The throne room of the court of Dispodel was unusually simple. It had a dark oak interior with four steel, leather padded seats on each side of a silver plated throne. The weight of the room seemed to branch towards one pillar above the throne, muted from squeaking but oppressive in silence. It could have been mistaken for a conference room had it not been for the rows of armoured guards brandishing halberds.
Sir Dotchus stood to the right of the throne, the only guard without a headpiece. His thin figure seemed to blend into the room and the throne itself, with only his concerned face standing out.
“I remember my father holding my hand as he claimed this seat was to be mine.”
The lord Cavellar laughed as he poured himself a cup of wine.
“It was my first day as lord and the first order of business was to have that gaudy-looking gold mine of a throne room renovated.”
Dotchus remained perfectly still. He was seething. He had woken up this morning to be informed that this would be the day of the Lord Cavellar’s apparently pre-planned abdication.
He had found out about this ridiculous plan of his ages in advance of course. While Cavellar was by no means simple, he was far too excitable to be discreet. Dotchus had hoped that he would at least receive a formal courtesy of notice. Either way dissuading the Toddler Lord would be impossible now. Perhaps the Lady Tictys could prevent this, but for the time being, Dotchus had promised himself he would do the best he could do.
“To think this is my last day as Lord, I do hope you won’t miss me, Dotchus. I’ve made preparations for a long trip away”.
He was interrupted by a horn sound at the entrance to the throne room — a royal messenger?
There was no standard bearer nor any reports of the queen visiting Cavellar. Dotchus questioned himself. Was this some other lord?
Four armed guards entered. Cavellar’s face wore a slight smirk. He raised his arms as if to surrender.
The guards rushed in. No one in the room moved. Before Dotchus could react, Lord Cavellar was stabbed through.
The Lord Of Dispodel would be declared dead in the papers tomorrow.
–
A month had passed. Dispodel was in the midst of a blizzard of political turmoil. Black banners were flown on the lamp posts of the Great Road, and shops were shut. People mourned – or pretended to mourn – the loss of their lord.
Lady Tictys had always believed that a monarch should act with certainty.
A monarch should never appear confused, never lack information, never proceed without a thought-out plan. Weakness, after all, had given her father the power to take over— and showing weakness could just as easily take that power away.
So when Sir Dotchus claimed Cavellar had just died —on the very day when he was supposed to resign— she didn’t know what to think.
She didn’t fully believe him. He seemed to be more annoyed at the fact that his lord had disappeared than genuinely sad. Still, Cavellar was believed to be dead by the public at least.
If Cavellar’s scheme was successful, it meant that she no longer needed to worry about how the abdication would damage the image of her own power. The power vacuum left in his wake was simply replaced by natural circumstances rather than by a defiant system.
Now, the idea of an election was suddenly plausible. Should such a sentiment really be allowed in a world ruled by noble bloodlines, with wealth confined to the crown?
If she had any other background she would not have hesitated to strike the Dispodelians. But she knew that the common person could benefit from making the decision. Though she believed her priority was to retain power, she was, at her core, a commoner, beneath the skin of the queen.
She knew, somewhere in her mind, that when Cavellar wrote that freedom lay beyond authority—that the system of power was a restrictive force—he wasn’t wrong. Appearances had to be kept, and not even a queen could ignore the shifting winds of public opinion.
She told Dotchus to continue with his preparations for the elections. Now, she had work to do. She had to cancel all the assassination orders she had hastily issued against Dotchus and Cavellar in response to Cavellar’s apparent betrayal.
Nonetheless, she felt a sense of ease that she shouldn’t have—knowing that Cavellar had what he wanted.
–
Guilt crushed Lathion.
He had tracked down the second Plot— but too late. The lord was already dead.
His hands ached. The sickly sight of blood— the same that once made him never want to draw a blade again— seemed to still stain his washed hands. Guilt gnawed at him: guilt that he had failed Leeland when he had been struck down by the first Plotters; guilt that he had failed the Lady Tictys by allowing Cavellar to be killed.
But guilt, nonetheless, for the peasants he had come across. People everywhere he went seemed tired of being ruled over. He didn’t find it devastating at the fact that they were mistreated by the nobility; his time living with the townsfolk had shown him that mistreatment was simply the norm.
But the powerlessness they felt when difficulty struck, that they couldn’t just raise a sword up against the aggressor, that they couldn’t rest today knowing they would have the resources to survive tomorrow. That they could barely protest when they were living day to day.
Lathion, too, felt powerless.
He was credited as a great knight, the one who had unravelled the first Plot to take Cavellar’s head. But he was also the knight who should have been ‘credited’ for failing to prevent the deaths of his colleagues at the hands of the infiltrators,
Why must the one life he saved be paraded over the loss of the others?
Every soldier knows that it is dangerous to question the fatal conviction to fight— yet Lathion had never strayed from questioning his purpose.
He felt the same guilt he had felt seeing the wounded Dotchus every time he swung to wound someone else. Could the one he harmed also be a friend, someone who should be respected.
Dotchus was now attempting to form a so-called ‘Recurrent Electorate of Authority’ in absence of Cavellar. Lathion wondered if any alternative to the royal system could last. Though a person of the common folk becoming a leader seemed like a new way forward, didn’t marriage between authority and wealth still persist?
At the very least, that ubiquitous feeling of powerlessness might decrease, when the common person had the autonomy to choose.
It was the complete rejection of authority that weighed the most heavily on Lathion’s mind.
Did they deserve to be stopped? Was there ever truly a need to prevent the plots of the people? There seemed to be an endless supply of those he had hurt to protect the precious code of laws— laws that prioritised and trivialised, rather than deliver equal justice.
Maybe he would resign from his role, and truly become a common man.
He had enough of fighting for a victory meant only for the few.
–
Cavellar walked with a knapsack over his shoulder, pacing the worn boards of a boat docked at the ready. Each creak beneath his feet left behind a new sound, that of shoddy craftsmanship, and overuse.
He smiled.
Perhaps he’d be back to the court one day. But for now, he had a world he could not have seen before now, within the grasp of his hands.
No longer bound by the authority of the throne, there was no Lord of Dispodel here. Just another wandering traveler.
Writer – Haran Thirumeni
Editor – Jessica Dai
Artist – Maryam Nawaz
–July 2025–
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