Morning all and welcome to Friday. It seems to have gotten here before I was ready but well, it is here none-the-less. So let’s see what the morning prompt brings and get started on the day. Ready with the timers and off we go.
I have to say I wasn’t quite sure where this was going to go, but I kind of like where it is heading. I may work on this a little at lunch today.
Friday, November 15th: He studied the prints on the damp soil.
He studied the prints in the damp soil. ‘A few days old at best,’ he guessed judging from the weather. He was gaining ground. He allowed himself a tight smile and walked away from the prints. He mounted his horse and continued down the trail. He rode slowly, eyes trained on the ground. He needed to find them before anyone else did.
While he was more than willing to accept his share of the reward for their capture, he also had his own questions he wanted to ask the two fugitives. Questions he wouldn’t get to ask should anyone else get there first. He frowned. The warrant read dead or alive but he knew that many of the others would go for dead. It was easier in the long run.
The prisoners could escape and run off while their captor was sleeping. The could be wrapped up in a tidy little bundle, or at least the parts needed to be brought back to the king as proof could be. It was far less trouble than managing live captives.
‘Especially when one is said to have blood magic.’
That was the part that troubled him. Blood magic was passed down through the generations. The bloodlines were strictly guarded. Even if someone had an illicit tryst along the way, they would have reported it on the off chance a child was born of the union. Not reporting such an act would reap dire punishments and the old families often kept people employed simply to search out anyone who spent the night with a member of the blood even if no intimacies were reported. To leave a child of the blood to grow up without proper training was unthinkable.
Yet before he left, he checked the registry. No link was found. There was not even a mention of a common moment where anyone from the House of Tarlan spent the night at a public in with a member of the bloodline. And he had been thorough. He searched the main family as well as every line of those who married in. When the rumors started, he, along with a team of archivists searched for connections.
None were found, yet the rumors persisted. It was why he was told to offer himself in the guise of a common bounty hunter and join the search. It could be a political ploy or it could be truth. They had to know. He was to bring the fugitives in to be testing. They would find out the truth of the rumors. Deverac wasn’t sure which would be worse.
If there was no blood magic than someone might be trying to bring the old families into their political realm instead of letting them sit safely apart. Peace existed because of the separate rulings. Those with magic were judged by those with magic, their actions accountable in ways often far more harsh than those without. Ans those with magic left those without magic to the judgement of the others. If someone was seeking to combine the two it could lead to war.
On the other hand if the child did have magic, someone was going to have some explaining to do. The bloodline would be traced and explanations demanded. It could, depending on the results, lead to internal conflicts.
‘Which we can ill afford at the moment,’ he thought.
Ten til Midnight 