Yesterday’s piece is here.
Copyright J.B. Norman
Kathryn, Dunstella, and Amarantha decided to debrief at the Frogurt stall after the encounter with the kidnappers interrupted their first attempt at a frozen dessert. Though Kathryn made darn sure to go back to the scrap-monger’s shop first to ensure she could get her hands on the cooling coil before some other disaster has the chance to befall them.
With her luck, a Carnifex is going to roll up to the Pythia system, take a couple shots at the Ring’s windows and they’re all going to find out the hard way that the windows aren’t up to a shot from a Carnifex’s main gun…
“So, this happens a lot?” Kathryn asks.
“It comes with the territory,” Amarantha answers. “Alvaraean politics are quite ruthless and cutthroat, especially where inheritances on the Throneworld is concerned.” She shrugs. “As a member of the Third House, I actually have things fairly easy. The members of the First House face so many assassination attempts that their food-tasters have food-tasters.”
“Do you have idea who those guys were?” Kathryn continues.
“Mercenaries hired by some minor noble trying to make me him marry him to increase his status in the system’s hierarchy, I suspect,” Amarantha says, as casually as if she were describing the weather.
“That happens a lot?” Kathryn exclaims.
“Well,” Amarantha says, smiling faintly. “Not so much since I started travelling with you. Which, actually is one of the reasons I started travelling with you.”
“You’re welcome,” Dunstella says around a spoonful of Frogurt.
“Yeah, well, happy to have you along,” Kathryn says.
Just as Kathryn is about to give the command to head back to the Dolphin, another of the Ring’s security officer pulls up on his hover-scooter.
“If you could come with me, please,” he tells the group.
“Wait, you are arresting us?” Kathryn cries. “They already told us we weren’t in trouble?”
“No, ma’am,” the officer says. “We just need to take your statement about the, um…” He glances around the row of shops, which is still being cleaned up by the Ring’s maintenance drones “…incident. And perhaps you’ll be able to provide us with some additional information that will help us with our investigation into the, um, incident.”
The security officer looks gravely at Kathryn, Dunstella, and Amarantha from behind the mirrored visor of his helmet.
“Now, since I’ve asked you politely. I am empowered by the Ring’s governing regulations to continue asking you politely,” he declares.
“Let’s get this over with,” Kathryn mutters.
Arriving at the security station for this section of the Ring, Kathryn never would have guessed that you could fit four people on one hover-scooter, but somehow they managed it.
The security officer leads them to the office of the security station’s superintendent.
“This is them, ma’am,” the officer says. “The ones involved in the, uh, incident.”
“Right,” the superintendent says, folding her hands and sternly looking across her desk at Kathryn, Dunstella, and Amarantha. “Why don’t you three sit down and tell me what that in the name of Yrrean’s Cinch was?”
“You are going to arrest aren’t you?” Kathryn groans. “You wouldn’t sound so angry if you weren’t.”
“I sound angry,” the superintendent says, angrily, “because I don’t take kindly to people exploding the shopping promenades in my section.”
She reaches under her desk and lays one of the kidnapper’s helmets down.
“So, start at the beginning and tell me just who these louts were and why you felt the need to explode them.”
Kidnapping the daughter of the Duke of the Third House of Vallda? Right to Space-Jail.
Though, actually, that’s probably more so relevant to what I’m anticipating will be happening tomorrow…
So, I guess, um: Being the Duke of the Third House of Vallda fending off a kidnapping attempt? Right to give a statement at the station adjacent to Space-Jail…
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
