by Robert Brady
He turned.
“When you see Karl, tell him ‘well done.’ They never guessed what he was up to, even after he did it.”
He grinned a yellow-toothed grin, inclined his head again, and left.
That left Toor. I had never in my life even met a Toorian. The only ones who had seen me had been delegates to the Fovean High Council. I traded with them but had never met them myself.
They stood, then inclined their heads, and they walked off without saying anything. That left me with the Eldadorians. Wolf Soldiers closed the throne room doors, and Rennin immediately turned on his heel.
“I really wish I had known you were going to do that,” he said.
“I know,” I said. Now I needed to be the peer, not the king. “I wanted to have this meeting first, fill you in and then meet with the Foveans, but the attack came and this had to happen.”
“How much of that was true?” Groff asked me.
“All of it,” I said. “The lowered taxes have brought a flood of people from all nations. We can offer them land and jobs and we can tax their earnings. I can increase the size of all of your holdings by more than one hundred percent if you let me, and I can make you wealthier than you are now.”
They nodded. They had seen Thera – it had become an economic juggernaut. Those who had lowered their taxes had seen their revenues climb and their lands swell with immigrants hungry for land and jobs.
“And about your ambitions?” Ceberro asked. He looked me in the eye. “Henekh Dragorson wasn’t wrong, your Majesty. You aren’t a merchant.”
I smiled – I couldn’t help it. I was the avatar of the god War, not Eveave.
“Be ready for one of them to decide that we are going to grow too powerful, too fast,” I said. “And be ready for one of your cities to be determined to be the perfect place for an example.”
They looked at each other, then at me. They didn’t want to be treated like pieces on a board. I had just informed them that there is a good chance that I would get some of them killed, and they had no reason to doubt me. Probably not what they expected on my first day.
“I am Genden,” one of the Counts said. “I am of Tonkin, on the Andurin peninsula. I am probably the city you are talking about.”
The port of Tonkin was similar to Thera, and yes, that made him a likely target.
“And when I am besieged, and when my fields are burning and my people are dying or coming to me and demanding I relieve them, what will I and my two hundred Eldadorian foot expect from Eldador the nation?”
“First, know that as soon as he is before me, I will be adding a Man, Arath, to the peerage and, as an earl, he shall be given land and title at the center of the Andurin peninsula.”
“Arath, the leader of the Legionnaires,” Rennin said.
I nodded. Rennin turned to Groff.
“How do you see that, your Grace?” he asked.
Groff’s severe features drew in on themselves. He lowered his face, then looked up at me, into my eyes. The room had gone quiet.
“I think,” he said, “that if the Free Legion is going to base itself in Eldador, then it should be taxed, and it should be encouraged to believe it has a stake in us. We have seen how beneficial Wolf Soldiers are to Eldador. Legionnaires and Sarandi shall further reinforce us.”
“Except that they all leave in the War months,” another Earl said. He didn’t identify himself. Ceberro looked up at me.
“We will need to demand that they leave no less than one thousand reserves in the city,” he said.
I nodded. “I will make it a condition of his elevation,” I said. “I think you have schooled him in the folly of doing otherwise.”
They all laughed at that.
“And I think we need an Earl for your holdings in the Plains of Angador,” I said.
He considered. He had already started a city, I knew. He would want someone he could control.
“Tartan Stowe would be a good choice,” Rennin said.
All eyes turned to Tartan, who normally sat quiet during such meetings. He was old enough, if he had a good advisor. Well, I only knew one Oligarch’s name.
“Will you join the peerage, lad?” I asked him.
His eyes found mine. His slight build came from his mother, with brown hair, brown eyes, white skin and a dancer’s frame. He looked nothing like Glennen. One too many slaps on the back, one too many accusations that he didn’t rise to his father’s high marks.
Too much time thinking that his dad was a drunken slob.
“I serve the kingdom,” he said, simply. “If this is where I am needed, then this is where I will go.”
“Ceberro can school you,” I said. Ceberro nodded. “Devarre will go with you as your personal advisor. He has been a great aid to me.”
The Oligarch nodded.
“And I will be elevating Two Spears of Thera to the rank of Duke, only because Thera is a duchy, and I will need to keep him there. Thera shall remain the home of the Wolf Soldier elite guard, but those troops are now at Eldador’s disposal.”
“Oh, good, another Duke,” one of the court barons quipped.
“Plenty of fresh blood in the peerage,” said another.
“The Uman-Chi already make fun of us,” Genden added.
“Not so much since we sacked Outpost IX,” Rennin said. Again, more laughter.
I knew Rennin would be the key to my realm. His support legitimized me. Now he wanted to recreate my victories as Eldadorian victories.
He had a son I knew. Like Hectar, he probably had his eyes set on Lee.
“And while I am expanding the peerage, I am going to make the Aschire a Duchy, and Krell of the Aschire its Duke,” I said.
Krell regarded me evenly. Rennin threw him a disgusted look, but made sure that he had it out of his system before he looked back at me.
“Is that wise, your Majesty?” Oligarch one asked.
“It is the best possible solution,” I said.
“Such title is meaningless,” Krell said. “The Aschire is the Aschire. If you make me a Duke, as you call it, then every Aschire is a Duke, and every tree in the Aschire, and every squirrel, and every rock is a Duke.”
There goes the peerage,” that same voice quipped.
“He can’t even understand what you are offering,” Ceberro said. “If the Aschire is to be a Duchy, then let us build a city and pick a Man –“
“No!” Krell and I said together. The Aschire turned back to me, gauging me.
“It is we who do not understand the Aschire,” I said. “Because we have made no effort to. However the Aschire is not a place for stone walls and roads and tilled farms. It is wild and untamed and free. It is a part of Eldador and we would protect it, and to protect it we must give it title and recognize it.”
I turned back to Krell. “You don’t want this, I know,” I said. “And it will make a stir among your people, and you fear that our ways will corrupt you.
“But you must call yourself a Duke and you must call the Aschire a Duchy to the rest of Fovea, knowing that it is meaningless there, because ‘Aschire’ is meaningless to the rest of Fovea.”
He nodded. I felt gratified that other nobles nodded as well. Rennin wouldn’t shake his hand, but he wouldn’t find it offensive enough to call me on it, either.
“If there is nothing else, I want you out among the Fovean nobles when we leave here,” I said. “Let it be known that Arath, Two Spears, Krell and Tartan are to be elevated. Devarre, I want you with Tartan, but not too close. Let’s see who comes to him to test his loyalty.”
Ceberro cleared his throat and looked at me then around the room.
“If I could speak with my Dukes, then – please would the rest of you depart, with my thanks and my appreciation, and my pledge that this new Eldador is your future, as well as mine?”
The lesser nobility filed out. Now three of the four Oligarchs, my Wolf Soldier guard, Shela and her new apprentice, and the Dukes, including Krell remained with me.
“That was ill a
dvised, your Majesty,” one of the Oligarchs said. “You cannot be sure that all of the nobility is behind you.”
“I’m sure that they are not,” I said. “I have no doubt that one of the court barons at least will go immediately to someone outside of Eldador and report that they had better stay away from Tartan.”
“In fact, I am counting on it.”
Chapter Twelve
Faith and Love
On the third day of the month of Order, we dropped Glennen into the ‘Tomb of Kings,’ which our stonecutters had been madly creating since the King died.
Dred Barr gave a eulogy about what a great guy he had been. Rennin and Ceberro said their part as well. I tied the whole thing up with a statement about the New Eldador.
I hate wakes and funerals. They aren’t for the dead because the dead don’t care, and they aren’t for the living because it is a misery for the living. Especially when you are committing such a great man like Glennen. People didn’t know if they should cry for the passing monarch or feel good that his suffering had finally ended. Everyone knew that he died in drunken misery – and everyone could see what that had done to his children.
After they sealed the stone cover on the stone crypt, which Hectar had built on a promontory outside of the city that overlooked the Bay, I lead a procession of nobles and merchants from there to the city, with everyone filing out behind me in a daze.
Arath had arrived finally. He rode with Karel of Stone and Dilvesh beside him. He looked more weathered and wiser than I remembered him. I had discussed his elevation with him the night before, at dinner with court barons and with visiting nobles who were now his peers. He seemed amused that I thought this would be a good thing for Eldador.
“You just make it harder for the Free Legion to invade you, not impossible,” he said.
“We can discuss that if it happens,” I said. “It gives the Legionnaires a home, the Free Legion as well, and my enemies will think twice about invading me outside of the War months if you are right there.”
“And you get to pay tax like the rest of us,” Ceberro told him. It turned out that Arath and Ceberro were becoming great friends, now that Ceberro officially ranked him. The opportunist had finally found his next opportunity.
As I entered the gate on Blizzard’s back, the gigantic wooden panels open and the Wolf Soldier and Aschire combined guard at the ready, I looked down at the people who didn’t yell, “Boo,” and didn’t cheer, but who just recognized that a new era had started, and that it would affect them.
They couldn’t do a thing to help it along, and they couldn’t do a thing to stop it. They could live their lives and pay their way and hope to their particular gods that they were left out of it as much as possible.
I wouldn’t have liked that, but of course I was the one making it happen.
I had spent this new part of my life here, the chosen of a god, and my god spoke to me directly. I knew what he wanted and I knew what to do, to a degree. I had to guess a lot, but I knew when I screwed up.
These people, they had faith. They prayed to their gods, who never answered. I had discussed this with Ann, and even if she had been a phony, I believe that she had answered me true when she informed me that the gods had been forbidden to speak to their subjects – that this involved some rule that they had to exist by.
I’d answered part of the reason why He had brought me here, but no matter how you spun it, I had no faith. I knew my god’s will.
I thought these thoughts as we rode along the cobbled path from the outer to the inner gate. People did what people did in any city. Commerce continued because people still had to eat. Porters ported and merchants haggled, kids ran chasing dogs and their mothers called after them.
I had seen cities once as steps toward my destiny. Now I saw them as a place to live. I admit, I liked it the other way.
“You are pensive, your Majesty,” Rennin said to me.
He had pulled his roan charger up along mine, and I hadn’t even noticed. I took another look around. We had caught the second bounty hunter and my Wolf Soldiers had cut him down. I had ordered him stripped naked and thrown in Tren Bay. That didn’t mean that there weren’t a dozen of his friends still in the city.
“He was a great man,” I said.
Rennin nodded.
“He meant a lot to me, Rennin,” I said. “He started all of this. You might say that they were my ideas, but he let me implement them. Anyone can come up with an idea – not everyone can decide to act on it, or even know if it is a good one.”
“He had great faith in you,” the Duke informed me.
I turned to him. “Really?”
He nodded again. ”That day I saw you in your Theran estate, I informed him of how I knew you and what you had done in my city, and that he should not trust you.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“He laughed,” Rennin said. “You didn’t know him long, but I can tell you that he was a man who laughed. He put his hand on my shoulder and he pointed to you, and he said, ‘That one – that mind boils like a cauldron, and even the spill can make you rich.’ I knew I could never turn him against you.”
I laughed. Shela rode up on my left a moment later, on her gelding.
“There is an unfamiliar sound,” she said. “What makes a White Wolf howl, finally?”
“My failures, of course,” Rennin said. “He doesn’t have any, so he has to enjoy ours.”
“It is more of a burden than most could bear,” Shela said. “I raced him last night and he defeated me on his horse, which as you know is the best horse of any horse.”
“He has to have the best horse,” Rennin said. “What else to carry the best sword and the best armor?”
“Which we all can see, because he is the tallest,” Shela added. They enjoyed this. They didn’t leave a lot for me to say. I thought I always made mistakes and screwed up, but apparently they didn’t see it that way.
“Are we talking about the new king?” D’gattis asked, riding up behind us. Avek and Ancenon were discussing affairs of Uman-Chi futures and D’gattis had found himself on the outside of that conversation, as he had with most conversations between the two. He had tried his hand as a hanger-on for a while, but I could see that he liked it so little, that he had lowered himself to talking to us.
“How could you have guessed?” Shela asked him.
“I heard best and tallest mentioned many times,” he said. “That had to be your White Wolf or Adriam himself.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I am not a god.”
“Of course not,” Rennin said. “Because no god could say, ‘I am not a god,’ but you can, giving you a power that not even they have.”
“He bears up to it well, though,” D’gattis said.
“My point exactly,” Shela said. “In fact, I think he bears up to it better than anyone else could.”
We approached the gates to the palace finally. I had never been more grateful to see them. “I think I need to start a tradition where no one speaks to the monarch on the day of a funeral,” I said, although I grinned as I said it.
“That would be the best tradition,” Rennin began, but I gave him a look that quieted him.
“I have seen to the ceremonies,” Shela said, relieving me from my attack. “Your new earls and duke are going to wait outside of the throne until you welcome everyone, and then be called to receive their titles.”
“Call them as commons, remember,” Rennin said. “They aren’t dukes and earls until he says they are.”
“How many of these have you been to, in other nations?” I asked Rennin.
“This doesn’t happen in other nations,” he said.
“No?”
“How could they? Sentalans are a collective and elect leaders by committees. Volkhydrans all are chiefs of their cities, and their sons replace them. They have a king but it is a simple ceremony to install him, and it involves a lot of drinking. The Hydrans have Dukes and Earls, but they are just chiefs of a different
name. Dorkans are lead by the most powerful wizards.”
“Andarans have nothing similar,” Shela said. “The city tribes elect the best among them, the horse tribes are lead by the one who is best loved by the tribe.”
“And Uman-Chi rarely die,” D’gattis said, “although I am told that Angron came to his seat by the will of his father, who was appointed by the Cheyak.”
“I will have to ask the Dwarven emissaries,” I said. “I’m concerned that I’m naming so many nobles.”
“Don’t be,” Rennin said. “Glennen named us all on his first day, and you are naming far fewer than he. No one is surprised you want to make changes and empower your own people.”
“How is this done in your land?” D’gattis asked me.
“We vote,” I said, without thinking.
Stupid, I cursed myself.
That got all of their attention. “You vote?” Shela asked me.
I nodded. Damage control time! The gates to the palace loomed up on either side of me as I said, “We have three groups who chose between two parties. The two parties hate each other and fight constantly about everything. They spend more and more money to convince the members of the third group to join one group or the other, and the third group demands more and more for its vote – so, of course, some travel out of the first two groups to join the third.”
“That is…” Rennin said, trying to put a face on it.
“That is insane,” D’gattis said. “And if I hadn’t cast the truth saying myself, I would say you are lying. It is no wonder you don’t think like Men think, Black Lupus. Your people are mad.”
“We are a nation based on the idea of ideas,” I said. “We hold free speech above all else, because we believe that there is nothing more powerful than a thought.”
They were all quiet. D’gattis lowered his head and became pensive. Shela just looked at me, as did Rennin.
Before I knew it I’d arrived at the stables. That was a shame because I had led the whole procession there. I heard some chuckling and a few gold coins changed hands when we stopped – apparently they were betting on how far I would take them.
“Now that your tour of the royal stables is complete,” I said, to a general chuckle, “those of you who would prefer to stable their own mounts, as I will be doing, may, and the rest will find that we have business in the throne room.”