Herald of Steel

“I think by that point Alozmer also ran out of patience.”

Sensing the pair of curious eyes land on her, the Queen Mother calmed her gaze and mused out, lifting her smooth chin and seriously recalling the former events,

“That creep had been promising Alozmer a potion of immortality for many years. However

despite trying for years, he repeatedly failed to deliver anything remotely useful. He even failed to cure the gout he had.”

(Gout is a type of arthritis that happens around the feet and other small bones. There is swelling and inflammation caused by build up of uric acid and blood and it makes moving those joints extremely painful. Among the causes of this disease is said to be obesity and excessive sitting or lying down, hence it was termed the king’s diseases. And true to the fact, the god king also had this.)

“So one day, when Alozmer’s gout started to flare up in a particularly, I whispered something into his ears.” Seelima’s facade suddenly changed from simple remembrance to something much more very charming and mischievous as she said this, her thick, red lips becoming curved with a curving slant, and her eyes twinkling.

It made the mature lady appear more like a fresh, teenage girl who had just played a prank and Alexander’s heart skipped a beat.

It went without saying the Queen Mother was still a very beautiful woman.

But this great change was still so removed from her usual self that it made her appear so much more attractive.

Alexander once again found how the mad king, even with his army of harem women chose her as his favorite.

While upon making that cunning smirk, the Queen Mother confessed,

“I reminded Alozmer he had originally hired that creep because he had promised to fix his gout. But he failed to do so even after so many years. So if he could not even do this, how was he going to grant him immortality?”

“Hehe, that really had that mad beast riled up. He immediately called him and then chewed him out for at least an hour for failing to deliver. Alozmer roared that he had given him tens of bodies to dissect, but all he got were empty promises and blatant lies.”

“The slimy ball initially tried to weasel out of his way by saying that granting immortality was not easy, that it would take time and that it was not the same as curing gout- he promised Alozemer could still grant him immortality but not cure his gout.”

“But then the mad king asked what meaning did life have if he had to live in agony for every second of it. Finally he demanded the mad maester to cure his gout with the next three months or be executed.”

There was a clear undertone of extreme pleasure in Queen Mother’s voice as she read out this fate, and it made Alexander wonder just how of this conversation was truly Alozmer’s own, and how much was it the clever lady simply steering her man.

Although it was impossible to guess accurately from this succinct recount, he guessed at least the entire framework of it had to have been orchestrated by her.

Alozmer must have only somewhat improvised the finer details of the script… without even knowing he was a part of the play.

The Queen Mother was not a shabby puppeteer herself.

“That seemed to finally cause some bells to ring off inside the idiot’s head. He found unable to simply bullshit his way out of there. So then seeing no way out, the creep suddenly asked opened his maw like a crocodile and asked for a Matbar (Marquiss) to be sent to the dungeons!”

“…????….” This sentence seemed a bit strange to Alexander, because he failed to see the connection here. What did specifically sending a Matbar (Marquiss) have to do with curing the gout? Why not ask for any other noble?

Hence he produced a look of clear askance.

“Wait! You mean that was why Matbar (Marquiss) Swehel died?” The news was far more alarming for Lady Inayah, as she exclaimed in shock.

As she was someone in the loop of the events back then, she was able to connect the events to a more personal level.

And the reason for her cry was that that incident had caused quite a bit of noise back then, with that prominent death really setting the nail in the coffin for that hated maester.

It even helped Pasha Farzah gain some unlikely allies against Alozmer, along with even many of the stancy royalist forces beginning to covertly retract their support of the mad king, thus paving the way for the rebellion to ultimately succeed.

Hence Lady Inayah found it fascinating to find all those great incidents had a start so… ‘mundane’?

A simple single sentence request made inside a room with two people?

And she was only finding the actual reason behind it all now?

Thus, upon learning this, she had a hard time convincing herself that a Matbar (Marquiss) was killed over a request just like this.

It should be known that this was an extremely high peerage rank.

Given that we always witnessed events through the lens of Alexander, who was officially a Pasha, anything below him might have been seen a bit small.

But in reality, a Matbar (Marquiss) peerage’s rank was nothing to scoff at.

Even a Jamider (Earl) was a behemoth in this country, someone even a king would think twice before messing with.

As proof, Lady Inayah had only recently became a Jamider (Earl) and even that was courtesy of Ptolomy and Agnirat’s increased importance due to the blooming trade with Alexander… although to be fair, her family’s standing was a bit special.

Due to their close relationship with the royal family as their tutor, they got to rub shoulders with even the high and mighty Pasha for centuries.

But still, hearing a high and mighty Matbar (Marquiss) be sacrificed just based on the wants of a mad doctor… shocked her,

And Lady Inayah found she still did not fully understand the kind of menace her husband was even five years after she killed the man.

Thus the black lady soon became all the more convinced that if there was one thing she did right in her life, it was killing that mad beast.

“Yes. This is the true cause behind Matbar (Marquiss) Swehel’s death.” While responding to her friend’s cry, the Queen Mother solemnly reaffirmed her statement with a nod,

“That mad maester probably said it to buy time… he thought Alozmer would never be able to able to get him a Matbar (Marquiss). That’s why when asked what was wrong with the current bodies and why he needed a Matbar (Marquiss), that bony fingered freak croaked that the bodies of shordars (barons) and talukdars (vicounts) were not close enough to Alzomer’s divine origin.”

“He said the higher the peerage of a nobleman, the purer he was.. the closer to Ramuh. Only by studying such a man could be find a cure of the mad king’s disease.”

“The charlatan even had the gull to give the excuse that that was why his usually effective medicine did not cure Alozmer’s gout. Apparently his body was too divine, unlike us mere regular mortals. Snort, what bullshit!”

The Queen Mother flared up her nostrils and cursed in a very unladylike manner, once again breaking royal protocol to show her absolute loathing for the man. In fact, hatred dripped out of her every time she even remotely made a mention of that man as she detested even the way that man looked at her.

It made her feel she was one of his lab rats, that she was going to be cut open and gutted any second now, making her skin crawl.

Lastly, he had a particularly disgusting, old, musty, medicinal smell that was stuck to him like plaster, courtesy of spending so much time in the underground cellars and handling all those disgusting things.

Hence whenever the Queen Mother was made to serve him, it made her stomach retch, and it was one of her most hated tasks.

Hence recalling all those things, she really wished she got to stab him a few times before he died.

While from the other side, Alexander gave a small smile at the Queen Mother’s dismissal of the mad maester’s techniques.

He was glad to see that despite all the egregiously wrong misconceptions and weird theories swirling all around about medicine, this lady had the brilliance to figure out that at least the most absurd ones were probably hacks.

Most people, even nobles did not have that insight- a phenomenon that was not restricted to Adhania either.

It was the same one even in Alexander’s previous world.

Take for example the famous case of the Russian monk Rasputin- it was said he managed to gain the favor of the Tsar by healing his boy. He claimed he had done so using magic.

When really, he simply took the young Alexie off his medication which was causing the problem in the first. The boy had a condition where his wounds had a hard time healing, and the medicine prescribed to him actually thinned his blood even more, thus aggravating the effect.

And one could fill an entire library with many more such examples.

While Seelima lastly added with a dismissive snort,

“Who knew Alozmer was insane enough to accuse Matbar (Marquiss) Swehel of treason out of nowhere and then send him to the dungeons. Fool should have asked for a Pasha, heh.”

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