Rodian took his duty seriously and kept meticulous records of which complaints or possible crimes needed investigation and who’d been arrested, charged, and scheduled to stand before the High Advocate in court. And who had already been sentenced or exonerated and set free. This too was complicated; more so than he’d imagined when he took his oath of service years ago.
Not all who slipped from justice were innocent. In turn, some who might have legally broken the law did not deserve to be branded criminals. He’d never wished for such complications, but service forced them upon him. In recent times, he’d grown weary of it.
Rodian set down his quill, rubbed his eyes, and realized he’d forgotten to eat again. Rising from his desk, he began unfastening his sword.
An engraved silver panel on the blade’s sheath bore the royal crest and a panorama of Calm Seatt. His tabard, worn over a chain vestment and padded hauberk, marked him as military. But unlike the regulars, attired in sea greens and cyans, his tabard was red. Combined with that sheath, it clearly declared him as captain of the Shyldfälches.
Some thought the position a high honor. Others considered it a dead end in a military career. But Rodian knew neither was wholly true.
Appearances were important to him. He was as meticulous with his grooming as he was with his records. He kept his hair cropped short and his beard close-trimmed, sculpted across his jaw above a clean-shaven neck.
He’d commanded the Shyldfälches for nearly four years, yet he was not quite thirty years old. Rumors spread by the envious didn’t bother him. He was ambitious, and success was more important than being liked, but that didn’t mean he cared nothing for the law.
Rodian had sworn his service oath upon the Éa-bêch, the first book of law from Malourné’s earliest times some four-hundred-plus years ago. The nation’s laws continued to grow until they could fill a small library of their own, but this first volume was the heart of it all. On the day he’d placed his sword hand upon it, his father, a plain timber man on the eastern frontier, had beamed with pride.
“Honorable service and strong faith,” his father proclaimed with an unrestrained grin. “What more could a father hope for his son?”
Rodian hadn’t known how to smile back.
He now glanced at all of the stacked papers carefully arranged on his desk, but for one. A letter he’d opened lay refolded on the desk’s far corner. He was too tired to think about it and needed to start remembering to eat. Heading for the office door, sheathed sword still in hand, he’d almost escaped from that letter when someone knocked.
“Sir?” a familiar voice called from outside.
Rodian opened the door to find Corporal Lúcan in the outer passage. The corporal kept himself almost as carefully groomed as his captain. However, right behind Lúcan stood a young male sage in a midnight blue robe. Rodian had to fight back a frown.
The last time a sage had come looking for him, he’d been forced into an investigation involving the guild. He looked back at Lúcan.
The previous autumn, Rodian, Lúcan, Lieutenant Garrogh, and others of the guard had hunted an unknown black-robed mage that Wynn Hygeorht had called a wraith. After the deaths of multiple young sages and several of the Shyldfälches, Garrogh had been killed in the final conflict with that figure. Lúcan, only a guardsman at the time, had been severely injured in a strange way.
Taln Lúcan looked no older than his early twenties, if not for the color of his hair. Since that night in the street, it had turned almost fully steel gray. His beard was the same if he didn’t keep it cleanly shaved, and if one looked closely, faint crow’s-feet framed his eyes.
Rodian had had difficulty accepting Garrogh’s death, more than he’d expected, as had the men under his command. Garrogh, slovenly as he had been, was liked as well as respected. But within a moon, Rodian had been forced to select a replacement.
He’d been sorely tempted to elevate Lúcan straight to lieutenant, thus skipping him over several orders of rank. He would’ve willingly faced the uproar from those with seniority in rank or years, but regulations wouldn’t permit it, so Lieutenant Branwell became his second-in-command. After all that had happened, Rodian still felt more comfortable with Lúcan, and promoted him from guardsman to corporal.
It had been a year of deaths, letters, and reports to write. Perhaps it was no more so than any other, but this year had wounded Rodian, even unto his faith.
Lúcan glanced sidelong at the sage and frowned as he looked at his captain. He shook his head, perhaps to express that he had no idea what the sage wanted here.
Rodian fixed on the visitor. The young man was panting from a hard run—not a good sign.
“Yes?” Rodian asked, not really wanting an answer.
The sage simply held out a folded paper—yet another letter—and Rodian was slow in taking it. Once in his grip, he broke the wax seal with its imprint from the guild’s Premin Council. He snapped open the sheet and quickly scanned its content.
To Captain Siweard Rodian,
Shyldfälches Command, Calm Seatt, Malourné
Rodian took a breath and let it out slowly. The official address and the reminder of his position were another bad sign.
Your immediate assistance is required at the guild. Please bring an appropriate number of city guards to secure the grounds.
Short and to the point, if utterly vague, the message’s dismissive and commanding tone was insulting. He was not some lackey at the high premin’s beck and call. Rodian’s gaze returned to the signature.
Did Sykion think to impress—intimidate—him with a reminder of her noble rank from her homeland of Farien?
He sighed. He entertained a good deal of respect from Malourné’s royal family. But for generations, the family had always favored the guild.
“Sir?” Lúcan asked, a hint of bitterness in his tone.
Rodian didn’t even look up, though he almost crushed the letter into a ball.
“Find Lieutenant Branwell and meet me at the stables,” he instructed. “Bring Angus and Maolís, as well. I’ll have the horses saddled.”
“Yes, sir,” Lúcan answered, not even asking where they were going or why.
As the corporal strode off down the corridor, Rodian studied the young sage dressed in a dark, dark blue robe—a metaologer. He didn’t care for the company of sages—well, most of them—but he wouldn’t send one off alone on foot at night.
“Come with me,” Rodian ordered. “You can ride with us.”
The sage stepped away. “I can see myself back, Captain.”
Typical. Rodian frowned; sages isolated themselves from “common” folk, regardless of the guild’s public works and charitable institutions. As he turned to step out and close his office door, he suddenly felt lost as his gaze lingered on the other letter, across the room on his desk.
It had come two days ago, and he still hadn’t answered it.
All the burdens here kept him from doing so. His father would have understood. In part, a father’s pride was why Rodian took his duty as seriously as his faith in the Blessed Trinity of Sentience. But his uncle had sent this letter.
How could Rodian say—write—that he couldn’t come home now? Not even to pay last respects at the grave of his adoring father.
Rodian shut his office door.
Without a glance at the sage, he led the way down the corridor and out into the open courtyard. The sage headed off for the gatehouse tunnel, and Rodian promptly strode for the stables. Upon stepping through the large stable doors, he found Branwell already saddling his huge roan stallion.