The King's Servants

Chapter 12

The next day, as the king had ordered, the human children were left to sleep in after their horrible month of meaningless chores. As all the servants shuffled out, one of the maidservants noticed that Miwana, the old cook, was still asleep. She approached the old woman and carefully rubbed the old lady's back to wake her up. When that didn't work, she moved up to Miwana's neck to try again. The moment she touched her neck, she withdrew her hand from it immediately. Miwana's neck was stone cold. She was dead.

Miwana didn't see what the children did to save king Baritorin so she had no idea, why her poison didn't work. Miwana had expected her poison to kill Baritorin in a matter of hours, but there he had been, almost a month later, still completely healthy. The realisation that her plan had failed worsened her already critical medical situation and led to her never recovering from her illness and, ultimately, her death.

In Miwana's cold hands, the maidservant found a note which said that Miwana wanted it read out to the household. The maidservant immediately told her fellow servants the sad news. The word of Miwana's death soon spread throughout the whole castle. As she had no family outside the castle, preparations soon began for her burial.

When the news reached Queen Armana's ears, she wasn't very much bothered by it. She had hated the old fool, so the fact that her castle had one less incompetent servant actually made her a bit happy. However when she heard that Miwana had left some sort of note of final note, a sly smile spread across her face.

She and Baritorin weren't on good terms as of the previous day. Why did he care so much about those human brats? Whatever reason, it was not boding well for them as a couple. Since the old hag wanted the letter read out to the whole household, why not honour her dying wish? Baritorin seemed to be very fond of kind acts, so maybe this would help him see her in a new light. "As much as Miwana did absolutely nothing to earn this type of honour, it's a sacrifice I'm going to have to make to win Baritorin's heart", she thought to herself.

Back in the servant's chambers, Amelia sat up in her small bed after, what she felt, was the best sleep she'd had in weeks. She looked up at her little clock to see that it was late in the afternoon and she and her siblings had still been sleeping.

She was about to shout for her siblings to get up when she saw a folded paper beside the hatch door. The paper was almost the same size as Amelia, so she knew that one of their giant colleagues had left it for them.

When she finally succeeded in unfolding the paper and reading the message, she breathed a huge sigh of relief. The note was from Wellsworth, stating that the king had asked for them to be left to sleep. "So we are not in bucket loads of trouble", she whispered as her brothers and sisters continued to snore. She decided to wake them up anyway, they had been sleeping for much too long.

Once they were all up, Amelia told them of what Baritorin had done for them. They all smiled. It seemed like the king really did care about their well-being. They had just finished dressing up when a loud knock came from their hatch door.

"Wakey, wakey little ones", said one of the servants, "Queen Armana has called for a meeting of all the servants in the main hall, Miwana has passed away". The children knew that name all too well. That was the cook who had tried to poison Baritorin and the person who started all their problems during the king's stay. As much as they were angry with her for trying to poison their friend, it was still unfortunate that she was dead.

The children all navigated the passageways all the way to the main hall to hear what Queen Armana had to say about Miwana's passing. They were actually quite surprised that Armana wanted to say anything at all, considering how much the two women had hated themselves.