by Choi, Bryan
“Do you think you would be a just ruler?” he asked. Amilia’s grip tightened on the revolver. Taki could easily overwhelm her in combat, but he lacked preparation and weapons, and she had the advantage of surprise. A well-placed round of .357 magnum could take any man down, even the exarch.
“And what constitutes justice to you, Corporal Natalis?” Her finger touched the trigger and tightened.
“A little while ago, I was sent to Kosovo, to aid the duke against rebels. He was supposed to be this big hero, but we were made to help his vassals kill an entire village of innocents. We could do nothing to stop it, for he was within his rights. Though it is blasphemy to say this, if the rebels hadn’t killed him I’m pretty sure one of us would have. While I don’t presume to know what justice really is, I now know what it’s not. I’ve always just gone along with everything because I didn’t care either way, as long as I was comfortable. But I can’t do that anymore, not if I want to sleep at night. I want to help change something.”
“Even if that means betraying your overlords?”
“I’m no traitor. But my overlords have to earn my allegiance.”
“Those are dangerous words, Corporal. Keep them close to your heart.”
“Understood, Minister.”
Amilia nodded. Her exhalation swirled tendrils of condensation in the frigid air. She let go of the revolver and brought her hand up to her mouth in thought.
“Come with me, then. I may as well show you the rest,” she said.
They exited the archives together, and emerged into the muggy night of inner Athenaeum. Amilia was not given to conversation, Taki realized. He was fine with that, as it was enough effort already to calm the fluttering of his heart. Before joining Tirefire the Lesser, he would have never imagined voicing his thoughts, much less to one of his betters.
As they navigated increasingly twisted roads and alleys, Taki realized that he was gradually going underground. The capital was an ancient place, and previous empires and kingdoms had extensively developed the warrens underneath. The first three hundred years of fallout from the Gotterdammerung had made life on the surface impossible, after all. Eventually, they arrived at a nondescript but rigid set of steel doors. There were no guards in sight. Amilia rapped briefly on a knock plate, and a small panel slid open to reveal a man’s eyes. He looked at the minister, slid the window shut, and opened the door.
The inside was underwhelming, though clearly massive in size. Just rows of stacked boxes under dim fluorescent lighting, and only a handful of sentries bearing the crest of House Gillette on their armor. Taki noticed, however, that they all carried functional, pristine Avtomat 74’s. Enough firepower to bring down a company of knights, and highly illegal for commoners to possess. The guards stood at attention while Amilia motioned for Taki to approach. As he did, she unlatched the top of one of the wooden boxes and lifted its cover for him to see. His eyes widened as he looked at fifty thousand rounds of golden milligrad.
“It’s not milligrad,” Amilia said. She handed him a round of 9-millimeter Luger. “But it’s very close.”
“I must admit, Minister, I can’t tell much of a difference,” Taki said, rolling the cartridge in his palm.
“The Ursalans have always enjoyed superior knowledge of the old world. However, with the recent wars we’ve seen more refugees coming over the borders. Among them were skilled alchemists who have developed ways to refine our manufacture of ammunition to this point. We can now make and draw brass into casings, coat lead with copper, and most importantly, cut powder smoke down to a quarter of what it usually is.”
“Much better than half-grad,” Taki said, handing the bullet back to her. “This many in circulation will make most of the reloaded rounds completely worthless. It will also drive the value of milligrad down. The guilds will cease to exist.”
“And when we dump these into the markets, I will have most of the lords in my debt, including the basileus. I think you can put together the rest.”
Taki nodded. It was a more potent plan than any attempt at seizing the Mitripoli by force.
“With utmost respect, why have you shown this to me?” he asked.
“You’re a low-ranking soldier in a disgraced unit. If you were to speak about this with your commanders, they would trepanate you because you’d have gone mad. And then, I would have others in my employ finish the job. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes,” Taki said, smiling despite himself. “Yes, we do.”
“Good. I must remain here for a time. One of the men will see you out and back to the gates.”
Taki was about to rise, but something stirred in his heart. Something he knew was wildly, impossibly dangerous. Something he couldn’t fight.
“Minister, must I return to the Temple so quickly?”
Amilia tilted her head quizzically.
“You have done enough for me, and exposed yourself to great risk. To ask any more would be unjust.”
He sank to both knees and touched his forehead to the ground. It was an abject and pitiful gesture, but the only thing he could think of at the moment to disrupt her focus.
“I beg you to reconsider! I want to help you do more. I want to make a Dominion I can be proud to serve again. I don’t care about career, or reputation, or even my honor anymore. Throw my life away freely, so long as you put me to use. Please!”
Amilia was silent for what seemed to Taki to be an eternity. Finally, she bent over and lightly touched her fingertips to his head.
“You have a habit of speaking dangerously,” she said. “So, Natalis, could you kill a king? Could you bear that damnation?”
Taki shivered. “Gladly.”
“Then perhaps you can be of use. We will create that Dominion you desire so much.”
11
“You know what, I think I’ll go back to Kosovo and ask the Prince of Maladies to just kill me after all,” Draco said. His mastery slowed by bitterness, he sloppily gouged an eye from a large potato in his hands and set to work on peeling the greenish skin away. The latest crop was practically bubbling with solanine and he swore it was leaching into his skin. His guts rumbled and his head hurt. Though the others had dismissed the theory, he suspected that Imperial sympathizers were unearthing the roots too early and letting them sit in the sun to poison everyone.
“But what if she’s all like: ‘Jawohl! Zen it is death by peelink zee potatoes,’ hm?” Hadassah asked. She poked him in the ribs with a finger, making him swat back at her hand.
“Then it wouldn’t be any different from what I’m doing now, and I’d be in much sexier company.”
“Go stick it in a goat.”
“Compared to you, a goat is more personable and possibly comelier.”
“Then what are you waiting for? No human woman deserves the burden of rearing your pus-faced, lazy-eyed, smegma-haired children. Not even the prince, who literally tried to jam one of her eastern pigstickers up my stinkstar and twist it.”
“That sounds beautiful. Tell me more.”
“Ugh!”
“Emreis, you may jape about death, but do realize that we’ve been sentenced to hang?” Lotte asked, rolling her eyes at him. Both corporals stood bolt upright.
“What?”
“You heard me. We’re supposed to hang, but since there’s no one to do the job, the punishment’s been suspended indefinitely.”
“How is that allowed?” Draco asked, grimacing. “I mean, I actually don’t want to be hanged, but it makes no sense. Why are we still here? Aren’t we entitled to a speedy execution?”
“We’re losing. Kosovo wasn’t the only province to go over. Everyone but us is holding a fort on the northern border or dying of fever and distemper. There’s no wood to spare for a gallows, nor anyone to build them.”
“So, basically, we have to keep screwing up, and we’ll live forever,” Hadassah said.
“A fate worse than death. Just my rotting luck,” Draco sighed. “Also, why is she here?”
He p
ointed a bulbous tuber at Hecaton. The major reclined alone on a bench, resting her head on an outstretched palm. She smoked a pungent cigarillo which she languidly ashed into a nearby tin cup. For his impertinence, she flicked a dried bean at Draco’s forehead. Inexplicably, it stung as badly as being shot. At least, that was how he imagined being shot in the face would feel. Draco reeled, his eyes tearing.
“I requested her help, now that Natalis is away and Gillette is not so used to our regular job,” Lotte said.
Karma glowered miserably. Compared with the others, he was a neophyte with a peeling knife. Innumerable small cuts on his fingers smeared red on the wet starch of his conquests.
“I think I might prefer dogs eating my balls,” he muttered. For this, Karma earned a bean to the lip. He gasped in pain, covering the swelling on his mouth.
“Don’t forget, the ‘H’ is for ‘Annihilation!’” Hadassah’s spite was rewarded with a bean to the cheek.
“Just where the hell is Natalis, anyway?” Draco huffed. “He never showed up here after turning his gun in.”
“Off at Athenaeum, visiting family. He has a grandmother who’s on the verge of death.”
“Wait, so all I have to do to get out of this is go and beat the shit out of one of my grandparents? Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner? Why is this world so unfair?”
“And you call me twisted?” Karma asked, crushing a bloodstained piece of raw potato in his jaws for emphasis.
“Ew, gross! Major, flick a bean at him!” Hadassah whined.
“I’d rather she actually helped peel!” Draco said, wagging a potato at Hecaton again. “It’s her fault we ended up doing this.”
“You kids are abominably ungrateful these days,” Hecaton drawled, swinging her legs over the edge of the table and sitting upright. “Anyway, you’re not peeling these because of the Tirefire thing anymore. The exarch finally requested I change it to something more suitable to the dignity of the Temple. I couldn’t refuse him in light of your recent failures.”
“Our recent failures? We only lost Vergina because of that oriental twit who showed up at the last minute! Who is that guy, anyway?”
“Calling us ‘oriental’ is quite rude. That earns two beans.”
One lodged in Draco’s ear canal and the other knocked him over.
“Aha! So you do know him!” Lotte said, clapping her hands together in hard-bitten triumph.
“Yeah, Major, you owe us an explanation!” Hadassah said. “Is he your ex-husband?”
“He would have to be both incomprehensibly strong and incomprehensibly stupid to bed her,” Karma muttered. His words earned him a bean in each nostril, plus one between the legs. He joined Draco in rolling around on the dirty floor in undignified panic.
“It’s complicated, our situation,” Hecaton said, uncharacteristically wistful for a second. “I certainly didn’t think I’d ever see him again, or that I’d be slightly pleased to see him alive. But he is dangerous, that is an absolute certainty. As the blond idiot over there pointed out so indelicately, we’re of the same extraction, and thus different from the rest of you. I can’t guarantee that any of you would live if he fights seriously, but what I can promise is that none of his disciples will live if I do the same. Anyway, you all need to think of a new unit name. Or a number, I don’t care either way.”
Taki sneezed into the crook of his arm just in time. For some reason, he was allergic to the down stuffing in Niketas Palaiologos’s bedding, and thus got the sniffles whenever he made the man’s bed. This made him wonder about nobles and other rich men who regularly used snuff to provoke the ostensibly pleasurable sensation of sneezing. It really wasn’t that pleasant.
He had not expected, at any point in his career, to end up making the basileus’s bed, cleaning the man’s floors, and bringing the ruler of the Dominion his nightly cup of warmed aniseed wine to serve as a sleep aid. In Taki’s wildest dreams, he had imagined himself defending the man against Imperial assassins as a praetorian guard, not maintaining his home as a manservant. Yet a manservant he now was, thanks to Amilia Gillette.
In actuality, he was the minister’s new steward. The transfer had gone over Hecaton’s head and straight to the exarch’s desk, where one of the triada had signed it in the man’s stead. Taki was to serve and protect Amilia Gillette, and would be paid the equivalent of three rounds of old Nayto Standard per fortnight: a major’s regular salary. However, from the start, his day-to-day duty had been to fill in for the missing servants at the basileus’s palace.
A short time ago, hundreds of thousands of high-quality reloaded rounds suddenly hit the ordnance depots. The results were as Taki had predicted. Anyone who wished to do business in the Dominion immediately dumped their supplies of unsafe, ugly, and dirty rounds in favor of the new ones, which were practically milligrad save for the smoke. Reports of the new rounds’ increased and consistent lethality versus human and beast alike further bolstered their value. Even the value of milligrad itself took a dive, and the nobles panicked when their hoards lost most of their value overnight. The legion of servants who once cleaned the basileus’s toenails for him deserted en-masse when he could no longer afford to pay them, and even his own steward left soon after. The cartridges simply weren’t forthcoming. Amilia, however, would not let the last scion of the Palaiologoi go unattended.
Niketas had come into power a decade ago, and had already been targeted for assassination over a dozen times. Mainly by his family members, the whispers said. The Palaiologoi were an ancient lineage, more sacrosanct than any others, and prolific to boot. As the fourth son of the old basileus, Niketas stood little chance of inheriting the throne at the outset. Yet from an early age he had shown a knack for being indispensable to those smarter than he. It had only taken five years to eliminate his three older brothers, and five more years to dispose of his mother. The next to go were his aunt who was also his father’s concubine, and finally four younger brothers. The men fell to poison and knives, and the women were sent to convents. In this time, he had accumulated many skilled companions, all of whom had expected a payout once he assumed the proper position. And then I went and helped kill one of them, Taki mused.
The small palace where the basileus lived was in constant need of repair and cleaning. Dust seemed to seep out of the walls and into every crevice possible, and it was a constant battle to keep the place presentable. One lone servant, even aided by prana, could not do a satisfactory job. And yet for all of his bluster in public, the basileus was a surprisingly lenient, though not social master. He never once berated Taki for lapses in cleaning or cooking, though Taki was far from experienced in those fields. Surprisingly, Niketas Palaiologos himself was virtually mute in private, mostly preferring to sit in an ancient ornate couch nursing a glass of cordial while staring into a fire. The limited conversations between Taki and Niketas were related to a direct expression of want or need. Wine, blankets, and sometimes a chaste massage. Taki had thought that the man would try to bed him, but nothing of the sort ever came to pass. The basileus did not even entertain courtesans, though he could likely afford them. The days had settled into contemplative silence, enough to make Taki sometimes forget what he had pledged to do for Amilia Gillette.
Today, Taki accompanied his master-by-default to a meeting of the diacheiristes: the inner circle. All of them had been hand-picked by the basileus, and were nobility of old families, some of whom had existed and ruled before Armageddon. It was the first time he had set foot in the Mitripoli, the seat of Argead power. Though it was a surprisingly cramped place to convene the leadership of a sprawling kingdom, it nevertheless made up for its small size with elaborate carvings, frescoes, and ornaments on every surface. Rather than excite the passions, however, the weight of such opulence usually seemed to stifle emotion. Yet, the basileus seemed at his most emotional today. With Taki standing uncomfortably at attention behind him, Niketas had been screaming at his inner circle practically all morning. It was easy to see why: things were rapidly fa
lling apart from without and within.
“And who’s next to turn traitor? Who’s going to be the next one to whore himself out to the padishah? Is it going to be you, Manuel Comnenus?”
“I assure you, Your Grace, I have no loyalty but to your esteemed self! I am a disl—” the Judge of the Realm began to trip over his tongue.
“Oh, save me the flattery!” the basileus whined.
The human mind could become desensitized to anything, and that even included constant screaming. Taki felt his eyes grow heavy-lidded and he struggled to maintain his rigid posture. The high-ranking servant’s outfit he wore helped in this regard with brace-like fittings that kept his back in perfect lordosis. Still, it was difficult, and he slipped into pleasant doldrums metered by fists pounding on mahogany.
“Exarch General Constantin Choniates, Supreme Commander of the Polaris, Lord Protector of the Cloud Temple, and Major Hecaton Kheiris Mezeta,” a herald announced in a loud monotone. Taki’s eyes flew open to hear the names. So surprised was he to hear of Hecaton’s arrival that he forgot to feel embarrassed for falling asleep in the midst of the greatest concentration of power in the land.
The herald continued: “Know that you are in the presence of Basileus Niketas Palaiologos, Ethnomartyr of the Dominion, Protector of the Theotokos, Primate of Athenaeum, Supreme Commander of the Argead Military, and King in Exile of Constantinople, Alexandria, Libya, Adrianople, and All Egypt.”
Oh shit, she sees me, Taki realized, as his gaze met Hecaton’s. Her expression seemed neutral, however, as if she had forgotten who he was. For going over her head, Taki had half-expected Hecaton to zap him in public.
“Your Grace,” Constantin said, “the Cloud Temple has come as bidden. We apologize for not arriving in a timelier fashion, as we were forced to ride the entire way.”