It was far past noon. Onochie could tell by the length of his shadow. In fact, the sun had recalled most of its fury. Still, she wasn't here. He was utterly wounded. She'd appallingly neglected to manifest civility in both the views of personal relations and the official relationship between a king and his subject. He could not count on a single hand the many rejections she'd sent back to him at his invitation to her.

He thought they were supposed to be a pair. They'd been in love for years. No, not they. He couldn't speak on or vouch for her feelings. Only his own. And he could proudly say that he'd loved her for almost three counts of the gods' annual festival. He still loved her, of course. Dearly. However, in addition to the firsts of the day, he did not want to see Ozioma.

Sauntering away from the heart of the lair, he called for Kamalu. Initially, he didn't order for the man to follow him, but he heard his footsteps trailing him nonetheless. It was like the chief guard to be stubborn in matters that involved the king's safety. And it wasn't like Onochie was complaining.

At a time, he'd thought the man's presence to be not so much short of a nuisance, but it wasn't so anymore. It soothed the fears that the attempted murder on his life had instilled in him. Knowing that someone was close by, ready to race to him at his slightest call for help, put him at ease, which was a vital prerequisite if he wanted to do something as important as declaring and dispensing love to his woman in peace.

"Kamalu?" He frowned when no tall fighter rushed toward him. It appeared that the man might have been distracted by something, or someone?

Onochie's pulse picked pace as he tossed about the possibility that the guard could have been taken down by an assassin. If it was so, he imagined that his life was now being threatened, and he could be blindly walking into an ambush.

This halted him in his tracks as he stopped to inspect his surroundings. There were long ropes of leaves wherever he turned his eye. They wrapped around trees, which bore different trades of scales. The ones on the bulky live-woods had wider shoots and appendages as opposed to those on strings, which were narrow and, on nearer inspection, had striped veins.

Only one portion of the lair had light springing in as trees were not planted close to it. Their canopies came up short of sealing the hole and leaving the spade within bereft of sun rays. It was a great design this way as the obvious was one could still check the length of their shadow for a glance at time in the absence of cock crowing nearby. Onochie had done a lot of monitoring and confirming during the earlier wait.

"My king!" Kamalu burst into his view, a cutlass in hand. The king contemplated whether there was a problem he needed to run from.

"Are we under attack?"

Confusion surged like a mist sheathing Kamalu's features, crimping them as it passed. Then it was gone all in a second. "Oh... I am sorry for my late comprehension, Your Majesty." His attention fell to the blade attached to a brown hilt then back to his master's face. "There is no attack on us, my king. My late absence was due to my remembrance that I was not in possession of my weapon. I left it behind at one of the watch-posts not far from where we stand."

"Alright." Onochie let himself release the breath he'd been holding, sighing in relief. "We shall go to the borders as we planned earlier."

He watched as Kamalu's eyebrow startled in silent query. The taller man peered into the large expanse of trees, frantically searching for who Onochie knew should have been there. Kamalu knew her and her value to his master. There'd been no lies or deceptions in that.

"She did not come to me," Onochie announced, ending the guard's search. If she'd shown up, there was nothing that would make her lover abandon her for an inspection of the boundaries of his kingdom.

"And I do not want to see her." He clarified though it was merely an attempt at keeping his pride intact. He could not seem like a bigger fool in front of the man he trusted most in the world. There had been too many cases of him losing prestige before the chief guard. He was not intent on upping that number.

"Understood, Your Majesty." Kamalu nodded obediently. There would be no more questions asked. In the entirety of Zoro, no one had worked as closely to the reigning monarch as he had. By now, he was expected to know his limits and mark them sedulously.

When it came to discussing Ozioma with Onochie, the whole world could well be treading on the mouth of an active volcano, unaware of when its wrath would explode. It, therefore, was the best choice to keep one's opinion to themselves. Exceptionally when the king's rile was written all over his face without a filter.

"Let us move then."

They both broke out of the haven of nature, meandering down the winding path that spaned further to the outskirts of the village. Once or twice, children ran up to greet the man clothed in the fur skirt cognisant of royalty. Kamalu kept them at arm's length, as was the custom, while Onochie smiled and waved at them.

The lair was not far from the kingdom's fringes. In actuality, it was incredibly close. Maybe even dangerously so. One could admit that it was the reason Kamalu was so reluctant to leave the king alone and unarmed each time he visited the brook of trees.

There was a possibility that assassins could cut into the edges of Zoro and, meeting the king alone, take his life. An absolute tragedy it would be, which was why it was best avoided with all severity.

"How were the performances yesterday, my lord?" The tampered sheet of silence in the company was broken by the well-meaning question.

Onochie jerked to attention, having detached himself from reality shortly before. He cleared his pipes before speaking. "It was a splendour."

"Really? I shall say you wholly enjoyed them?"

"Oh yes," Onochie assented fervently. "I most certainly did. The performers dropped jaws with their energetic displayed. I was awed by them."

"Did you have a favourite, my lord?"

"I did." A knowing smile pulled on the corners of his lips. The chief guard was seeking to pry out a secret that was not to be for his ears. "Do you mean to ask the group I have chosen, Kamalu?"

"That might be the case, Your Majesty." He admitted unashamedly, to which Onochie shook his head in mock disappointment.

"And my response to the audacity you've gathered is that you wait till the festival day when I'm to present them before my people."

His choice was meant to be a surprise except to the performers themselves, of course. That was the only group exempt to his secrecy since they would need to know of the king's wishes to prepare passionately before the day they entertained his people.

Onochie was most moved by the acts the Ati and Otigo groups had put on. The first focused on acrobatics and had an awe-inspiring display in all. However, the latter made their audience's bellies ache from rousing laughter. He was not yet explicit on who he would pick as the best.

It ladened him all the more as both traditional throngs of performers were not in any form comparable. One had amusement as its core subject, while the other set its foundation on pure exciting skills. Both prospects were very promising. Onochie was taking his sweet time with the process, but the delay would soon end. It could only be so long before he sent word to the chosen one.

"I will do my best to wait patiently, Your Majesty. Though it will be strenuously challenging. In fact, I am quite pained to not be in the know, my lord."

"You will be alright, Kamalu. No one knows of my choice either. You are not in a case of specialty."

A breathy rustle shook the single string of white canines and teeth from a variety of rare animals clasped around Kamalu's neck—all of them which he'd killed at one point in his hunting history. "I have no choice then. I must wait."

"Say, do you have news for me about what I assigned you?" The matter of heavy dalliance was broached to the guard, whose face immediately adopted a calm gravity.

"No, Your Majesty." He rubbed his forehead with an open palm, tension stringing the thin flesh into a fold. "I have dug into the matter as far as is possible with the secrecy you swore me into. Yet, I have not found a single thing out of place. All fingers point to Chief Okorie being the culprit. However, it is all so weird that there are no stray clues. I cannot find anyone to pin the blame on other than him."

"How do you mean?"

He brought a hand to his hair, tugging at the ends of the short, twisted strands. "What I am trying to say is that it is all too suspicious, my lord. All arrows point to the chief, which makes it baffling that the Wise One cleared of the sin he appears to so confidently be the culprit of. I am not certain who, but the person who framed the chief must have a great deal of power."

"There is no doubt in that." Onochie acquiesced, rubbing a hand against his wild scruff. He'd not shaved of recent. How could he when he spiralled down a dark chasm each day that passed despite his sincerest endeavours to stay afloat?

Ozioma had been his raft through the violent currents of the treacherous river, but it'd recently been made manifest that he could not appraise her as a constant. It was unalloyed cruelty to him, and he had not yet fashioned the course he would drift down to dilute his anguish. He hated that he was sinking without her.

"Yes, Your Majesty." Kamalu maintained with a deadening air about him. "It is only a reasonable guess as it must have taken a considerate amount of resources to conceal the truth. I suspect Chief Iwegbuna to be at the core of this problem, Your Majesty. In fact, he has been acting dubiously. I have found that he has plots of land bought under the names of his attendants."

"What?" Came Onochie's surprised gasp. It was all too strange. "Why would he do so?" Iwegbuna was a man with a stone for a heart. It was not in him to do good things for his servers. News had even diffused through the village that he ill-treated them, striking both women and men without mercy in his furies. Would such a man gift people he deemed as less-than lands?

"I have no hint of what he is up to, my lord. But I am working on unearthing whatever dishonesty he dabbles in as soon as I can. I do not trust the man at all."

"Neither do I." The king's agreement was an honest truth, though his caution was not solely for the head chief but towards all he knew and was acquainted with. "We shall uncover his secrets soon enough. I expect you to strive hard to bring his misdeed to light. I have overlooked his iniquities for too prolonged a time."

"Certainly, Your Majesty. By the gods, I will bring you results forthwith."

Onochie placed a hand on the guard's taut shoulders, hoping to relieve him of the mental stress that inevitably was plaguing him. "I trust in you, Kamalu. Take your time with the examination of this case. You need not be so worried for accouching outcomes rapidly."

Relief sluiced over him, palliating the strain in his stance and body language as he seemed less overstrung. "Thank you for your charity, my king."

"It is nothing. You deserve my grace, Kamalu. And more." He added the last part with a grin. Why would he not bestow grace on a man he considered his brother? The chief guard's actions merited the choicest of his blessings, and in the future, Onochie was confident he would give it all to him. Kamalu was the finest of men he'd ever met. His qualities were of the superior kind, and all one could need in a confidante. He'd not once forgotten. Could never afford to do so.

"Thank you, my lord. I will gladly serve you for the rest of my life." Onochie thought he caught some moisture glistening in the man's eyes; oh, how he was similar to an oversized infant. In moments like this, the guard was his junior, not only in rank but also in age.

Choosing not to comment on his companion's emotions stirring as due to the effect of his words, the master hastened ahead. They were nearing the perimeters of the kingdom, and though Onochie's feet were becoming sore, he savoured the excitement of being so far from his palace and, more saliently, being out for a mattering cause.

He would incipiently be encountering the perimeters of the kingdom since he proclaimed the borders' opening. Troops were based in station houses freshly erected, following his orders. The only trouble was that not many men volunteered for the posts, so there were few watchpoints.

Onochie saw no benefit in forcing men into a service they did not initially enroll for; they would slack off and not put in effort into their work if he did so. Yet, he also needed more soldiers guarding Zoro. They were wide open now without much protection. If he wanted relationships with other lands, then he had to tighten his defences first. His people's safety and security would be threatened otherwise.

"We should be careful, my lord. There are no posts on the lookout around here." Kamalu warned, advancing forward, so his imposing build was before the king as a shield.

"Yes, I noticed. We must..." Onochie trailed off at an entity that had corralled his heed. "What is that?" He questioned in a whisper. It was a bundle in the near distance, but everything about it was incongruous. There was much to find it expressly out of the ordinary as it lay across the lines of Zoro, half past the red marker and the other half below it.

"What is what, Your Majesty?" Kamalu's voice was macerated in perplexity.

"There," Onochie curved a finger at the object. No, it wasn't an object. He discerned with a shake of the head. It looked suspiciously... human. "Do you see it?"

"I do, my lord." His tone was low, dangerous. Onochie's eyes darted to him, observing how his stance had become less loose and at ease, plus how his weapon was raised in a defensive offence. He backtracked to the target of their focus and gulped when he noted it had stirred.

"Shall we check what it is?"

"Permit me to go alone, my lord. I smell danger, and I do not want you to be harmed."

Onochie's chest tightened. He felt unduly insulted, and he wasn't sure why. Aggravation rose from his core, and he tried and failed to depress it. To his dismay, it only mounted like it had wings with which to soar to boundless peaks.

He was provoked, something that had never occurred of Kamalu's doing. He dissected the morose sentiments assuaging him, analysing each one as they came apart; it was a process of coping he'd recently adopted.

After a while, he ruled that his irritation had to be because he'd been asked to stand aside while a situation was taken care of as if he were a toddler who could do nothing for himself. The muscles in his stomach clenched as he conceived that he was being treated this way since he'd allowed for it through his former failures. If he'd been qualified and skilled enough in the past, this image of him being incapable would not have flourished.

It was all his fault.

"Your Majesty?"

"I will go with you, Kamalu." He stated coolly. From now onward, he would dispatch more matters into his hands and concern himself with added affairs. He would make sure he was in charge. Today would be the inception of his novel attitude. "I will lead the way."

Kamalu must have glimpsed the fire burning behind his orbs as he bowed and stepped back instantly. "As you wish, Your Majesty."

Onochie reached the marked terminals in steady strides. His bravado held him up till he was before the root of his trepidation, but no more. The breath he previously held trapped in his chest as he gazed upon the most beautiful woman he'd ever confronted in his existence. Just one look at her, and he could tell...

She was dying.
•