Valkyrie's Shadow - The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 4, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

It turned out that Neia wasn’t very good at punching people. In her panic, her fist missed the Rogue’s face entirely and hit him in the shoulder. The man staggered back several steps in a half-spin before bumping into the wall and losing his footing.

The Rogue with the lamp gaped silently at the result. He turned around and raised his lamp as if to swing it at her, then stopped upon seeing Neia’s horrified expression.

“Sorry,” he said with an apologetic look, “I was–”

“What the hell are you doing in there?!”

A shout turned their attention to the mouth of the alley. Four men came running in through the pouring rain. Their eyes went from the man on the ground to the man with the lamp.

“I think these two Rogues were trying to start a fire!” Neia said.

Before the man with the lamp could react, one of the newcomers grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall.

“You bastard! Who are you working for? Is it Horta? Pereria?”

I guess they’ve been harassed enough that the royalist houses instantly come to mind.

Two other men came and grabbed the downed Rogue by the arms, dragging him to his feet. The last newcomer narrowed his eyes at Neia.

“Have I seen you somewhere before, Miss?”

Neia fidgeted under his scrutiny. Was it safe to tell him who she was? They would probably bring the Rogues to the guardhouse and then the royalists would know she was around.

She started as her vision blacked out for an instant.

“Ah, it’s Miss Baraja! Long time no see!”

Neia blinked through the eye holes in her mask. The man was grinning broadly at her.

I give up.

Was her mask – actually, it wasn’t even the same mask – so iconic that people couldn’t identify her without it? Plenty of people in the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps had been around her while she wasn’t covering her eyes during the war.

Neia sighed, reaching up to tie on her mask.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve met a lot of people since the war started. Are you part of the Corps?”

“Sure am!” The man continued smiling, “Martin Martinez. Most of the members who lived around Lloyds stayed when the army moved on, but we’ve been doing well. At least until recently…”

He sent a pointed look at the two Rogues.

“Why don’t you come on in? It ain’t proper to be talking in the rain like this.”

“I’d like that, thank you.”

The alleyway was narrow, so Neia waited for the captured Rogues to be led away. She turned around to find Saye standing behind her and wrapped her arms around the Bard.

“That was sooooo scary!” Neia whimpered, “Why did you leave me like that?”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Saye replied. “I was standing here the entire time. It’s not as if the two of us can fit through here at once. Also didn’t you just fight a whole war against Demihumans and Fiends? Why would you be scared of two thugs?”

Neia pulled back and looked the Bard in the eye in all seriousness.

“I…I think they were Rogues.”

“So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘so what’? They’re Rogues – Rogues! Baby Assassins. I’m so glad some help came. They might have taken my shoes away otherwise.”

“Your shoes?” Saye frowned.

“Shoes are important! What do you think would happen if I lost my shoes?”

“You’d walk around barefoot until you bought new shoes.”

She released the Bard and turned back around, shaking her head. Saye just didn’t understand what Rogues were like.

“That one Rogue looked like he was going to swing his lamp at you,” Saye said. “Why did he stop and apologise?”

“Why?” Now it was Neia’s turn to frown, “Because everyone knows that it’s not right for men to hit women.”

“But I see women hitting men all the time.”

“That’s because they’re men, obviously. A man hitting a woman can badly injure or even kill them. Men hit each other all the time, so a woman hitting a man is nothing to them.”

“Are you sure about that?”

What Neia wasn’t sure about was what the Bard was trying to get at. Not hitting women was just plain decent common sense.

They drew their mantles around themselves before joining Mister Martinez on the street. He led them to a nearby office nestled amongst the row of warehouses. An older man standing with his arms crossed behind a counter spoke as they entered.

“You figure out what that noise was? Oh, if it isn’t Miss Baraja!”

“Hello,” Neia bobbed her head.

“A pair of Rogues were trying to start a fire at Warehouse Five,” Mister Martinez said as he shook out his mantle.

“What?! I knew they wouldn’t take no for an answer. Which house was it?”

“They wouldn’t say. I had the boys take them to the Holy Order office.”

“Good. I’d have rung your head if you took ‘em to a guard post. Call ma down and have her whip up something for our guests.”

Mister Martinez left the front office, taking a flight of stairs to the residence above. Neia and Saye removed their mantles and placed them on a row of wooden pegs to dry out. The man at the counter disappeared into a back room, returning with a stack of wooden stools.

“I hope you’ll forgive us for the crude welcome, Miss Baraja.”

“Ah, it’s no problem at all. I didn’t mean to impose on your business…Mister Martinez?”

“Martin Martinez.”

“Martin Martinez…this is going to get confusing.”

A snort rose from the man as he placed the stools in a row before the counter.

“Just call my son ‘junior’. That’s what everyone calls him anyway. Did you have anything to do with what happened just now, Miss Baraja?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Or fortunately? I’ve seen how the royalists operate elsewhere and suspected they might resort to the same methods after they got comfortable in Lloyds. The harbour is the only part of the city they can’t blockade with their labour camps, so I figured this would be where they started causing trouble.”

“Pretty sharp of you,” the senior Mister Martinez said. “Not a week after they set up shop here, the new set of Nobles started making ‘offers’ to the folks along the waterfront.”

“What kind of offers?”

“At first, they tried to get us to cooperate with them over imports and exports. No one wasted a minute listening to that drivel. They knew they had no right to set regulations in the city, so they tried to have us raise our rates for cargo handling and storage instead. We figured they were just ignorant assholes who thought they could profit without thought, but, now that you mentioned the labour camps blockading the city, I suppose that was their true goal.”

Neia nodded. City folk stayed away from the labour camps not only because there was a division between urban and rural society, but certain stigmas were attached to the camps. During and immediately after the war, every city had prison and refugee camps growing around them. That, in turn, led to the belief that the camps were dirty and dangerous places where the destitute and desperate survived off the scraps of the cities.

While that was true at the time, this was no longer the case. The royalist camps around Hoburns were in reality wealthier than the city that they sucked the lifeblood out of.

“What did they do after that?” Neia asked.

“Tried to buy us out,” the senior Martinez replied. “That didn’t work, of course – especially since we had just recently expanded our operations.”

“Was your expansion a result of the Sorcerer King’s wisdom?”

“I’d say so,” the man nodded. “Figuring out how to get stronger running a warehouse business was a bit of a puzzle, but we did what we could. It’s surprising how all the little things added up.”

“I’m curious what you did to grow stronger.”

The senior Martinez leaned on an elbow, scratching the stubble of his jaw.

“Well, right from the get-go, all that training we did as part of the Corps gave us a lot more heft. Each one of us could handle bigger loads than most, which meant we didn’t need to hire as many people. We put anyone we hired on through that same strength training and we kept at it ourselves. That helped us get ahead little by little until we could buy up all the ruined warehouses and empty lots close to the waterfront, which in turn allowed us to hire more people and made us Lloyds’ biggest player in cargo.”

“I see,” Neia said. “That sounds similar to how the other members involved in physically demanding industries achieved their successes. Have you learned any new tricks when it comes to running your business?”

“Tricks? Hmm…well, we gained more bargaining power in negotiations with both the shipping companies and the city. Naturally, expanding our businesses was a big learning experience, too. My old self couldn’t imagine managing so many employees or organising so much storage space. I suppose the funniest part is that we can somehow figure out how to fit more things in the same space as we used to be able to.”

Neia furrowed her brow as she tried to imagine what he meant by that. Did they just organise their inventories better or did crates and barrels somehow shrink when they handled them? Surely, the warehouses themselves didn’t grow…

“Anyway,” the senior Martinez said. “The new Nobles resorted to ‘persuasion’ after that. They’d harass us in various ways. Closing streets so we’d have to travel extra. Performing cargo inspections that took ten times longer than they rightfully should have. Most recently, they’ve shunted their business to ‘preferred partners’, which obviously doesn’t include us and even goes so far as to take up storage in other parts of the city. You can imagine what sort of chaos that causes.”

She actually couldn’t, but she had wondered why traffic made it seem as if the city was at its full population rather than almost half.

“Sorry for the wait.”

A set of footfalls came down the stairs and a woman appeared with the junior Martinez plus two others.

“About damn time, woman,” the senior Martinez said sourly. “Did you have to come out looking like it’s the Wind of Rimun?”

“Why wouldn’t I dress up for such an important guest? And why do you look like you just dragged in a galleon’s worth of cargo from the wharf?”

“Because I just did.”

Mrs Martinez grabbed a broom and swept her husband up the stairs. The junior Martinez took his father’s place.

“Miss Baraja,” he said. “This is my wife, Laia, and my sister, Sofia.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Neia bobbed her head. “Your father was just talking about the harassment you’ve suffered from the royalists.”

“They’ve been at it for a while now,” the junior Martinez shook his head. “I never imagined that they’d try burning down our warehouses, though. What were they thinking? Half of the city’s grain imports were in that one they were at!”

“It’s because the northern harvest is about to start,” Neia told him. “What portion of your inventories are from the time when the conservatives ran Lloyds?”

“Off the top of my head, I’d say about half. But why would that matter?”

“Because they don’t plan on supplying grain and whatever else comes in from the countryside by ship unless it’s necessary. Those labour camps outside the city intercept all of the goods delivered from the prefecture and process them on-site. Then they sell them to the city at much higher prices. Your inventories are an obstacle to that control since people will just go to you instead for what they need.”

The man’s cheek twitched as Neia laid out the points of the royalist strategy she had discussed with Lord Aston and the other scions. His wife came around with a tray of steaming drinks.

“I don’t get it,” the junior Martinez said. “For what reason would they do this? This is like something you’d hear from a story where evil people do evil things purely for evil’s sake. But no one acts like that in reality. What’s their angle?”

“That’s something I’ve yet to figure out,” Neia replied. “The Nobles in the conservative faction say that the royalists are doing it to weaken the cities and thus rob the Crown of its economic power.”

“But they’re royalists.”

“A royalist is someone who stands for monarchy. Why they do so and how they operate as agents of the Crown is another story entirely.”

“…you know, not too long ago you could trust people to be what they were.”

Neia couldn’t disagree. Before the war, one never wondered if someone wasn’t what they appeared to be. She wondered how everything had gone so wrong.

“By the way,” she said. “Is everyone here a member of the Corps?”

“Everyone ‘cept my wife was part of the Corps during the war,” the junior Martinez said. “Uh…I don’t think we’ve been recruiting since then, but everyone in the family and all of our employees do our best to follow the Sorcerer King’s wisdom.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s something we need to recruit for,” Neia’s eyes went over the gathered family. “Anyone can follow the Sorcerer King’s wisdom if they want. In fact, I’d be happy if everyone did. Also, it would probably help if you wore something that showed everyone who you are.”

“Like the pins that were made back in the war?”

“Yes, exactly. Something like that. The royalists will do anything to grind the citizens into submission, so people need to know that they’re not alone. Just like during the war, we have to support one another in this new struggle against injustice.”

The door to the office swung open, bringing with it a gust of cold air. A thoroughly-soaked man stomped in, dripping water over the hardwood floor.

“Junior, we’ve got trouble!”

“What happened, Biel?” Junior asked, “Is it a fire?”

“No,” Biel wiped the water from his face with a hand. “Some armsmen took your brother away!”

“What?!”

The senior Martinez stormed down the stairs, half-dressed and dripping bathwater.

“He was bringing a pair of strangers up the street just now, right?” Biel said, “The armsmen at the post on the corner by my place came out and insisted the strangers be handed over to them.”

“Did they do it?” Junior asked.

“Not at first,” the man shook his head. “Sergio said they wanted to bring the strangers to the Order. That’s when things got ugly.”

Neia imagined that it would. The armsmen were being denied what they considered their authority and having their honour questioned at the same time. There was usually only one answer a member of a Noble House could render in response, no matter whether they were in the right or not.

She grabbed her mantle and threw it on before running out into the street. The Holy Order office was next to the cathedral, so she headed off toward the city centre. Not a minute later, some figures materialised through the sheets of rain. Junior sprinted past her.

“Sergio!”

Junior’s companions from the alley were being bound by a set of armsmen. Several resting halberds against their shoulders made a loose semicircle around them, but Junior didn’t care. He barreled straight into the armsman tying his brother up, driving him to the street.

“You evil bastards!” He shouted, sitting up to punch the man under him, “How many of you are in on this? How low are you–”

The butt of a halberd clubbed Junior in the side of the head, knocking him off of the armsman. Two others jumped on top of him, pushing his cheek into a puddle.

“Hey!”

Junior’s father crashed into the men holding his son down, sending the three of them rolling over the street. A scuffle broke out and men rushed in from the surrounding buildings to make their opinions known. Neia’s mouth fell open as the brawl grew to fill the intersection.

Dammit, they’re playing right into the royalist’s hands!

While the choice to deliver the Rogues to the Holy Order could be justified, attacking the city guard could not.

“What are we going to do?” Saye asked.

“We need to bring in an arbiter,” Neia answered, “or the Nobles will have their way after this!”

They skirted the edge of the melee and ran toward the city centre, their boots splashing through the shallow streams that rushed down the street. The Paladin in the Holy Order office, a brown-haired man in his twenties by the name of Ander Moreno, rose to his feet when Neia threw open the door.

“Baraja,” he nodded. “Some weather we’re having, huh? You delivering something from Hob–”

“A fight’s broken out on the way to the harbour!” Neia told him.

“…in this rain?”

“Yes! Some of the residents found a couple of men trying to light the warehouse district on fire. They were trying to bring them here, but the royalists are trying to stop them.”

Ander’s frown only grew deeper as his confusion escalated.

“That doesn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t the residents be fine with handing them over to the city guard?”

“It’s…because it’s too dangerous,” Neia said.

“They’re Rogues,” Saye added.

The Paladin rose to his desk, retrieving his sword harness before coming back around to the front.

“Where are the others?” Neia asked.

“Castro’s on the night shift. The rest are on patrol. Let’s go.”

They ran back out into the rain. As they passed the cathedral, Ander gestured to it with his scabbard.

“You – girl. Do you know your way back to the fight?”

“Yeah.”

Saye didn’t seem very pleased at how she had been addressed.

“Let the cathedral staff know what’s going on. Lead the Priests to us.”

The Bard wordlessly turned and jogged up the cathedral stairs. Ander came closer to Neia.

“Where’s your gear, Baraja?”

“I came to the city on a personal visit,” Neia replied. “Someone came into my acquaintance’s place shouting about some armsmen stopping the men from delivering the Rogues.”

“I don’t understand why they wouldn’t just bring them in together. The more people they have, the safer it would be.”

“Because…because I think those Rogues are working for one of the royalist houses. Haven’t you gotten complaints from the residents about the Nobles that took over?”

“Nothing substantial,” the Paladin replied. “Certainly nothing that suggests that something like a fight was about to break out.”

Half a block from the intersection with the guard post, the mass of men appeared, still tangled in their brawl. If anything, there were even more people than before.

“What the…”

Ander slowed to a stop. He raised a gauntleted hand.

“「Flare」!”

A flash of blinding light erupted in the centre of the brawl. Men on both sides fell away from one another, holding their arms in front of their eyes.

“What in the gods’ names is going on here?!” The Paladin roared.

His voice drew squinty-eyed looks from the men in the intersection. The rain pattered against his plate pauldrons as a patrol sergeant limped up to him.

“It’s nothing we can’t handle, Brother Ander–”

“Bullshit! You’re ‘handling’ this about as well as my wife handles a rat in her dress! And what’s this I hear about Rogues?”

“Rogues?” The patrol sergeant blinked, “I’m not aware of any Rogues…”

“Don’t let him fool you, Brother Ander!” One of the residents shouted, “The damn Nobles are trying to burn down our homes! Martinez caught ‘em trying to set fire to his warehouses!”

“Brother Ander, this is a preposterous accusation! Slander, even!”

Ander’s eyes went from one speaker to another as he silently gauged their claims. Neia bit her lip, wondering how she would handle the situation if she didn’t know what she did. As far as the Paladin was probably concerned, it was an unprecedented situation that made very little sense overall.

“Brother Ander,” Bishop Jan jogged up behind them with several members of the temple staff, “how can we help?”

“Inspect these…gentlemen for injuries. I’ll be taking statements from everyone here. Everyone is to stay in their homes or at their posts until then. The weather’s shit anyway so you won’t be missing much.”

The Paladin waded into the crowd, separating men who looked like they were about to start fighting again. Neia sighed as she watched the combatants disperse.

We lost them.

The Nobles knew the law and they knew that judicial procedure would work to their advantage. As short-staffed as they were, the Holy Order couldn’t detain everyone. Not that they had space in the gaol. Also, since the city guard was involved in the fight, they couldn’t be coopted to help. Neia suspected that the two particular Rogues captured earlier would never show up again.

“Have you suffered any injuries, Miss Baraja?” Bishop Jan came up to her.

“I’m fine…sort of. This is what I feared would happen. Lloyds is in the position where it can compare how the two factions in the court handle the recovery efforts.”

“Your warning felt like an exaggeration, but this is most extreme…”

Fights could occasionally break out between individuals back in the day, but they were little more than drunken spats. She certainly couldn’t recall anything like this. Neia couldn’t help but think that she had a hand in the incident, though it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The members of the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps understood that they had to fight for their justice, and the ones in Lloyds were in a position where they understood the injustice that the royalists were attempting to impose upon them.

The Bishop left her to tend to the others. Ander returned to Neia after a few minutes, his helmet tucked under an arm.

“What’s your take on this, Baraja?”

“…I was sort of the first person to discover the Rogues, so I can’t be impartial about this incident.”

“Don’t be silly. As a member of the Holy Order, you’re under an oath of service. Not that I expect you to lie in the first place. Also, why didn’t you bring in the suspects yourself if you’re the first who encountered them?”

Because I was scared.

Even though she had been dismissed from the Holy Order, most of her long-time friends still worked for the Order or the Temples and it wasn’t as if she stopped believing in the Four Great Gods. The thing that she perhaps dreaded the most was how everyone she had come to know after years of working as a Squire would treat her after she had lost her position.

“I couldn’t,” Neia’s cheeks burned with shame. “Because I’m not a part of the Holy Order anymore.”

“Hah? What crazy talk are you spouting now? Who in the world would–”

“Last month,” Neia said, “Captain Montagnés came out while I was on patrol to deliver an ultimatum. The Temples didn’t want my testimonies surrounding the Sorcerer King and his wisdom to be construed as an official message from the Temples. They told me to stop speaking about it entirely. I couldn’t, so I was dismissed.”

Ander remained silent for a long moment as the last of the men left the scene of the brawl. The rain had lightened somewhat, but the runoff still filled the street to their ankles.

“Well,” he said, “that’s stupid.”

“I-It is?”

Neia finally dared to steal a glance at the Paladin, but he only scanned the street as he spoke.

“Of course! The Temples already stated that all that talk of yours doesn’t explicitly go against the tenets of the faith and the Holy Kingdom’s moral imperatives.”

“I know, right?!” The words spilt out of Neia’s mouth, “It was fine, then it wasn’t! The people have been benefiting from it, as well. You should see how crazy good Rimun is compared to Hoburns these days.”

“You should have spoken to Custodio about your dismissal.”

Now it was her turn to be thoroughly confused.

“I’m pretty sure she hates me,” Neia said. “I’m also pretty sure she hates the Sorcerer King with every fibre of her being.”

“But there’s one thing she hates above all else,” Ander told her, “and that’s injustice.”

“It didn’t seem like that when we were travelling to the Sorcerous Kingdom,” she muttered.

“She’s a Human just like you and me. She lost her entire family, her best friend, and almost everyone she called a friend on the same day and she still shouldered the fates of eight million people after that. I don’t think your mother would teach you any different, but decent folk do their best to support someone in that situation and you don’t leave millions of people to founder over an irrational fit.

“Also…you became an insufferable, insubordinate brat after being assigned to the Sorcerer King as his attendant, you know that? If it was anyone other than Custodio in charge, you’d have lost your head long before the war ended.”

That can’t be right. Remedios is a horrible person who just happens to be strong and beautiful.

Ander smiled slightly, his grey eyes seeming to see right through her.

“You were never stationed in Hoburns as a Squire, so I guess you never got to know her before the war. Custodio may be the greatest Paladin that our country will ever know and the most caring person that I’ve ever known. The personification of the Holy Kingdom’s justice. And a pain in the ass. That’s the Custodio that most of us know and love and hate.”

The pouring rain finally abated, settling into a drizzle. Ander took one last look around before turning to leave.

“What are you going to do?” Neia asked, “About what happened here, I mean.”

“I’m not sure why that’s a question,” the Paladin answered. “I’ll do my duty and nothing less.”

“There’s something wrong with the Holy Kingdom,” Neia told him.

“Anyone with a lick of sense knew that when the Holy King replaced Custodio with Montagnés.”

“It’s not something you can fight by just doing your duty.”

Ander turned back around, regarding Neia with a calm look.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Baraja,” he told her. “I must fight it by doing my duty. It’s not the result or destination that matters the most. Simply surviving doesn’t matter much, either. What’s truly important is how you achieve your results and what path you take to your destination. How you live.Justice is what matters, and you die every single day you cannot live the life that justice demands.”