Puppet Strings - Chapter 1

A Fledgling piece, so still very raw but you get the idea.

If you like what you see, R&R and I may continue with the story.

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    “I don’t think you realize the trouble you are in young man.”
    Max made a show of looking around the poorly lit room before smiling politely.
    The Imperial guard towered over the miniaturized table and leaned into his personal space. A scarred and hardened face took over his vision.
    “Do you find something funny?”
    Like all the Imperial Guards, he reeked of the well oiled leather armor and had at least a hundred more pounds of muscle on him. But the bitter promise of death that came from his eyes was a new one.
    Max supposed the guard had every right to be pissed, but he wasn’t about to say that.
    “Yes, actually,” Max said, restraining his smile from a full out laugh.
    The flesh on the man’s face darkened as the blood from his hundred pounds of muscle went straight to his face. Arching an eyebrow expectedly, the Imperial played stone, waiting for his explanation. Max was tempted to let him stand there like that for eternity but couldn’t bring himself to it.
    “Here’s what’s going to happen…” Max glanced down at the man’s stripes. “Lieutenant.”
    “In the next couple of minutes, a knock is going to come from the door behind you. You’ll open it to see a man who out ranks you by more stripes than you’ve been alive and he’ll tell you that you’ve done a great job, commending you for your excellent work. Then, just when you are starting to feel all high and mighty, he is going to tell you to release me.”
    Max took in the perpetually darkening face with scrutiny. “You’ll protest, even though you shouldn’t. You might even threaten to quit--I wouldn’t recommend that.”
    He leaned in, matching the Lieutenant’s glare with one of his own. “But regardless of your meager threats, in the end, I will be free and you... Well you’ll either be continuing your meaningless job or looking for another one to support your wife and--two kids?”
    The table creaked under the man’s weight and just when Max was sure he’d stepped over the line for the last time, a knock came from the door.
    Max lifted a challenging eyebrow and silently thanked the gods for the timing.
    The door opened and, to Max’s disappointment, the Lieutenant’s Captain appeared. They whispered back and forth, the conversation clearly escalating at a point to harsher whispers—presumably at the point when the Lieutenant was told to release him. His captor shot a glare over his shoulder that could have killed and then at his superior. With a vicious snarl, the man pushed passed the Captain roughly, cursing creatively enough to get an approving nod from any self respecting sailor.
    The Captain quietly stood there, watching the exit of his Lieutenant with a frown. Then he turned to Max.
    “You have some powerful friends, young man. I would advise staying out of the daughter of the Empress’s private baths before you run out of favors.”
    Max, who hadn’t stopped smiling like an idiot, said, “I’d have used all my favors for just another hour in there.”
    The Captain, unshackling him, shook his head. “Son, you’re either the bravest man I know or the stupidest.”
    Standing, Max rubbed his wrists muttering, “For now, let’s stick with brave.”

    Upon exiting the Imperial Guard’s barracks, Kara pushed off of the wall she’d been leaning against and flanked him wordlessly. They continued to walk in silence for a whole three minutes until he couldn’t take it anymore.
    “Alright, out with it.”
    “Out with what?”
    “The four words you live and breathe for.”
    “I have a plan?”
    Max involuntarily winced at hearing his own words mocking him.
    “By the gods, I didn’t realize your poor attempts at Devian humor could get any worse.”
    “What part of your plan did you think was a good idea?” Kara demanded.
    “And here we go.”
    “Was it the part of us hiding in your soon to be blood sworn’s private bathing chambers--”
    “In my defense—”
    “Or the part that you pushed me into what you Devian’s pass for water?”
    “Now if I had known that the guards would check—”
    Kara grabbed his shoulder and successfully stopped him in his tracks. Max made no fantasies that he could pull away from the Tyrn’s grip. She had strength beyond any normal human—granted, no one would ever describe him as strong.
    “You don’t think do you?”
    He sighed and succumbed to looking into her brilliantly green eyes. She kept her tribal shawl up but he could still see a tuff of her snow white hair. From a distance, an uneducated man would have passed her off as a Devian, but her bronze skin she hid from view would tell even the daftest man of his error. At times Max had a hard time ignoring the fact that she was a striking woman, but it was difficult to appreciate her exotic beauty when he knew her true reasons for being with him.
    “Not my best plan,” Max admitted with a sigh. “But the only option we had at hand.”
    Suddenly concerned of an audience, he looked around them but only found Kara rolling her eyes. Of course, she wouldn’t have said anything if it could be overheard.
    Kara’s eyes narrowed and he inwardly groaned at the familiar gesture.
    “My responsibility is you. How am I supposed to protect you if you continuously push me out of harm’s way?”
    Max had quickly learned in the beginning that her value in human life wasn’t very high.
    “You can teleport, I can’t,” Max explained, trying to appease her logical side. “My presence, albeit painfully, could be explained. Yours couldn’t. It was the only viable option we had.”
    She released her grip on him and he imagined the rest of her face behind the shawl taking on a thoughtful pose. Tyrn’s were known for their violent but straight forward nature, and that’s why he took his chance and made for his escape.
    “And if you had killed the guards it would have raised more hell than it’d be worth,” he said over his shoulder.
    Behind him, he heard her footsteps tap in rhythm to his.
    “You still could have done your puppet thing.”
    He had the urge to correct her usual butchering of the Devian language but instead said, “And if I had done that, they would have known an Overlord was in the room. I’d like to see you explain that one to Sahir.”
    “Explain what, exactly?”
    The voice, that clearly wasn’t Kara’s, pulled Max’s attention to a side hallway where an older man had liberated himself a bench. He judged Sahir a little past fifty feet away, just outside of Kara’s senses.
    It was yet another reminder of how Dangerous the man was. Dangerous with a capital D.
    Sahir stood and closed the book he’d been reading. No one would have guessed that the nondescript Devian was secretly the Director of Shield, the clandestine organization that protected the Empire from all threats without the normal bureaucratic bullshit.
    “That I’d have to enlighten the old buzzards as to why I was bailing you out?” Sahir demanded.
    Max’s back stiffened. Sahir going to the Senate for approval guaranteed the Director to be in a foul mood. Wordlessly, he followed his superior down a hallway that would take them to the landing deck. “I report directly to the bloody Empress and even she doesn’t ask me what the bloody hell I do.”
    Sahir stopped and pushed the book he’d been carrying into Max’s chest. Hard.
    “Unfortunately,” the Director said the word sounding each syllable. “I need my best for this. Otherwise, I would have let you rot in a cell until you’re old and gray.”
    Max cracked open the book to where Sahir had marked it.
    “Woodstaff, that’s a Boarderland town isn’t it?”
    Sahir nodded grimly. “Both Red Dog and Flytrap went there to investigate rumors about wild dogs baying at night… Dogs that left hoof prints. That was over a week ago.”
    Max blinked in shock. “They haven’t checked in?”
    “I want you in Woodstaff as fast as a flying fur ball can get you there. You’ve got five days to report back.”
    “Then what?”
    Sahir uncharacteristically broke eye contact.
    “If I don’t hear from you in five days,” he said slowly. “I’m going to assume you are dead. If you’re dead, then it means the threat is real.”
    Max looked down at the book in his hands, and only then noticed that his hands were trembling.
    “And if the Yurki are back,” Max silently finished Sahir’s train of thought. “The Empire will be at war with the only enemy it’s lost to.”