“Oh, nothing much,” Christopher replied, a wry grin on his face. “You see, I was waiting in the throne room to give my birthday address when an assassin who had apparently been waiting there the whole time came out of the curtains and swiped at my arm, trying to kill me. Almost succeeded, too. Anyway, we took him to the dungeon for questioning and I got sent to the Royal Hospital so they could stitch up my wound and neutralize the poison.”
He was trying his best to sound nonchalant. Mary seemed to like it when he acted all brave and strong.
“Oh, Chris, that’s awful!” Mary said. “How could the assassin get through all the guards, and how could someone do such a thing to my favorite person?” She was frantic, and Christopher guessed she was probably trying to pull out her hair, which brought a smile to his face.
“I don’t know all the answers, Mary, but the important thing is I am safe and sound, and I’m sure there won’t be any more attempts on my life for some time. Say Mary, would you mind coming down here for a moment? I’m getting kind of lonely with only these stone walls to comfort me.”
"Sure, honey. I'll be down there in a few minutes," she said in a more controlled tone.
The other end of the line went dead and the young king knew she had left, so he lay back down and tried to get a little sleep. He figured he had at least an hour before she got there.
He still didn’t know why she had insisted on getting that cottage apart from the castle and wouldn’t just move in with him already, but what could he do? So he waited, not able to fall asleep as it happened.
The young king was growing bored fast, so he decided to call up Talon and see what he had figured out with the assassin. He thanked the gods that he had left the com link on his head, not wanting to sit up and get it again.
“Talon? Can you hear me, Talon?” he said over the com link, having no need for an operator for calls inside the castle.
"Yes, my liege? What is it that you require of me?" Talon replied, right as he entered the operating room. Evidently, he had been waiting just outside for his king to wake up.
"I was wondering if you had gotten anything out of that assassin yet," King Christopher said in a raspy voice, still feeling quite weak.
“Some, my liege, but not a lot. We started interrogating the assassin and things were going well. He was very . . . communicative,” Talon said, a strange reticence in his voice. “But then, right in the middle of the next questioning session, he . . .”
“Yes, get on with it,” Christopher growled.
“He dissolved, Sire.”
Chris reared his head back and blinked. “Dissolved?” Talon nodded. “Like, into a puddle?”
“Yes, Sire. I couldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t watched it with my own two eyes. He dissolved into liquid and then that same liquid turned into vapor and disappeared completely.”
“Surely it was some weird mage trick,” Christopher replied with a certain disdain. He’d never been fond of wizards, not even the ones he kept under his employ.
“Of course, Sire,” Talon replied, his tone mechanical. “All that was left of him was a small piece of torn cloth from his robes. A crimson square that looks to be centuries old.”
Christopher shook his head again, still a little confused and weary from the remnants of the poison. “Well, what did you find out before he ‘dissolved?’”
Talon sighed. “We found out that he's from Fusong, one of our neighboring countries. And he was sent by none other than King Caballar himself.”
Christopher grimaced, which brought on more pain. “How can you be so certain?”
“It was the cloth, actually. The material and colors bear a strong resemblance to Fusong’s royal robes and coat of arms.”
The young king was taken aback. “Do you mean to tell me that this assassination attempt came from Fusong's king?”
Talon nodded again.
Blood rushed to his cheeks and his body tensed. “That's it!” he barked. “Send our fastest messenger to their castle. Have them tell the king we will have war in seven days.” Outwardly he was trying to portray the calm of an age-old general the night before a battle, though he was failing badly.
Talon recoiled and glared at him, mouth agape. “But sire, even if we ready our armies today it will take us at least six days to get there ourselves! We would need at least two weeks to prepare and have a guarantee of victory.”
“Really? Six days to march the troops there, you say? Well, we can’t have that, now can we? You should have told me this before, so I wouldn’t have had to change my mind and tell you we shall have war in six days, not seven!”
Christopher propped himself up on his side a little, his right arm protesting, but from this position he could look Talon directly in the face. He could tell what the big man was going to say from his astonished, ‘please listen to reason’ look, and he silenced it with his good hand before going on.
“I cannot let these repeated assassination attempts go unchecked. Prepare the troops for the march now, get all the servants together to gather provisions for me, and gather the people together for an address I will make at six o’clock tonight. They shall have their birthday address after all!”
The force behind his voice sent chills through Talon’s spine. “Yes, Your Highness. I will do it right away.”
“Good, now move!”
“Yes, sir! Right away sir!” Talon gave him a forced salute and fled the room as fast as
