GAMBLE ON GREED

Amita

Amita was all about anticipation and strategy. For someone whose life was a game of chess, she was more than used to scrutinizing her options so to know which move would be the best given her circumstances. The chess board was something only she could see, and so were the pieces, each one of them steps she had given in life, sometimes losing, sometimes winning, depending on which surprises the opposition had reserved for her.

But even then, said opposition – be it life itself or, perhaps, a divinity – found ways to surprise her. She did not predict Sebastian Rosenheim. He wanted not only to break natural cycles that the gods would see as an unforgivable offense, but also to commit murder. Taking down the current monarch to replace him with bones below earth was a plan only the most wicked thought of.

As Amita made her way to Market Square to buy groceries, she searched for peace of mind in the sunset, pushing past all the thick clouds calling for rain, with the sweet orange and spicy red clashing with a gloomy blue above the druse town. Had she asked for it, the miracle of getting herself in the cable car that ran up and down the steep roads of King's Port would not have happened so soon. Miracles were as rare as the times she had the privilege to ride the cable car, so often filled with people who came to see the town known all around by its colors and tiles.

But as she held on tightly to the handrail, she wished she had gone on foot instead. Seeing the town from above was upsetting her already upset stomach, somersaulting with each bump. This was a bad idea, she concluded while taking a deep breath to settle her nausea but regretting the moment she inhaled, the bodily scent thick inside that tight space.

The elevator stopped, and Amita had to squash against the rusty doorframe so more people could climb on it. She almost let out a curse, but the bright red sign outside lured the attention of many, including Amita's. Her weariness first zoomed in the water splashing from the buckets, with which guards whipped off a symbol that had never ceased to hunt Hiseans and was now reappearing across the land, King's Port being no exception. Walls, floors, and even tall ceilings were not exempted from being marked with the proof that – and using the teachings her father engraved in her brain with branding iron words – poisonous weeds, when carelessly dealt with, would always find a fissure to thrive through again.

A hand crushing a windflower and blood seeping through the gloved fingers of not a person, but a group that had been accruing power as the dissatisfaction with Vandrel and his ministers increased. The Skipta didn't see windflowers as a symbol of protection or the new breezes of springtime. No, they saw it as a forsaken devotion, the death of a loved one which she assumed that, from their point of view, it could be either Prince Eliot, their martyr, or Hisea itself.

The guards scrubbed it, yet the only thing oozing down those tiles was the painted blood now earning a three-dimensional depth, realer and forever staining not only the wall and floor, but the mind of those who watched it. By the size of the stain and the vivacity of the color, someone could have died there, and the gloved hand persisted, untouched where they had first portrayed it.

The car trembled underneath her feet, the bell ringing as it departed from the station, leaving the Skipta's mark on the house's façade behind. Her stomach jumped once more, jittery with the awareness of the height. She hated the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff and couldn't wait to set foot back on the ground. Both metaphorically and figuratively speaking.

The elevators all over King's Port had been built by Kaseans. They were experts in this kind of constructions and the late Queen Imogen Sans had decided to offer a few of these genial devices in a way to thank King Vandrel Tallard for allowing a peaceful alliance between both lands. Since it was deprived of sea, fertile soil, cooperative weather and, consequently, a prosperous economy, Kasea depended heavily on Hisea. It needed its energy, its goods and routes to the vast Heno Sea that most lands took for granted. Kasea had to look over Hisea to find it. Although it was a poor kingdom, Kasea invested in new inventions, even if most were built at the expense of a faction in their society that the royal family insisted on ignoring and, at a certain point, stifling.