Once Herscherik, recently returned from a kidnapping scare, had left his room, Solye let out a long sigh and slumped deep into his sofa. Even though he had finally been relieved of the dread that had plagued him all night and day, he now had a different problem to face, and he was exhausted beyond belief.
“He really does take after her...” Solye muttered.
His butler and childhood friend that stood beside him shrugged his shoulders. “Take after? He’s just like her, if not even more so...”
Her—the king’s most beloved queen, Herscherik’s mother, was devoid of any frivolity, manlier than most men. That was only describing her personality, of course. In appearance, she was a truly beautiful woman. The contrast of her feminine exterior and her masculine decisiveness and bold statements had often frozen these two men in their tracks.
“Hersch really is her son, all right.” Solye chuckled. Herscherik was just as stubborn as his mother had been, in stark contrast to his beautiful appearance. His tough backbone that never let him give up on anything he’d set his mind to was undoubtedly inherited from his mother. “Putting what do about Hersch aside...” Solye’s tone lowered. “We were complacent, Rook.”
Rook could feel the temperature of the room drop. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I was complacent...” Rook immediately apologized, not out of fear for Solye but because he knew that part of the blame lay with him. “I didn’t think Meria would do something like this.”
“Right... I do feel sympathy for Meria.” Solye understood that he was the ultimate catalyst for Herscherik’s kidnapping.
When Meria had pleaded with him to help free her hometown from the oppression of their new lord, Solye had failed to answer her plea. There was no incriminating evidence against Grim, only Meria’s claims. Solye had been searching for a move he could make, but there wasn’t enough time. Anguished by the current state of her hometown, Meria had reached for her last resort. Solye did feel sympathy for Meria, but her action was inexcusable more for the precedent she had set than the simple crime of abducting royalty. For the threat that precedent posed to the very foundation of their nation, Meria would be charged more harshly than she deserved if her crimes were to come to light.
She hasn’t done anything worse than he has... Solye snarled to himself. In fact, her crime was not so different from Barbosse’s, who had taken away his family and first daughter. In fact, Solye could forgive Meria’s crime in light of her dire predicament. None of this would have had to happen if only I had one solid piece of evidence... In Solye’s eyes, this was just another tragedy that he could have prevented by making better choices, somehow. The king grit his teeth from the overwhelming sense of powerlessness and self-condemnation coiling in his heart. Thanks to Hersch, I don’t have to charge Meria with a crime... That’s a silver lining, at least.
Since Herscherik had never admitted to who the perpetrator was, the case had been closed, unsolved. If details of the abductions were ever made public, part of the blame would fall upon Herscherik, too. With that at the forefront of his mind, Solye had thoroughly questioned his son to no avail. Herscherik’s resolve never wavered.
“I have to be honest, Solye... Prince Herscherik is no ordinary child.” Rook called to the king who was stooped over in silent rage.
Rook had reached this conclusion through secretly guarding and observing Herscherik over the past two years or so. The first indication had come shortly after Herscherik’s third birthday party. At Herscherik’s request to begin his studies, Rook appointed the appropriate tutors under Solye’s command. While Herscherik was exceptional in both language arts and mathematics, he had no knack for physical activity nor a drop of Magic Within. His tutors’ disappointment was plain to see. Still, Herscherik had delved into studies as if to compensate for those shortcomings until he could read literature too complex for most adults. Rook always found the prince with his nose in a book, whenever he had spare time—unthinkable behavior for a three-year-old. Rook found the sight of Herscherik reading the day away, buried in a mountain of books on his window seat, to be completely bizarre. He wasn’t the only one who took notice, either. Some of the tutors were so completely astounded by Herscherik’s unbelievably quick learning that they believed there must be some kind of supernatural element at work. Herscherik, on the other hand, paid no mind to such trivialities. He read book after book, soaking in every piece of knowledge along the way.
After some months, just as Rook had gotten accustomed to seeing Herscherik reading a thick book by the window, the prince had disappeared in the middle of the night. Once Meria had come to him in tears to inform him of this fact, Rook rushed to notify Solye, and they had immediately searched every nook and cranny in the royal palace. After a few hours with no sign of Herscherik, the dejected Rook had found the prince peacefully sleeping in his bed.
Rook spent another night secretly watching Herscherik when the prince slipped out of his room in the dark of night and into the castle, digging through all sorts of paperwork in the various offices. Rook had investigated the piece of paper Herscherik had spent the most time with that night to find that it was an invoice with a suspect detail. He could not figure out why a young child would show interest in such a thing. As he watched Herscherik sneak into one department after another only to return to his room after midnight, Rook noticed that all the papers the prince had paid close attention to showed some sort of discrepancy. Considering how Herscherik had been acting, it didn’t seem like Herscherik’s interest in those particular pieces was mere coincidence.
When Rook had reported Herscherik’s strange behavior to Solye, the king pondered for a moment before instructing Rook to continue to guard Herscherik from the shadows without interrupting him. Unbeknownst to Herscherik, Rook watched him night after night as the little prince plunged himself into danger. On one particular night, Herscherik ran into an intruder. Rook was about to emerge from the shadows to protect the prince when the little boy easily defused the situation. Even more impressively, Herscherik had befriended the intruder.
Rook had later discovered that the intruder was Shadow Fang, an infamous agent of the underground guild. He suggested to the king to let him stop Herscherik’s nightly adventures, but Solye never agreed.
Just as Rook was beginning to get used to the double life of serving as the king’s advisor by day and Herscherik’s bodyguard by night, the prince learned about a secret passage out of the castle grounds and began frequenting the town.
I might just work myself to death... Rook had contemplated, gazing out in the distance. And who could have blamed him?
Herscherik, through his cleverness, had gained the trust of a couple who ran a fruit stand, where he began helping out. But the couple weren’t the only ones who had accepted Herscherik. With each visit, Herscherik began to blend in with the castle town, and more and more townsfolk accepted him. Still, Rook noticed that Herscherik wasn’t going out into town simply for his own entertainment. The prince acted like an investigator when out in the town, to verify the information he had researched in the castle.
On that fateful day, Rook was reporting Herscherik’s ordinary outing into the castle town to the king when the prince was kidnapped by Meria. His complete faith in Meria had betrayed him.
Solye smiled at Rook’s statement. “Yes, I know. Hersch isn’t normal. He’s her son, after all, as well as mine... He was never going to be an ordinary boy, if I do say so myself.”
“I agree with that, of course,” Rook had to admit. “But that’s not what I mean...”
Solye understood the intentions behind the statement of his childhood friend. Herscherik had no magic, no physical talents... To boot, while he was the apple of Solye’s eye, his appearance was unremarkable, relative to the other princes. Still, Solye saw in Herscherik’s gem-like eyes, as blue as his, some boundless light that seemed to see through everything, all the way to some distant land that not even Solye could see.
“I told Hersch that he could make his own choices now.” Solye recalled the day Herscherik had asked to begin his studies.
It seemed like Herscherik had chosen a path of his volition. It was clear that the little prince had a goal in mind. Solye guessed that the path would not be an easy one to traverse. As a father, he wanted to keep Herscherik from following it, and perhaps he should have. It seemed like the most dangerous path he could take, one that was most likely to prematurely end his life. Even so, Solye couldn’t bring himself to stop him. He knew that her son would never back down, once he set his mind to it. The best this heartsick father could do was appoint Rook as Herscherik’s bodyguard.
Maybe it’s time to end even that, Solye considered.
Herscherik had begun taking his own steps down the path he chose. Solye was aware that his youngest son was already walking out of his protection. Just as he had told him to, Herscherik chose his own path.
“But who do we make his butler of service?” Solye asked with a frown.
He couldn’t very well trust any noble here. Any trustworthy men and women of status had been relocated away from the castle—all according to the minister’s plan, of course. Solye refused to call any of them back, lest they would be plunged into some terrible jeopardy.