The Broken Crown

Chapter 21

Jeffroy

 The sun was beginning to rise later in the mornings and set early in the evenings, yet Jeffroy’s days seemed to have gotten only longer. Even with the royal family gone and their court with them, his days should not have changed as much as they did. Yet they had.

 His days seemed pointless, repetitive. This was what he had sworn an oath to do, thirteen long years and one hundred and seven days ago, but during those many years and days, this was not what he had been doing. Of course, he had prayed, as a Servant must; cleaned the temple, as a Servant must; executed ceremonies, as a Servant must. But he had never spent his days walking amongst the arches of the temple, reading the thick books in the Old Tongue, waiting with nothing much to wait for.

 He was without distraction, and it was tearing him apart.

 Lucretia was gone and with her the jobs she needed done, the people she needed won. All he could do was to stand in the shadows, a book open on his lap while he stared at the page, wishing the damned dwarf and his commoner friend had not come in the way of their plans.

 They had been right of course; the Queen’s Tour was there for a reason, and it was not just the distraction. It was there to install the Queen as a queen in the hearts of the people as well as the minds of the court. Lucretia had never been the people’s queen, but that did not mean she could not prevent Adrianne from becoming one.

 Except she hadn’t, he thought as he remembered the last time he had spoken to Lucretia in privacy, the day that the letter from house Denver has arrived. He had wondered what the letter said but his Queen had not brought it up and he had not dared ask.

 Still, his mind wandered, endlessly. He was quite sure he did not miss Lucretia, for he was a Servant, forbidden to feel affection for any person – but he did miss the distraction, the purpose, the drive. Now all he could do was to read or pray or walk the halls with his mind full of thoughts. And walk the halls he did.

 He had been walking them when the thieves broke into the castle, lucky enough to not have met them, and now he was walking the halls again as another even happened – another event of great importance.

 He had been reading and meditating most of the day, trying to collect his straying thoughts, before giving up on the silence and went for a walk. The town was nicely ordinary. Jeffroy kept to the wide streets, where the sun could reach, far away from the shadows and the alleys where pleasure and relief from whatever source you needed was available. He still looked there, saw them, faces that he thought smiled thinly as he walked past.

 No, the light was much better. The screaming merchants and running children, innocence. It was as he walked here that he heard a scream, a very high-pitched one, and then he heard roars, like a large brawl had begun.

 Jeffroy hurried down the street, his toga flaring around his legs in colours of red and orange. Around the corner, beneath the afternoon sun, a large crowd seemingly surrounding something had collected. They were roaring obscenities, but Jeffroy couldn’t make out the victim. Not until two red guards with a golden helmets on their heads broke free from the people.

 Between them, hanging onto their arms as if with every fibre of her strength, was a dark-haired girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, with wide, brown eyes full of tears. She wore a lady’s clothes, but they were ripped so that only an eye accustomed to riches would recognize it as what it was.

 Someone shouted an order from inside the crowd as the girl was hauled past him; a shout that seemed to cut through, yet nothing changed. Soon enough, another pair of guards emerged, another lady on their arms. She looked possibly worse than the first, a large red mark across her cheekbone and her eyes red with tears. Then another pair came out, and then another, and then another.