Chapter 52: Hungriest Beast of All...
"I should be asking you that," Keiser murmured, his voice low, roughened by weariness.
Tyron’s face paled even further at the words. His hands, already restless, clenched and unclenched against his knees as if he didn’t know where to place them. "It’s just... this feels like it’s my fault," he admitted in a voice that cracked at the edges.
Keiser raised an eyebrow.
So this was the same boy who had spoken so boldly before, declaring he could heal him with confidence. Now all that fire had shriveled into ash, leaving behind nothing but a nervous, guilt-ridden youth.
He leaned back against the damp stone wall, studying him.
It wasn’t surprising.
Hinnom had been harsh... more dangerous than most villages, with its proximity to Sheol, where beasts and abominations crawled out like maggots from rot.
But danger there was straightforward. They knew what had claws, what had teeth, what wanted to devour you.
The capital was different. Far worse.
Here, beasts wore perfume and silks.
They smiled as they sharpened their knives behind closed doors.
They feasted at gilded tables while blood pooled beneath the floorboards.
In these walls, the greatest predators were not the monsters in the forest... but the ones who sat in judgment, the ones who breathed power like fire.
Keiser’s gaze drifted from Tyron’s hunched shoulders to the iron bars that kept them caged. ’No,’ he thought grimly, though he didn’t say it aloud.
Because the boy still thought the capital’s cruelty was like Hinnom’s... raw, violent, and immediate. But it wasn’t.
Here, the bite didn’t always come from fangs. Sometimes it came in whispers, in ink, in a blade slipping quietly between your ribs after you’d already welcomed the hand that held it.
And Keiser knew all too well. In this place, the crown itself was the hungriest beast of all.
"It wasn’t your fault..." Lenko was the one who answered, his forehead pressed against the cold iron bar, hands gripping it as if he were too exhausted to keep yanking at it any longer.
His voice was muffled, but the frustration in it rang clear. "Those knights must be blind. Didn’t they even bother to check properly? We had a writ of passage!"
Tyron still looked unconvinced, fingers twitching again at the small vial hanging from his neck... a nervous habit, like the boy was trying to anchor himself by the trinket. His lips pressed into a thin line, pale as though the weight of it all was about to sink him.
"It’s easy and fun to be brave..." Keiser pushed himself up from where he sat, his steps unhurried as he moved to stand beside Lenko at the bars.
His gaze flicked back at Tyron, steady and sharp. "But the hard part," he continued, voice low but cutting through the air like a blade, "is to survive through it."
Even Jim and Jill, the two old men who had long been watching the exchange in silence, leaned over to tap Tyron’s shoulder in turn... rough, calloused hands offering wordless comfort. The gesture was clumsy, but somehow it steadied the boy.
Slowly, Tyron’s tight expression began to loosen, his breathing less frantic, the edges of his panic smoothing into something that almost resembled the confident youth he had been before. He no longer looked about to keel over under the weight of his own anxiousness.
Keiser turned back to the bars, but he felt Lenko’s gaze lingering on him. Irritated, he snapped, "What?"
Lenko only shrugged, the corners of his mouth twitching into a smirk. "I’m glad you’re making friends," he said, his tone dripping with mockery.
Keiser grimaced at the words. He didn’t bother replying to the jab, at least not directly. Instead, he shifted his attention back to the cold iron before him. "...Sure," he muttered under his breath.
Then, with deliberate rhythm, he lifted his knuckles and tapped against the bar... three times, sharp and precise, each beat alternating in pitch and pressure. The sound echoed faintly into the stale silence of the dungeon.
For a moment, nothing followed. Just the heavy quiet, the drip of water somewhere in the distance. Then...
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A resounding reply answered from a few cells down, the same rhythm thrown back at them.
Keiser caught Lenko’s bewildered expression from the corner of his eye and smirked faintly, though his voice was flat when he explained. "I don’t do friends. An alliance, maybe."
Keiser’s eye flicked to the side, catching movement... someone’s hand, lazily waving from the shadows of the cell that had answered his tapping.
A voice followed, rough and low, carrying the kind of practiced ease that only came from a man who thrived in places like this.
"Well, well..." the drawl lingered, casual but sharp. "What’s this, then? A client reaching out in a place like this?"
Keiser grimaced.
The familiar tone grated on him more than the mold-stink of the dungeon.
Beside him, Lenko’s head snapped around so fast it nearly rattled the bars. His eyes bored into Keiser with imploring confusion, as if demanding... ’What in the hells did you just do?’
And he was right to wonder.
Muzio had never dealt with things like this... Keiser was certain of it. The boy’s life, as far as anyone knew, had been confined to noble studies, rigid training, and sickness that kept him too frail to run wild in alleyway markets.
But the truth was harsher. Muzio’s life had been nothing but empty... no lessons, no training, not even a place at court. An outcast. A ghost wandering the palace halls.
So for Lenko, who had been at his side since the very beginning, to hear His Highness suddenly use a secret signal for dealings like this... it made no sense at all.
Even Tyron, still pale and jittery, looked bewildered. The old mans, Jim and Jill, paused mid-comforting pat on the boy’s shoulder, their worn faces creased with suspicion.
To them, the capital was still the shining jewel of the kingdom, not the nest of rats and backroom deals it truly was.
They didn’t know the truth... that the palace itself was a stage for beast, and beneath it sprawled a web of nobles trading coin for secrets sharper than daggers.
Keiser, however, knew it too well.
He had caught this particular spider, previously, as ’Sir Keiser’. He’d taken the risk, made the gamble, memorized the call, because one never knew when a noose might tighten around the neck.
And it seemed, for once, his gamble had paid off.
Because if there was an answer, that meant the man was here. That meant the kingdom’s most notorious information broker had been caught and caged at the same time as him.
And that meant Keiser was about to strike a deal. Dreading that the cost in exchange would not be as grim as the price he already envisioned.