***
“You do realize you won’t be alive to witness this revolution of yours,” Rook said as a pair of muscle-bound soldiers shackled him to the table.
General Bremen grunted. “Because your companions will come for you? You’ll forgive me if I’m not particularly worried.”
“No,” Rook told him. “Because one of your companions will kill you first.”
Bremen glared down at the Ebaran man. In many ways, Rook was exactly what the general had expected: clear-minded, poised, and too observant for his own good. All things considered, they were traits Bremen respected in those under his command, but right now it was rather annoying for one very simple reason.
He was right.
“You don’t really think the prince will have any use for you once he controls the Faceless, do you?” Rook went on. Despite his best efforts, the man’s voice was strained and even taking on a twinge of desperation. “You don’t need a general to order around a bunch of zombies.”
“The prince understands that the military will be loyal to me. The Faceless are just the beginning; he will still need the officers to fall in line.”
“Maybe, but then what? They don’t know anything about what happened, but you do. That makes you a risk. Trust me, I’ve been around politicians long enough to know that they don’t like skeletons in their closet. Better to just get rid of you so his mythical rise to power seems all the more amazing.”
Thorne stepped up next to Rook. “Shall I gag him, sir?”
Bremen bit his lip and waved away the other soldiers. “Not yet.”
“You know I’m right,” Rook told him. “And that’s just the beginning. Veltar isn’t the type of man to lurk in the shadows forever. He set this whole thing up—he used the two of you to get exactly what he wanted. And once you’re no longer useful, he’ll cast you aside.”
Rook feared being tortured and would say anything to get out of it—that much was a given. But in this case, it didn’t make his words any less true. It had been weighing on Bremen’s mind the entire trip. At one point after he’d looked over the scrolls, he’d even considered burning them. He was little more than a krata, after all, and while he could understand the spells well enough to realize their potential, he had no hope of weaving them himself. His two mage allies, however, could very quickly turn them into a weapon.
In the end, he hadn’t destroyed them. They were relics of Abalor’s earliest disciples, after all, and that made them sacred. But it also meant that his position as a member of this triumvirate was in serious jeopardy. Whatever leverage he might have had over the others was now tenuous at best. He simply wasn’t sure what he could do about it.
“If you let me go, we can get out of this together,” Rook said into the silence. “Otherwise you’re a dead man.”
Thorne snorted. “You really expect that to work? Do you take us for kreel?”
“Not at all,” Rook replied. “Quite the opposite, in fact. That’s why I know you agree with me.”
“You carry within you a precious gift from Abalor,” Bremen said softly. “I don’t know how to make use of it yet, but I will find a way. Until then, you aren’t going anywhere.”
Rook’s cheek twitched. “Then you’re doomed. Both of you.”
“Perhaps,” Bremen admitted. “For what it’s worth, Mr. Rook, I have no intention of torturing you. Shakissa does not appreciate needless cruelty.”
The man’s brown eyes flickered, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe an old enemy. But he did seem to relax slightly, and eventually he just shook his head.
“You’re a man of faith, General,” Rook said. “It’s too bad your associates don’t share it. Do you really think they care about serving Abalor, or is this just about their own personal glory?”
Bremen nodded to Thorne and turned to walk away. “I’ll have food brought to you shortly.”
The moment they made it into the adjacent room, Thorne stopped in her tracks and shut the door behind him. Her dark eyes smoldered as she ran a hand through her short, matted-down hair.
“You know he’s right, sir,” she murmured. “When you gave the others those scrolls, I half-expected them to turn against us right then and there.”
Bremen pulled off his gauntlets and sat down at the table. “As did I.”
She shook her head. “Then we have to do something, sir. I’ll not sit here and beg for scraps at their table. They don’t believe they need us anymore. Veltar treated us like dogs, ordering us to go and fetch for him, and now he’s getting away with it! And the prince…he is not fit to be Emperor of anything.”
“He’s the only choice we have, and Veltar knows that just as well as we do,” Bremen said.
She glanced away and seemed to muster the courage to press further. “So what about Veltar himself, then? Rook is right about that, too. He wants power, plain and simple.”
Bremen pressed his palms together. He despised politics almost as much as this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. But after years of working for the prince, having to conceal his movements and operate in the shadows outside of the Empress’s gaze, he had started to get a feel for it. He hated that even more.
But at least he finally understood how the game was played. It wasn’t so different from war, really, except that here, his enemies were often willing to smile right to his face while planting a dagger in his back.
“We should make a move now,” Thorne suggested, “before he has a chance to remove us.”
Bremen nodded. “We will. Get me a list of all the soldiers in the city that have served with us in the past.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “To what end, sir?”
“The one thing a man like Veltar will never understand is loyalty,” Bremen said, a smile pulling at his lips. “It’s time to give him a demonstration.”
The Last Goddess Page 70