Down the dusky trail the procession rode, the rising sun shining into their eyes. Suhail paused to adjust the turban on his head and wiped the sweat from his brow, then goaded his horse to resume its walk. "My prince," one of the many bodyguards called out. Suhail turned as the horseman tossed him a waterskin. He took several gulps before throwing it back and giving a terse thanks. The morning sun gleamed on the bronze armor of his guards and the glare shone in his eyes, and the horses of the men riding ahead kicked up dust. The prince made his way to the front where such annoyances would be lessened.

Passing a dozen bodyguards, Suhail could not help but wonder why he had this small army accompanying him. The squad of some fifty Atarma that had been sent from Marad to summon him would have been excessive, yet a retinue of two hundred of Dhirim's city guards had also been ordered to accompany the prince on his journey back to the capital. Suhail knew Malik Uqais like a father, having had the man as a guardian for the past eight years. Uqais would not have sent so many bodyguards unless told to, the prince reasoned. This had to have been the work of his real father, the Sultan.

Suhail struggled to remember what his father looked like. He had seen the man once for a day or so, a few years back when he came to visit Dhirim. He had brought with him some foreigners, from a strange and faraway land named Ryukyu, that were to help Uqais modernize Dhirim and increase production. Naturally, after a brief greeting to his father, the prince had then allowed his interest to be captivated by the foreign scholars and their thickly accented speech, and before he had known it his father had left to return to the capital.

Then, half a year ago the letters had began coming in. At first they were a weekly occurrence, small gifts and friendly letters from his father, but they soon increased in frequency and size. For the past two months the letters had arrived constantly, sometimes two or three in one day. Occasionally they were friendly questions that Suhail amicably answered back to with a letter as expected, but many more were simply long ramblings: pages of his father's musings, on everything from the situation of the military to his thoughts on things such as salt shortages. A few times the messengers had been accompanied by bodyguards and the letters sealed many times, because the contents of the writings contained information that was secret to the public, and sometimes even to Uqais.

Suhail had not known what to think of the sudden flood of information; he read all the letters when he found the time, but after some time he had noticed that the handwriting was too sloppy to have been the work of a scribe. The realization that his father was spending hours every week, personally writing out these letters and having them sent had been strange, and somewhat worrying. The prince had started to feel that his father was going mad, until Uqais suggested that he might merely be trying to reveal his thoughts in the hope that Suhail would learn from them. Grooming him to be Sultan, from afar.

In any case, Suhail should not have been surprised when the Atarma came with a royal summon and orders to accompany him to the capital. There had been no prior announcement, and they ignored Uqais' objection that he leave at once without a ceremony or chance to bid the court farewell. Their leader said something about Suhail perhaps coming back, though Suhail suspected that he was done being a retainer to Uqais. With any luck he would be allowed to visit again, but Marad was doubtless going to be his home now.

The prince looked up from his musings, surprised to see a roadway sign that indicated they had traveled many leagues. The sun had risen as well. It would seem that he had rode for hours, the time passing by quickly as he looked back through his memories. Suddenly fatigued by the monotony of the countryside, Suhail waited until the procession passed by a small peasant caravan, with farmers bringing wagons of crops to the capital. Then, the prince moved back into the middle in the procession and joined in a conversation with some of the more affable Atarma. He laughed at their japes and joined in on the few times that he knew of the subjects that were discussed. The time once again passed quickly, and soon the great walls of Marad appeared on the horizon as they drew nearer to the city. After many days of travel, they were drawing close.

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[b]TL;DR[/b]

The prince, Suhail, has grown up serving as a retainer to the Malik of Dhirim. But recently, his father has taken an interest in him, sending many letters. Suhail has now been suddenly summoned to the capital to live in his father's court, and has traveled with a small army of bodyguards. They have nearly arrived.