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he’d begun, but it was too late to go back now. He glanced around briefly, looking for any sign of support; his eyes landed on the prince’s face, but the young man was just as impassive as ever, looking at him with an unnerving lack of expression.
    “Things have gotten different on the border. It’s not my first time serving out there since I joined up, although it is my first time as Captain. The enemy is growing, not just in number, but in strength. They’re looking less and less… human, Your Grace.”
    The king shifted in his seat, displaying his impatience; David rushed on.
    “We recently came back from our last deployment and are headed out again. I’d like to formally request stronger body suits for them. Something like…” He felt a bead of sweat form on his temple and roll towards his eyebrow. “Something like what the dreadknights wear.”
    There was murmuring from the nobles gathered at the edges of the audience chamber, seated in comfort while David, and other commoners like him, stood. David had known the risk he took by making such a request - the dreadknights were noblemen, wearing suits of advanced kevlar from the Old Ages, while David’s common soldiers made due with modern plate armor and chain mail. As the room whipped into a furor, though, he began to regret ever speaking.
    “Enough!” The king’s deep voice silenced the fretting nobles. His wife, her hand gripping his arm, leaned over to speak to him in a hushed voice. Even the young, bored prince was paying attention, his dark hazel eyes looking at David rather as if he’d sprouted a second head.
    “Less human, you say?” It took a moment for David to realize the prince was speaking to him.
    “Yes, Your Grace.” He dipped his head briefly, fighting to stay calm as his heart pummeled against his ribs. “All the men have noticed it. They’ve grown taller, and stronger. There’s one leading them, we’ve only seen him from afar, but we call him-“
    “Goliath.”
    David ripped his attention back to the king. “Yes, Your Grace.” If the prince’s gaze was unnerving, the king’s was like standing in a tempest. David found himself wishing he were back on the borderlands again, fighting something he felt a little less defenseless again.
    “We have heard of this,” the king said, surprising David for the first time.
    The prince seemed surprised as well. “I hadn’t heard of such a thing. Why wouldn’t you tell me about this, Father?”
    The queen turned to her son with a curt look, and he retreated sullenly into himself again.
    “Tell me, Captain, have you gone to your superiors with your request?”
    David bowed, every instinct in him screaming deference. “Yes, Your Grace.”
    “So you do know your proper chain of command.”
    David swallowed, and merely nodded as an answer.
    “Kevlar is kept for Panath’s most necessary generals. Your men will make do as they always have, Captain Thresher. You are dismissed.”
    Sensing a safe path out of battle as he had many times before, David bowed a final time and swiftly withdrew.

Jonathan
    “You could have told me.”
    Jonathan’s father stood stiffly at attention while his manservants unclasped his heavy brocade cloak and withdrew. They were alone together in the antechamber to his father’s private rooms - or as alone as royalty ever could be, that is. His mother, uninterested in refereeing yet another fight between them, was in her lady’s solar, where she and a group of scholars translated and copied ancient texts.
    “The existence - or nonexistence - of Goliath is a matter of national security. If you’d wanted to know about it, you could have easily attended the military council. Instead, you played around with your toys.” Samuel swept his eyes over Jonathan and his guards, who stood at attention several feet behind him, faces carefully blank.
    Does he know? If he did know, he wasn’t tipping his cards, as usual. “I didn’t realize I was invited to join the