The King's Servants

Chapter 3

From then on, it was almost the same routine every day. The children would rise early to wash up and prepare for the day. Then they would make their way down to the kitchen with their little push trays, where they would each receive one part of the king's breakfast and wheel it down to his room through the passage ways built for them. Over the course of the day they would cater to his needs as and when due. For example, when he needed them to fetch things or when he needed them to clean up little spills every now and then. Two weeks into Baritorin's stay and everything had been swell.

One thing was surprising though. The children realised that despite their massive responsibility to the king, they had a lot more free time than they normally would have had with their regular duty schedule. This was because the king didn't have as many needs as they assumed he would have. He wasn't at all like their queen who liked to be waited on hand and foot at all times. He enjoyed solitude and he preferred to do certain tasks by himself, so that left the kids with nothing to do most of the time.

However, this was a good thing. The children all had different hobbies that they had little time to enjoy, like singing, acting, drawing, playing instruments, writing stories and writing poetry. With this spare time, the kids were all able to focus on their different forms of leisure.

One such day, Thomas had been working on a simple yet sweet tune on his tiny flute. It had taken him many hours of preparing sheet music and practicing to get him to the point at which he could say it was complete. He had listened to it himself, while he played, but he could never say what he thought about it. He had asked his siblings but of course they would say it was nice.

"Who else could I ask?" thought Thomas, shaking his blonde hair out of his face, "I need a set of new ears to listen to this tune so I can get a fresh opinion". The little blonde thought about it when a strange suggestion entered his mind. What about king Baritorin? He had never heard Thomas play his flute before and being a royal, he would have definitely attended many musical programmes with flutists. That meant that he probably knew what excellent flute playing sounded like and would be a perfect candidate for Thomas to ask.

Upon realising who he wanted to ask, Thomas became very nervous. As much as the king had been nothing but kind to him and his siblings, would he really want to listen to what a little, peasant boy had to offer? With that question in mind, Thomas began to reconsider. He endured enough insult from Queen Armana on a daily basis, he didn't need to get any from her guest. Plus, with the king being so large, his irritation would be extremely scary to behold.

In the end, Thomas decided that he would stop being such a baby and ask the king if he would listen. "He seems nice enough, so I may as well take the opportunity while I still have it" he muttered to himself in order to gain some motivation. He grabbed his music, his sheet stand and his flute and approached the same door that they used every day to bring in the king's breakfast. He dropped his things just behind the door and knocked on the small door, his heart threatening to explode from nervousness.

Baritorin had been suffering from boredom since he reached the kingdom of Valencia. When he and the queen were not at one of the peace conferences, or when the queen had not dragged him to an event he was not interested in, he had literally nothing to do to entertain himself. He tried writing to his brother to ask how his own kingdom was faring and tried reading the books he had brought with him but that didn't use up as much time as he would have liked.

Once again, he heard a tiny knocking coming from the entrance his human servants used. He raised an eyebrow in wonder. What could they want at this time of day? It wasn't supper time yet and he had not called for any of them, so what could be the matter? He decided to stop thinking about it. He beckoned whoever was there come to come in. He was met with the sweet face of young Thomas. "Hello Thomas, what seems to be the trouble?" he asked the tiny servant.