City of Snakes - Book 2 The Council of the Light

-Sixteen-

16

Three days later, Tupuddle convened an emergency meeting of the Council to announce the enemy as the New World Order. On the fourth day, Lance disappeared from the court. Clarence had never seen Fraggle so angry. He spat feathers about how his brother had been betrayed, how friendship was sacred and oaths had been broken. He speculated that Sausage had already run off to join the NWO and now Lance had gone with her. "Betrayed!" he stamped his foot in Clarence's bedroom. "His friends have betrayed him! Can you believe the cheek of it? he sacrificed so much for those two and look what they have done! I warned him not to get mixed up with them but he's always had a weakness for broken soldiers with questionable pasts. It's narcissistic, he only befriends them so he can feel better about himself."

All Clarence could think was that Lance had seen something in his father's letters that had made him run. His spies in Lumane watched the portals around the Necromancer territories but nobody reported that Lance had come through. The Jump Unit kept an eye on the Necromancer base but they could only watch the roads in and out and were not able to infiltrate inside it. Perciville's facility was built around its own portal too, so Silvan deployed spies to the known link stones that it connected to.

He set his council to the task of bringing Perciville to justice but was told that no army would be able to march for at least three weeks and would not reach Lumane to storm his base for another month after that. All Clarence could hope was that Perciville had been unsuccessful in creating another marker stone to ground his portal and the usual rules of engagement still stood.

Everything was frustrating and slow. Whilst he was waiting for the opportunity and means to attack the Necromancers, he started to try and make friends with his wife. He decided that rather than pestering her, he would focus on his son, and try to build a relationship with him. During the hours he would normally go to the fighting pits to train he went instead to Silvan's family apartments. His wife and their family usually lived on an estate towards Odstock but in the current climate, Clarence had thought it better to keep them at court. They moved into a suite of apartments near the Leprechaun barracks in the Inner Sanctum. When Clarence visited he was taken on a tour by Mary, Silvan's wife. whilst their dogs roamed around with Madness, she took Clarence to see their music room, library and portrait gallery, all of which were being transported from their home at Odstock to their new lodgings.

The first time Clarence visited, Odwald was busy with a tutor having a politics lesson in the music room. When Clarence entered the room both of them went into a bow and only when Clarence told them to complete the lesson did they return to what they were doing. The tutor, an old man who used to be something to do with taxes was talking to Odwald about court procedures, Clarence sat at the piano playing background music as he listened to the Tutor tell Odwald about structure and function of the Childs Court.

"S-s-so I am pretending t-to b-be the High King?"

Clarence listened to the stutter with shameful disappointment. His son sounded like he was three years younger than he was. he hugged himself as he spoke and sat awkwardly. He was thin, angular and effeminate. Clarence wasn't sure how to take him. Odwald was not exactly the boy he'd pictured to be his son, but he was more like Clarence than his older brother. Odwald senior had been a rotund pig. Clarence's father used to snort at him during banquets and called him Piggy.

"Call it trying the crown on for size. The court tutors create scenarios based off of the current political intrigue or historical scenario's. The Childs Court play out those scenarios and then the tutors offer feedback and debate on the learning points. It allows you to make mistakes. You can learn who in your court has value, and learn your craft before you have to do it for real. Obviously, when you inherit the crown you will have the serving rulers, not their direct heir's but there are nineteen examples of monarchs taking over the high crown and putting the child's court into play in its entirety. You have to remember, Prince Odwald, that some of the people in the child's court are old themselves- until they inherit that is where they sit."