Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 967: Getting the cards(2)

According to Laedio’s initial reports, the key to Alpheo’s grand design was a waif of barely eight years,a cog in a machine who had spent the last eighteen months buried in the soot-stained belly of a criminal syndicate. She was a tabula rasa, a blank slate with no living kin, and no attachments to the world outside of what the gang had provided, which was not a lot.

For a man like Alpheo, she was the perfect instrument.

However, as he stood in the private sanctuary of Laedio’s solar, he realized his friend had omitted a rather glaring "nuance." The girl did not simply have a preference for silence; she seemed to exist behind an impenetrable wall of glass. Alpheo would have pegged her as a mute, had he not just witnessed her tugging on Laedio’s sleeve and standing on tiptoe to murmur a frantic, buzzing secret into his ear.

She could speak; she simply refused to acknowledge that Alpheo existed.

That...admittedly tickled his pride a bit.

For Alpheo, this was a bit of a logistical nightmare. Any meaningful instruction, any correction of a forged seal, or any redirection of her delicate labor would have to pass through Laedio’s filter. When dealing with a secret that could turn every sovereign prince and high lord into a pack of baying wolves at his door, Alpheo preferred the circle of knowledge to be a dot.

Still, there was a jagged silver lining. He trusted Laedio. The garrison commander possessed neither the dark ambition nor the intricate political mind required to weaponize such a girl for himself. Had she fallen into the hands of a more predatory lord, Alpheo would have had to order a quiet assassination before the moon set. She was worth that and the extinction of a entire house after all....

"Can I get a look at your drawings?" Alpheo asked, softening his voice into the honeyed, gentle tone he reserved for his own children. He knelt, reducing his height to be less of a looming threat, and extended a hand toward the child.

The girl didn’t reach for him. Instead, she recoiled as if his touch were a brand, retreating behind the safety of Laedio’s leg with the speed of a startled rabbit. She peered out from behind the heavy silk of the commander’s trousers, her eyes wide and unblinking, before shaking her head in a sharp, definitive no.

Alpheo’s smile didn’t falter but he did feel the twitch of an eyelid.

He looked up at Laedio, who suppressed a smirk and leaned down to the girl. Another frantic whisper followed, a soft hiss of breath against Laedio’s ear.

"She has... given her permission," Laedio said, his voice dancing with irony.

Alpheo huffed a dry laugh as he reached for the sketchbook. A Prince of the Realm, the victor of the Fingers, feller of Oizen, reduced to seeking the permission of an orphan to see her drawing..... Truly, the sun had risen in the west today.

Whatever lingering doubts Alpheo harbored about the logistics of the girl’s silence evaporated the moment his fingers brushed the vellum of the sketchbook.

Alpheo’s own artistic prowess left a lot to desire; he was a man who drew five sticks and a circle and deemed it a man. But this, damn, first time he was getting envious.

He looked at her, and she was a little girl at that...

The subjects were mundan, lilies, sparrows, the lithe forms of the street cats Alpheo had imported to purge the city of the Great Plague Makers years ago, but the execution was very nice.

She used hastily scratched lines to define the edges, then applied subtle, atmospheric washes of grey

"Hey, Laedio," Alpheo said suddenly as he turned another page. His friend immediately shifted his focus from the girl’s nervous twitching to the Prince’s intense stare. "I think I’ve found a seat for her in my court."

"Is that so?" Laedio asked, leaning against a wall as the child followed him there. "I figured you’d hide her in a basement."

"I’ve grown weary of the official court artist," Alpheo said, flipping to a particularly striking sketch of a sleeping kitten. "The man paints like he’s documenting a funeral. In a few years, she could take his place. It’s time for a fresh wind to blow the dust out of the palace galleries."

Laedio scratched the back of his head, his face a mask of bewilderment. "I didn’t realize you were a connoisseur of the arts, Alph. Since when did you care about the aesthetic of the court?"

"Art has its tactical uses," Alpheo countered, his brown eyes flashing with a hidden agenda. "There is a design forming in my head, a grander play for the future. I’ll tell you when the ink is dry, but she’s the centerpiece of it. She needs to be visible for it...."

"So, she’s off to the palace, then?" Laedio asked. For a fleeting second, his face crumbled into a look of genuine melancholy. Beside him, the girl seemed to sense the shift; she gripped his trouser leg even tighter, her eyes turning into sharp daggers aimed directly at Alpheo’s throat.

"Well... the pronoun is a bit narrow," Alpheo said, closing the book with a soft thud as she realised the girl’s problem. "She needs a background. A pedigree. And given her... unique communicative hurdles, she’s going to need an anchor. Someone she trusts implicitly."

Both the Prince and the orphan turned their gaze simultaneously toward the Garrison Commander.

"Oh, no. No, no, no, five fucks no..." Laedio stammered, holding up his hands as if to ward off a curse. "You know my thoughts on that den of vipers. I’m happy in my little heaven here. I have no stomach for the palace, Alph. I’ve told you a thousand times: I don’t play the games, and I certainly don’t wear the masks."

"There’s no need for you to play anything," Alpheo said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into the coercive register he used with wavering generals. "But just because you aren’t playing doesn’t mean the game isn’t being played with you. You think your seat has been safe all these years? Head of the Capital Garrison is a plum position, Laedio. You’d be horrified by the number of ploys the Southern Lords have used to try and get you dismissed."

Laedio blinked, genuine shock breaking through his bravado. "Really? I haven’t heard a whisper of it."

"Of course you didn’t," Alpheo purred. "Because I strangled those whispers in their cradles. Not that your previous... enthusiasm for taking bribes made my job any easier."

"Hey! I cut that out years ago!" Laedio protested.

"Which is the only reason you still have a helmet on," Alpheo shot back. "And you’ll keep it that way if you satisfy this one wish of mine. The girl needs a linchpin to enter court. You are childless, unmarried, and famously private. It won’t take much to convince the gossips that she is a secret of your own blood"

Laedio felt a small, urgent tug on his sleeve. He looked down. The girl was peering up at him, her usual icy stare replaced by a look of profound, desperate hope. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Alpheo caught the girl’s eye and gave her a mental thumbs-up.

That was some nice work...

He would make sure to have the servants leave a welcome-cake in her chambers tonight.She had earned it.

"Come now, Laedio. Haven’t you spent the last three years complaining that we never visit this oversized mausoleum you call a mansion?" Alpheo’s voice was pure honey, the kind of soothing tone that usually preceded a tax hike or a suicide mission. "Think of it: if you move into the palace apartments, you can dine and drink with us every single night. No more lonely vintages."

He leaned against a marble pillar, a roguish glint in his eye. "And now that I offer you the perfect solution to your boredom, you turn up your nose? I’m wounded, truly."

"That is a low blow, Alph. Even for you," Laedio grumbled, though the fight was clearly draining out of him. He looked around his opulent, silent hall and then back at the Prince. He let out a long, theatrical sigh. "I didn’t realize I had traded a master’s leash for a royal one. I still don’t see why you’re going through all this theatrical trouble for one little artist."

"I told you," Alpheo said, his smile sharpening into something more clinical. "In due time, she will need to be public in a way you can’t yet grasp."

"Yes, yes. Fine. Have it your way, you silver-tongued devil," Laedio muttered. He looked down at the girl still anchored to his leg. "Well, little shadow, it seems I am your new daddy. Gods help us both."

The girl didn’t speak, but her eyes lit up with a radiance so sudden and intense it could have blinded a man.

"By the way," Alpheo asked, lowering himself once more to the girl’s level, trying to pierce that wall of silence one last time. "What is your name little one?"

As expected, the girl didn’t address the Prince. She scrambled up Laedio’s side like a squirrel, perching near his ear to deliver another frantic, buzzing whisper. Laedio listened with a face of granite, nodding somberly at every syllable.

When she finished, Laedio turned to the Prince with a gaze of utter, deadpan seriousness. He looked Alpheo dead in the eye for a beat of three seconds.

Then, he thrusted his fingers below his lower eyelids, pulled them down to show the red, and stuck out his tongue in a magnificent, childish bleat.

Beside his thigh, his new "daughter" mirrored him perfectly, her tiny face scrunched up as she gave the Prince of the Realm the most professional "raspberry" in the history of the South.

Probably the only one that had ever been given to a royal.