by Eric Ugland
“There are not many sewers here, that is true,” she replied, just a hint of a smile around the corners of her mouth.
“I could kick Nikolai out of his office, or we could go to the Treasury. Or, you know, we could go stand on the wall. At least there we could see if anyone is eavesdropping. Your choice.”
She looked from the wall to the mountain and back.
“I was told you have your own quarters.”
“Yeah, they’re up there,” I said, pointing to the windows cut out of the rock well above us. “It’s just kinda cold with the wind and the snow and whatnot. And, you know, stairs.”
“Ah.”
There was something there, something she wanted to say but didn’t have the guts for. She wanted to talk to me in private, in my own quarters… Oh. It took a minute. I mean, I could have been adding a rather large amount of unsaid context, but it wasn’t far from the realm of possibility that she was engaged in some form of seduction.
‘How about the wall?” I said, starting to walk, figuring she’d continue along with me.
“Excellent,” she replied, sounding not at all happy with that suggestion.
We walked right by Carpophorus, who bowed reverently at the princess, and scowled at me while holding a large wooden sword. I gave him a big ol’ smile right back, as he cut through the air. Perhaps I hadn’t thought through my attempt at skipping murder-Montana-time; my afternoon was going to hurt.
We climbed the stairs to the wall, and the guards gave us some space. I noticed the princess held back ever so much, looking out across the open field with more than a little fear. There wasn’t much to see: five hundred or so yards of dead grass and mud, with the occasional splotch of snow tucked into a shady spot. Beyond that, tall trees and dark forest. The weather was moving from mostly sun to mostly clouds, but the cold westerly winds seemed to be on a midday break.
“What’s up?” I asked, leaning against the wall.
“You are rather informal, Duke Coggeshall.”
“Yeah, it’s a problem, isn’t it? I just can’t seem to shake the habit.”
“I like it. Refreshing.”
“Only feels that way for a little while. You’ll get over me pretty quick.”
She raised an eyebrow and pursed her plump lips. The princess had a different way about her than anyone else I’d met in Vuldranni, and that moment, her skin was close to perfect, her hair was well done, her eyebrows would probably be considered on fleek. I didn’t see a single scar on her, anywhere. I wondered if her almost perfect appearance had something to do with a sheltered upbringing. If she looked so good because she’d never missed a meal, or fought a monster.
I think she was about to say something, but thought better of it. Instead she just looked out over the open area some more.
“Was there something specific you wanted?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Or more that there is something I wish to discuss with you.”
The guards seemed to realize why we were on the wall, and had chosen to take new positions a discrete distance from the two of us. No one else had approached closer to the wall, but I noticed Carpophorus was chatting with the young woman who’d been accompanying the princess. The young woman, for her part, was sneaking glances at us on the regular. Seemed like Carpophorus had picked up on the princess’s desire for privacy and was helping us out.
“Seems like we’ve got a moment to chat without anyone overhearing us,” I said.
“What do you know about why I am here?” She asked.
I glanced her way. She was staring right back at me. It was a pretty intense stare, her big blue eyes boring into me as if she was about to do some sort of magic. The act of being a young girl was gone; she was serious now.
“Beyond you being the potential heir to the throne?” I asked. “Very little. I heard you tried to give the throne up.”
“I did. It was not something I was keen on inheriting.”
“But now?”
“Now I see I made a rather large mistake.”
“You want to be Emperor?”
She took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut again. She swallowed whatever she’d been about to say and shifted her intense gaze from me to the dark foreboding forests beyond.
“I have no idea what the Empire needs,” she said finally. “Nor what the Emperor is able to do. It was a process hidden from me as I grew up. My father was as much a stranger to me as I am to you. I was not prepared for ruling — I was prepared for a political marriage.”
“One, I’m hearing a lot of excuses, princess. No one can possibly know what being the Emperor is truly like. There’s only one Emperor at a time, and unless you’re the Emperor, you just don’t know. And two, that’s not what I’ve heard about you and the Emperor.”
“You are new to the Empire,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “At least as far as I have heard. For that reason, I will forgive you for speaking so bluntly of topics you know little about.”
“Is the topic you?”
“Yes.”
“Princess, I know people. I’ve known a lot of people in my life. Good people, bad people, young people, old people, poor people, rich people, happy, sad, glad, mad, craven, suicidal, psychopaths, sociopaths, and homeopaths. I’ve known all kinds. I’ve been fucked over and done the fucking over. I’ve killed people, saved people, and left people to horrible fates. People might be the only thing I know well. So, yeah, I don’t know you, but I can hear what’s behind the shit you’re spewing.”
“I spew shit? Do you know to whom you speak, Duke of Coggeshall?”
“Sure. A young woman who’s scared because she’s on her own for the first time.”
Once again, she looked away from me, this time over at Coggeshall.
“Maybe I am scared,” she said softly.
“Being scared is never the problem,” I said, excited I could pull a trite quote out and sound like I was a genius. “Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the triumph over it.”
She seemed to take that in for a moment, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed.
“You continue to surprise me, Duke Coggeshall. It is one reason I am willing to speak to you. To trust you. But your newness to my empire means you lack the grasp of our history that you should. Do you know of the Carchedon?”
“I’ve heard of them. Nearby assholes, tend to invade us a bit, then we invade them a bit?”
“They have long been our adversaries, but we are just distant enough that an all-out war with them has never been possible. Sadly, our conflict with Carchedon never ends. We throw our sons and daughters to slaughter, doing little more than fertilizing fields with our blood. My father had his own plan to end the war.”
“You.”
“Me. I was to wed the Hospodar’s son. My father and the Hospodar had communicated in secret, and a deal was struck. I was betrothed without my knowledge. The Hospodar was much like my father, a man who cared about his people. But his son was different. A capricious and cruel young man, if just the nicer stories told are remotely true. I was unwilling. And ultimately, my betrothed wanted war. He killed his father to make sure the wedding could not be completed, and took the throne.”
“Sounds like a good husband.”
“He is a more a monster than any I have ever met or seen.”
“But you were left without a gig.”
“You mean like a role? More or less. I was not overly disappointed but ultimately, I find I am not prepared for the situation that has resulted. I thought my father would be alive much longer than…” she trailed off.
“Than he was,” I finished for her.
She nodded.
“My uncle’s desires were no secret,” she continued. “But my father believed it would amount to nothing. He thought his brother was all talk, that when push came to shove, Valamir would remember family. He was convinced there were bigger threats to the Empire than Valamir.”
“Who?”
“I hav
e no idea. He never entrusted me with any of his theories. About anything, really. He had decided who I was before even I knew it — I was just a pawn to be used to placate some other ruler.”
“I don’t want to make light of your situation,” I said, “because it sucks. I know what it means to lose a parent. Or both. But, at the same time, it’s given you the chance to pivot your path to whatever you want it to be. That’s huge. Most of these people here,” I gestured to Coggeshall behind me, “they were born into what their life is going to be. Farmers, soldiers, miners, regardless of what they actually want. You get to choose. You want to be the Empress? Take it. All you have to do it say yes, and there’s no way the Senate can stop you—”
“What if I cannot pass the test?”
“Then, once again, you’re letting fear dictate your life, Princess. You aren’t making your own choices.”
“And if I choose to give up the throne?”
“I don’t know. You can be a farmer. Or a soldier.”
“Or a miner?” She asked with a smile.
“Sure. Make candles. Hunt monsters. Weave baskets. You can do most anything.”
She was quiet for a moment, as if she was actually absorbing what I’d just told her.
“Do you trust your men?” She asked, out of the blue.
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you know what they intend?”
“When, and where?”
“For you.”
“As far as I know, we’re just trying to make a safe home for people. A place to weather the storms of the Empire and beyond.”
She laughed a little, a harsher sort of chuckle than I’d heard from her so far.
“What?” I asked.
“You are either innocent or stupid,” she answered.
“Probably a mix of the two,” I replied, doing my best to let the insult slide off.
“There is a reason I am here—”
“You mean other than you’d be killed if you were anywhere else?”
“You do not see it?”
“Not yet,” I replied, genuinely confused with where she was taking things.
She looked me over, nodded to her self, then looked back across the open field once again.
“I know being blunt is your thing, but I find it quite a challenge to be so, a lifetime in court has taught me to speak around any topic of import. Because gods-forbid a child should speak his or her mind on a topic to be left for adults. I am still thought of as a child, and those around me seek to yet do what my father could not.”
“Aren’t you still a child?”
“I am old enough to be wed — is that not the act of an adult?”
“You’ve got me there. But how old are you?”
She sighed, and though she’d turned away from me, I’d swear she was pouting.
“I am twenty-two,” she finally admitted.
Definitely not a child then, I thought.
I had the feeling there was more to this story than she was letting on. From what Cleeve and Nikolai had told me, the Emperor was no fool. He’d had a pretty clear picture of the enemies out to get him, and he seemed to value his people as, well, people. I just didn’t see his own daughter being ignored in the way she was describing. The princess may have been engaged in a marriage intended to become a political alliance, but if everyone treated her as a child even though she was in her twenties—
“They expect us to marry,” the princess said suddenly.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, startled out of my reverie.
“I am here to fall in love with you, and I assume you are either to do the same or to realize the positional benefits of marrying the Emperor’s daughter, so that you may take the throne instead of me.”
“Uh, who’s plan is this?”
“Nikolai, Wian, my father, and whomever else is involved.”
My brain clicked and whirred as that plan ran through, and not much seemed to line up.
“Let’s just say that is their plan,” I said as my brain clicked and whirred as I thought about that idea as a real plan. “Which, I’m not saying I’m convinced it is, but if it were, I don’t see how that benefits either one of us. We’d still be stuck here, prevented from going to the capital so we could, what, vote me in as emperor? And your father’s votes only count for you, not me, so you can’t exactly transfer those over. Not to mention, I have zero desire to govern. If anything, I’d like to pass off some of the responsibilities I already have so I might engage in more leisurely pursuits.”
“You are not doing a great job wooing a princess by saying you’d prefer to be lazier.”
“Oddly enough, my desire to woo the princess is right about even with my desire to be emperor.”
She tilted her head and squinted, as if she was trying to see through me.
“You are lying,” she announced after a moment.
“Hey, princess, you believe what you want to believe,” I said. “But let’s not bring more poop into this shit storm. We have enough problems to deal with right now. You want to be Empress some day? Great. Super. Awesomesauce. If that’s the case, though, you gotta start pushing yourself to be more involved with the people. Help them. Boost morale. You want to be a miner or something else? Learn a trade. Now is not the time for romance, okay?”
Her face was a cute mixture of disbelief, frustration, and confusion.
“What if what I want is romance?” she asked, her eyes staring into mine.
“Oh, would you look at the time,” I said, “have to run. Good talk. Great talk, even. Always available if you want to chat some more. Have a lovely day.”
I stepped off the wall and dropped the thirty some-odd feet to the ground. Immature, sure, but it did a great job in ending our conversation. A conversation which had actually made me look forward to my time with Carpophorus, though when I heard the laughter coming from the top of the wall, I felt a bit worried.
Chapter 146
I made it twenty feet before Carpophorus came blazing out of nowhere, sword held high for a massive overhand chop. I got my arm up, acting mostly on instinct. I heard a sharp crack as the wooden sword slammed against my forearm. The wood snapped, and the top half of the blade spun off.
I grabbed his wrist and pulled his arm out straight. I was about to break it over my knee when I finally realized what was going on, and stopped.
“You are learning, your grace,” Carpophorus said with a nod.
Then he smacked me on the other arm with a club.
“Not fast enough, though,” he replied.
Afternoon training, also known as getting the shit beaten out of me, had begun. This time, though, I felt like I could hold my own ever so much — I wasn’t getting absolutely beaten on every single spar at least. I focused almost exclusively on sword and shield combat, though there were several times where Carpophorus had me use shields alone. Sometimes a single shield, sometimes two shields. It wasn’t fun — even with two shields, the motherfucker still found a way to slip his weapons around my defense and wallop me. Every few minutes, my skin became a new abstract painting of pain. I had bruises and lumps and bumps, and blood ran out of welts and cuts and scrapes.
But I was learning.
Cool beans, you’ve leveled up the skill Swords (Lvl 25).
Cool beans, you’ve leveled up the skill Shield (Lvl 40).
And it wasn’t just my stats increasing; I had a sense for fighting now - I understood how to get my feet under me to accept a hit, how to move my body to turn the strikes away from me, how to look two or more moves ahead and set my opponent up. Granted, my current opponent was so much better than me that even when I set everything up perfectly, he still managed to smack me around. Every time I thought I had him, he managed to beat me down.
I must have done something right, because Carpophorus put up his hands, and said he needed to take a break. Then he assigned me some stances and forms to work through with the sword and shield.
So I didn’t get a break. I started workin
g through the damn forms. I understood the point of it, the ability to drop into muscle memory when things got crazy. And yet, I was bored. I found my mind wandering through the events of the last few days. The princess, the kobolds, the night goblins, the ursus and the corrupted ones, and the whole damn Empire. How did I fit in with everything, and how would I start to fix some of this shit? Was the princess right about everyone planning for us to marry? I didn’t exactly see how that made sense. Perhaps in a more traditional monarchy, it might get me on the throne, but I wasn’t a great choice for that. On the other hand, perhaps the Emperor thought his buddy Cleeve was going to find a great heir for the dukedom, so it might have been a good plan on paper. They just needed somebody completely different. And I was me. Oops.
But this was a modified elective monarchy, so whether or not I was married to the princess made almost no difference at all. All that mattered were the votes I could get, and considering the princess wasn’t exactly popular, I didn’t think she would actually help my chances. Anyway, Nikolai wasn’t convinced the princess would make a great Empress, and he’d never been even remotely confident in me. It made no sense.
Then I realized something, and it rankled at my brain. Nikolai had said that a worm of that size hadn’t been seen in the Empire for a long time. And Harmut told me that worms weren’t from the same plane of existence as us. So how did the worm get there?
Something smashed into the side of my head, and I dropped to the ground.
I rolled to the side and got my knees under me, coming up into a guarded position, sword and shield at the ready. I tried to stabilize my vision enough to see straight.
Carpophorus stood in front of me, a grim frown on his face.
“You have to pay attention for this to be of any value to you, boy,” he sneered.
“Sorry, man, but I got a lot going on—” I started to say, but he just attacked me again, which was as valid a way of interrupting a shitty excuse as any.
He laid into me, and we fought back and forth across the grounds. It pissed me off that he’d taken advantage of me thinking. Especially because thinking was something I’d been neglecting for a long time. Here I was, finally getting a few neurons to fire, and then this asshole comes along to beat on me.