Misconceptions (P.B. O’Dea)

Karlisle came alive at sunset, with its busy streets, flooded in a sea of colour, all the visible colours of the rainbow and more, but Stefan wasn’t there to drink in the vibrant scene. Stefan was there for blood. As he strolled past the fortune telling district of the city, where the downtrodden, the cripples, the undesirables made their homes, he was reminded of how he himself would have ended up there if it hadn’t been for Elisabeth Lochforne, or “The Empress Elisabeth” as she styled herself on her own minted currency. He removed from his red-coloured tunic a coin which bore the face of the current claimant to the throne of the Dulmanian Empire, and kissed it reverently. He had been nothing but a mere child of the streets, fighting and stealing to make a living, but the Empress had raised him up and made him her chief assassin.

When Elisabeth, then still a relatively minor princess of the nobility of Dulmania, had announced her intention to dethrone Emperor Leopold II and had thus sparked a civil war, Stefan had known that his blade would be called upon, and called upon it was.

“Stefan,” the Empress had said. “You have served me faithfully this last decade.”

“I try my best, majesty,” he had replied in earnest.

“If possible, I would like to take the throne of Dulmania without too much bloodshed,” she had said. “A quick end to this war is desirable, do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he had retorted. What quicker way to end the war than cut off the head of Dulmania itself? And that is what he would do. He had secured, with the aid of a contact within the Imperial Palace, some forged papers that would enable him to get into the palace, and from there? Well he’d worry about that then.

He came to the gold-decorated fountain that was right in the centre of the Dulmanian capital city. Here he spied a man dressed in a gold tunic, who was leaning a little too casually, his back to the fountain.

“Rodrigo?” Stefan hissed. The man gave a start.

“In the name of the moon goddess!” he swore. “Stefan?”

“Who else?”

“She sent you then?”

“Well I’m here, aren’t I?” Rodrigo merely made a coughing noise in response to this, or it might have been a laugh, Stefan would never find out.

“Of course, the Emperor has a son, they say, a bastard, who lives overseas; he will have to be dealt with in due course. For like his father he too is a cripple,” Rodrigo warned, waving a stern finger at his contact.

“Does he have the same affliction?”

“The very same,” Rodrigo confirmed with a nod. “The medical men, whose vocabulary seems to be ever growing, call it cerebral palsy.”

“A cripple cannot sit on the throne of Dulmania,” Stefan said dogmatically. “The Empress must prevail.”

“Aye, good fortune to you,” Rodrigo said, clapping him on the shoulder. “The letter of introduction I gave you will see you safely inside the palace gates. With a bit of luck you’ll get back out again afterward.”

Stefan nodded, he didn’t want to think about the aftermath; if all else failed he had a vial of poison upon him which would spare him the prospect of torture followed by a brutal execution. As he mulled these thoughts over in his mind, he came upon a beggar, who was in a wooden chair with wheels on it. A cripple, he thought to himself with disgust.

“Good evening, young man,” the cripple said affably enough. Stefan grunted and moved to go past him, but the man wouldn’t move out of his way. “Of course it is a crime to carry daggers within the capital city of Dulmania.”

“Really?” Stefan said in his best attempt at a nonchalant voice; he didn’t need this mindless distraction, he had a crippled Emperor to kill.

“Rodrigo Carpgengo was never the best at court intrigue,” the beggar continued in an almost conversational tone.

“What?” Stefan could feel himself beginning to sweat; something was wrong here, something was very wrong indeed.

“I imagine the royal guard will have apprehended him by now,” the beggar said in the same blithe voice. “They’re good at that sort of thing, you know.”

Stefan had a vague inclination that he should run, but something was rooting him to the spot, a nameless dread. At that moment the coin with the face of the Empress fell from his tunic. Before he could stoop to retrieve it, the crippled beggar had lurched from his chair; Stefan noted that he wobbled while he walked and he also had a speech impediment. Some possible symptoms of cerebral palsy, he reflected.

“My cousin always looked good in portraits,” the beggar said as he sat back in his chair, the coin clutched in his right hand. “Nice to see it’s the same with coinage.” It was then that Stefan gasped with dismay.

“Emperor Leopold?!” Not waiting for an answer, he drew his dagger, but it was then that he saw the blue cloaks of the Imperial Guards closing in; sure enough, as the beggar – Emperor – had predicted, he could see that a separate group of guards held a struggling Rodrigo captive.

“The idea of a monarch dressed as a beggar,” the Emperor mused as if he had forgotten that Stefan was there, “a fairly old literary device that everyone should read up on, for you disregard beggars at your peril; at least that tends to be my experience.” 

“Long live the Empress Elisabeth!” Stefan cried, for he did not know what else to say, as the Imperial Guards closed in upon him.

“She may live a long life yet,” Emperor Leopold said. “That all depends on her next move. If she stops this foolish pursuit of my throne, I will pardon her for her misconceived ambitions and I will name her regent, till my son comes of age.” Stefan blinked at this, he wasn’t expecting to hear the musings from the mind of the powerful – he was nothing but a hired hand, a doomed hired hand at that – but to his surprise the guards, who had him in their clutches by now, made no effort to harm him, they merely held him where he stood, away from the royal beggar. Rodrigo on the other hand was still struggling. He had, Stefan saw with some hope, managed to put one of his hands on the hilt of his dagger, and was in the process of drawing it, when there was a sharp swooshing noise through the air, and then a flash of silver, accompanied by an agonising scream. One of the guards holding Rodrigo had severed the hand that had clutched at the dagger clean off.

“An inconvenience,” Leopold observed, glancing at the scene that was happening to his side. “Now, sir,” he said, turning his chair to face Stefan. “Will you deliver my terms to my cousin? For I too am eager to avoid civil unrest.” Stefan swallowed and then nodded his head. Leopold was wasting his time, for Empress Elisabeth would never consent to those terms, why settle for temporary regency when she could take the crown? But he would offer those terms to her, for at least it meant he got to keep his head, at least for a little while. The Emperor of Dulmania smiled, and gestured to the guards who were holding Stefan. “Remove him from the city,” he said blandly, and then his eyes fell on Rodrigo. “As for this palace traitor: I don’t want it said I was too lenient, take him to the cells.”

“Majesty,” Rodrigo spluttered, still bleeding from the loss of his left hand. “I never intended to betray you.”

“Be quiet, sir, you insult both yourself and me,” the Emperor said. “You misconstrued me as a fool, and now you will pay for that error.” Stefan did nothing to intervene, what could he do? Instead he allowed himself to be marched towards the gates that acted as an exit to the city of Karlisle. As he left the city, he looked up to the sky, which had been a blood red upon his arrival; now it was merely black, with a few stars watching him from above, passing their seemingly eternal, silent celestial judgement on the follies of mankind.

© 2019 P.B. O’Dea. All rights reserved.