Coded Sketches

"Idiots. Don't understand the sweet English language without a cold order." Roy muttered while looking at the door where everyone exited.

Ella's angry voice stated, "How dare you?"

"Daring what exactly darling?"

Ella turned her moving seat towards him completely and grabbed his collars, angrily looking at his eyes, "You bastard!" She yelled at him while clutching his collar angrily. Roy brushed a speck of mud lining around her left cheek, which was accessible to him due to their position.

"Calm down honey. That's no way for the heir to be behaving, right?" He said while removing the dust and tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear in the process.

She let go of him, his hands left in the air, stood up from the chair and moved back from him. "Since when have you been planning this?"

"What plan? This is your destiny."

"Don't play riddles with me Roy. We never agreed this. Weren't you the one who wanted this position? You fought for this, you worked for it!", she kept babbling about it who was getting confused by her own words.

"Ella."

"You were after the throne-"

"Ella!"

"My father gave it to you. I am giving it-"

"Elle", he called softly holding her shoulders closer to him. She stopped speaking and looked at him with confused eyes. He said no more and pulled her towards him, hugging her. She was standing frozen with what was happening; the series of events led from one to another until she was left in the spotlight having no words to form. "You can make as much theories as possible. But not before you hear the truth first", his voice said soothing her.

Roy kept on petting her head while she calmed down to her senses. She moved back from him a few moments later and gazed at him level headed.

"What are your intentions?"

"There are so many. For now, I want you to sign up the proposition and give the agreement to bring war on those Saudis."

"Explain. Everything that is going on."

Roy smiled at her and then it turned grim while thinking about it and pacing around the hall; Ella observed it all and waited for him to speak. "The deals with the oil supply go way long before us or Mark Kingsly. It had been present ever since the oil was discovered in abundance. But greed overtook the normal trade of goods and supplies. They want us to increase the amount of price negotiated in our deed; hence they had supplied less than half of the quantity. It happened once, two years back. At that time Mark was unable to influence it favorably, for which he asked for a secondary option. And in the context of maintaining long term relations with them with us being one of the prime buyers, the prince of the Saudi province had relayed an irrevocable contract to the next heir." He turned to her, "He asked for stronger relations with the throne through you.

"Why didn't Papa tell me anything about it?"

"That old man was still building negotiations with them, then he had almost accepted their terms until I interfered. You see, the Saudis were in need of consistent supply of money; they still are."

Ella thought about the events that had happened in the previous years. She reasoned, "The war. The conspiracy of the terrorist group being funded by them, was that why?"

He nodded in acknowledgement, "Close. Those were only rumors as the public know. But they needed it for better access to make weapons."

"How can you say-"

"Because the terrorist group was a cover. It was a cover for a larger covert operation. Those people are ruled over their religion and motivated to give away their lives in the name of their Lord." She looked at him and awaited more explanation for she was sure he must have done some study of his own. Then came his next question, "What do you know about the Faceless?" He looked at her expression and was surprised to find her knowing about it. Her eyes widened after two seconds and she looked over to him. "So you do know it. How?"

Thinking about the how made Ella look away from him and her eyes staring downwards, nervously moistening her lips. She could hear him coming closer to her. "I-I'm not sure." She said that truthfully but it wasn't enough for the man. "How, Ella? How do you know about this?" His voice was enough indication to her for not trying to lie.

Strangely Ella felt very uncomfortable with the situation as though she had knowledge of something that she shouldn't have known. But, wasn't it the duty of the heirs to know about those things which are specially not to be known! It would come to be a merit for the ones seeking knowledge, as her father used to say. "I, I read it in some notes here while I was studying."

"When?" He asked impatiently.

"About three months before my birthday party." Ella answered calculatedly avoiding the part to say 'the day I left'.

"What did you read Ella?" Now that was the trick question which she was hoping to avoid completely. She gulped and wondered whether to answer that.

"Um, it didn't contain any words but sketches. I don't remember them, but all figures were faceless", she said hurriedly.

"Ah, you saw 'that' one!" In a switch his mood changed from serious to amusing. "That was made by me, in order to protect the real contents of those notes."

"Oh."

"Were you snooping around my study by any chance that time?" He asked with hidden mock in his question. That got her again to catch her breath.

"No! I just stumbled upon it accidentally."

"Now that I remember, I had stored them well away from sight. So how could you stumble upon such drawings? Accidentally?"

"I-I was looking for a book and your drawer was half open, so I went to close it up and while doing that I saw some papers to be peeping out of the drawer." That got his attention. It meant that someone else had checked upon it before Ella.

"Don't worry darling. It was the sketch form of the actual contents in the Notes I had prepared. To prevent any snoopers." Ella's face was red by now.

She defiantly questioned, "Who in the right mind keeps such drawings in the drawer?"

"I thought you didn't remember them?"

"I do remember some. Now that you spoke of", she said timidly. Those sketches involved the ones of a male and female in awkward positions which at first confused her when she had glanced them and then as she saw them further, she understood that they were various positions of having pleasure! She put them back to their place and left the study as fast as possible with a flushed face and a corrupted mind.

"You said it was sketched purposely. Who were you trying to show it to?"

He smiled at her and answered, "Your father. But it didn't work."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know it."

"That's alright. I'm glad you told me. Because you weren't the first one to go through them. I never kept the drawer open, and it was not kept behind any files. Someone tampered the original position. If you didn't then it means someone had paid a visit that day in my study."

"It could be Papa."

"No. It couldn't. Else he wouldn't have agreed to give you away as a bargain for a negotiation." He said angrily.

"Was it so important that I had to be the one to make the relations?"

"You didn't have to do anything alike. It was just a plot to bring the throne into the Faceless. And I couldn't explain that to your father. He would demand a concrete base for my theory. After his death, my suspicions were confirmed for the existence of Faceless."

"What now?"

He nodded in acknowledgement and looked at her saying, "Now we have to ensure to stray ourselves from this conspiracy."