someone who showed Ambrose kindness as a child. He told me while you were sleeping last night. He told me she was the only person who has done this,” Ms. White tells Gytha.
“Well, we show you kindness too,” Gytha corrects her mother.
“Yes, you two do. You two and that woman that I speak of are the only people that showed such kindness to me. I thank you two for this.”
“You are welcome,” Gytha said smugly, trotting in front of them both.
Ambrose smiles from Gytha’s reaction and continues, “I believe that woman might have been my mother.”
“Yes, you told me this already as well. Why do you think she did not tell you?”
“What my king does is look for young children around the age of two, sometimes even younger. If they meet his standards, he will kill the father and take the mother and child into his castle. From there, he will take the mother and make her a slave. He then takes the baby from her and condemns the child in a dark dungeon room.”
“Oh, how sad.” Ms. White looks down then back at Ambrose with new knowledge of him. “I see now. You were once a child like this. She would stop every once in a while to see you. While doing so, she had to bear the grief of not telling you her true identity. If you told the king by accident, he would execute her on the spot, knowing very well the exact woman you would have spoken of. Didn’t you say you think she was killed? This does not make much sense. You did not say anything about this woman, did you?”
“No, I never did. I think the king found out some other way and killed her. After she stopped showing up, I remember my king telling me she did not care about me. He said that is the reason she did not show up anymore. It did not make sense how he would have known about her, but he must have caught her and told me that crazy story to make me worship him as more of a god than a king. It worked.” His fist tightens to show anger toward his king and his lies. “He told me only he was the one who would always care for me and will never leave my side. So my heart filled with hate and anger, but I was very dedicated to the king. Because of this, I was able to become the most feared Sicarius and would never let anything happen to my king.”
“So what are you called? Is there a special group you are part of with a name?” Gytha changes the topic as children would do.
“What the people in our land call us is what my king’s ancestors named us. The kings that have ruled Fraudule have filled the people with fear. Just a whisper of or saying Sicarius out of the kingdom would be death. That is why this name, Sicarius, is so unknown to you.”
“Oh. So the name of the group is called Sicarius,” Gytha declares.
Ms. White looks away from the conversation into the trees for none to hear her think aloud, “Most feared?”
“What is that, Ms. White? I did not hear you.”
“Oh, it is nothing. Never mind me. Keep telling your story. You can call me Aida, by the way.”
Ambrose nods to acknowledge Aida’s request and continues, “Very well. As I was saying, recently, I have started to understand what really happened. So now I have no choice but to question my king. I do not know why I keep calling him my king. I shall call him King Oswald from now on. I have no king.”
“A true drifter,” Aida announces with a smile and a quick nod while looking at Ambrose with certainty.
“Yes, I agree. Well, every Sicarius is brought up the same way, only the king is to interact with us, and that is to make us believe we have no emotion. No other Sicarius had to deal with any other outsider like I did. An outsider gives us mixed emotions. Without mixed emotions, we would have no emotion. I think because of the emotions I had, but was too uneducated about, this gave me the upper hand with the other Sicarius. Kind of how King Oswald—” Ambrose stops in his sentence to hear and looks from the corner of his eye without