Theodore would know what he must do when the moment came. If he chose to. It was now in the hands of the gods. There was nothing else he could do.
Sergei headed back into his hut. It felt small and cold and spartan, just like his soul.
CHAPTER 49
“I want to know everything,” James said as he entered the cabin.
Nigella didn’t seem surprised at his sudden appearance. She stood near the stove, cooking. “Do you?” she asked carefully.
He removed his gloves and threw them on the table. “Yes, I do.”
“Mind your manners. Those are wet. Get them off.” She stirred the contents of her pot.
Like a berated child, he picked up his gloves and beat the ice off against his trouser leg. Then, he carefully placed them on top of the small hearth in the corner of the room.
“Better,” Nigella said.
James sat in a chair and watched her work. The small house felt oddly intimate. After having masturbated in one of its corners for a while now, the sense of belonging had seeped into his skin. He felt relaxed in Nigella’s home, even though he knew it was an alien place, in spirit and purpose.
The cat came over to sniff him.
Winter snows had put an end to his military excursions for now. He had done all he could to prepare for war. There was only one piece missing, the certainty of his cause. Relying on visions to blaze the path through his future was a dangerous game. It was like being fed; after a while, you forgot what hunger was, and you never hunted as keenly as before.
Her advice shadowed him like a silent bodyguard, protecting him, guiding him, lending a sharp killing edge to his sword, an edge that guile and money and fake smiles could never give. His life was wrapped in magic, with glimpses of the future borrowed in blood and seed.
But there was always something missing.
He had disposed of a dozen enemies, only to have dozens more appear, new faces, new names, fresh ambitions. After a while, he had learned it was better to have old foes with known intentions than young upstarts dying to prove themselves. He had promised the world twice over. He had threatened until his throat turned raw. He had bedded so many women the act of pleasure felt like a boring duty. There was perfume clinging to his skin and crusted flakes of blood under his nails. Xavier was working a net of spies so thick a fly couldn’t slip through. His sycophants and fans numbered in their thousands. And his armies were as ready for war as they would ever be. And still, he was edgy, uncertain, reluctant.
Rob was the friend he had never had, a brother almost. They had become inseparable, in secrets, in deeds, in their plans. But even though he trusted the man with his own life, a streak of bone-deep paranoia burrowed through his bones, like some maggot.
So, he visited Nigella almost daily now, gasping and huffing in a chair as she patiently waited for the cup of his hot semen, and she swilled it and rolled her eyes and told him truths and riddles. But the world was glazed over, a pane of grease and filth clouding it. He could guess shapes, but he couldn’t tell for sure. It maddened him.
His every sense screamed at him not to give in. But he had to. And it wasn’t that difficult. The bucktoothed woman was there. He could smell her, the ripe smell of womanhood and life’s hardship, her plain lines strangely attractive.
He realized she was watching him intently. “Let us eat first,” she said simply.
James swallowed down hot gulps of thick broth mechanically as he considered the next hour of his life. The cat tried to push its tiny nose into his bowl, but he flicked its ear, and it retreated. It would change everything. He almost feared the foretelling, but he knew he must have it. When Nigella pushed her plate away, he almost jumped.
Without a word, she reached for her cat, picked it up, opened the door, and gently tossed it out. Then, back in the warmth of her small, humble home, she started shedding her clothes, layers of wool and leather. Soon, she stood in front of the fire, shivering, goose bumps covering her pale skin. James felt his heart hammer as he took his clothes off. This felt nothing like any of his political rituals back at the mansion. This was no silly game.
Nigella lay on her bed. “Come here,” she called.
Giddy with excitement, he rested on top of her, the tips of her nipples brushing against his chest. He wondered what she was thinking. How many men had she lain with in her life? How many times it was for business and how many times it was for love? How was she different from a common whore?
Doubts and questions fled him as he entered her. At first, he didn’t move. She nodded. He made his first thrust slowly. She gasped. Three minutes later, he spent his seed with a savage growl on his lips. Nigella’s head slumped against the hard mattress.
Panting, James watched her. Her face was ruddy, her skin dewed with sweat. She shone bronze in the dim light of the cabin fire. An artery in her neck pulsated rapidly, beating against the skin. Her eyes were wide open, but they only showed the white.
“Nigella?” he whispered.
Her eyes rolled back to normal. Her vision focused. “I saw,” she said.
James swallowed. “What?”
She put a hand on his nape, pulled him close, and spoke in his ear.
Three days later, James stood in the same big hall they had celebrated the Autumn Festival in. The audience was much sparser, but still large and colorful. All slightly tired and drunk, they waited for the day to end and a new year to start.
The future emperor of Athesia had won himself a moment of respite and stood all alone, sipping wine, thinking. The flood of people moving before his eyes floated in a rapid stream, those who called themselves his partners, those who styled themselves his friends, followers, maybe even enemies, definitely those. He had labored for the last six months trying to carve his survival in a bedrock of lies and plots. And now that he had, he felt naked, exposed, exhausted. Nigella’s words boomed in his head, echoing the sound of his heart.
His eyes scanned the hall, past the expensive wall portraits and landscapes, tapestries and huge chandeliers, past the rows of stiff-backed servants rowing through the torrent of guests, armed with tiny yet delicious dishes and a never-ending supply of drinks. Here and there, he glimpsed Xavier’s men, mingling so casually. Some tried their best to look inconspicuous; others were nothing more than brutes with rich clothes and sporting week-long whiskers, smelling of garlic. It was almost silly. James saw Timothy talking to a servant girl, swaying ever so slightly.
Rob was talking to his two patrons. For a change, Master Angus was lively on his feet, dancing to some silly tune, goaded by equally drunk merchants and bankers. Off to the left, Rheanna stood her ground, watching the crowd with the same bored look he wore on his own face.
She must have felt his gaze, as she raised her pretty face and smiled at him. James nodded in return. They hadn’t spoken much in a long while. Nigella’s words felt like a pair of clammy hands round his throat, stifling, maddening. A partner, a butcher, and a friend. You got it all wrong, James, he told himself. Or did he?
He decided.
Ignoring the flirty giggles from a squadron of young ladies, he marched across the hall, his eyes locked on Rheanna. She was watching him approach with a cool, guarded mien.
“Greetings, my lady,” he said when he was close enough to smell her. He liked everything about her, the soft, pleasant aroma of lemon, the tight bun of hair, the modest jewelry, the tiniest touch of makeup around her eyes. And in those eyes, not a trace of treachery or deceit.
James wasn’t quite sure if there had ever been a plot to tame him with seduction. Otis and Melville may have plotted something, but it made no difference. He knew what he wanted. He knew what was missing. He was sick and tired of all the stupid games he had played, the fake courtesy and interest, the protracted rituals of wooing and courting and the dutiful sex that quenched his thirst but burned his throat. All he was left with was a big, gaping hole in his soul.
“You look ravishing today,” she complimented.
He smirked almo
st like the silly boy he had been in Windpoint. And to think that his dirty leather uniform and a sword had made him feel like a man. Such innocence.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. “And I’m sorry.”
Rheanna arched her pretty neck. “For what?”
James shrugged. “For everything. For doubting you. For neglecting you.”
The banker gently touched his shoulder, just a fingertip. He suppressed a shiver. “I told you, Your Highness. I am yours.” James reached until his hand found hers. He cupped it. “Will you be my wife?” he asked her.
She did not hesitate. “Yes, James.”
Their wedding ceremony was a simple, humble affair, to much chagrin from Otis and Melville, who had hoped to monetize his marriage. Instead, he had shattered their plans with his modest and private rite. Well, he had other plans.
Rheanna wore cream and red; he was dressed in rich blue silk. As he placed a wreath of dried bay leaves on her head, he briefly thought of Celeste and his mother. And for a tiny moment, he felt sad. Not for abandoning his betrothed. Not for losing his naivety. He couldn’t quite explain it. His former life in Eracia was a misty shadow, blurred like the engravings on an old, worn stone. Yet, there was joy there and happiness. He did not regret his choices. He wished his mother could have seen her son get married. But she probably wouldn’t cry, like mothers often did. Mali was of the tougher sort.
Rheanna gently lifted the counterpart of her wreath from an ornamental pillow and laid it on his brow. “We are joined together,” she recited.
The three realms were distanced by culture and their belief in the gods, but they all shared the same life’s little ceremonies: big festivals and holy days, birth rituals, days of joy, and days of mourning. The nuptials were no different.
A Parusite couple would have had a patriarch preside over the ceremony and bind them together in the sight of the gods. In Caytor, however, since the Feoran revolution and the subsequent purging, religion was not really popular among the rich. So it was Councillor Sebastian as a guild head who held the honor. Some might call it a political move, James knew, but it was more than that.
Rob was at his side, too, grinning madly. No one really knew why the groom needed his best man, nor why the brides had their chaperones. The historical reasons were lost, but the practice had endured the passage of time.
James glimpsed Otis frown unhappily as Sebastian raised his arms to announce the ending of the vows. And that meant Lady Rheanna was now an empress-to-be. For James, it meant power and wealth and sympathy from bankers and lawyers in Eybalen.
Some of them, at least.
He knew his choice of a wife would not please everyone. With so much scheming and plotting going on around him, his best bet was to anger as few of his would-be friends and allies. But whoever he might have favored would have meant resentment and fury from the others. So he’d done the one sensible thing and ignored them all. He’d chosen the woman he knew he could live with.
As he led Rheanna away from the ceremonial altar, the guests of honor pressed forward to share in his joy. Officers, guild masters, merchants, councillors, even disappointed suitors, they all made sure he saw and acknowledged their plastered grins and heard their polite blessings. There weren’t that many of them, but they had all been carefully handpicked, most valuable allies and undecided foes, people whose support he could not do without, women who would never give up their pursuits until they saw him claimed by another. He had also carefully selected among prominent soldiers, lawmakers, and industrialists who shared his ideas.
The tricky balance meant none of them would gain or lose too much. The mix made sure mistrust and rivalry would work in his favor. Finally, the hundreds of his guests and followers left uninvited would feel less spurned as there were just so many of them. They would figure out he had opened the ceremony only to his intimate circle, which would goad them to work harder to gain entry to that privileged group. All in all, if you could slap a hundred people on the wrist, it was better than spitting in one man’s face. Small insults were easy to forget, especially when doused in gold and future prospects of gain; big insults could only be resolved by death.
Dinner swept past him in a dizzy rush of colors and sounds. He remembered the eating, the wine tasting, the dances, the endless stream of salutes turning ever so funnier with every new guest until some tottered and could hardly speak, the camaraderie of artists trying their best. It snowed outside, and James’s head was a flurry of thoughts. He knew what he had to do, and it kept him preoccupied. If Rheanna noticed, she said nothing.
The next morning—or rather, the next day—he woke up with a solid headache and a blank gray sky staring at him through the window. It was impossible to tell the hour. His wife slept curled on her side, the blanket bundled around her waist so her back dimples showed. Smiling, James reached over and caressed her warm skin. She muttered something and turned over, but did not wake.
Then, he remembered what he had to do.
He wormed out of the bed and dressed, simple leathers, nothing fancy. He tiptoed out of the imperial chamber. Xavier was waiting outside, oiling his sword like he often did when bored. A dozen soldiers stood or sat farther down the corridor, chatting quietly. When they saw James emerge, they snapped to attention. The warlord took his psychopathic share of time.
“Ready, sir?” he asked James.
“Let’s go,” the future emperor said.
They marched in silence, weapon harnesses jiggling and creaking and sword sheaths clanging now and then against the wall or some ornamental suit of armor. The occasional guest or servant quickly stepped out of their way. For once, people felt this was not the best time to fawn upon James.
After a while, they entered a secluded part of the mansion. It was frequented only by the help and used mainly for storage. Walls were neatly lined with stacked firewood; dark corners bulged with sacks of potatoes and onions. Entire rooms had been converted into cellars, holding spices, pickles, and whatever was needed to see Pain Daye safely through the winter. Old, disused furniture was piled under huge tarps, collecting dust. In the monochrome winter light that pervaded the corridors, they looked like sleeping, twisted monsters.
One of the nondescript rooms had a pair of guards in front of the door. They were playing cards, but when they heard the storm of boots approaching, they carefully put down their decks and made sure the small heaps of coins were safely distanced from one another.
Without a word, the man on the left opened the door and let James and Xavier enter. Inside, there were four people, two soldiers and two men, kneeling, with arms bound behind their backs and mouths gagged with old socks and rope. They looked roughed up, but there weren’t any visible bruises. Xavier had taught James that torture need not begin by shattering someone’s teeth with a hammer. You could work with a dough roller against the softer parts, like the armpits, foot soles, the belly, or even kidneys. The victims would piss blood and look no different than the next man.
The two men kneeling were Otis and Melville.
“Greetings, friends,” James said. “It is sad that we must part ways like this, but it’s a necessity. You’ve been of great help to me, and I’m immensely grateful. Alas, we now have a conflict of interest.”
Otis squirmed, red-faced, eyes bulging with fury. He growled into his gag. The soldier behind him kicked him lightly in the slabs.
“All your assets and personal holdings have been transferred to me. The steel and wool industries will come in handy financing the wars I must wage now. After all, that’s what you wanted. Worry not, your families will be taken care of.” James approached and knelt near Otis. He reached behind the man and sliced the cords round his wrists.
Moaning with pain, the councillor slumped forward. His palms were dark red with excess blood, even pudgier than normally.
“I will need your rings,” James said.
Otis said something, but his words were lost.
James rose and nodded at the nearest guard. The ma
n grabbed the councillor’s hand and started pulling on the rings. They would not come off.
“Use soap. Or butter.” He didn’t want this to come down to cutting the fingers off, but if it had to be done, it would be done.
Ever since his return from the last war exercise, James had known he would have to settle the score with the entire Caytorean caste. The original plan of fostering an exile emperor and using him as expendable political leverage against his half sister and the rest of the world had mutated into an unpredictable game of power. Thanks to Master Angus, from what the books he had been reading lately were telling, this situation was no different from what had happened with the Feorans. At first, the rich and cunning had thought to exploit the new sect, but when they realized they could not control the religion, it had been too late.
It had taken a long time for James to figure out the full enormity of the truth. Luckily for him, the division in the Caytorean camp was wide enough to allow him to slip through and survive until he was strong enough to fight back. Between those who valued him as a friend of the High Council and those who perceived him as a terrible, chaotic menace to their realm, James had managed to grow his own following. It was a gift, Rob claimed, one he had obviously inherited from his father.
The most shocking realization was the endless possibility of manipulation that greed bred. Every time James thought he was done handing out charm and favors and future promises, Rob showed him yet another angle, yet another opening. But it was no longer simply having sex or giving out cash or leading impressionable fools on hunting trips. He now dealt in much subtler, more dangerous affairs. James was burrowing into dens of secrets that councillors and merchants desperately tried to keep hidden. He was matchmaking future couples based on their fathers’ allegiances, strengths and weaknesses. He was bribing their tailors and barbers and nannies.
The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2) Page 56