Requiem for a Robin by Carter Bowman

Author:Carter Bowman [Bowman, Carter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ghost Pepper Press
Published: 2019-03-21T22:00:00+00:00

16

A Curious Echo

“What an ass.”

Two figures watched from the rooftop, leaning into the rafters as the front door to the inn closed two stories beneath them.

“And he’s not even the worst of them,” said Agile. Despite relaxing his stiff posture, he never let his eyes move from the entrance. “The lesser nephews and nieces in the royal family exist right in that sweet spot of obscurity. Unlike the direct line, they have to campaign for seats in the Royal Council. Being a statesman is nothing compared to the respect and security they grow up seeing the main line receive from birth. Men like Buster Chaplain have had to actually work, which more often than not turns them rotten.”

“He seems like he’s more bark than bite, though,” replied Lily. She could catch glimpses of the man and his two hunters as they appeared in the ascending row of staircase windows. One of the hunters was sagging more and more under the weight of the group’s luggage with each flight. Lily had listened to this man be berated so often over the past few hours while trailing his party that she had actually begun to feel a kindling of sympathy for the Passerinian hunter. “But Gash thinks he’s dangerous enough to address directly?”

“The barkers are usually the first ones to turn toxic,” said Agile. Another couple had come wandering up to the front door, arms locked together against the cold. “His whole platform is centered around building up Djural Keep. He wants to start moving offensively into Chryssus, bagging up entire families, and throwing them in the ever-growing prison.”

“Seems like a dangerous waste of time,” said Lily, thinking back on her own recurring experiences with Gehenna.

In the four months that Lily had now spent with Parabellum, she and Agile had been called to take care of bubbling problems in the shallows of Gehenna no less than once a week. Every time they cornered a monster from the city’s depths, another invariably raised its head somewhere else in the city. Even the ever-positive Agile had been forced to admit that Gehenna was becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Taking care of the danger on the surface was difficult enough; the idea of stamping wretches and other monsters out at their source was unfathomable. If Parabellum was having that much trouble holding back mindless creatures poking their heads out of the ground, she could not imagine the amount of fruitless bloodshed that would result in the Royal Guard attempting to round up a city full of organized Chryssians.

“It’s more than dangerous,” said Agile. “Chaplain is going to cost potentially hundreds their lives if his campaign is allowed to proceed. Ten to one he doesn’t even understand what he’s doing. All he can see is that his name will be associated with big results—hundreds of millions of bills spent on more prison cells, more hired guardians, and a theoretically reduced crime rate to take credit for. The overlaps been hanging around the Rubicon River for long enough that leaders on both sides are starting to get antsy.

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