I will say this for the King’s Guard. They’re quite efficient. There were a hundred of them in the shrine valley that day, and within minutes half of them were on the bluffs. But I was stalking through the disheveled marketplace, sopping wet, angry, and looking for one of the toughs. Vaenahma had anticipated my thought. As I came up from the stream, they pushed a man forward. He fell onto his knees in the center of the road and looked up at me with despair in his eyes. The angry trumpeting of the elephant continued apace, but I had no glance to spare for it.

  Yaendrid appeared at my side as I paced up to the man. Slaedrin had emerged from the shrine and was coming down the road towards us. Huehlscot of the Sleeve had disappeared into the hills with the guard.

  “Go into the shrine and fetch Dursehl,” I said to Vaenahma. They turned to obey and the man in the road tensed, preparing to run.

  “You’ll get a spear through your back,” I told him.

  “Haendil, there’s an old woman crying over there,” Yaendrid said.

  I followed her gaze and nodded. “Your old granny?” I asked the man.

  “I ain’t saying nothing.”

  Yaendrid took a step towards the old woman, maybe to comfort her. “No,” I said. She looked at me in surprise. I had never directed my tone of command at her before. “There are old women in the bandit crews,” I told her. “And young women who dress as old women. And men who dress as old women. And everything else.”

  Her expression soured and I cursed myself inwardly. I had no need to tell her that. She had spent more time in the bandit camps than I ever had. But then she came and stood beside me again, and all was forgiven. We stood, waiting for Slaedrin to bully his way through the churning crowd, staring down at our captive. Sunlight glinted off of his copper-colored hair. Brown skin peeked through a little bald patch.

  Setrabohst came limping up to us. He was sucking on a knuckle, and the hem of his robe was bloody. He saw me looking and said, “Arrow grazed me. It didn’t shatter a bone.”

  “A giant fish ate the bomb,” I told him, and as he goggled at me I added, “I hope it’s swimming upstream.”

  Then Slaedrin was there, and he was angry. “Who’s this?” he asked.

  “One of the men I warned you about. Vaenahma snagged him before he could get away.”

  Slaedrin grabbed the top of the man’s head and jerked it backwards. The man’s face tilted upwards and sunlight fell into his eyes. He had a very long neck and an Adam’s apple that seemed to bob along his throat. I hoped that, in his anger, Slaedrin wouldn’t find it a tempting target. But Slaedrin is a professional. He calmed himself by studying the man’s face. Then he said, very softly, “Captain Haendil, I have been told that something happened with a cart.”

  “Yes, Captain Slaedrin. A bomb. We diffused it.”

  “Haendil was quite heroic,” Setrabohst said, to add color to the story.

  “And I’ve been told that archers shot into the marketplace,” Slaedrin continued.

  “They were aiming for the cart. Then they were aiming for me.”

  “As assassination attempt?”

  “I suppose. I don’t know why they didn’t trigger it when the king rode over the bridge. Perhaps they weren’t in position yet.”

  “Political, then, and not mere banditry.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “And you said that one of the King’s Rangers was here earlier?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  The look Slaedrin gave me was full of pain and sorrow. “Then it was a coup attempt.”

  “That’s what I think, too. Tell me, Captain, how did the king know that Princes Iyedraeka would be visiting the shrine today?”

  A frown crossed Slaedrin’s pock-marked face. “I don’t know.”

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  “I think that we’ve all been lured out of the city. I saw a number of bandits in Barmzahva Plaza this morning. I recognized one of them, but couldn’t place him. Now I think I know where I’ve seen him before.”

  Slaedrin studied me. “Let’s not give way to dangerous speculation.”

  “If they lured us out of the city, they mean to seize it.”

  “They can’t seize the whole city.”

  “It depends on the degree of rot, doesn’t it?”

  Yaendrid and Setrabohst were listening closely. Yaendrid had gone pale. Setrabohst’s eyes had narrowed, and he was looking at our prisoner with hatred. The crowd had dissipated. Merchants had closed up and were trying to wheel their carts out of the shrine valley. The elephant had become calm again. I glanced back at it and saw Cloehen sitting on its back, out in the middle of the stream. He was watching the fleeing carts go across the bridge, his body held rigidly, like a sentinel. I had a sudden sense of precarious balance. As if whatever was about to happen would change everything, irrevocably. And I thought of my family. Thaeto might still be in Barmzahva Plaza. Nolio was either at home or at the House of Song. Grandahlae and my grandchildren might be in the market place, or walking along the riverbank. I imagined bandits swarming around them. I imagined bandits swarming over the guard towers, the palace, the entire city. As ants will swarm over a dead animal.

  Then Vaenahma returned, with Dursehl in his wake. Dursehl was quite pale under his peaked cap. Slaedrin gave me a glance and waited, wise enough to defer to me in that moment.

  “Well, Dursehl,” I said, “it seems that your old friend Pertrahn is mixed up in some plot.” Dursehl pursed his lips and squinted his eyes and said nothing. “I wonder what he said to you, when you talked to him beside the tinker’s cart.”

  “Nothin’, Captain. Or not much.”

  “Seems that those are two different things.”

  “He said he was scoutin’. For the king.”

  “And for some reason you didn’t want to tell me that. I believe that you said he was just a woodcutter.”

  Dursehl seemed more embarrassed than afraid. “He asked me too. Said he didn’t want to talk to you. He don’t like you.”

  “The feeling is mutual. Get on your knees, Dursehl.”

  “What?”

  “Kneel in the dirt beside this prisoner.”

  “I ain’t a prisoner, Captain.”

  “You are now.”

  “Because I talked to Pertrahn?”

  “Because you lied to me.”

  He made to kneel but I stepped forward and pushed him down into the road. Yaendrid gave a little gasp. I had my eye on the balding bandit. I wanted to see if he knew Dursehl, if he would react to my ill-treatment. I saw him flinch and try to catch Dursehl’s eye.

  “Captain Slaedrin,” I said, straightening, “I believe that these two men are in league with each other.”

  “I agree,” Slaedrin said. “Now which one of you is going to tell us the rest of the plot?”

  “There ain’t no plot,” the balding bandit said. “I was just here with my old granny.”

  I sighed. “Fetch the granny.”

  Then we had three prisoners. But none of them knew much of anything. The granny was the most talkative. She was proud, gossipy, and old enough to want to flirt with death. “We was just told to mingle in the crowd. To be ready for when the bomb went off.”

  “And after the bomb went off?”

  She shrugged. She had a shawl over her robes, and its lace echoed the lace on Slaedrin’s sleeves. “We was to do what needed to be done.”

  “Kill the king, you mean, if the bomb didn’t,” Slaedrin said.

  She got mulish. “I don’t mean nothing.”

  “Captain,” Setrabohst said, and he was addressing Slaedrin. “It seems very likely that they’ll come back. They missed, but they can’t allow the king to live. Not if they’re trying to seize the kingdom.”

  Slaedrin nodded. “We need to move.”

  “Will you allow me to ride back to Rahasabahst? I should find out what’s happening. If it’s safe to go there.”

  Slaedrin studied him. “It will be dangerous. And you’re the king’s nephew.”

  “Then I’m the right man to go. I can rally support.”

  The Captain of the King’s Guard gave a brief nod. “Well, I have no scouts. No one mounted, except for a few nobles. Go.”

  “Where will I find you upon my return?”

  “Come back here. We’ll find you.” Which meant that Slaedrin did not entirely trust the Duke of Nhadtereyba’s second son. That’s the problem with coup attempts. They set everyone against everyone else.

  I saw Setrabohst register Slaedrin’s suspicion. But he said nothing. He limped off to find his horse. Slaedrin turned to go back up towards the shrine. “What do you want me to do with the prisoners?” I asked him.

  “Kill them,” he said, without looking back.

  I was sad to kill Dursehl. The only evidence we had of his complicity was that look in the balding bandit’s eyes. And he had given me a very nice sharpening stone once, on my birthday. But I did my duty, and then looked at Yaendrid. She wasn’t shocked, or even angry. She had spent time in a bandit camp, after all. And she was rumored to have murdered a bandit chief.

  When Might a Hero Find His Rest. If you want to read the little world-building stories I'm writing as I go along, go to my Patreon page.

  Copyright KPB Stevens, 2025

  The Apprentice and the Fleeing Skull

  from The Hidden Exempla of the Sasturi Sect, condemned by His Grace the Emperor Oments II in the year 343 of the Eretsuma Empire