6
You pretend that you have been caught, and pretend even more effectively that your motive was genuine concern were the information to reach her ears that it would endanger the child. For you see, this child is born under a star reserved for the most heroic of fates. Left alone and orphaned in a village put to the torch by an evil sheriff working under none other but the Duke of Hestermaillin in Vesperlund, fearing that this child would grow up to represent a credible threat to his succession!
For you see, and at this the Queen seizes her blanket a little more tightly, this child is the last scion of a line almost as ancient as her own, and were he to grow up well and be prepared for the fate that awaits him, he could potentially change the face of Vesperlund - nay, he could change the face of the known world!
The best lies, you think, are not just the ones that are mostly true, but the ones also supplemented by the supernatural - the darkness of the room bends around you like a cloak to a point where you are not merely endowed with mystique, but actively embody it. And despite herself and the strong intuition that what you are spinning is a load of bullshit, she is bound readily by your spell. Why, she does believe she will hang on to this child in that case - he does seem like he could be a valuable sort, if permitted to grow...
You bow deeply, and exit the way you came as the Queen calls for a servant to park the baby you delivered in a less unpalatable location, and soon you are on your way along the nightly streets of Ortfast.
You snap up a sleeping vagrant on the way back. He proves unappetizing, but filling. You leave half of him in the gutter, a tip for the omnipresent rats of the city, and head back to your office.
258 S.I., Two Weeks Later
The Queen does not make your son the kingdom's heir, of course, that would just be utterly ridiculous. But he is kept around, and quarters are made for him quite discreetly.
5
Fortunately, people do not seem to put two and two together and fold this into the broader picture of bewitchment that had started to surround the court. In fact the matter is kept out of the ears of the public entirely, which you suppose to be agreeable enough.
Meanwhile you have a bit of time to yourself, the Queen being quite busy with her own matters, your son included (she appears to have trouble settling on a name much like your son has trouble settling on a concrete set of facial features), Assante being busy steadfastly bothering the Queen about mining matters in the Utterdark Caves, Princess Annika being busy bothering her entourage of "diplomats" and occasionally the Queen about letting her see the latter more often and most everyone else keeping to themselves.
What you discover first and foremost is that you do not appear to get along well with sunlight anymore - so much as a minute in direct illumination makes you feel like purging your own organs through your mouth, and only by wrapping yourself up in four layers of clothes and at least three separate veils you manage to make it merely feel like a crippling hangover.
Furthermore, your level of self-confidence in the nighttime doesn't appear to be holding steady. The honeymoon of becoming a creature of the night seems to be rather quickly evaporating as you feel yourself getting very hungry, even for something as typically repulsive as vagrant flesh.
A) Start grabbing more vagrants, and make sure to eat all of them this time.
B) Seek a stabler arrangement with, say, a prison. Or maybe an orphanage!
C) Treat yourself with a tastier target or two.
D) Try importing.
E) Seek a more... exotic solution.
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Topic: SPAMMASTER: Spymistress Kalja the Bewitched (Read 36854 times)