Painfully, the weight of Roman’s uniform swore to drag him to the ground in exhaustion. He had taken it upon himself to patrol the streets until the sun had began to rise, and the birds sung sweetly. He doubted he got any real sleep since then as, now, he stalked the docks once again.

           The attack had been three days ago, and there was still no luck trying to find how Scrios infiltrated the city so easily.

            Roman had spread butter harder than the Scrios’ flawless plan.

            Not that it was without flaw. They all died, but the four.     

            Kalila was currently going through the logs of what ships had docked in the last week or so, while Roman poked around the few remaining ships. Unfortunately, all were looking the similar. With their cargo being fish, and their ship names varying in names related to the ocean or someone’s body part. He was more than glad he hadn’t been landed the job of looking through them. Roman could barely keep his eyes open as he stood by the swaying ships.

            Sailors and fisher men brushed passed him in their rush. Yelling orders and curses at one another. People selling their wares along the docks and streets.
Roman hadn’t been down here since he chased Lady Jysmn.

The ship she had come on, the Little Coral, was no longer ported in the City of Balance’s docks, and he had only grown slightly suspicious of that.

Had her running that morning been a distraction? To get the guards to look the other way as she led them on a goose chase. Perhaps, the reason she was so mad that she had been caught, mad enough to hit him in the face, which was now a violently purple bruise, was because he had messed up her plans. Making them have to attack that night.

Although the party thrown in her honour was already the best place to stage an attack. Already, the Captain was working on sending spies into the two other countries in hopes of catching onto what was the real cause of this attack.

Maybe the party was just a show of her power. To steal the breath from people, to blast them out her way.

She had motives, her families mistreatment to her being the only one he could find. She had run away two years ago, and was now suddenly back because the King was sick. And apparently she had already enough sway to have the King throw her a party personally.

Lady Jysmn Graceline was a very suspicious suspect.

“Good morning, sir, may I interest you in something to eat?” a venders gentle voice called to him. He stared at her. She had ebony dark hair, but blue-green eyes. A low born with what could have been the breeding of a high born. One of the highest. “A mans got to eat?”

Roman made to dismiss her, but his stomach growled. Fishing two coppers from his pocket, he dropped them in her eager hand. The vendor food she handed him looked fatty, and almost unappealing.
But once he bit into it, he didn’t doubt he was going to come back a lot more.

“Make it myself right here. Tomatoes, lettuce and onion grown in my garden. The beef I get from a friend, and the sauce is a secret,” she ranted, pointing her tongues at the metal slab she had on top of hot coals.

“This is really good,” he almost moaned, his mouth still full. He was not really Lord material. In gratitude, he pulled a gold coin from his pocket, and placed it on her crumbed table. “I’ll have to come by again.”
He was definitely showing this place to Jed and Kalila. Roman still had a jetty to explore, though, so he left the vendor with his food. Stomach screaming in satisfaction.

“Thank you so much, sir!” she called after him, face beaming. Her front tooth was chipped, making it shorter than the rest, and her skin was marked with grease, her hair pinned back with a strained cloth. Roman couldn’t help but think she had a cuteness to her.

Continuing on his patrol, his eyes roamed across all the ships, bobbing with the water. Their sails filtering the sun, almost shading parts of the ship. Their Captains rushing about on deck, bartering their prices with potential buyers.

Roman made his way all the way to the end of the jetty. The noise of the busy workers behind him as he stared out at the sea. The sun was going down, which almost made him panic. He felt that this job made time fly by fast. His mind focused on being a guard that he ran out of sunlight to do the things he wanted.
Licking his fingers clean of the dark mystery sauce from the vender woman’s food, he took a deep breath. His stomach was satisfied for now, even though his mouth was a little dry, demanding he take a drink of something.

The glittering rays of the sun made the ocean look like liquid gold. He just grew thirstier, especially as he licked his salty lips. The smell of fish and something else horrible he didn’t know the name to place had almost ruined his appetite. That, and the squawking of the seagulls.

With the sun going down, he would return to the Captain, only to tell him they still had nothing to go on.

There was no way he would utter his suspicious of Lady Jysmn’s part in this. Especially not after her father died in the attack on the Palace. Even though his death fuelled Roman’s theory just the little more.

He hadn’t seen her interact with her father, but he had seen her with her own mother. The father couldn’t have been any better. But there was nothing, yet, to convince him that it wasn’t otherwise Lady Jysmn.

His Aunt had predicted that she would be in his life, that she could make him happy. Perhaps that made him right. Because if he solved this, it would make him a more than likely top candidate in the arena. The King would probably forfeit the whole match just to hand him Captain’s position.

The funeral would be in the next few days. There were a total of twenty Lords and Lady’s who had been slaughtered that night, the toll for the servants was still being taken… The last count Roman had been able to stomach was two-hundred and forty-eight. It made him almost glad that his family hadn’t been able to make it that night, had instead decided to finish fixing the leaks in their homes roof.

Eyes trailing over him, he listened to the late afternoon chatter. It made a sick feeling over take his once happy stomach. Nearly everyone’s whispered mutters were about the now indefinite war with Scrios.
Because they were right.

This was war now. Roman hadn’t known war, unlike his father, who at his age had gone to war with a foreign continent. But there hadn’t been a war between the three countries in nearly a millennia, since the founding of the three kingdoms.

A loud, insanely obnoxious, squawk of a seagull to his left made him flinch out of his thoughts. Offering it a grimace, Roman watched the Sun finally touch down on the brilliant sea.

He saw a silhouette bobbing on the water.
Squinting against the harshness of the sun, Roman had to put his hand up to ward off the brilliant golden. And there, he saw it. Bobbing up and down out at sea… No, not out at sea. Tied off on the Cliffside of the cove, was a familiar ship.
Little Coral.

It seemed to be anchored, for how long, Roman had no idea. All he knew, is that they were near the abandon Amari temple.
The boat, which had been signed out a while ago, was now bobbing near Iarmheid’s shores. And right after the attack a few days ago, it was more than suspicious. It was so entirely suspicious, that Roman legged it back down the Jetty to get Kalila.
 
***
 
Roman hadn’t trusted anyone outside of his two closest friends. They hadn’t even mentioned their lead, or where they were going, when they slipped out of the Palace Guard’s keep.

            Jed, with his larger build, slammed his body against a thick tree, ahead of the other two. Roman knew it was an unspoken manoeuvre, to keep Kalila from harm. Roman hoped it was for him to, not that anyone here needed protecting.

            They were making their way up the steep hill, which they knew dipped off onto the Cliffside. Amari’s abandoned temple over looking the City of Balance beneath. Roman had no idea why it was abandoned. Perhaps it was an insult to the goddess if her place of worship was renovated. He doubted it. Considering the ugly buildings that were being erected closer to the city for the Gods and Goddesses. When his eyes landed on the run-down wooden cottage, he wondered if this was really a temple.

            The thick, carved trunks at the temples wooden stair case held up the triangular roof. The closer they got, Roman could see the details. Of beautiful women in flowing gowns, tiny knives carved into their dresses. Some women were pregnant, some even held children, their flowing hair curling up to the roof. Chipping away with age.

            Amari – the Goddess of women, deception and miracles.

            Kalila took the bull by the horns and dared to jog passed Jed and Roman. Her dark hair tied back in a slicked braid on top her head.

            Jed lurched after her in panic. Roman could only follow. They couldn’t disguise their heavy footsteps in the grass. Keeping their distance and letting the slowly crawling night shield them from the crew of Little Coral, they were safe to make this slip up.

            The Crew had gathered around the base of the cliff, nursing a paddle boat, a fire crackling on the crisp sand.

            But that wasn’t where the three Palace Guards were jogging to. The flicker of a torch and voices from inside the abandoned temple held their focus. Whoever was in there, had the information they sought. Whether it had to do with Scrios or not, they needed to know. This was all too suspicious. Not to mention, they had crew Lady Jysmn fled with two years ago, and reappeared on the same day as the attack.

            Kalila stopped, crouching behind a rather large rock. It was defaced with carvings and long forgotten paintings. Jed and Roman fell beside her.

            “We were supposed to stick together,” Jed hissed at Kalila. The blood haired eyebrows of their friend were pulled sharply together.

            Her reaction made Roman keep his lips sealed, despite agreeing with Jed. The two were always fighting over things like this. It was times like these Roman was almost glad they weren’t together… Which was only thought in a second of bitterness, because the two were made for one another.

            “You’re not my babysitter,” Kalila spat.

            Jed took a moment to respond, his eyes burning like coals. “I know more than anyone that you are capable, I would not do you the insult of thinking you needed a man to protect you. But we can’t work together if you think you need to prove yourself by putting yourself in danger.” His words did not ease Kalila’s fire spirit. Instead, she angrily snapped her head to Roman, raising her eyebrows to urge him to put his two cents in.

            “You take the back, Kalila, mark out any escapes. Don’t enter until we give the signal,” Roman ordered. He knew evading Kalila’s urge to get into her and Jed’s romantic problems would piss her off more than actually saying something. “Jed, you go in from that side, I’ll go in through the front.”

            “If we think this is linked to Scrios, then shouldn’t we tell the Captain?” Kalila said, the voice of reason now. “We shouldn’t be just waltzing in like we’re catching two nobles in the middle of an indiscretion.” That had happened multiple times. Despite being skilled and slowly ripening soldiers, most their work with the palace was to catch out husbands or wives being unfaithful. Yet, this could have been their big break.

            “It is better to catch them in the act then to look like fools for getting it wrong,” Roman said, his final command, as he slid out from their position.

            His friends went to their given positions, too afraid to give their position away by arguing with him.

            Staying low to the ground, his only cover, Roman knew he wasn’t hiding as he walked up to the front door. If there were any look outs stationed in what seem to be the still abandoned temple, he would be seen. He was relying on his restored magic to get him out of any tricky situations.

            Even though he knew he’d regret the headaches.

            Taking the steps, he knew they creaked, and required him to be as light footed as possible. He couldn’t conceal his steps, but he knew that he needed to be quick. Roman barely let his feet stay on the steps for more than half a second, racing up them to get to the deck. He had his back against the wall beside the door as quick as he could, hiding behind the open doorway.

            The mummers from inside halted for a moment, before continuing. They didn’t send anyone to check. Not from what Roman heard or saw.

            With his heart beating fast in his chest, Roman prepared for the two possibilities of entry. Either, he could hide without being detected or seen… Or they saw him and all hell broke loose. He was prepared to face either or both those possibilities.

            Leaping out from behind the wooden walkway, Roman had his sword drawn within a flash, ready to face the rather large gathering of people inside the temple. He hadn’t even counted them, or seen them draw a weapon, before he was sent hurtling back by a gust of strong wind.