Power Hungry

Chapter Two

     The hold up outside the palace gates lasted less than an hour, but it felt like much more. Most people decided to turn around and find a different rout to wherever they wanted to go. Only the determined few stayed behind, and as the crowd thinned, it became harder and harder for Naya to stay hidden from the roaming palace guards. 

     At one point she ended up having to duck into the conversation of two strangers, then promply appologize, hurrying off to another stretch of the road. Naya was convinced that Alan would have opted to be patrolling the grounds, rather than being posted outside an unmarked, royal door within the palace. Some part of her wondered if he wanted to be out there on the off chance that he'd see her, but she dismissed that train of thought promptly. I'm done with him. Just as he's done with me. Besides, she added, it would only get the two of us in trouble. More me than him. So it's safer to forget about him. 

     Naya didn't want to be bored, but the feeling crept up on her. At first, she busied herself by walking through the dwindling crowd, but as more people left, that became harder. Eventually, there was no one within ear shot to Naya, and the only groups she could see were couples highly engaged in each other's company. Feeling useless, Naya leaned her back against a grisled oak, telling herself she wouldn't sit down: she wouldn't relax. To Naya's disapointment, her legs ached the more she stood, and after not long at all, she lost the battle to stand, somewhat collapsing beneath the tree. It does feel nice to stop being so uptight for the moment, she admitted as her eyes slowly got heavier. 

    

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     The guard was confused. 

     One moment, he'd been looking down the straight path, guarding who-knows-what inside of the palace, for only a second he'd turned his back to scan the surrounding guards, then when he turned back to the road, and the girl with the dark hair was gone.

     She wasn't striking in appearance, although her mask was impressive. The sunset colours appealed to him, even if she was nothing out of the ordinary. She appeared an average Ventrallan, with a touch of something different he couldn't quite put his finger on; wavy, dark hair, hazel eyes, a bit of a hollow face hinting at poverty, but that didn't surprise the guard. Up ahead was the Brick Road, a common peasant travelway right in front of the palace. Many of the lower-class used it for convenient short-cuts, and he'd been told the royals enjoyed seeing the poor people. According to whispers, they said it reminded them that their kingdom wasn't perfect. The guard didn't exactly believe that, but he knew he was in no place to judge the royals' perceptions of the poor. He'd done worse than stare at the starved children, the sick elders. Most of the palace guards had.

     This guard, though, was one of the few who wasn't proud of what he'd done. The guard remembered how the rowdy ones of his training group would sit around the dinner table, going in a circle and boasting about their 'accomplishments' of the day. It didn't take long for the guard to realise that his fellow guards-in-training were speaking about the civilians that they'd harassed simply because they could. This guard had done it as well - it was common practice. He'd stopped, however, when he'd met Alan. Alan, who'd taught him better.

     Idily, the guard wondered if it was a girl like the one he'd just seen, the one who had somehow disapeared, that had changed Alan. The guard didn't think it was likely. He couldn't find anything special about this street girl, but he knew his orders. Pushing Alan from his mind, the guard walked down the street carefully, for a reason unknown to him expecting something out of the ordinary, looking for the hidden girl.