The King's Servants

Chapter 7

King Baritorin was not able to enjoy the rest of his evening. Despite the amount of wine he consumed, he was completely unable to escape his inner conflict. He was filled with mixed emotions and he couldn't shake them. He was angry with his human servants because of what they had done to him, but at the same time he was angry with himself for trying to hurt them. The jokes and laughter of his fellow royals had no effect on his mood either. After the banquet he returned to his room and went to bed with a heavy heart.

The next morning, the king awoke without a hint of anger left in his system. The king had a slight headache from overdosing on good wine. Luckily, the maiden that normally woke him had left a bottle of aspirin for him. The king got up to pour some aspirin for himself when he stubbed his toe on something. He looked down to see a silver chalice by his foot, then it call came flooding back to him.

He remembered all the events from the previous night. He looked at the chalice as he remembered how he had insulted the children and how he had thrown the cup at them. Baritorin bit his lip and cringed as he noticed the large dent in the chalice from his throw. His heart sunk when he saw the dent in the wall as well. If he was able to do such damage to the wall, he could only imagine the kind of damage he could have done if he had succeeded in hitting any one of the children.

The king exhaled a deep breath of regret. "I didn't mean to say those things to them", thought the large man to himself. He was about to muse some more when he smelled something nice. He looked towards the ledge where the children usually greeted him to see his breakfast already laid out for him. The king sighed. He wasn't surprised however. He didn't expect the children to just forget what happened after only one night, but it still hurt all the same knowing that they didn't even want to show their faces to him at all.

He gathered the bits of his breakfast off of the ledge and onto a tray. As he did this, he thought more about how the children were possibly feeling about him. He raised his large shoulders in a shrug. He knew that one good thing may come from this.

"Well, at least what I told them will make them learn a little bit of respect. It'll also show them what happens when you take advantage of someone's kindness, especially if that person is much older than you", said the massive monarch to himself. "I'm pretty sure that we will find a way to resolve all of this soon enough", said Baritorin before he finally began eating his breakfast.

Meanwhile, Armana had spent half the night steaming about what the children had done to her darling Baritorin. She should never have given him the chance to pick servants. She should have just given him all the old ones. That way none of this would have happened and he would have been able to enjoy himself to the fullest during the banquet. Oh how she hated those pitiful little scoundrels that her idiot husband Merobim had let into their lives.

"I can't believe that Baritorin didn't want me to intervene. How could he not want them to be punished for what they've done?!" The royal lady just couldn't understand how the man thought sometimes. That didn't stop Armana from having second thoughts about how to deal with the puny humans.

"I'm sure Baritorin won't mind if I punished them a little bit, plus I don't even need to tell him that I'm going to punish them and what he doesn't know won't hurt him", thought Armana. She planned to disregard the king's request to leave the matter alone. They were just servants after all. Even if he did find out, nothing too drastic would happen.

With that in mind, Armana made her way down to the servants' chambers. With no regard for their privacy, Armana barged into the large room full of servants and immediately started banging violently on the hatch covering the humans' room.

The children had escaped having to see the king first thing in the morning. They had made a deal with the maid that woke Baritorin up every day. After telling her what had happened to them that evening, she agreed to always wait for them to finish bringing in his breakfast before she woke him up. For lunch and dinner times, they would just not make eye contact with him.