other cities were founded on trade of a given resource, Skarg. was founded on the control and intersection of two trade routes. One a north-south highway; the other the Krogg river, which stretched to the sea. All but the largest of ocean-going vessels could sail up to dock at Skarg. Barge traffic could go further up the Krogg river to a small port town north east of Skarg., but beyond that the river was too shallow for anything but personal dinghies. Larger traffic could also go up the Garmad river but there was only one port past Skarg. It was a fortress that did turns as a shipping point for fall harvests.

  The monarchy that reigned in Krogg set its throne on an island with access by bridge to either side of the river, north, east or south, where the Krogg and the Garmad rivers joined. Most of this island was dominated by a castle. Time and manpower had diminished the island to the point that on all sides, the river ran past the foundation stones of the outer fortress wall. Though Krogg had not seen major war in almost two dozen years, the current monarch had taken the throne by marriage at the force of arms, and had expanded his territory to its current boundaries by the same.

  Today a woman walked across the main northern bridge to the fortress gates, and to the guard at the post. She showed him her written summons/pass, and was waved on. This repeated several times, at each portal. She crossed the courtyard, and into the palace proper. Across the hall, left down that hall, and to the doors. The guards stood with crossed pole arms.

  The woman, named Karen, stopped and waited. She held herself well. Brown hair hanging to below her shoulders. A heavy tunic and leather vest above, a woolen skirt below, boots beneath, a winter cloak tied about her shoulders. As she went further into the structure and its warmth, she opened her cloak and turned the front open across her shoulders to keep from getting to warm. Her features were soft enough to be unremarkable.

  A crazed looking old man finally scurried from a side room, and took Karen’s papers. As she turned to follow, the man motioned her to stand where she was.

  Karen noticed that the guards had shifted their weight slightly at her movement. As had a shadow off to her extreme right. The man shuffled away into the side room, looking increasingly mad with each step. Finally he returned and spoke, in the high voice of supplication.

  “Come. Come.” He moved between the pole arms and opened the right hand door. He held the door for Karen as she entered the dark room beyond it.

  Karen’s senses told her that two people stood in the corners behind her. The Queen could be barely seen sitting across the room in the dim light, with its dimmer shadows. A quiet whisper, full of meaning, rustled across the darkness, as The Queen spoke.

  “You are Silver Adder. Sent to fill a contract.”

  Karen held herself straight. “I am.” She held her extra senses to herself, sensing the probe of a fifth person in the room.

  “You know of the two children recently here, and the prophecy attached to them?”

  “I do.” Karen could sense meaning in what was said, like roots under the earth. ‘Speak as little as necessary’ was a guild motto.

  “Good. I will pay you twenty five pounds of gold, and gems, plus reasonable expenses, to eliminate the wizard guiding the parents, and arrange for the parents capture.”

  The Guild also had a standing rule ‘as opposed to other customers, never haggle with Royalty.’ Expenses were a different story. “Do you have a preference on how, where, or when?”

  “Before they can retrieve the children if possible. Before they leave The Kingdom at all costs.” The voice was a dry wind across fall leaves.

  “Expenses may be considerable. I would hate to cost you a good man, should your people get in my way. They shall wait for my signal before coming to capture the parents. And they shall have the completion of my payment with them at the capture.” Karen preferred to work unhindered. Arranging capture was troublesome. Every assassin knew the corollary to ‘don’t haggle with Royalty.’ ‘Always have payment in hand before delivery.’ Royals had a habit of eliminating assassins upon completion of a contract.

  “Done.”

  A squire brought forth a parchment with the contract, a quill, and a small bag.

  Karen produced her own stylus, wet it in the available ink bottle, and signed the parchment with her professional signature.

  The squire handed her the bag. Karen opened it, giving it a good shake, seeing coins and gems tumble about in it. She pulled the drawstrings, feeling them as untreated leather. She took her copy of the contract, and followed the squire out.

  Karen left the palace, and went to one of her safe houses: a room over a tavern that she owned. She sorted the bag’s contents into a large casserole pan of soap and water. Satisfied that she had washed it all sufficiently she set the money aside, changed clothes, and went downstairs for her turn as bar-lurker. While of average height, Karen always held herself erect, and so looked taller than she actually was. She also paid attention to what she ate and how much, and exercised regularly.

  The lunch rush was petering out, when she quickly spotted the two irregulars from the crowd, and they spotted her. One came over to where she stood at the bar.

  “The Gentleman would like to buy you a drink.”

  Karen looked at the messenger, almost ready to give her usual response. She worked as security and backup server, not as a wench or guilds-woman. But something about the confidence and bearing he stood with told her he wasn’t even considering that sort of proposition. His winter coat was hung on the hook of a booth-coat-tree. His clothing said he was 'important' without being contemptuous of others.

  “Very well.” She stood, and motioned the man at the table to one of the curtained booths on the inside wall, as she entered carrying her glass of water she had been nursing all afternoon.

  A moment later, The Gentleman entered, and his man closed the curtains. The Gentleman sat opposite Karen, with his work hardened hands clasped on the table. An older man, but not yet into physical decline. He wore the seasonal business-formal attire of a man of means. He spoke without preamble.

  “You received a contract today. I would counter it.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Karen had her senses on full, but found no threat. She took a drink from her glass.

  “You went before The Queen, and received a contract for twenty five pounds of gold and gems plus expenses to kill a wizard, and deliver the parents of the children of prophecy.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Daughter of Oleg, I know the stipulations of your guild, and I have met them. Now speak truthfully.”

  Karen spun the glass with her thumbs for a moment. “You are correct in your information. How do you come by it?”

  “There are few secrets that The King and Queen keep from me.”

  “Ah. You are a Chancellor, or a Viser.” Karen knew precisely who she had sitting here, and was a bit surprised. She let him carry his facade a bit longer.

  “Something like that.”

  “So what is your counter offer?”

  “Do not just turn the parents over. Instruct them on what they need to know to defeat The King and Queen in battle.”

  “You know that prophecy as well as anybody. Only the children can kill them.” Now that’s ambition, Karen continued the thought to herself.

  “Is that so,” he responded dryly. “Then I guess they will need to get the kids first.”

  “And why should I do this?” He had her interest, but not her commitment, yet.

  “Civic Duty. There can be no heir, and The Queen is a festering disease upon the land. And I will give you five times her price to do this thing.”

  “Civic Duty is a curious subject, to my Guild. Greed is not a temptation to me, Viceroy. But you are right about The Queen.”

  “More than right. The King won’t get rid of her. She is a familial dead end, connected to that daemon. Both are going to die anyway, at the hand of the harbingers of the Chaos Bringer. And The Queen and her daemon’s actions will destroy The Kingdom long before he shows up, thanks to the proliferation of evil magic, especially among the youth.”

  “And they say you only pretend to be civic minded,” Karen said drolly.

  “Enough fooling around. The prophecy tells that luck and skill will keep the parents on course. Then there is the influence of that tribe of elves. The way things are going there will be one of two branches of outcomes:

  “The three will get careless and killed here while trying to find where the kids were taken. They will get the kids back, and someday come and kill the King and Queen. On that one, if the parents face The King and Queen alone, they are as good as dead. If the parents face The King and Queen with the kids, the thrones will be left vacant.”

  Karen interrupted him. “So the parent’s need to get the kids. Then be instructed in how to kill The King and Queen.” This should be best done while asleep, Karen thought, already planning.

  “Then you will do this?” His words betrayed his anxiety.

  “It will be difficult.”

  “I recommended you to The Queen. I know your work. Killing the one who… took your sister, and liberating her: that took skill and courage.”

  Karen wondered by what means and how much he knew about that incident from the last spring, nearly eight months prior.