Chapter 80

The next course was thinly sliced sugar beets, baked on top of dense pasta in a cheesy but oily sauce. It added a sweetness and crunch to the Roman mac'n'cheese. It was also going to turn my pee red later on. The pasta was heavy, but it was the best thing served tonight. A few men further down the table were getting louder, drunk on the wine, but no one at the head of the table held them in check.

As the rest of dinner proceeded, I had a front-row seat to final negotiations with Castile and Dunchess Veronica. The biggest hurdle seemed to be what requests the Duchess would submit to the Legitus Legonis that Castile's company would then accept. I listened as I ate, and certain requirements needed to be met. It had to be Empire business, a monster subjugation, a benefit to a First Citizen, or a defense against a foreign power in order to be legitimate.

Linking a request for a duke was very loosely regulated. When an assignment was accepted, the mage company had a certain number of days to complete it. The assignment could be completed quicker, freeing the mage company. Our current assignment was slated for a maximum of six months due to the distance and work involved.

A duke could only have one preferred request active at a time. They would be assessed the Emperor's tax if they exceeded the one request. Since Duchess Veronica was so tight on coin, she could only make one request at a time. The tax was also applied if a request required more than one mage company to complete it.

The discussions basically ended with Castile being able to review the request before it was sent magically to the capital by the message sending spell. There was no dessert, just an alcoholic heavy cream drink. I could smell the alcohol coming off it as I brought it to my mouth. I had barely touched my wine but quickly drank the creamy alcoholic milk but did not feel the expected buzz. I guess I would need to work harder in the future to overcome my enhanced constitution.

The Duchess stood, clapped her hands, and twenty-four servants, all dressed in her dark green house colors, arrived. "The servants will take you to your rooms. You should all have baths waiting for you!" There was a scramble as a few of the servants were young women.

Castile barked, "Hold legionaries!" And the men stumbled as many were drunk. She turned to Adrian, "Adrian assign each man to a servant, and if I hear of any impropriety or abuse, I will handle the discipline myself." Castile left with the first middle-aged man in the row. The waiting servants had also all clearly heard Castile's pronouncement.

Adrian started pointing at the servants one at a time, and they stepped forward, and he would call a name. The first servant he pointed at was a graying older man, and Firth was assigned to him. There were snickers from the men as everyone knew his propensity to visit brothels. I still believe he mostly visited brothels in his capacity to work for the Praetorian Guard. Firth grunted non-committedly as he followed his man out.

That was how it went. One after the other, and I waited and waited. Finally, it was just me, Konstantin, Adrian, and Delmar. The four remaining servants were all young women. That sneaky bastard! Delmar spoke, "Konstantin, after you clean up, I want you and Eryk to scout the city and surrounding terrain."

My jaw hung open. I guessed, as a scout, I was going to have to get used to getting less rest than the others. "You two," Adrian pointed, "Take these men to adjacent rooms if possible." We followed the two women in green dresses out of the hall.

As we walked, I noticed that although the Citadel had lots of glass, there were not many decorations. Some walls looked like they had square fading, so maybe a picture had once been there. Missing furniture in the wide hallways was marked on the floor by their outlines in the floor where they once stood. We ascended wide white marble steps following our two guides. Both had light brown hair held back in a bun. The green uniform dresses were baggy, so you could not tell their figure from behind.

We climbed to the third floor and were brought down a wing, "This is the guest wing. Each apartment is fully furnished, and we will be available to call on at any time." She paused at a large, deep blue door that I recognized as tace wood from Tsinga.

"Ah, tace wood from Tsinga," I said aloud, stroking the door. I was doing this for Konstantin's benefit as well as to show off my knowledge to our escorts.

Konstantin was unimpressed, "You can have this room, Eryk." Konstantin moved to the next door with the other servant woman.

The servant opened the wide door and waited for me to enter. The room was massive, and the walls and floor were the white marble that I assumed was quarried nearby. "This is my chamber," the woman motioned to a door to the right. "It is where you can find me if you need anything. If you follow me, I can show you to the bath."

I paused to take in the room before following. A massive bed dominated the wall to the left, and a single nightstand was adjacent. A floor-to-ceiling window nearly ten feet wide dominated the far wall. We were on the backside of the Citadel as the windows looked down onto gardens and a forest beyond. A bar ran in the ceiling over the window, but the curtains were apparently missing. I stepped to catch up with the servant.

"Thank you, what is your name?" I said as she walked around the corner.

The young woman turned, "Lareen, legionnaire." She paused, "May I have yours as well?"

"Eryk, Konstantin mentioned it in the hallway," I said, disappointed she did not remember.

She smiled at my disappointment, "I was unsure if it was your name or a term of derision based on his countenance." I think she just talked down to me, but I was not sure. I guess I was supposed to be the brutish, uneducated legionnaire.

She paused at a narrow door, "This is the latrine. Once you use it, call for me, and I will empty it." I nodded but planned to shit in the woods when I went out scouting with Konstantin.

The next room was the private bath. A tub was recessed into the floor. A long wooden table ran along one wall, and a high window gave the chamber light. It was big enough for two—or three people. "I thought you did not have an aqueduct? They carried all this water up here?"

Lareen looked at me, "Ten boys haul buckets up to the top of the Citadel all day. There is a cistern up there." She walked to a spigot near the tub. "A servant heats the first pipe coming off the cistern and gives us the hot water. Your water will just be warm as we had so many tubs to fill."

"I will clean your clothes for you, Eryk, while you bathe." Lareen waited patiently, and I stripped off all my gear and clothes. She started sorting the items. I settled into the tub, and it was barely even warm. Well, it was water, and I had an assortment of scrubbing devices on the floor near the tub. I took the soap and an abrasive sponge. I washed my hair first and then worked my way down.

I thought Lareen would have left as I was ignoring her per Castile's orders. She was still working and always turned away quickly when I looked at her. I sat down in the tub and scrubbed away the four days of road dirt. The soap had a floral scent I could not place. Loreen had placed my pack and all my gear on a table in the large bathing room and finally left. The only problem was there were no towels or clothes to change into.

I rinsed off and stood. The bathroom door had a lock on it, and I closed and latched it. I pulled out my clothes and dressed in my nicer clothes. I knew Loreen was going to take at least an hour to wash those clothes. I was in a private space and was not going to be disturbed.

I decided to take out the dead elf scout from when we escaped Macha. I would use the collector on him and see if it preserved him for using the device. I was nervous as I did so, and the body appeared on the floor. The elf looked so young, like a teenager. I removed his bow and quiver with eleven arrows. His bow was layers of wood and much longer than the legion short bows. The arrows were longer, too, so I was not sure about using them interchangeably with a legion bow.

I placed the collector on his chest and activated it, waiting anxiously. The blue wisps were drawn into the collector, and an essence was formed! It actually had worked. The elf was eigth or nine days dead, and he still gave an essence. It was a pearly pink and the size of a major essence. It took me a moment to remember light pink was for the empathy attribute.

That was my lowest attribute. I did not hesitate and dropped it in my mouth. The dissolving ball seemed to have a lemony taste that traveled into my brain. Can you even taste lemon in your brain? Before I could dwell on it, the sour sensation faded.

After assimilating the essence of empathy, I felt slightly off, like I was not quite myself. I was kneeling on the floor and noticed a blood trail coming from the elf's body. Shit. Of course, I had stabbed him in the chest to kill him, and he had been preserved fresh. I would have time to clean up the blood after I stripped the body and placed it back in my space. The body was still warm but pushed past my discomfort.

I pulled off his small satchel. It was like a small backpack and had numerous items inside. There was a pouch with steel arrowheads and fine wire wrap. I guessed he repaired or even made his own arrows. There was a bag of tightly wrapped food. A roll of thin netting. Maybe it was to catch birds to take their feathers for arrows? A small kit of knives with a sharpening stone. A few blood stains on the kit made me think this was for dressing a game animal. So, this elf was a hunter. A pouch of salt. A white shirt rolled tight. The final item was a fire starter kit. I put everything back in the satchel and placed it with the bow in my dimensional space.

I took his belt off, and it had a knife and a long sword. I checked the blades, and there did not appear to be any markings, making them runic weapons. The craftsmanship looked average to my untrained eye. I searched his jacket and found a pocket on the inside. A bag with some powder—the color and consistency looked like the mycoid powder Konstantin had given me. There were no healing potions at all on him. He had an old, tarnished silver chain around his neck. It was intricate, and I was not certain if I should take it. In the end, I did and placed it with the other items in storage.

The elf looked to be more of a hunter than an army scout. Maybe a civilian recruit to the Bartiradian army or a volunteer woodsman. I moved the elf back to. I removed my clothes, not wanting them to get dirty. Then, I began to clean up the congealing blood with the spare shirt from the elf's satchel. I drained the bath as it was a simple plug in the bottom and then used the water from the spigot to clean. I even wiped down the tub, as it had a layer of dirty soap scum on it.

With the tub cleaned, I quickly used the cold water to rinse my body again before dressing. I guessed whoever heated the water pipe was off duty now. I checked the cleaned bath and nodded. I unbarred the door and went to the only mirror in the room. I looked a little ragged with a few days of facial growth.

I crashed on the bed and waited for either Konstantin to drag me out or for Lareen to return with my cleaned clothes. The bed sucked me as it was too fluffy for my taste. I could smell the feathers inside the mattress. I preferred the smell of my griffin-down pillow, so I removed it from my space, placed it under my head, and quickly fell asleep.