“I see.” She stared at the parchment in her hands as she added, “He offered me a trade. If I give you to him, he’d sign a treaty with me.”
For a moment, he forgot to breathe. A treaty. A treaty of non-aggression or an actual peace treaty? Did it even matter which? Tresea was just as strapped for men and resources as Brindisi, in her own way. Darius could talk until he was blue in the face but even he couldn’t guarantee that he’d win every battle. He couldn’t airily promise her that all would be well.
He swallowed his first instinctive response, to somehow convince her not to take it. No. She’d given him more power and freedom than anyone else. He’d sworn an oath to her that he would do everything to protect her and this country, no matter what the sacrifice. If his life and freedom were the price…. Taking in a deep breath, he tried to sound normal. “Seems like a bargain in your favor.”
Tresea abruptly crumpled the letter in a ball and threw it with as much force as she could muster to the ground, where it bounced once before rolling away. “You stupid fool! You know as well as I that the moment he has you in his hands, he won’t follow through on whatever treaty I sign!”
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Yes, he’d known that. But if she had ordered him to go, he would have. “I know. I had to give you the option.”
She threw both arms into the air, absolutely incensed. “You are the most aggravating man! Why wouldn’t you at least argue with me about it?”
“It wouldn’t have been convincing,” he pointed out. His heart still beat like a hammer in his chest from the fright. “Anything I said would have sounded self-serving.”
She crossed her arms over her chest in a huff and snubbed him. “I didn’t want to make the decision. I wanted you to make it for me.”
Ahhh. That was why. He gave her a short, slightly mocking bow. “Apologies, My Queen.”
She wrinkled her nose up at him, still peeved. “I should betroth you to a fat, nagging woman as punishment.”
Ah…she was joking…wasn’t she? He couldn’t quite tell by that look on her face.
She abruptly grew quite serious, facing him squarely. “Darius, when word of Baros’s offer gets out, then there will be some that demand we take the chance for a treaty. It will be worse than that silly scheming to get you removed from your position. I won’t be able to squash it as easily. You’ve assured me before that you can win any battle, no matter whether it comes by land or sea. Are you still that confident?”
“Yes,” he answered steadily. I just haven’t fully figured out how to do everything yet…no, I better not mention that.
She let out a long breath. “Alright. I will keep my confidence in you. On the morrow, tell me how we’ll win a sea battle. I am too tired to hear it tonight.”
Darius swallowed hard. He didn’t know how they’d win that battle yet. I have twelve hours to figure it out though. “Of course, My Queen.”
~~~
Bohme found him thirty minutes later in his war room, hunched over the maps and charts, the room blazing with light. Darius had found every white candle he could lay hands on and set them up in the room. A jug full of water sat near his right elbow and he drank from it steadily. He’d offered a prayer before even looking at the maps, pleading for inspiration. So far, Shaa had been slow in answering.
The bodyguard took a good look around the room before venturing, “Shomething go wrong?”
Darius looked up at him with tired eyes, neck already trying to cramp from his slumped position. “Oh, Bohme. Good. I need someone to talk to. Sit.”
The bodyguard obediently pulled up the chair across from him and sat, repeating, “Shomething wrong?”
“Queen Tresea wants to hear my plan for winning the sea battles tomorrow.” He dropped the quill in his hands and rubbed at his face briskly with both palms. “Only I don’t have a plan. I just have a notion or two.”
After listening in on so many strategy sessions, Bohme knew the drill well enough. “What notionsh?” he prompted.
“Kaveh came up with the idea of creating a fake gate, something that looks like the harbor wall, to fool the armada into thinking they were trapped inside the harbor.” He lowered his hands again to stare at the chart, but his eyes didn’t focus on it as he continued talking. “He’s still checking to see if it will work, but I think it will, from what Gabr told me. If it doesn’t, I have another idea that I think will work just as well. The problem I’m facing is I don’t know what to do with them once I’ve got them trapped. I can’t pump out the water like I’d originally planned—there’s no method in the world fast enough. They’d break out before the water level really dropped to dangerous levels.”
Bohme gave a grunt to indicate he followed this. Strangely encouraged, Darius continued. “I’ve got this urge to use burning oil on the water—did you know that oil not only floats, but burns? You did? Strange, I had no idea that would work so well until I tried it—anyway, but I’m not sure how. We can’t use it to break up the ships’ formations as the tides of the sea will move the oil around. Not to mention, it will be impossible to light as archers from shore wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between sea and oil at a distance.”
His bodyguard frowned at him in a way that suggested he either didn’t follow or Darius had said something stupid. Probably the latter, with the sluggish way his mind worked right now. “I don’t undershtand why you need to put oil in patchesh,” Bohme said slowly. “If you put oil over the whole harbor, wouldn’t that work better?”
Darius had his mouth open to object only to freeze. Wait. Why wouldn’t that work? “It would take a lot of oil…,” he trailed off, thinking hard.
Scratching at the back of his head, Bohme nodded. “True. And it would be hard to clean up, after.”
“Also true.” But that assumed they didn’t light the fire and burn it clean off the water. Granted, burning the oil would create other problems. Like preventing the fire from spreading to the city. But even that, with the proper preventions in place, could be avoided, couldn’t it?
“Maybe not shush a good idea,” Bohme rescinded with a grimace.
“No,” Darius refuted slowly, “I think it’s a good one. After all, if I can pull this off, I could probably just threaten the enemy into surrendering. With them sitting on wooden ships like they are, being surrounded by oil that I could light afire at any time would be terrifying. If I play this right, I might well be able to win the battle without a single sword leaving its sheath. Bohme, you’re a genius.”
The bodyguard raised both hands in a protesting manner. “But we don’t know if it will work!”
“True, I need to do some research and figure out how much oil this will take.” A ton of it, certainly. They’d probably have to buy multiple cargos and ration the whole nation’s supply to pull this off. “But I think it’s plausible and it will save a lot of lives.” Reaching over, he clapped the man on the shoulder and beamed at him. “You just saved me a lot of agonizing, Bohme. Now go wake up Payam. I need numbers to crunch.”
~~~
When Tresea summoned him around noon the next morning, he had an answer for her. Well, not completely, as parts of the plan hadn’t been ironed out yet. Kaveh still needed to confer with Gabr on the gates, after all. But he was certain the rest of it would work.
He splashed water on his face, dove into a clean uniform, grabbed up his charts, and walked quickly toward her garden. He probably had dark circles under his eyes but he’d sleep after he had her briefed.
When he did enter her garden, she had resumed her usual seat under the tree, although this time a very low table had been moved in front of her. No doubt for his benefit, as nothing sat on the surface. She looked up at his approach with a greeting of some sort that died instantly when she got a good look at his face. “Good grief, Darius, did you stay up all night?”
It’s confirmed. I definitely have dark circles under my eyes. “I wanted to make sure that the numbers supported the plan I had,
” he answered half-truthfully. “And good morning to you too, My Queen.”
She snorted. “Stop with that silliness and sit down. Tell me what your plan is.”
He didn’t so much as sink to the grass as fall onto it. He’d been able to do all-nighters and still run around the next day as a teenager. It must be a sign of age that missing one night of sleep made him feel forty instead of thirty. Tresea didn’t say a word to him as he rolled out his map and the close-up chart of the Izeh Harbor. “Before I start—”
“You don’t have all of the details planned out yet and there’s some information that you’re missing, so you might have to change a few things later,” Tresea supplied with a maddeningly dry tone.
He paused and looked up at her in confusion. “Surely I don’t say that every time.”
“You do. Every time.” Her eyes were sparkling now with amusement. “But your disclaimer has been said. I await with baited breath.”
Alright. Here went nothing. “My Queen, the plan that I have is…a bluff.”
“A bluff.” Tresea looked at him neutrally as if she knew she’d heard him correctly but didn’t actually want to believe that she had.
“We cannot fight a naval battle,” he answered seriously, bracing his forearms against the table and leaning forward. “We don’t have the ships or the means to do so. Trying will only waste good men’s lives and gain you nothing. That’s why I’ve been so focused on somehow turning a naval battle into a land battle, where we do stand a chance. But I cannot find a way to enclose the harbor walls without straining the structure to breaking or making it a permanent fixture, which defeats the whole purpose.”
Her eyes narrowed as she listened to him. “Go on.”
“But they don’t know that I can’t do that. If I had walls made, hollow ones, that looked just like the other sea walls and had them quickly lifted into place, it would look very solid to anyone on a ship. But it would still be light enough to not add strain to the walls. They would think I’d trapped them inside the harbor, limiting their space to maneuver.” He took in a deep breath. “Then, once I had them inside and supposedly trapped, I would make sure that they were aware that I’ve poured oil on the water of the harbor.”
The queen’s brows compressed, head cocked slightly. “You’ve lost me, Darius. Oil?”
“Oil floats.” His lips curled back in a feral smile. “Even on water, oil burns.”
Her mouth opened in a gasp of horror. “Great sands. You’d threaten to burn them?!”
“Wooden ships are very combustible, I’m sure.” He shrugged so nonchalantly that it clearly unnerved her. “It’s a ruthless tactic. But it’s because it’s so ruthless that they won’t want me to use it. They cannot get off the ships and to the safety of land before the fire reaches them. Would you risk it?”
She had to swallow, twice, before she could speak in a hoarse voice. “No, I wouldn’t. But if you have to use it….”
“I will.” He didn’t like it, either, as it was borderline murder to his mind. “My Queen, you don’t understand. If I let them unload their marines and deploy on shore, we’d have to fight them one boat at a time. They’d overwhelm us eventually and street fighting is the ugliest thing in the world. In that crowded harbor city, it would quickly become a bloodbath. I will take every precaution to make sure that the harbor fire will not reach the city. But even if it did, we would still come out ahead.”
She blew out a long breath and buried her head in both hands for long seconds. Without stirring she murmured, “You are just as ruthless now as you were three years ago.”
“Did you think I’d changed?” He felt like laughing for some strange reason. “Sego claims I am kind, and I am to the people nearest to me, but I have limited kindness for people trying to conquer my country. If they dare to face me on a field of battle, I will use everything in my power, every dirty trick that I know, to destroy them.”
“I see that.” She lowered her hands and looked at him. Tresea had a gentle heart so the idea of burning thousands of men alive clearly made her queasy but her mind understood the necessity of it. There was regret in her eyes but she met his gaze steadily. “I approve your plan, Darius. But please…make sure they buy your bluff.”
“I would also prefer for things to work out that way,” he assured her with a reassuring nod. “I will do everything I can. With your permission, I will set the plan in motion today.”
She waved a hand wearily. “Granted.”
In a flash of insight, he understood how she felt in that moment. He hesitated, wondering if he were perhaps overstepping his bounds, but finally offered a quiet reassurance. “It will end.” When she looked up at him, confused, he repeated, “This war will end. When I have proven to them that they cannot win, no matter how they approach, they will give up. They do not have the resources and the unity of manpower to keep battering against us.”
“I pray you are right.”
With the plan approved, he had a great deal to get into motion. He had to verify just how much oil it would take to cover the harbor’s surface, first. From there, he had to figure out how to somehow get his hands on enough oil to cover most of the harbor. And then he had to come up with a defensive plan for the city just in case the bluff failed or in case he really did have to light the oil and the fire spread to the city.
Getting back to his office, he sat down and wrote up orders for each of his commanders for Payam to deliver. With his runner dispatched, he thought he might as well take a closer look at the city’s layout before taking his nap. His subconscious mind had come up with some rather ingenious strategies before while he slept. If he were lucky, Shaa would guide his dreams so that he would wake up with a brilliant plan.
Alright, that might be pushing it, but he’d be grateful for just a nudge in the right direction.
From the doorway, someone cleared their voice. Darius looked up with bleary eyes to find Sego standing there, giving him an exasperated look. For some reason, faced with that expression, he felt like defending himself. “I’m just taking one last look so that my mind can be mulling it over while I’m sleeping.”
Sego heaved a patient sigh. “General, you sent Payam off close to a half hour ago.”
Had he really? It seemed like five minutes to Darius.
“You’ve been sitting there in a daze ever since,” Sego added unmercifully.
Darius held up his hands in surrender. “I’m going, I’m going.”
“Before you go,” Sego’s mouth twisted as if he had something sour in his mouth, “you should know that your enemies in court have somehow already heard about your plans for the sea battle. They’re advocating to have you removed.”
They’d heard already? How in the world…? No, he shouldn’t be surprised by this. In the palace, any palace, news could travel faster than a galloping horse could carry it. He also knew full well that things that were sworn to secrecy were normally told first. He raised both hands to his grainy eyes and rubbed at them tiredly.
“Granted, the idea seems ludicrous on the surface. They probably have a lot to complain about. But there’s no other way to fight this. What do they want to do, go meet the enemy on the shore in some glorious clash of swords?”
Sego snorted. “That’s probably exactly what they think should be done.”
Yes, and that was why Darius had almost conquered this country once. That idiotic thinking. He hadn’t minded when on the other side as it made his job easier, but now that he had to work with the fools… “Sego,” he asked in mock seriousness, “is there a court assassin that I can borrow for a few days?”
“There is,” Sego confirmed with the same level of mocking sincerity, “but he’ll only take orders from the queen.”
“Curse the luck.” All banter aside, he’d have to find a way to deal with them before they stirred up too much trouble and prevented him from doing what was necessary. But later. Sego had a point about him trying to think while sleep deprived. “Alright, later today we’ll sit do
wn and think about how to deal with them.”
“After you sleep.”
“After I sleep,” Darius agreed around a yawn. Getting up, he trudged to his bedroom, stifling several yawns as he moved. Really, why was he this tired? Just because he’d been up for two days straight without getting any sleep…he truly was getting old.
As he fell face first into the bed, his last thought was I really have to investigate whether Amalah is engaged or not.
~~~
He woke up bleary eyed and groggy, as he always did from mid-day naps. After eating a late lunch (breakfast?) he dressed and headed out the door. There were too many things yet for him to do so he couldn’t just stay in bed the rest of the day, as tempting as the idea sounded.
At this hour of the day, he had Tolk with him as Bohme still slept. As they headed for the library, he turned to ask of the man behind him, “Did anything happen while I slept?”
“Largely quiet,” Tolk assured him. “Master Sego not happy about a few things, though.”
Darius grimaced. “Yes, he told me what was happening before I laid down. Really, don’t these people have anything better to do than hassle me? We are fighting a war, after all.”
Tolk seemed to find this amusing as his eyes crinkled up in a smile. “Yes, but problem is—” he stopped abruptly, eyes cutting to the hallway beyond Darius. “Raj, stop.”
Instinct had Darius spinning around in his tracks, looking for the trouble Tolk saw. It didn’t take more than a second to see it. From a rarely used side hallway, three men had appeared. They looked a little rough—clothing frayed along the edges, stubble on their chins, heads nearly shaven. Street thugs or brawlers, by the look of them.
How had they even managed to get into the palace? Darius shoved that question to the side as unimportant at the moment and went to the second, more urgent question: why were they targeting him? They obviously were, as they were approaching in a steady manner, pulling daggers free of their sheaths.
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