by Radu Aldea
“Aleyna, it’s so good that you came. I was sure you would want to meet Maeve.”
Marcel’s enthusiasm was as annoying as ever, but this time he was right. She did want to have a talk with this Rifflander. “So you’re from Therburg. What the hell happened there?”
“That was very direct, lass, but I have to admit I’m just as curious. Perhaps you may allow me to sit at your table.” This was the old woman who stopped the man before she did. She was ballsy and Aleyna liked her. The man gave the woman a look that warned her to stay away, which she chose to ignore. Aleyna had nothing against having another guest at the table.
“I am Unna,” the old woman spoke. “My son thinks I am old and can’t take care of myself anymore.” She chuckled. “And he has forgotten his manners, but he is a good son and he can’t be blamed from taking offense. The young lady has forgotten this is Suttland, not Riffland, but she can’t be blamed as well from not knowing how things are around here.”
“That’s what he said. That senator who commanded all the others.”
“Who said what?”
“Are you a senator?”
Maeve’s question surprised her. She’d never been mistaken for one, but she had been around senators and people who knew who she was all her life. “What makes you say that?”
“You have that expressionless, emotionally-detached look they do when they are ready to kill somebody, usually in a very disturbing way.”
Aleyna understood what Maeve meant. She knew about senators who had given the most horrific orders that would break others without flinching. “Do you think I am emotionless? You would be very wrong. What I am is angry, really, really angry. Just because I choose not to express myself the way you do, doesn’t mean it’s not there. To answer your question, no, I’m not a senator, I’m just ruthless like them and this is the first time I was mistaken for one.”
“What made you like that?”
“Circumstances! Isn’t that what we all are, victims of circumstances? So tell me what happened in your town and what did that senator say?” Maeve told the whole story, how she was about to die when they were interrupted by the emissary from Cuttland, what the leader of the senators said about Suttland, which was an insult Marcia, Christian, Sarah or Reyna were not likely to ignore and how that young senator managed to save them. That was impressive. Aleyna knew Nestor would not be easily dissuaded when he put on one of his spectacles of brutality. When she asked for descriptions there was little doubt the leader was Nestor, but she had no idea who the emissary was. When she looked at Thea, the senator just shook her head slightly signaling she had no idea either. “Are you sure she stopped him?”
“Very sure! The others didn’t look very happy about it, but weren’t doing anything. Then she came all alone, looking very young, no more than sixteen, said a few words, got him alone, and when they returned he stopped the executions. I was about to be next on that podium. Then she came to me, asked for my name and told me I should come here.”
“She did what?” Was this emissary of Cuttland playing games with them? Aleyna knew how Sarah or Christian would react when they found out about this. They will consider it an invitation to invade Riffland and she agreed with them. When that girl had sent Maeve here she must’ve known they would find out about her and act in exactly this way.
“That’s a special brand of crazy,” Thea said before Maeve got a chance to respond.
“Why do you say that, lass?” Unna’s question was not a surprise. Very few humans could discern the intricacies of senatorial politics because they happened in a world they had no access to. In order to learn something, they would have to be really smart in interpreting the rare glimpses they were offered. Of course, they had been given plenty of them recently.
“Walking into the heart of another family’s territory in a different province without any protection right now? Yes, I would say that qualifies as insanity.” Thea was right, it did, but it wasn’t half as crazy as provoking them, which the girl had done. Maybe she was young and didn’t know what she was doing, but there was another explanation. She did know what she was doing and was powerful enough that she believed she could taunt them.
“Was she really in danger?”
“I think she was more likely to be killed than to walk out of there,” Thea answered Maeve’s question. Aleyna was not so sure. Nestor must’ve been worried that Suttland was going to invade. He was always paranoid that way, but now, with the killings of Kara and Rufus, there was more reason for him to worry. Aleyna was aware there was indeed a plan to conquer Riffland quickly. So if you played on those fears and offered support from the only other province that was able to do it, which was almost certainly why this girl-emissary was in Riffland, there was a very good chance you would walk out alive. She didn’t share any of these with her companions, she would discuss it with Sarah and Christian later and decide what to do.
“She didn’t do you any favors, lass,’’ Unna addressed Maeve. “You are in more danger here than you would’ve been had you stayed in your province. I fear you walked out of the frying pan into the fire. Given your beliefs, they are not likely to be forgiving right now.”
“Why do you say that?” Aleyna wanted to find out what the old woman knew.
“Senators here might play by different rules than those of Cuttland or Riffland, but they are neither soft nor tolerant of any challenge to their authority, especially now that two of them were killed. And Hilderfort is the center of their power in Western Suttland.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, woman! Hilderfort is not on senatorial land, none of the provincial capitals are.” Marcel argued. If he only knew how wrong he was. It was true that in the other provinces the capitals were on imperial land, a source of endless resentment for the other houses, but not here. Aleyna knew her history, the other humans didn’t. If Marcel had only been aware how many senators lived here he would’ve run a long time ago.
The old woman chuckled. “Tell me, dear, where is the senatorial land in Suttland?”
He was stumped. There was a clear division, but the senators didn’t feel the need to share it with the populace. Nor did most of them made it largely known who they were. Kara and a few others let it slip when they hired servants they would be working for senators and paid them more. Others, like Aidan or Thea, masqueraded as human lords or rich city dwellers. Enough people had died in the war that the appearance of a new aristocracy wasn’t suspicious. In fact, very few human lords had their roots traced far back into the past.
“What do you think are senatorial lands?” Aleyna asked Unna.
“Hilderfort and everything north of Hilderfort. You can’t find a trace of a human lord in those fortresses they call homes.” The old woman was right. In fact, there were no human lords north of Hilderfort. All of the villas in the north were occupied either by senators or humans who worked for them. This again, was not common knowledge.
“Old woman, you are out of your mind. If this was senatorial land they would’ve already found us,” Marianna argued. That woman was really getting on Aleyna’s nerves and she would be very happy when she got to kill her. But for now, she had to suffer through it.
“What makes you think they haven’t?” The old woman chuckled. And before Aleyna got the chance to question what she knew, Unna added. “I’m only joking. I think they are busy right now, otherwise they would’ve found you. But make no mistake, they will!”
“You don’t seem too worried about it, otherwise you wouldn’t sit at our table.”
Unna smiled at Aleyna’s question. “You don’t seem too worried either.”
“I am not afraid of senators.”
The old woman looked at her wanting to say something and then said something else. “You truly aren’t afraid, are you? Well, I’m an old woman, they aren’t going to do anything to me just because I sat at your table and listened to you.”
“They did it in Riffland, killed people for listening. They can do it here too,” Maeve said.
Nestor was great at instilling fear into the hearts of men. It even helped them by making people glad they lived in Suttland and more cautious, the threat that the same thing might happen here looming over them. No senator here would punish you just for listening to Ilan’s sermons, but they would if your ideas made you a threat.
“As I said, dear, in Suttland, senators play by different rules. That’s why you should have not come here and they and their priest aren’t welcome. People have good lives.” Aleyna had told them the same thing. The locals understood, the outsiders didn’t. She didn’t bother explaining it to them again. They believed what they wanted to believe. It was always that way.
“How did you know which were the senatorial lands?” Aleyna asked Unna.
“The taxes are lower if you live on senatorial land and there are no thieves, murderers or gangs. You can find them on imperial lands or on those of the barons. I think the criminals were the first to understand that some lands were forbidden to them and if they ventured there they would die. Establishing order was the first thing senators did after the war.” The old woman was right. The senators, given their powers, could maintain order without the large manpower the emperor or the barons used to do a worse job. Which was why senators could afford to exact lower taxes from the people on their lands. That was not enough to eliminate every kind of criminal. You had to make sure they weren’t forced to resort to breaking the law because of the circumstances. So, in Hilderfort the poor were fed, the orphans were taken care of and widows and other women without families were protected.
“So you agree to be slaves because you have to pay lower taxes?” Maeve asked.
“You still don’t understand! Let me tell you a story. There was a lordling who had the really bad habit of taking young, pretty girls and not only force himself on them, but hurt them in the process. Until one day he picked the wrong girl. The girl’s mother knew the mother of another girl who was the servant of a senator, a young woman herself. The story passed from mother to mother to daughter and then to senator. Soon after, the lordling was just gone. I don’t know what happened to him, but I can guess.”
Aleyna remembered when Amelia told them the story. Kara, of course, already knew and had probably come to a decision, but she let the servant tell the story. “He cut off his genitals during an assembly of the human lords. He died and, needless to say, they all knew who did it and why. It did scare the life out of them and they thought twice before they took girls to bed them. I don’t know who gave that order. It could’ve been any of them, really.”
Aleyna saw that everyone at the table froze. They wanted to know, but they didn’t want to know. “Too bad they don’t do the same when they take the girls and use them,” Maeve said.
“Bah, that servant girl wasn’t used. She gets paid really well. She comes to the village and gives her family money. They’ve become one of the richest families,” Unna responded.
“Then she must be offering other services than those usually required from a servant.”
“The girl is pretty, but not pretty enough to attract the attention of a senator. This one here, however,” the old woman pointed at Aleyna while talking to Maeve, “would get their attention. I’m surprised they haven’t already found her.”
Marianna felt the need to annoy her some more. “She said they haven’t, but I’m not sure that’s true. I think one of them used her and when he got bored threw her away. That’s why you hate senators so much, don’t you?”
Aleyna didn’t dignify this with anything other than a laconic answer. “No!”
Luckily, Maeve changed the subject. “Even if they did the right thing for once, you can’t tell me that other senators didn’t know what he was doing and did nothing about it.”
“You are rich, lass, or at least you were.” Unna waited for Maeve to acknowledge that she was indeed well off, which meant she had been rich. “That’s why you choose to judge us for wanting to live on senatorial land. To us, the commoners, there is no difference between the powerful. Human lords are worse than senators and the imperial governor is the worst of all. The rich folk are all connected one way or another. I bet your father had dealings with senators and you didn’t even know it. All the rich humans do, including the lordling and his family. Very few people in this world have no one to answer to. Senators, just like anybody else, have their superiors. Some probably didn’t care, but others, especially women, probably wanted to see the bastard die, but were afraid to do anything because they might offend somebody.”
That wasn’t exactly accurate. A decision like this, to execute a human lord for something he did on his own lands, could only be taken by the top senators of a house, as there was a fear of repercussions. It was never clear-cut and could create tensions with other houses.
Only someone like Kara could execute a baron without consequences. And there hadn’t been any. Nobody dared to question her judgment. The family of that lordling had dealings with the Arvillii and probably with the Valerii. Yet the business never stopped and even his family didn’t voice its outrage or made any demands. The old woman was right, there were a lot of things that tied senators to the human potentates. There were also good reasons why senators chose this system. Mainly because they couldn’t control everything, they didn’t have the numbers for it, but there was another reason, just as good. It was a way of stemming human resentment. If they took away all their power, someday humans would revolt. And there were a lot more humans, ten thousand times more, which was a chilling number for senators. It was the constant threat in the back of their minds, one they could never truly ignore.
“I’ve seen that girl senator once. She came to the village with her servant. She was incredibly beautiful with her long, silky red hair and blazing green eyes.”
Damn it! She had been with Kara on that trip. Her friend was always striking and maybe they ignored the human companion, but people tended to remember Aleyna too. Unna might be about to reveal to everyone who she really was. There was no way she could communicate to Thea what she really wanted. Fortunately, the diviner knew what to do.
“I tell you, that girl is not someone I would ever want to cross. I suspect that is true for senators as well because looking at her is seeing the power of the divine trapped in a mortal coil.” Maeve’s derogatory snort told her she didn’t believe in the divine origin of the senatorial power. Truthfully, Aleyna agreed. Probably, a very long time ago, someone gained a new power. Was that the result of a gift of the White Goddess or something that occurred naturally? Who could say? She didn’t want to debate theology right now, but she understood Unna’s reaction. It was the same reaction anyone else would have while facing someone as powerful as Kara.
“And now she’s dead,” Aleyna said without letting the bitterness leak through her words. When this was over and if she was still alive, which Aleyna doubted, she promised herself she would return to her family’s home and help the people she was responsible for. She had forgotten there were people who needed her. Marcia would never relinquish her control, but she would not question her decision. First, she had to make a lot of people pay.
“She was one of the two senators who were killed?” Marcel asked.
“Yes, father and daughter, both dead. They lived in a fortified villa north of here.”
“Funny you called it a villa, lass, because it looks nothing like one. What it is, is a fortress. I don’t know a lot about these things, but my son fought in the war and he tells me it was the most impressive he ever saw. Wizards tried to take it and they lost. They didn’t attempt it again. Yet somehow someone managed to kill every person in there. The senators returned a lot of bodies to the nearby villages from there and they compensated the families.”
Aleyna knew all that. It was the least the Arvillii could do. The money would not ease the suffering, but it would help the families. They served senators well and they deserved it.
“Don’t you all look so shocked! You didn’t really think only two senato
rs have died? Have you forgotten they had humans under their control?” Unna berated them.
“Do you know who killed them and why?” Marcel asked. “It sounds like they weren’t the worst senators.”
No, they weren’t the worst senators, but Kara was the best. The why was easy, her friend was the most powerful member of the Order. The who was still a mystery, but when she found them, she would make them suffer. “I don’t know,” was what Aleyna answered.
“Stranger still, the senators closed an area not far from the fortress. When they allowed people to go there again weeks later the land was recently plowed. Why would they do that?”
Well, because Julia asked them to in her attempt to hide the involvement of wizards or sorceresses. Aleyna wasn’t sure why she did it, but she was sure the blonde senator had a very good reason. The old woman obviously knew a lot, but would be very surprised to learn how many humans died at the lake. Ten times more than had died at the villa. Of course, there were no corpses to return. Somebody must’ve missed them and would probably never know what happened. “It’s certainly strange. I have no idea why they did that.”
“That servant girl I told you about, she was a ray of sunshine. Every time she came to the village she brought happiness. If someone needed her help she was there to offer it. The senators compensated the family for her too, but they didn’t return a body.”