Chapter 10: - The Cub And The Pup

  Navtej hated the Vanfoster palace.

  It was big, stupid, and filled with soldiers. He didn’t want to be here, he wanted to be anywhere but here really. He wanted to be with papa most. But Papa was gone. So Navtej was in a stupidly big house with stupid soldiers, because that was what Father wanted.

  And Father always got what he wanted.

  He was sat in a waiting room chair. To the left of him was what he thought was Father’s office—he could hear his muffled voice bleed through as he spoke with someone.

  Even when I’m here, I’m still not your top priority.

  Thirty minutes passed before the door swung open. A man stepped out—colonel by the badges on him—turned around, and spoke warmly into the office. “This meeting has been quite productive General, though I must stress, you are quite missed on the battlefield.”

  “And when it is my time I will return, Colonel,” came Father’s booming voice from within.

  The Colonel nodded, turned, gave a glance at Navtej that seemed a perfect mix of shock and disgust—like a man who’d just returned to his room to find a mountain of shit in his bed—and left.

  Navtej thought there might have been something on his face, but found none when he searched it. His rumination was cut short by a call from the office.

  “You can come in now!” Father’s voice boomed.

  Navtej steeled his nerves, drew in a breath, and made his way in.

  Father was standing by the window, morning sun shining on half of his face, eyes hard on Navtej. “Why did you attack the King?”

  Of course. “I suppose it is only proper that upon seeing me for the first time in two years, the first thing you ask about is the King,” He hissed.

  Father raised an eyebrow—a note of behaviour he didn’t like. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, knowing full well what it did. He was challenging him, and Navtej would not back down.

  “I am implying that you seem to care more about the King than your own son,” he explained, feeling his temper rise and then deadening it. If he threw a tantrum, adults would dismiss him as just being a child yelling at the world.

  Father only seemed to grow angrier, eyes narrowing. “And why would you think such a thing?”

  Navtej snapped. “Because you were not there for papa’s funeral!” He regretted it the moment he did. Maintaining calm was of utmost importance. Still, he kept going. “You were not there when he was sick. When he lost his hearing, his voice, his sight. But I was. I was always there, and you were not.”

  He waited to be dismissed, waited to be told to stop raising his voice, to be sent to his room. Father did something much worse—he seemed to understand. “I’m sorry, Nav. I should have been there,” he said, eyes filled with conflict. And then, he buried it. “But I was needed here.”

  “You are always needed here, Father,” Nav shot. “Always. Before the revolution, during the revolution, and after it.”

  “There are things you cannot understand, Nav. Not now, not yet.”

  “Are these things more important than me? Your own son?” he challenged.

  His Father met his eyes with an unflinching gaze and an unyielding resolve. “Yes.”

  It felt like a punch to the gut, and Navtej could barely breathe. There it was, there it fucking was. At least the bastard had the guts to say it out loud finally. He wanted to… well, he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He was just angry, so fucking angry. He missed Papa.

  “You are to apologise to the King for your violence,” Father said, and that made Navtej’s blood boil to new heights. He didn’t think the next words could make things any worse, but they somehow did. “And you will be taking lessons with him from now on.”

  “What?” Navtej found his words lacking.

  “While his grace is not particularly well behaved,” Father began explaining, “he does have an instinct for violence that I believe you could learn from.”

  This conversation again. “I do not want to be violent,” Navtej protested. That was Father’s tool—not his. He did not kill, he did not threaten, he did not Mage. At least, he promised himself he wasn’t going to. War was what made men like his father. And he would never be anything like his father.

  “It does not matter what you want, Son,” Father declared. “You have bronze skin, a foreign name, fetish magic, and an outsider’s tongue. Violence will find you whether you like it or not. The only thing you can change is whether or not you are prepared when it does. And my son will be prepared for violence.”

  Navtej hissed his words. “Then why did you bring me here in the first place? Why did you not just leave me in Putesh with Papa’s family? I look the wrong colour, I am not important enough for you to see, I am less important than your work—why am I here, Father?”

  His Father held his eyes for a long moment, and Navtej thought that he might possibly get something out of the man, something that forgave years of absence and never more than an uninterrupted week of presence. “You’re dismissed,” he said instead, as if speaking to one of the many thugs under his control.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Navtej knew better than to disobey. “Of course, father,” he said. And headed for the door.

  ###

  Sasha set her eyes on the brown man in front of her—the Putesh man with round glasses sat on his nose. That…that was not Volkov.

  “I trust you two can handle the details!” Belavkin stated, and left. Sasha was so stunned, that she’d barely even noticed the Governor fail to acknowledge her presence.

  The three were alone now, and both Exia and the stranger looked at each other with recognition in their eyes. Clearly, whatever was happening here, Sasha was more lacking in information than the King.

  “You bastard…” the Putesh said, eyes wide with shock.

  The King just grinned. “You fuck.”

  The pair moved towards each other—Sasha’s heart skipped a beat—and then they were hugging.

  “Brother!” The brown man laughed, patting the King on the back.

  “Good to see you, Nav,” he replied, voice filled with genuine disbelief. “How long has it been? Fuck.”

  Sasha just stared. It seemed she had been doing a lot of that lately.

  King Exia set his eyes on her and they were beaming in a way she’d never before seen. “Ah, yes, this is Captain Osin—Morozova’s girl, Osin, this is Navtej—Volkkov’s boy!”

  The brown man looked as surprised as Sasha felt.

  “You’re…” he paused, and he seemed to be looking through her and at someone else. It wasn’t in a way that felt bad, it felt…warm. But wrong too. “No way. I didn’t know he—”

  —“Had a cock, yes, me too. I thought he’d had it blown off in the war. Would have explained the cranky bastard’s attitude,” The King chirped.

  Navtej—the son of General Volkov, just rolled his eyes at the King’s antics. He them eyes back on Sasha, wearing grief across his features now. “I’m sorry about your loss, I—”

  —“Oh, I killed the guy who did it, it was very funny actually, you really should have been there,” the King said so nonchalantly that Sasha might have thought he was talking about something that wasn’t Governorcide.

  Navttej turned his full attention to King Exia now and the pair met each other’s eyes with no smiles, no jests, only a heavy silent understanding. Navtej nodded. “Good.”

  The King nodded back. “Good,” he echoed.

  It struck her that the man hadn’t even asked for more information. Did he simply not want to know, or did he not care?

  “I never met him…” Sasha found herself blurting out. “So…so it’s not like I lost anyone I knew or anything,” it felt right to say. Whatever loss they felt, whatever grief they shared, she didn’t have the right to share it with them. Not in the same way at least.

  Navtej’s warmth only remained however. “Well, he was an amazing man, and I trust he loved you very much,” there was something so raw and genuine about the way the man spoke. It was the complete opposite of everything she’d seen from the King.

  That the King had friends, and that this would be one of them seemed preposterous.

  Perhaps in a way it made perfect sense. Sasha imagined that if the King Exia so much as locked eyes with anyone that was as cruel, vindictive, and annoying as he was, they would both spontaneously combust.

  Sasha cleared her throat and looked away. “I think it’s best to get down to the matter at hand.”

  The man nodded in a way that made it seem like he’d both read her mind, and would take her secrets to his grave. “We should. Governor Belavkin has hired me as the head of his security team due to recent events.”

  Hired?

  Sasha paid more attention to his attire now. A trench coat, leather harness, wool tunic and trousers, side holster at the hip, and most importantly, no Bessmertnyy insignia.

  “You’re a mercenary…” Sasha didn’t mean to say it, the shock just forced it out of her mind.

  Navtej smiled playfully, taking no offence. “A Watchman,” he corrected. “I protect people.”

  Volkov’s kid’s a fucking Putesh mercenary…

  Sasha nodded. “Watchman, of course,” she said, using the term he preferred. She hesitated. “Your fa—the General didn’t tell me you were going to be here.”

  The man’s smile seemed to sour ever so slightly. “I doubt he knows much of my whereabouts lately.”

  Sasha nodded, and quickly moved on—recognizing a nerve when she’d hit it. “So… the Zakadochnyy. What do you know about him?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed with focus at that. “Unstable highly excitable zealot. Likely grew up in the church, so we’re looking at a page. That means short hair, modest clothing, and formal tongue. He’s of the north so—”

  —”South,” The King corrected.

  All eyes fell on him now.

  “You think he’s from the South?” Navtej asked, and there was a playful edge to his voice…A challenge. “You are aware the North is where the church and its doctrine is strongest, yes?”

  “In the Tragedy of Crowns—I read the whole thing by the way, very boring—” The King began,Sasha knew the referenced material, it was one of many manifestos written by the Zakadochnyy. “—he speaks of how we have tainted the Fae, Nav, Fae as in Fairies, not Angels—only a southerner would call them that. I’m quite embarrassed you didn’t catch that.”

  The son of Volkov grinned, unfazed by the King. “And I’m quite embarrassed you took that and ran with it. When I saw it—which I did by the way—I at least had the sense to cross reference it with his other manifestos and found that he uses northern terms ninety percent more than he uses southern ones.”

  The King didn’t falter, if anything he seemed more excited at the contradiction. “Further evidence that we’re looking at a southerner trying to throw you off his scent. Sadly, he’s rather unimpressive in the mind and only manages it a third of the time.”

  “Or, he just so happened to have a tutor from the south. Not everything’s a conspiracy, Exi, sometimes some things are just coincidences.”

  Though Sasha had very little to contribute to this conversation, she did realise two very important things.

  The first was that while she didn’t know what kind of creature The King was, she could tell that this new man was very much of the same species—if only a different breed.

  The second was that for all the King’s performances and bluster, he was still a man. And when he met a creature he considered his equal, neither he nor his counterpart could resist a round of dick measuring. She supposed she was thankful that this was a contest of the mind and not of fists, magic or armies.

  “That one.” The King pointed at a tower outside the window.

  “No, it’s more likely to be that one.” Navtej pointed as well.

  Sasha blinked. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh we’re taking bets on which of these buildings is going to explode by midnight,” the King explained eagerly.

  That did not clarify things. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Navtej was the one to react, and he seemed almost chastised at the look Sasha gave him—like an adult caught playing with toys. “Uhm, yes, sorry. The Zakadochnyy promised to strike by midnight. But we know that he’s not stupid enough to attack the Grovenor while we’re here. So instead he’ll do something to shake the populace’s fate in him—and then use the chaos that devolves from that to strike his target down.”

  That was a textbook way to sow discord in a populace, and though the Zakadochnyy had never done it, he’d never been in a position where he needed to in the first place. Sasha, Exia and Navtej being here was that situation.

  Sasha turned and looked out the window to the sprawling city of Znaniye.

  Which building?

  It wasn’t like she had thousands of them to pick from.

  And only until midnight to figure out which.