Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

us.” I rapped the arm of the sofa and shook my head. “How about you? Doing alright?”

He looked past me to the window. “Healing from the war is a slow process, with many stops and starts. Drilling the recruits and watching them shape up into soldiers helps. Seeing the castle rebuilt helps even more. Though… I would like to make a request of you, when we have some coin to spare.”

“Whatever you need, man.” I spread a hand and gestured widely. “Go ahead.”

“There was a large cottage with its own yard behind the kitchens,” Istvan said, crossing his legs and slouching back. “The place where I lived with my wife, my daughter, and my daughter’s puppy. It was razed to its foundations when they breached the castle.”

“You want it rebuilt?”

Istvan shook his head, gazing toward the windows. “No. I would like to create a memorial of sorts. A garden, if we can afford it. Yava had a flower bed that she cared for every day… it… it would mean a great deal to me.”

I leaned forward on the sofa. “Tell me what you need, and we’ll go ahead with it. I’m two-hundred-percent on board.”

Istvan let out a small sigh of relief. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

[New Side-Quest: Yava’s Garden.]

“We all need to time to heal from the shit that’s happened to us,” I said, adding the Quest to my queue. “Rule me up a plan, or give me a lead to the architect you need to make a plan, and I’ll follow it up once we’ve got Withering Rose sorted out.”

“I will.” Istvan drained his glass, then took to the bar and rinsed it before setting it to dry. “Do you wish to take the night off? Or shall I send the artist in to see you?”

“Go ahead. Might as well get that out of the way before I head off to bed.” I sprawled back on the sofa—my sofa—with a sigh. “Now that the gatehouse is fixed, I can get from here to the Lord’s Tower, right?”

“Yes. There is a door which unlocks with your Lord’s Key,” Istvan said. “You will enter onto the kitchen level. Your rooms are two flights up from there.”

“Thanks, man.” I thoughtfully drained the rest of my glass. “Let’s get this artist in here, and sketch the hell out of some heraldry.”

Chapter 49

By mid-morning, me and the visiting artist had decided on a standard for House Dragozin: a black spear on a sky-blue field, with the nine Keystones represented in their associated colors: White for Veles, Indigo for Matir, Red for Khors, and so on. It wasn’t a complicated flag, but it did everything I needed it to do. It was visible at a distance, it embodied the key identifiers that most represented the House, and—most importantly—wasn’t any shade of green.

On the way to my rooms, I found myself gawking at all the small, but obvious changes that had taken place between leaving for Taltos and returning from Meewhome. Carpets cleaned, water leaks fixed, missing tiles replaced. When I entered my apartment and went to the bathroom, I found it had been cleared of sand. There was a nicely folded towel on the thick rim of the tub, along with new soap, razor, and small clay jars.

“Huh.” I scratched my head. Rudolph knew I needed to sleep in earth to get the Well-Rested buff, so he normally didn’t touch the Ducal Litterbox. It seemed unlikely a maid had come through. “Did it despawn?”

Curious, I made my way to the darkened bedroom. The four-poster bed was gone. In its place was a specially constructed, very fancy sandpit. Karalti was stretched out on top of it, nude, her hair fanned out across the loose earth. She had one hand up by her mouth, the other resting just underneath one small breast.

My pulse jumped in my neck and under my tongue as I set my things down and walked over to sit. Warmth radiated up from the sand. I dug my hand into it, and found that it was warm all the way down. There was some kind of device built into the bedframe that heated it.

“Mmm…” Karalti’s eyes slowly opened, and she blinked up at me in a daze.

“Sorry.” My voice was tight enough I had to clear my throat. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Karalti smiled at me, her eyes dark and hazy, and opened her arms. Unable to take my eyes off her, I unequipped my clothing and climbed onto the bed. She embraced me, murmuring sleepily, and I pulled her in against my chest… and not for the first time, or the last, found myself feeling like the luckiest man on Earth.

We slept that way, tangled together in the warm sand, until a HUD notification chirped and I started up out of a dead sleep. Blearily, I compulsively swiped it across, and Navigail’s cheery robovoice began to speak.

[Your Steward has deposited 500,034 Gold Olbia in the Treasury!]

[Myszno has 1,363,843 olbia available. Use your Kingdom Management System to manage projects, pay your Royal Dues, and recruit specialists!]

Well, damn. Just like that, I was a millionaire. I rolled over onto my back, one arm over my face, and tried to wake up. If the money was back from Krivan Pass, that meant only one thing. “Hey, Tidbit. Wake up. Vash is back.”

“Mmmngh?” Karalti burrowed in against my chest, wrapping her arm a little tighter, and sighed. I waited to see if she was actually going to open her eyes, and when she didn’t, I sucked my lips in like a fish and began kissing her: her head, her shoulders, then her cheek.

“Mmm… nnn…” Karalti began to squirm, then to giggle. “Nuuu! Stop fishing me!”

“The Fish Imperium knows no surrender, only victory!” I lunged in and got hold of her ear. “Num-num-num-num.”

“Eeek!” Laughing helplessly, she pushed at my