The King’s Tower

Basen looked out from his boss’ office towards the silver-blue glass monolith being constructed a few blocks away. That will be my new office, he thought. But more importantly it’s a symbol of what is to come, either bad for Synn or bad for the Confederation; either way – bad.

Basen is the personal advisor to the Hud Ker of Synn prefecture, which along with its southern neighbor of Peadraj, forms a rather sharp thorn in the Confederation’s side. Gempech Drensomin V would have eve his own relatives banished if they called him the colonizer term “Hud Ker”. Basen learned that the first day as the newest in a long line of personal advisors to the Gempech or king of what was the last of the old independent city-states to ‘join’ the Confederation. Almost four hundred years later, it remains the most rebellious prefecture in the Confederated Metropolis of Gwij.

~~~~

“Yes, Hud Ker?” Basen signified his prompt arrival after being summoned scolding himself for making a stupid rookie mistake. I can’t even think of that word for fear of saying it.

“What did you call me, you Confederation flea?” Drensomin swooped his bulk down to meet his Confedeation-appointed advisor. The king Hud Ker was a large almost obese mass of a man approaching his sixth decade who towered over almost anyone in his “court” at the Synn “Palace”, as he called the prefectural capital building “Bad enough I have to use that insulting title when I’m forced to attend those interminable meetings down in Karkasum Nesula. I will not be called that pack-animal title here.”

Besan could only nod and bow with a slight but required slant to the left. Beads of fear sweat began bursting on his skin, sending chills through his slight body.

“Do that again, and I’ll send you back east to that idiot Portinen. He can have you spy on another one of his increasing number of enemies; if there are any left alive.”

“Your highness,” Basen started to correct him by saying he is a native Peadraji but thought better of it.

“What is it?” Drensomin demanded instead of queried.

“Uh, understood. It will not happen again, sire.”

Drensomin, no longer interested in his assistant and his close to deadly faux pas, focused his attention on the new palace tower and mumbled his response. “I know it won’t.” The Gempech reminded Besan of one of those ancient angry stone statues of the Gwij Bilik pantheon, his heaving graying beard and eyebrows killing any other expression.

~~~~

His highness is doing something very dangerous by building his new capital building taller than the East Confederation Tower, Besan thought. Hope he knows what he’s getting himself and the almost three million of his subjects into by literally overlooking the symbol of power of the Confederation. The new tower will be spectacular, though. Besan had to admit a sense of pride of being a Peadraji and working for the living symbol of defiance to the hegemony of the Confederation.