The Ippos King: Wraith Kings Book Three

a sleepless night prior to the letter’s arrival. What was one more in the long procession?
He traced the curves and loops of Pluro Cermak’s script across the parchment with one finger, lost in thought. He suffered no reluctance at providing the escort Megiddo’s brother requested. It was the least he could do, though he wondered what had inspired the monks of the Jeden order to ask for the body. Was it simply because they valued one of their own? Even caught as he was between the living and the dead? Did they not have enough to concern them with the valley’s simmering unrest?
The news of the warlord Chamtivos’s defeat and the return of the valley to the monastery’s control had managed to reach as far north as Belawat. Chamtivos’s bid to invade and control the area had been thwarted by the combined forces of the local population, the Nazim monks of the Jeden order and a small contingent of Ilinfan swordmasters. Peace came at a high cost, and Belawat had issued a warning to all its traders to exercise caution when traveling to and from the valley.
Bringing Megiddo to his religious brethren carried risk to his living but soulless body protected by magic and to those who would bring it back to the Order. Unwelcome guilt coursed through him. He had men to spare who would do an able job of bringing the monk home and returning to High Salure unscathed. Still, it somehow felt both wrong and unfair that he not be among their contingent. The monk deserved the respect and recognition of being accompanied by a high-ranking Beladine, especially one who had fought beside him and failed to save him from a horrific fate.
A quiet tap on his door pulled him from his grim thoughts. “Enter.”
The door opened with a creak, revealing a servant carrying a tray with a steaming pot of tea, a cup, and a plate of bread with butter and a cellar of salt. “Fair morning, my lord,” the man said as he placed the tray on the table where the candle dripped a slow death into its shallow holder. “Something to break your fast.” He reached up to close the shutters.
“Leave them.” Serovek ignored his puzzled expression. “I won’t remain long enough in here to bother starting a fire in the hearth, and the chamber could use an airing.” Only innocent shadows, fading with the growing morning light, lingered in the corners, yet he fancied they flickered and gleamed in spots as if eyes watched him from their darkness and waited.
The servant bowed. “Will you require anything else, my lord?”
Sounds rose from the bailey below the window, the early rising of High Salure’s garrison. A hodge-podge concert of soldiers' boisterous and often vulgar conversations, the whistles and commands to the horses, the clop of hooves on cobblestones, the hollow exhalation of the forges brought to life in the smithy. . . so many everyday sounds he’d grown accustomed to during his many years as margrave in this mountain fortress. They were the stuff of life, of breathing men and women, of hard work interspersed with light-hearted revelry or annoyed bickering, drunken brawling, and practice fighting. He recalled Haradis once more, shattered to its foundations, a silent mass grave once the galla were herded back to the nightmare realm from which they had emerged.
“My lord? Is there anything else you need before I leave?”
He’d forgotten the servant standing nearby awaiting his reply. Serovek waved him away. “No, that will be all.”
The man bowed and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. Serovek scrubbed a hand across his cheeks in a weary gesture. His beard was sorely in need of a clipping, and with the hesitant arrival of spring, he might as well just shave it off completely to stay cool for the summer months. One of the three garrison barbers had already set up his chair and knives in the bailey, hawking his services to those soldiers going about their morning tasks. His voice was loud enough to wake the sleeping mountain gods, and Serovek wondered why no one had yet dumped the man in one of the horse troughs to shut him up.
He returned his attention to Cermak’s letter, considering. While Brishen Khaskem had no control or say in Megiddo’s continuing fate, Serovek knew he'd appreciate news of the man who fought beside him against the galla. The prince regent had his hands full with raising and training the infant queen regnant while trying to keep the traumatized Kai kingdom she’d inherited from her slaughtered father from completely falling apart or falling into civil war, but Serovek believed Brishen would want to know.
He dragged a stool to the desk and sat down. The cold made his hands stiff, and he blew on them to warm his fingers before reaching for a quill. Tantalizing aromas of herbs and spice drifted to his nose from the still hot teapot, but breakfast would have to wait a little longer.
The ink in the inkwell had thickened to sludge, and he held the glass over another lit candle until the flame warmed and thinned the ink. He looked forward to writing this letter. Brishen had replied to the previous letters to him with an invitation to visit Saggara and partake of its hospitality. Belawat might consider Bast-Haradis an uneasy neighbor at best and a possible enemy at worst, but Serovek considered Brishen Khaskem a friend and looked forward to seeing him once more.
His lips turned up in a smile as he wrote. Winter had enforced a near total isolation for the garrison. Except for the necessary descent into the lowlands for patrol, those of High Salure had stayed close to home to wait out the snows and avalanches. It had been three months since Serovek crossed into Kai territory to visit the Khaskem and his pretty human wife.
And his magnificent second-in-command, sha-Anhuset.
The quill paused in its scratching on the parchment. Serovek rubbed