Realizing how lucky they had been, how much they owed the troll for the damage it had done to the warlord’s army, Mari shouted again. “Somebody stay with Tesa until the healers get to her! The rest of you, let’s move in!” She waved the Mechanics forward.
They advanced slowly, pushing the broken remnants of the warlord’s fighters ahead of them until the common soldiers took them prisoner. Mari stopped when they reached the armored man she had seen Alli kill.
“It’s not a pretty thing,” Alli said. “But I’m glad I nailed that guy. He didn’t get away to cause more hurt.”
Mari didn’t know what she had expected the warlord to look like. Monstrous, maybe. But Raul looked distressingly average. A little tall. A little heavy. Nothing in his face or in the eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky that would indicate this was someone who took pleasure in inflicting pain.
That was more frightening than if he had appeared hideous. “Monsters should look like monsters,” Mari said.
“His sort of monsters do not,” Alain said.
Before she could speak again three men came running out of a tent, holding their hands high. None of them wore armor or carried weapons. “We surrender! Don’t turn us over to the commons!” one pleaded.
“But aren’t you commons?” Bev asked.
“We’re part of the Order! We know Mechanic skills!”
Mari glared at the three, thinking of the evil they had abetted by helping Raul. The presence of these Dark Mechanics explained how Raul’s ballista had been repaired after the damage inflicted by the Pride’s deck gun. But the idea of ordering the deaths of the Dark Mechanics repelled her. “We will turn you over to the authorities of Tiae. They can decide what punishment your crimes merit.”
“There are no authorities in Tiae!” one of the Dark Mechanics protested.
“Yes, there are, and you’d better be prepared to beg mercy from them.” Mari took a step away from the three and stumbled slightly.
Alain was right there, grasping her arm to steady Mari. He eyed her closely. “How are you feeling?”
“Sick,” Mari said, feeling an odd buzzing in her ears. “Sick to my stomach, sick at heart, and sick of death.” The surge of excitement that had kept her going during the battle was fading, replaced with weariness and something that felt like depression. Then she heard a strange sound filled with anguish, which yanked her out of her mood for a moment. “What’s that?”
Alain looked in the direction of the sound. “The troll. It is not yet dead, but it is no longer a threat.”
Mari got to her feet, pushing past Alain, drawn to the noise even though she wasn’t sure why. Looking past the bodies of the warlord’s fighters littering the ground, Mari saw the shape of the troll, not lying in the dirt but seeming shorter than it should and not moving.
Despite a reflexive burst of fear at the sight of the monster, Mari walked closer and stood watching the troll in the light of the burning ballista. The creature was on its knees, arms hanging uselessly, its thick blood coating heavy, rough skin ripped and torn by the weapons of the soldiers it had fought. The troll was so badly hurt it could no longer move, but it kept moaning. Mari could easily hear the pain in the inarticulate sounds coming from the troll’s malformed mouth.
“There is nothing we can do,” Alain told her, standing beside Mari. “If anyone gets within reach it will still attempt to kill. That is all it knows. It will cease in time.”
“Alain, it is in pain. That creature hurts and it doesn’t understand why, it doesn’t understand anything except that it’s in pain.” Mari still held her rifle, but she rubbed tears roughly from her eyes with her free hand. “It didn’t ask for this. It didn’t choose this fate. That Dark Mage created it to be nothing more than…than a monster. It couldn’t be anything else.”
Alain stood next to her, searching for words. “There is nothing we can do,” he finally repeated.
Mari shook her head. “I will never believe that there’s nothing to be done.” She walked toward the monster again, hearing Alain following, and stopped near it, so close it could almost reach her with one of those long arms. So close, a short lunge from the troll would have doomed her. But the troll was beyond lunging. It just stared at her, its eyes dark with pain and, Mari thought, perhaps puzzlement. The creature had just enough intelligence to kill, but not enough to understand what it had done and what was happening to it. “This is so wrong, Alain. To create a living creature as a weapon.”
“It is not truly living, Mari.”
“It lives enough to feel pain!” She raised her rifle, aiming at one of those eyes. Her hands trembled, making the rifle wobble, but she steadied them. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “this is all I can do.” Then she squeezed the trigger.
From this close she couldn’t miss her unmoving target. The bullet went into the troll’s eye. It stiffened and the moaning sound finally stopped, then it fell forward, its bulk slamming to the ground at Mari’s feet to lie silent and finally bereft of the illusion of life. She looked down at it, then shook her head and turned away, pausing to stare at Alain. “It’s wrong,” she repeated, tears coming again. She rubbed them away, flinging the tears from her hand so that they fell to the ground, mixing with the blood everywhere.
Alain nodded. “I understand.”
* * * *
Late on the afternoon of the next day Mari entered the grandly named, sparsely furnished, and slightly cramped suite of the Princess of Tiae on the third floor of the city hall.
Princess Sien stood next to a window, gazing out over the town, her back to Mari. From the streets below muted sounds of celebration could be heard. “Please be seated.”
Mari, still worn out from the exertions of the previous night, did not object. She took a comfortable-looking chair and sat back, wondering why the chair looked and felt familiar.
“Your Captain Banda provided us with a number of chairs,” Sien said. “He said that he understood we had need of them, and that those who had once used them no longer required them. Are you displeased?”
So that was why the chair felt familiar and was so comfortable. It had been one of those made for the Senior Mechanics and looted from the Mechanics Guild Hall in Edinton. Mari took another look, realizing that this particular chair must have come from the Guild Hall Supervisor’s office. “Displeased? Not at all. I’m glad that Captain Banda found them a good home.”
The Princess turned to face Mari, her expression somber. “It’s odd how hard it can be, accepting charity even there is almost nothing left to us. Where is your Mage?”
“Alain is helping make sure no one from Raul’s army got away. We don’t want any of the scum who terrorized people to hide in the woods or elsewhere and go on to cause more trouble.”
“A wise measure,” Princess Sien said. “You’ve won a notable victory. Raul has been terrorizing this area for a long time. With him dead and his army destroyed, a major threat to the surrounding area has been removed, and other people in this region will be more inclined to deal with us rather than hide and hope to avoid further danger. I’d wondered if you could really help us, if you would really risk yourself to help Tiae, but you’ve proven that you can and will.”
Mari just nodded.
“Why aren’t you celebrating, Lady Mari?” Princess Sien asked.
This time Mari shrugged. “I don’t particularly feel like it. We have a Mage who can send messages. I’ve asked him to contact a General Flyn, who operates around the Free Cities.”
“You think that this Flyn will come?”
“He’s, um, already sworn himself to my service,” Mari said. “He’s a good commander, and I’ll be more than happy to turn over fighting battles to him. I’m not actually that good at it.”
Princess Sien raised a questioning eyebrow. “In that case I would hate to go against you in something you think you are good at. You’ve every right to feel proud of this victory. You’ve helped ensure the safety of this town and eliminated a warlord who has done gr
eat harm.”
Mari let her distaste show. “And all I had to do was kill a lot of people.”
“I see. You don’t like causing deaths.”
“No. Even when it’s totally justified. Even when it’s the only good option.”
“But you do it anyway,” Sien observed.
“I don’t have any choice, Princess. How else do we stop people like that? If you know another way, please tell me.”
Sien watched Mari for a little while without speaking. “As you say, we have no choice. But I understand you participated in the combat, in firing your Mechanic weapon at the warlord’s soldiers. As commander, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Maybe not.” Mari gave the princess an angry look. “But how could I tell somebody else to do something I wasn’t willing to do myself?”
The princess nodded. “I see more and more why people follow you, Lady Mari.”
“Feel free to explain it to me sometime,” Mari offered, feeling irritable.
Sien’s lips curved in a wry smile. “It’s not my place to do that. I will say that the choices we make define us to the world. You seem to make difficult choices for the right reasons.”
Mari laughed. “I wish I had choices, Princess Sien. It seems more like I’ve got lots of things I have to do, and then whatever choices exist are between bad or worse.”
“Really? I understand you even granted a merciful death to a troll. That was a choice.”
Mari looked away, agitated and angry over feeling defensive about her action. “Why not? Why shouldn’t I have done that?”
The princess’s expression was impossible to read. “You felt sorry for a hideous creature whose only function in life was to kill.”
“That wasn’t the troll’s fault,” Mari replied with a scowl. “It had to die. I know that. That didn’t mean it had to suffer. It wasn’t like Raul. It didn’t choose to be what it was.”
“You speak truth.” Sien glanced out of the window again. “Tiae has suffered at the hands of those who care nothing for the pain others endure. Yet we came to this state in part because of those who hesitated to punish, even those who most deserved it.”
Mari leaned back again, watching the princess’s face. “Alain knows a lot of history, but I don’t.”
Sien gave Mari a startled look. “You depend upon a Mage for knowledge of the world?”
“Well…yes.” Mari couldn’t suppress another sudden, brief laugh. Mages believed the world to be an illusion and most knew practically nothing of it, let alone any history. “I know that’s a little strange. But Alain’s not a typical Mage, either.”
“Obviously,” the princess observed. “The entire history of Tiae’s troubles is too long and complicated to force upon you at this time, but in short, my parents were well-meaning but naïve. So I’ve been told by those who knew them well and who I trust, for my memories are those of a very young child.” Her face was shadowed by old grief. “They would not act against those who were acting against them, and they would not take steps needed to stop those who defied them. Perhaps they were already trapped in this Storm you and your Mages spoke of, helpless before the fate that had come to Tiae in their time.”
“What happened to them?” Mari asked.
“Eventually, one of those they would not confront brought about their deaths. My brothers and sisters and I were all too young to assume the throne, so a regent was appointed.
“The regent,” Sien continued, “was my uncle, a man as hard as my parents were soft. Where they would inflict only the mildest of punishments, and then only reluctantly, he dealt death as a common remedy for wrongdoing. And my uncle greatly expanded the list of those things considered wrongdoing. He killed many enemies but created far more in the process. One of them ended his life and his regency. By then Tiae was in great turmoil after the combined excesses of kindness and harshness. But there were other problems, mostly the rage of our people against the Great Guilds and the repression the Great Guilds ordered as punishment. There are few records surviving from that time, but I suspect the Great Guilds had demanded many of the most severe actions my uncle took against his own people.”
“I’m very sorry,” Mari said.
Princess Sien eyed her. “If you still represented the Mechanics Guild whose jacket you wear, your words would mean nothing. I would regard you as just one more agent of those who helped destroy Tiae.”
Mari nodded. “I had to decide whether I would keep defending that Guild. I realized that I couldn’t.”
Sien sighed. “After my uncle was killed, the next regent died within weeks. Then my eldest brother, who was close to reaching the age at which he could rule, was slain by poison, for by that point many others thought they saw the way to power over Tiae.”
Mari looked away, not wanting to see the sorrow on the princess’s face. “I guess it just got worse after that.”
“It did,” Sien confirmed. “Full-scale riots erupted in the cities. The army fell apart as officers and politicians vied for control. The Great Guilds unleashed spasms of violence that fed the chaos instead of suppressing it. Trade collapsed as the roads became unsafe. In the midst of that, my brothers and sisters and cousins and I became pawns. Powerful people, or people who wished to be powerful, wanted to control us, and to kill the ones they didn’t control. Tiae broke into two parts, then three, then shattered completely. The royal family died person by person. I was traded for a while among captors wishing to use my royal status, narrowly escaping from the last thanks to some still loyal to Tiae itself. Those brave men and women died to save me. I hid. I fought. I survived. I learned how to judge who I could trust and who I could not. A single mistake would have doomed me.”
“How did you survive?” Mari asked. “I’ve only gotten this far because of Alain.”
“I had no Alain,” Sien said, averting her eyes from Mari. “I did have those who still believed that Tiae meant something. Who were willing to run the greatest risks in what seemed a hopeless effort to keep one small part of Tiae alive.” She paused, staring out the window. “I eventually ended up here. I have done all I could to help Pacta Servanda hold out, to remain Tiae, while the rest of my country sank further into barbarism.”
The Princess looked at Mari again. “Why did the Great Guilds do nothing? They left what had been Tiae. They left us to suffer. Why? Did they no longer wish to rule the commons here, or consider us not worth the effort?”
Mari shook her head. “They were afraid. Every tool they were used to using to control the commons had failed. Trying something else would have required them to change, and both the Mage Guild and the Mechanics Guild are dedicated to not allowing any change.”
“That is…stupid,” Sien said. “They control the world. Shouldn’t that be their priority?”
“They control the world because they haven’t allowed any change,” Mari said. “The Great Guilds have long since made that tactic into their whole reason for being. Change must not happen. Yet change did happen in Tiae, and anything else the Guild did would open the door for greater change. What would happen to the world’s stability if the Bakre Confederation restored order in Tiae with the help of the Guild and then decided to stay, thereby doubling its size and power? What would happen if the Confederation moved into Tiae and instead of restoring order the social collapse in Tiae spread into the Confederation? So the Great Guilds did nothing, because the Great Guilds feared doing anything else.”
Mari leaned forward, resting her forearms on her legs as weariness struck again. “That’s why I’m here. Why my Guild decided to kill me even before I knew I was…that person. Because I thought that kind of reasoning was terrible and I want it to stop. I want to fix things, not let them go to blazes because I’m afraid change might undermine the way things are.”
The princess watched Mari a little longer, then shook her head. “Would that you had been born twenty years earlier. Perhaps you could’ve prevented much suffering here.”
Mari shook her head in turn,
closing her eyes for a moment. “No. I don’t think conditions would’ve been right twenty years ago for me to get the support I’ve needed. Besides, it’s not me alone. I wouldn’t be here now if not for Alain. He’s kept me alive and kept me going. Without him, without his skills as a Mage, I’d be lost. Actually, I’d be dead. And I know a lot of people look at us and think we couldn’t possibly really be in love, but we are. He’s my partner in every way.”
“Your partner.” Sien nodded. “A nice thing to have. Can he then take your place if the worst happens? You told me the others would follow only you.”
“I’m afraid that’s true.” Mari sighed, raising both palms in a what-can-I-do gesture. “Don’t ask me why. They listen to Alain because they think he’s telling them what I want. Even though he’s smarter than I am. Probably has a lot more common sense, too.”
“Success depends upon you,” Sien noted. “As it depends upon me for Tiae. I’m all my country has left to rally around, Lady Mari. There should be an elected parliament to exercise some authority. That disappeared long ago and will need to be recreated, but even when the government has been rebuilt my status will stay the same in one very important way. I literally am Tiae, by the laws and beliefs of Tiae.”
“I’ve got enough trouble with being the woman of the prophecy,” Mari said. “I can’t imagine being a country.”
“If I fall, all will be lost. There is no one and nothing else left that all of Tiae could look to. It would be generations, or never, before Tiae was whole and happy again.”
“If the Storm hits as the Mages keep warning, it’ll be a lot longer than that,” Mari said. “Why does it have to be me? I’ll bet you’ve wondered the same thing plenty of times.”
The princess nodded at Mari. “You may be the only other person in the world who understands how I feel. And I may be the only one who fully understands how you feel.” She blinked, smiling sadly. “I remember as a small child playing in the palace in Tiaesun. Tiae was whole and at peace. It seems an impossible memory now, a dream of a place that never really was. I’ve spent so many years hiding, trying to stay alive, trusting in only a few. Even within this town only a trusted few know my true identity, because if it became widely known that the last princess was here, the warlords would flock to capture or kill me. There has been no one I could share the burden with.”
The Pirates of Pacta Servanda (Pillars of Reality Book 4) Page 32