"You’re it! You’re it!" Rosalind squealed, her face flushed red, half-laughing and half-shouting as she danced away from him. SHe thought herself fast, but she was not.

A man would think the girl didn’t have a single friend in the castle, the way she cornered him every bloody morning to play whatever game had caught her fancy. Today, it was tag. More than once Basil had told her to go bother her highborn bed-companions, but the little girl always had a ready quiver of excuses whenever he tried to roll out of it.

Magya is too slow. Leria is too boring.

And I am too old for this, Basil thought with a silent, heavy sigh, though his legs kept moving anyway.

Rosalind wasn’t looking where her little boots were landing. She tripped over her own feet and went sprawling into the grass. Basil was there in a heartbeat, pulling her up and dusting off her knees before shoving her gently on her way. She took off again, cackling and sprinting as if the stone-bruise had never happened.

It wasn’t exactly a thrilling hunt for Basil. He was older, longer-legged, and easily swifter than his little sister, though he was still a fair bit slower than Whitey, the massive white herd dog currently bounding through the clover beside them. Still, Basil found a quiet pleasure in the pure, unburdened mirth on his sister’s face whenever he allowed her to win. He’d purposely slow his stride to drop down and scratch Whitey’s soft belly, giving Rosalind a dozen paces of a head start while the dog thumped its tail against the dirt and wagged his tongue on his cloth.

Gross, he wiped it on the big boy’s fur.

It was strange, he reflected, how easily a man could fall back into this sense of peacefulness. He had seen war with his own eyes now, even if it was from a safe distance, and the blood and smoke made him appreciate this green heaven all the more. It made him respect his father’s heavy labor in keeping this peace of theirs.

He had just managed to scoop Rosalind up by the waist, her tiny fists drumming against his chest in triumph, when Ser Narry strode into the garden, his pale cloak brushing against the morning dew.

How his father had already discovered the little gift Basil had slipped to that wandering knight a fortnight ago remained a mystery. It had to be either Narry himself, or his taciturn brother in arms, Ser Dandweel, who had accompanied them on the road. Basil was not a wagering man, but if he had to lay a silver piece down, he’d bet everything he owned on Narry, the younger, louder, and vainer of the two brothers. Still, without proof, suspicions were nothing but hot air.

Whitey padded over, her wet nose sniffing aggressively at the knight’s greaves. Narry did his best to ignore the beast, shifting his weight with a sour look; the man was clearly more fond of cats than hounds.

"Prince. Princess," Narry said, offering a stiff, courtly bow.

The words still tasted strange in Basil’s ears. To his mind, there had only ever been one prince in these lands, and that was his father. But now the old man wore a grander crown, and Basil had inherited the title, ranking him alongside every other lordling and sovereign in the bloody South. Rosalind, of course, hadn’t boggled at the change at all. When the heralds first proclaimed it, her only question had been, ’But isn’t Mother the princess?’ When Basil explained that their mother was a queen now, she had simply shrugged, laughed, and tried to drag him into a game of hide-and-seek. He had relented then, too.

Of course he did...

"Ser," Basil said curtly, setting his sister on her feet. "What is it? Has my father summoned me ?"

If the King wanted him, Basil hoped it was for some tedious chore or ledger-checking. At the very least, he could tell Rosalind he had royal business, and she would get bored and leave him to his morning. She usually relented the moment his father gave him proper work.

"Nothing of the sort, my prince," Narry replied, much to Basil’s silent disappointment. "I come on my own account. I believed you would want to know of it."

Basil wiped a smear of grass from his palm, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Know what?"

----------

The courtyard was in chaos,a rolling tide of noise that Basil knew as intimately as his own name.

Stable boys ran ourselves ragged, their shirts soaked through as they yanked heavy destriers by the reins, the great beasts snapping their teeth and stamping their iron-shod hooves against the cobblestones. Servants bent double under the weight of grain sacks and salt-pork barrels, their spines groaning as they hauled the provisions up onto the wooden beds of the supply carts. Black-thumbs kept a tally of everything on their papers, going over from cart to cart to write whatever they did on white sheet.

The Hounds were preparing to march.Had Basil not known better he could even think it was war again.

He had watched this exact same scene unfold a half-dozen times before whenever his father called the banners and prepared to ride out for a mission.

The air always smelled the same on the eve of a march: a thick, suffocating mix of horse manure, wet wool, and unwashed bodies.

Basil picked his way through the clutter, stepping over a stray wheel-rim and ducking beneath a bundle of ash-wood charging lances a guard was hauling past.

His eyes cut through the shifting crowd, scanning the sea of faces. Many wore the heavy wolf-cloaks of the Hounds, but they were not the only steel in the yard. Alongside them stood another force entirely, one whose presence puzzled Basil more than a little.

He would have expected another of his father’s legions to bolster the horsemen, or perhaps a fresh levy of green boys recruited for whatever grim work the King intended. Instead, the courtyard was thick with blue cloaks.

What the hell are they doing here? Basil thought, slowing his stride.

They were armored well enough, though lighter than the standard iron of a proper legionnaire, and their steel was meant for a different sort of butchery. Where his father’s legions relied on the brutal efficiency of the shortsword, the axe, the mace, or the long halberds of the Third, these newcomers carried a stranger assortment: heavy ash-wood batons, arm-glaives, and shields that varied from small, nimble iron bucklers to massive, rectangular pavises broader than a standard kite shield.

Their gear made sense, of course, once he recognized the men wearing it. They were not soldiers meant for the open field; they were the peacekeepers of the city. And from what Basil had heard from certain sources, they were the very cream of the watch.

They were the ones who had spent years breaking the spine of the city’s gangs, a nasty, dark business that required a man to know how to raid a den at midnight and kill in narrow alleys and cramped rooms where a long spear and was useless and where you had to mind your companions. But if they were being packed into supply carts now, it meant the King’s business was a bit different from the usual one Alpheo would have expected.

And indeed, where the blue cloaks gathered, their commander was never far behind.

Laedio had never been granted a formal legion to win laurels and glory in the open field, but the man had proven a master of the gutters. As garrison commander, he had turned city security to paramount importance. He had even become a popular sort of fellow among the smallfolk; whenever the watch burst through the doors of a thieves’ den or a smuggler’s cellar, you could bet a silver piece you’d find Laedio leading the charge, his sword already wet.

Clearly, today was no exception.

The commander stood near a stack of grain barrels, deep in talk with two of his captains. Their blue cloaks were pinned at the shoulder, draped across their chests like the ancient, dusty togas of the Romelians of old. He must have been sharing some tavern jest, because as Basil approached, the two captains were bent double, clutching their bellies and wheezing with laughter.

The joyous expression on Laedio’s face only widened when he caught sight of the young prince.

"Uncle," Basil called out over the din of the yard. Somewhere a boy let fall of sack, and thousands of seeds of grain bursted out like coins spluttering across the floor.

"My prince!" Latio bellowed. He didn’t bother with the stiff courtesies of the court; instead, he stepped forward and caught Basil in a fierce, rib-cracking embrace that smelled of old sweat and strong ale.His long matty brown beard pinched Basil’s forehead as he found his head nestled in his chest.

The two captains immediately straightened, their laughter dying down. "Your Grace," they murmured in unison, offering tight, respectful bows. Basil gave them a curt nod of dismissal, and the men slipped away into the press of the crowd.

"I had hoped you’d come down to wish me a fair ride!" Latio said, his eyes gleaming with good humor as he finally released Basil from the bear-hug.

Basil wiped a speck of horse-sweat from his tunic, his brow furrowing as he jerked his chin toward the mounted men nearby. "Where are you riding to, Uncle? And why in the gods’ names are you clustered with the Hounds?"

Latio’s smile turned into something sharper, a bit more wolfish. "We’re riding south, lad. To Oizen. There’s a rot blooming in those hills, and your father wants it cut out before it spoils the rest of the harvest." He patted the heavy hilt of his shortsword. "The Hounds are for the road, to run down any fool brave enough to bring plight on the King’s road. But my blue cloaks? We’re going for the only thing we’re known for: crushing rats.And there is a fucking lot of them in the new jewel of yours. Your father told me he would give it to you as lordship by the bye, so congratulations, I suppose? Oh yes! Make sure to write while I go and clean your garden.That fair?"

Basil did not reply to that as he looked past him at the wagons of wood batons and shields. "If you’re taking the best of the watch with you, who keeps the city? Who takes command of the garrison while you’re off playing soldier?"

A mushin highbrow arched "Playing soldier?Why I ought to set you straight! Still, the second of my second,of course will take commandI’’

’’Why not just your second?’’

’’ A second is meant to aid the first.I’ll need Hypathio with me there" Latio replied with a careless wave of his hand. "He’s a dull fellow for he is no wagering man, but he knows how to keep the guards walking their beats and the gates locked at sundown. Besides, I welcomed the change. This city is already cleansed of its vermin. The alleyways are quiet, the guilds are paying their taxes, and my boys are growing soft from lack of skulls to crack.

Going soft , Aye. ’’ He said that with a sneer ’’That cannot do.So when Alph made the request to me, promised me some rat to catch and told me how he needed me for a job.Har!’’ He chuckled ’’Well, there isn’t much of need to spur an old hound , except for a few words and a piece of meat after job’s done. I jumped on it like a dog in heat..."

He leaned in, a hungry glint in his eye as he looked toward the northern road. The sound of grain swooshing against backs filled the courtyard. "It’s time we brought some proper order to that den of lawlessness down there. Those Oizen bastards have lived like beasts for too long. Stabbing and gutting the king’s soldiers?Now that is a death’s sentence if I ever knew.

They don’t know what’s best for them. But by the time my blue cloaks are done with their alleys, they’ll learn to love the peace,even if we have to beat it into them.

Always remember: Vermins don’t know what’s what, so it’s you duty to tell them what is exactly and indeed what , else it’s lawfulness.This is new to them, so they are going to grumple and revolt. You put them down now, hard and fast. The harsher the pain the stronger the peace.’’