This story is shaping up to be entertaining, and you have salted enough allusion and foreshadowing to keep you very busy story-telling for several volumes. I am starting to warm to the Garrik but the other boy is a bit of blank. Karrys is another sympathetic character. Some of your asides in the first submission, suggest that the boys might have been slumming so there may be potential to see him interacting with the Duchess.
I saw a number of structural issues that arise from characterization, setting and use of language.
First, the "fast pace" may be an experiment, but I think it might actually be getting in your way. It's a good sort of thing for a guiding rule, but such rules shouldn't become so rigidly applied that they hamper you. If you sacrifice too much character building the story telling will suffer and the fast pace will never have it's audience.
In the previous submission, the terrible Hand looks like an organized crime syndicate, then suddenly they are patriots engaging in Kingmaking. It's a jolt. And the only reason I can see for a group like this to let the boys see their faces, hear the plot to assassinate the King, watch the Drakkin assassinated, and escape is if it was all a staged performance. That would presuppose that the Hand knew in advance the boys would get caught, run into their territory, hide in just the right building and that it would all happen on schedule. It's pretty thin, but even if you intend that as the plot, then it begs the question why the Hand want to be the target of a manhunt by the Talonguard, and why they want a war with the Drakkin. Far too convoluted and otherwise it just doesn't make sense.
Let us not forget though that the Neutral City sits at the center of this heightened conflict. Prudence would prove wise
Prudence is at minimum a closely related concept to wisdom so this reads as, "wisdom would be wise." I know it's more of a catch it later issue, but it interrupted me reading.
“Sarikk, I wish the drakkin hadn’t left this city decades ago.
The phrase "decades ago" is too specific and not specific enough. The way it stands it sounds lecturely and pedantic.
Eight large high back chairs lined each side of the anteroom stationed in small groupings around sturdy oak tables.
I'm just not comfortable with a keep having wooden floors, or with one Royal, keeping another Royal of equal rank, waiting in an anteroom. The floors compound this problem, as Chule is obviously the poor country cousin.
Sergeant Jora Je’Thelras, the King’s niece.
The king's niece is a potential heir or at minimum the potential mother of a potential heir. As a royal, it seems unlikely that if she were allowed to take up arms she would be given a rank of knighthood instead of command.
For that matter a Duke or a Duchess is a prince, a royal and, technically, a King (or queen) who has sworn fealty to another King. It seems far more likely that the written message would have been simple stuff and even lies, to throw off anyone who managed to sneak a peek. The only logical reason for a Royal to carry a message, is if the real message were in her pointy little head.
Now it's your story and your plot, but that's the hurdle you face in convincing me that this made sense.
His mouth was wide and dual canines protruded from his lower lip, each two inches in length.
Not sure, do you mean dual as in two on each side? So four tusks then.
Long ears, sharp nose, and tiny eyes adorned a thin ragged Duke Chule.
This phrasing left me wondering at first if a Duke Chule was a style of facial hair I needed to know to read the chapter.
But why not inform her? She would have argued and tried to avoid the assignment, she knew.
I assume the tersity here is in the interest of avoiding wordiness, but some segue is needed to go from wondering why to answering her own question. Maybe rephrase for clarity.
On a positive note:
Thunder boomed across the sky in the distance. A storm was coming.
This works nicely, though it might work even better separated into a new paragraph.
I'm looking forward to the next block of this "chapter"? It's intriguing. If told a little too sparsely. ;P
