CHAPTER 44 His Never-Ending List of Kingly Duties

Keith

The morning sunrise was a terrible thing that Keith never had to experience because he'd purposefully chosen rooms facing the western sky.

That morning, however, he wasn't snug under a plush comforter enjoying a peaceful sleep. No. Instead, he was glaring against the light in Henrietta's room.

In front of him knelt a trussed up and slightly battered spy whom his lizardkin maids had found hiding in Ria's closet.

He couldn't be certain if the woman was an assassin or simply there to gather information. Either way, this was the closest any such outsider had come to the castle since … Well, since Henrietta herself.

"Why is this happening?!" He pinched the bridge of his nose, slightly lifting up his glasses to do so. "And why at this ungodsly hour of the morning?"

"Perhapsss it's because we sssent out all of the automaton guardsss?" Lilith suggested. She gripped the rope of the tied-up individual in one hand and held a knife to their throat in the other. The spy glared up at the Dark Lord, but her mouth was gagged. "She must have ssslipped through our defensesss."

"I kept some behind!" Keith argued.

He'd learned his lesson, and a midsize snake golem now lived in the rafters of his workroom. And there were still the gate-golems for anyone foolish enough to walk in through the front draw-bridge. "Still, again? I thought I covered every base with the princess's extra tests!"

"Shall we move this one to your inner sssanctum, my liege?" Lilith asked.

"Yes, yes." Keith waved a hand flippantly. "I'll be by after breakfast. You may throw her in the pit."

"Right away, Your Viciousnesss."

It'd been so long since he'd used the pit under his workroom, he didn't know how clean it was, and he didn't really care.

He considered the merits of going back to sleep.

"Your Viciousnesss?" Chikli poked his head into entry to the Nightshade Rooms. "Were you going to make time to interrogate the egg-napping mercenariesss today? Or should I leave them with Rufusss for one more sssession?"

Keith let out an exasperated sigh and stalked toward his never-ending list of kingly duties.

"I won't say. Ya can't make me! Ya can't make me."

"I would never force you, Warren." Rufus's calm voice came from inside a cell when Keith arrived at the dungeons shortly after breakfast. "If you don't want to talk about how hard it is being the navigator, we can change the subject, but the subject does seem to eat at you."

The beastman reassured the panicked youth sitting across from him in the locked cell. Warren was missing a great many teeth, and his words slurred with spittle.

"It's just not right. They wanted me to navigate the Dark Enchanted Forest. And the boss kept yelling at me whenever we had to backtrack," Warren grumbled. He took a swig of water and then asked, "How do you live here, General Rufus?"

Rufus smiled. "I can only say that you get used to it."

"Well, I don't wanna get used to it! I wanna go home," Warren said. "How is taking eggs breaking the law? Nobody complained when I harvested floofpoof eggs!"

Rufus began listing off the laws that he had, indeed, broken, "Article Twenty-Three of the Classification of Nilheim Districts, Section Two of Citizen and Denizen:

Monster races which maintain communicable soul sapience are to be treated as native citizens of Nilheim.

"And further, Article Seventy-Eight of the Classification of Collection, Section Six of Harvest and Hunting:

Hunting denizens or citizens of Nilheim by foreigners shall be punishable by the Secord Order.

"Which is why you have been deposited here for questioning."

"But eggs can't communicate. So's they ain't a citizen or a denizen or whichever," Warren argued. "They's just eggs."

"And you are just a mercenary. With no one to hear you scream," Keith commented offhandedly from where he stood, leaning against the cell and smiling viciously. To Rufus, he said, "Why not quote childhood labor law? Section Two:

the action of using for profit any offspring, living or dead, not yet of age, shall be deemed illegal unless approved by a merchant guild application."

"I was going for the long-winded, roundabout approach where you convince someone to change their mind through their own dealings." Rufus sighed. "But yes, Section Two does apply."

"Does that mean I ain't going home?" Warren shriveled up under the look Keith sent him.

The Dark Lord smiled a very toothy grin. "Depends on who hired you, now, doesn't it."

"It were merchants!" Warren offered. "Servalt merchants. But merchants."

"Excellent. I've been looking for an excuse to deal with the corruption from Servalt bleeding into my realm." Keith speared his general with a gaze of iron. "When the war is done, Servalt is next. And you'll be in charge of cleaning it up, Rufus."

The therianthrope kept his professional demeanor in front of the prisoner but gently sighed. "Of course, my liege. Right away, my liege."

Keith left the dungeon, satisfied that things were going to be solved without much need for interference.