Western Watch (3rd Draft)

Chapter 2

Two scribes occupy desks in High-Mistress Rehkhell's white-plastered antechamber. Duggel, Senior Scribe, has seen at least fifty summers. Tall, thin and balding, with a nose like a raven's beak, Duggel wears a simple russet tunic belted at the waist with a length of rich brown leather. Circling his neck is a mahogany-coloured service collar, prominently inscribed with the High-Mistress's House symbol.

Rehkhell's door is slightly open. allowing infrequent breezes off the Saskanna River to waft through Westhold's adobe-bricked and oak-timbered buildings. Here on the uppermost floor of the Watch's temporary provincial hall, they are the only relief from the summer heat. Along with the breezes come strong words passionately delivered.

"I don't give a damn for your petty political concerns, Rehkhell! That unwashed, swaggering barbarian insulted me. His mere presence is an insult to all of us!"

Across the room, Sarrit, the junior clerk, gapes at the door. He drops his quill on the parchments in front of him and runs a hand through his sandy blonde hair. An off white cotton tunic and breeches, emblematic of his lower status, covers a frame that is shorter and wider than Duggel's. He starts to say something but Duggel waves him into silence.

"You are not in Red Hand Province, Tiandraa," Rehkhell retorts. "Things are different here. You can't order Hanahk to obey like one of your stable boys. He's leader of the Saskanna River Clan."

"No honorific," says Duggel. "The High Mistress is angry."

"Different? Disgusting you mean!" Tiandraa snaps.

Duggel's eyebrows rise.

"In our province ..."

"This is not your province, Tiandraa," says Rehkhell. "The Red Hand's writ doesn't run here. Mine does. You've been here almost four weeks. Look out that window. What do you see?"

"What do you think? Nothing but a hovel for a town and a sewer for a river. A fitting hold for a feeble House."

A chair is pushed back, banging into a wall. "Shut up, you blind fool! That river carries trade from Suthgat to Baltoni. If you spent more time speaking to the scribes I've lent you and less time chastising them for every imagined slight, you'd know that."

"You can't ..."

"And," Rehkhell grinds through Tiandraa's protest, "if you'd spent even a minute of the two hours you were actually on the far bank speaking with your observers, never mind Domina Charadell, you'd know that river is the only thing between us and the steppe clans. Those clans grow stronger every year, burning our homesteads, plundering our crops, and killing our people!"

"Your degenerate sisters are getting themselves killed by venturing across the river in the first place! And if you're so worried about the clans, why do they walk your very streets?"

"Hanahk's people are the only clan friendly to us, you fool! And you've managed to give him offense!"

"This 'Hanahk' refused to surrender his weapons to me. To me!"

"Surrender his weapons?" Rehkhell says, "You're bloody lucky you didn't surrender your head! By the Goddess, Tiandraa! Are you here to help us or bury us? At times I swear it's damned difficult to tell the difference!"

Sarrit winces as the argument escalates. He picks up his quill and tries to busy himself with a bill of lading. Why doesn't the High Mistress at least close her office door? Perhaps she doesn't know it's open? He worries his lower lip when he notices Duggel nodding after each one of Tiandraa's outbursts.