Chapter 7 - The Reason Why

I closed my eyes and had a visible blush on my checks and just nodded to her. "Sorry about that it must have been the good meal. Is there anything planned for today? And have you had any sleep tonight?" She answered with a nod. "The Royal family together with your aunt wants to discuss what they have found and how they wish to proceed. Apart from that there are no further plans to my knowledge milady."

"And yes I have slept but I shared the personal guard duty with Johanna since well she has your trust obliviously." I nodded looking to the deeply sleeping woman for a moment. "So where can I get some breakfast here?" She put report neatly into a leather folder and looked up to me. "Well you have the choice milady. We can either go to the mess hall or we could eat at the table over there." She pointed to the room behind me but I just shook my head. "Mess hall sounds good to me there is no need to let them run through all of this if i can just eat at a nice dinner table."

"Do you think that people will be upset for me to visit the king so often?" A genuine laugh did answer me, while she guided me through the wide decorated corridors. "A lot of people are going to be offended by you and the kings ruling milady. He is doing a big statement with it because basically says that the lawless time of his father are over. Interestingly enough they found, that they can actually apply certain laws to transfer all that legally as punishment." I nodded. "Is there a chance of this leading to a civil war or is it more that a few but influential people want me dead?" She pondered when she opened the door to a large but mostly empty dining hall. I saw only one of the tribes eating breakfast and to my surprise reading a book in silence.

"More of the later but who can tell? There are already people campaigning for equal rights in marriage for woman. After all they allowed us to join the army after your kind did not only had woman soldiers but a general leading them all." I smirked while sitting down and starting to serve myself from the lavish meal. "She always was one of the best fighters according to the legends. She died after the war in an small skirmish."

I hesitated for a moment then shrugged with a grin and continued. "Although the rumor has it that it was in truth a wild orgy and she did fight a bull, drunk. She did win but it fell on top of her and well died a while after that." The captain shook her head in amazement. "How likely is it that the rumor is true? I giggled Extremely since my grandma was there but pssst the elders want to keep it quiet. The general was 97 at that time." Elaina gulped. "Fighting a bull drunk with 97?" I swallowed my bite before adding. "Barehanded and nude mind you!"

She chucked. "Living among your people sound quite interesting ... now that you had a night to sleep on. How do you feel about the idea of the King and Queen?" Another bite found its way into my mouth while I was thinking. "It is ... interesting. It pushes a bit of responsibility onto me especially since I convinced the king to let me keep the other contracts but if I can prevent them from landing in a similar position as I was in its all good. It depends however on them. How they behave and if they are willing to give me the time of the day. And if we are compactible or not. If not they will get a house and pension and can do whatever they want." I shrugged.

"The other big thing will be to get to live with the fact that I am suddenly quite wealthy compared to everybody else in the Kingdom. Who is the richest by the way?" She chewed for a moment before answering. "A family of traders. They do trade across the whole kingdom and are well respected. Actually they are not the typical cutthroats you would expect. I mean most of their riches exist because they dare to trade where nobody else wants to go." I made a small guess. "The Largram family?" she nodded in confirmation. "You have heard about them before?" I took a small gulp out of the juice. Everything here was so far away from what i had just two days ago that it felt a bit unreal. "I worked for them actually many of the caravans through the grade desert are sponsored by them."

"Hmm they might actually not mind the change." I mumbled to myself thinking about the few times I meet some of the family members during my work. "They will love it. The duke was a thorn in their said forever and was one of the biggest supporters of the slave trade. And as you may know the family hates the slave trade." Another bite found its way into my mouth. It was some really tasty meat on bread. Oh how I had missed to be able to eat such in the morning. "Something about their founders being illegally traded as a slave, right?"

The Captain nodded again. "Well they might not be your enemys in all of this. It depends how well the king makes it clear that these are very specific circumstances. By the way we found a witness that confirmed the attempted rape way back then. One of the guards heard about the duke being arrested and steeped forward, it is unclear if It was because of guilt or the hope of gaining some reward, but it helped the case non the less." I cleaned my plate carefully of the last remains before moving my head in agreement.

"So how will the trail thing work?" She hesitated before answering. "Usually there will be actually a whole trail which might drag on for years. However, with this overwhelming evidence he will be offered two choices. Plead guilty and receive milder punishment like prison and banishment or fight and potentially receiving the complete punishment Infront of the law which would be in this case a gruesome death."

"And he should know that the noose is pretty tight around his neck since we found the signed and sealed document that proves that you were brought in by his order not the King. He will be told by now about these two choices. The king hopes that he will chose the first one because then it will prevent a long battle in court while his defense to try and rescue his ass. But even with his connection that wont happen."

I bit my lips and nodded. "And that will happen in just one week?" She smiled her eyes brimming with pride. "Yes, there was more significant evidence coming in. The thing is the king could just execute him without a trial, but he tries to prevent such things from happening. Simple because it is to much power in the hand of a single person. Even the king should not have that kind of power according to himself."

"If it would come to a trial the king would only be a Veto power and the one who proclaims the final judgment as presented by the primary judge. The one presiding over the case would be the oldest most respected judge at the given time. Simple so that the King wont be forced to do a quick decision because of other duties. So the judge will sit in. And listen and ask and gives a suggestion and in a high-profile case like this one the king at the end will have the final say over the judgment. The judge by the way supports the unusual punishment simple because it would calm the tribes in all likeness and show that we take such things seriously."

I nodded and pondered. "So how set is the judgment of the duke?" She smirked. "Normally it would be all open but since well we found out who the original target was and what the consequence would have been if they had succeeded he would not walk away unharmed in any case." I hesitated, i wasn't the original target of the attack? There was another person with similar body markings then mine that had traveled with the caravan I was with. And if they captured that person and attempted to rape her. My face went pale like a ghost. "He tried to capture the Merutka?" I said in a shocked whisper.

She nodded. "I bet he assumed that holding her would have kept the tribes in check and would have given him a position of power." A rough laughter left my lips. "The merutka, the diplomat, the wise one. She has many names. She is the closest thing the tribes have to a spiritual leader. So if anything where to happen to her ... there wouldnt be a declaration of war. There wouldnt be any advance warning. There would only be almost all of the tribes slaughtering the city who dared to harm her. And if he had tried to rape her or even worse. They would not have stopped at one city."

I could see the captain nod. "Yeah we didn't know how bad it would be, but I assumed quite bad. What makes her so special?" I took a deep breath. "Well you remember the general we talked about?" she nodded. "She is from her line. Her granddaughter. The general had a daughter that was born when the general was 86. And yes thats old even for us."

"In all honesty it should have been impossible, but she was someone who didnt care for impossible things." I chuckled loudly. "She might have been adopted but no matter what she was the generals daughter and the general did not have a long-term partner. Well anyway as you may count, she was barely 10 when the general died."

"And while there was aunt, she was out exploring the desert for ruins and new trade routs. Not a place where you send a child to. Especially since nobody had heard from her in a while. She did return as a partial guardian later on but well ... usually a child like that would be raised by the tribe in whole and that means at first by everybody, and then the family that she felt closest to, unless such already existed. But her mother had not stayed at one tribe since she was 20 so it was unclear which tribe was responsible."

"So the elder decided that she should be raised by the different tribes in turn until the aunt returned. Traveling with an group to learn all about them simple because it was clear she would be a important political figure. Well that founded the family of Merutka which moves around constantly living with different tribes. The title is in fact quite old but they always run into the problem that after a few years nobody cared to listen to them."

"Well considering who her mother was nobody dared to anger her. And now they tend to be diplomats and peacemakers. Wise woman teacher and well leaders when needed. Whenever there I a conflict between two tribes the Merutka with her daughters is there to calm it. Because of that everybody knows and respect them. And well after almost 100 years she is part of our culture now."

"They dont have any real say. A Chief could easily ignore their advice but you simple dont do that. Around 10 years before I was born there was a chief who fell in love with the current Merutka and well thought that the best course of action was to kidnap her and try to rape her. He only could try because his own people stopped him before he could lay her hands on him. His own wife as far as I know. She became the second wife of the Merutka a few years later." I shook my head.

"The title gets passed on as soon as the oldest daughter reaches the age of 24. However, if she is not interested or unfit in the eyes of many it will be the second oldest and so on. The first one created that rule to protect her oldest daughter who wanted to settle down and run an inn at one tribe not to go around and do diplomacy. Its something you just grow up with when you are part of a tribe. And well if the Merutka gets captured because of her unique position it would create a third war with ease. And this time they all would be motivated. So yeah .. capturing her would have been more then just bad."

The captain had written down some notes but was a bit pale too. "So ... I guess we should better keep quiet about it." She mumbled. A servant walked into the room and straight towards the captain. "Yes the tribe elders will learn about it but it should not spread through the masses, for them it is hard to know the difference between one person and a country sometimes. I mean we dont need some stupid hothead trying to do something." I said while watching him as he stopped right at our table and made a deep bow. "Good morning miladys I was send to inform you that the king invites you to take part in a talk between him and elder Kadrim".

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My appologies for the delay xD I had to edit some of these parts and i is quite talk heavy. Sighs. We will soon get the first tiny glimps at her future family i really hope you all enjoy it so far ;)