“Given the situation, I’d suggest you want odd. Or at least, out of the ordinary,” he suggested.
“And what do you think the situation is? You’ve barely let me attempt to explain anything.” Anna glared at him over her cup, slouching back in her chair. “You’re a noble. There’s something to be said for politeness, even if you prefer to be more straightforward. We’ve only just met!”
“Your facade melted fast,” Nathan commented.
She smirked at him, showing some teeth. “I’m happy to smile emptily, simper, and pander to you all day long if that’s what you like. But I’m absolutely certain that’s not what you want.”
“What do you think I want?” Nathan asked.
“Answer my question first.”
Nathan paused. She had asked him what he felt the current situation was. A fair question to ask of a new Bastion, especially when he hadn’t let the meeting play out the way Anna wanted it to.
“I think you’re the countess of an old, failing noble family in a region plagued with issues. You lack recognition and are under-resourced,” he explained, leaning forward and cupping his hands together. “The land is undeveloped. You rule from a township as if you’re a mere baroness, but you have your own military, so you must be a countess at least. The nearby bandits are brave enough to openly lay siege to towns, which suggests you’ve lost control of the region.”
Nathan took Anna’s widening eyes as a sign that he was on the mark, and continued, “To make matters worse, tensions are rising in the Empire. Last year’s campaign against Trafaumh failed, and there are worries that another will start any day now. Some are even worried about the Amica Federation and what they’ll do, but they won’t say it aloud. You should be receiving recognition and military support equal to the countess of a border region, but you’re only now being sent a brand-new Bastion with no additional support.”
Leaning back, Nathan spread his hands as if to ask if anything he said was wrong.
Anna frowned at him. “There’s one thing I’m confused about.”
“Name it.”
“I heard that your father passed over you in your line of inheritance. That’s why you became a Bastion.”
Really? Nathan hid his surprise at the revelation and checked his implanted memories from this timeline. They had grown less fuzzy over the last day.
She was right.
He had been raised to take over his family’s county in the north of the Empire. For years he had effectively run the land in his father’s stead, commanded its military, and learned sorcery on the side, while his father was busy being a Bastion.
Then war broke out with Trafaumh last year and his father abruptly returned, named his younger brother the new family heir, and left again. Nathan had effectively been disinherited. Any possibility of rebellion was quashed by the fact that his father was a Bastion. A single Champion could crush any uprising without even trying.
“And?” Nathan said after he finished processing his false past. Or perhaps his real past. He wasn’t sure which was which. Or whether this timeline’s past even mattered.
“I can’t understand why,” Anna said. She sipped her tea. “Unless your brother is one of the brightest people to walk Doumahr, I cannot see him being more worthy of the county than you.”
“We only just met,” he said, echoing her earlier words. “You’re making quite the assumption about me.”
“Cute,” she said, shooting him a smirk. “But you understand the situation better than most. Better than some of my own advisers, even. I don’t need a Bastion to quell some bandits. I need a Bastion to keep the Federation from invading, to make the region desirable, to make the Empire remember that my county even exists.” She nearly slammed her teacup onto the table, but stopped just short.
“Somebody could have told me all of that,” Nathan responded.
“There’s exactly one man in Aleich who understands what’s happening here, and he never tells anybody anything that they don’t already know,” Anna said. “I requested a Bastion over a year ago. Vera’s been complaining ever since I took over the county from my father that the Empire doesn’t do enough. She’s right, but her frustrations have made her less reliable in her agreement to protect the region. She used to clean up the bandits twice a year. Now she only deals with them when they attack, and I can’t contact her using sorcery anymore.”
That was news to Nathan. He finished his tea and placed his cup back on the table. Fei poured him another cup.
“Is she distracted? Or is something else going on?” Nathan asked.
“Both? Neither?” Anna huffed. “I wish I knew. Vera and I are old friends. I never planned to ask for a Bastion, but when my brother got called away to fight Trafaumh last year, I needed more support than Vera was willing to offer me.”
“Your brother went up north?”
“He’s still there. We’re a noble family, and we ostensibly rule a county. My archduke would strip me of my lands and title if I didn’t support him militarily.” She shrugged. “The bandits were a problem before, but they’ve gotten worse over the past year.”
Nathan leaned back and let her words wash over him. A grandfather clock ticked away in the corner of the room. Seconds passed, and Anna finished off the last of the two pots of tea initially laid out.
“Kuda, more tea, please,” Anna asked the beastkin servant in the room.
“Yes, mistress,” Kuda said with a bow. He removed the tray containing the tea set and passed it to a servant outside of the room, before immediately returning.
“A question,” Nathan said. “Let’s say I deal with the bandits—”
“A brave proposition,” Anna remarked.
“I know. I’m amazing, aren’t I?” Nathan said blandly. “I deal with the bandits. What do you do next as countess to make it worthwhile?”
“Well, I could give you a curtsy, a cute smile, and serve you some nice cakes, but you seem to want me to do something of substance,” Anna said. As if to punctuate her point, her servant placed a tray of cakes and tea on the table. “And it seems you get the cakes as an advance payment, so I’ll need to offer something more attractive, won’t I?”
“I’d imagine so,” Nathan said, trying to hide a smile.
“I’ll lower taxes,” she said simply. “I’ve always wanted to do it, in order to attract the peasantry from neighboring counties and develop Gharrick County. But Kuda thinks that so long as the bandits are here, nobody will come. So I need the right opportunity.”
“Can’t say I know much about that, but if you’re confident it will work.” Nathan shrugged.
Anna gave him an odd look. “You ran your father’s county longer than I’ve run this place. Don’t you have an opinion on it?”
“Aren’t you the one relying on Kuda’s advice?” Nathan replied, nodding at the male beastkin standing by the door.
“The plan is my own. Kuda is merely an adviser, and I disagree with him.”
“Then why not go through with the plan, if you’re so convinced that you’re right?”
“Because that’s what it means to have a trusted adviser. If I ignored him, he’d be pointless.” Anna sighed and bit into her cake. She spoke again after a few seconds, “I think I’m right, but I trust Kuda. And if I’m wrong, I risk bankrupting the county. Now that you’re here, I don’t need to wait.”
“What if I don’t get rid of the bandits? You lowering taxes isn’t much of an incentive for me,” Nathan said, keeping his face expressionless. Unfortunately, Fei looked at him in shock.
Anna smirked, and pointed at Fei. “Your poker face is good, but hers needs work. Besides, you drove away the army outside the gates without any offer of reward. I imagine you became a Bastion for a good reason. Trying to retake your lost county, hmm?”
Anna’s eyes bore into Nathan’s, her smirk widening.
Perhaps that had been the drive for the original Nathan of this world. Revenge. Without the power of a Bastion, it was impossible for Nathan t
o take back his inheritance. His father was too powerful.
But for the Nathan sitting in this room right now?
“I’m a Bastion. I use a binding stone to rewrite reality. I have an adorable Champion by my side. Why would I care about some old territory?” Nathan said, before stuffing a hunk of cake into his mouth.
Anna burst into a fit of laughter, genuine mirth spilling out into the room. “I never thought of it that way.” She wiped tears from her eyes and met Nathan’s gaze. “It sounds like something my father would say. You remind me of him.”
“I remind you of your father?” Nathan asked incredulously.
“It’s in your manner. Arrogant, overconfident, certain that you’re making the right decisions. You’re the type to ask me a question when you already know the answer you expect to hear, and you’ll educate me on why I’m wrong if I don’t give you that answer.” Anna’s smile turned wolfish. “Am I wrong?”
She wasn’t. The description was everything Nathan worried he was becoming.
“I’m not sure I like being compared to your father,” Nathan said. “We must be close to the same age.”
“True.” Anna gave him a critical look. “You should lay off the condescension a little until you have the gray hair to pull it off without pissing people off. You’re a little too cute to pass as a wise but embittered mentor.”
“Cute?” Fei repeated, her voice low and eyes narrowed. The tip of her tail circled in the air.
“Do you describe your father that way as well?” Nathan drawled.
Anna paused and tilted her head. Her cheeks turned red, and she looked over Nathan’s shoulder for several moments in silence.
“That’s not what I meant when I compared you to my father,” she said. “I was talking about how you behaved.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can we pretend this didn’t happen?”
“Can you never call me cute again?”
“Deal.”
Nathan raised his empty cup. Seconds passed. Eventually, Anna realized the purpose of his gesture and raised her cup in return. He clinked his cup against hers and nodded.
“To a long and beneficial relationship,” Nathan said.
Chapter 8
“You should see Vera once you settle in,” Anna said as they left.
She saw them out through the rear courtyard of the manor. Monstrously tall hedges hid them from sight as she led them down a marble path. A solid wrought iron gate blocked the exit, and Anna stopped short of it. Her servants, including Kuda, stopped just outside of hearing distance farther down the path.
“You mentioned she’s been hard to contact,” Nathan said.
“She responds to messengers, but I can’t get through using magic at all. I’m not a very proficient magic user, so I don’t know why. But neither the two-way communication mirror I share with her works, nor the wireless.” Anna grimaced and looked up at the odd metallic box protruding from the top of her manor house.
Wireless communication was a burgeoning field of magic. Sorcerers had always communicated long-distance between each other, or enchanted objects to do the same. But making it available more widely had only become a reality during Nathan’s childhood.
Nathan knew that only nobles and the military used the wireless at present. The boxes were expensive, used rare magical catalysts, and needed to be located close to leylines to be effective. They also weren’t portable. But they enabled transmission of audio and images to anybody else along the same unbroken leyline connection of the wireless. Sorcerers had been battling over what to name the technology, but most people called it the wireless.
In the future, it would become reliable enough to use over short distances and dominated all forms of communication. Nathan had used it to transmit the visuals of the demonic portal in his last stand, and the technology had become vital to the monitoring of demonic portals across the world. But it would be years before sorcerers would make the advancements necessary.
“That’s likely because the leylines are disrupted,” Nathan mused aloud, responding to Anna’s worries.
“Disrupted? How can the leylines be disrupted?” Anna asked. She folded her arms and gave him a quizzical look.
“Usually because of demons.”
Anna gasped, but he gestured for her to calm down.
“But I don’t know. I’ve been here a day. The first thing any Bastion does is check on the leylines and the portal. The portal is fine, but the leylines aren’t. I can probably kill two birds with one stone and deal with the bandits while checking on the leylines. Nair might know more,” Nathan explained.
Most likely, Sen had convinced her group of bandits to locate themselves on top of a leyline. Her magic would be greatly enhanced, and she could recover her stamina much faster. Nathan hoped she hadn’t, but Sen wasn’t stupid. She would take every advantage she could get.
“Hmm,” Anna let out a low noise as she eyed Nathan. “In any case, you should be off. I’ll send Kuda along to Gharrick Pass with some soldiers and staff in a week or two.”
Nathan blinked. “What?”
“I said—”
“I heard you. Why?”
“I’m the countess of Gharrick County. I need to help my Bastion run his fortress, don’t I? And keep an eye on my investment.” Anna smiled. “Who better to send than my most trusted adviser.”
With those last words, Nathan and Fei left the countess and the town of Trantia.
The remains of the bandit camp smoldered outside the walls. A handful of carts sat near teams of laborers piling up wood, rocks, and messier things. The people helping were exclusively male, and the soldiers pitched in to help with grim faces. Nobody tried to break apart the fist of earth that Nathan had created.
Before he returned, Nathan took the opportunity to break down the remains of his spell and burn the bodies of the fallen bandits. Fei wanted to stay for longer to help clean up the rest, but the red rays of sunset peeked over the horizon.
The automaton horse trotted up in response to a mental command from Nathan, and the two mounted it. Waving goodbye, Nathan returned to Gharrick Pass.
Outside, he found the messenger from the morning. He was drinking from the well in the courtyard. The soldier saluted Nathan with a slap of his chest, but his expression showed his confusion.
“Bastion, you’ve returned?” he asked, looking past Nathan for something that wasn’t there.
“We have.” Nathan lowered the horse to the ground and dismounted after Fei did. “I went, I saw, I chased away the bandits. Once I find out where they’re hiding, I’ll finish them off.”
The messenger gawked at Nathan. “That… That fast?”
“I am a Bastion. Haven’t you read the legends?” Nathan walked past the messenger, then turned back. “Did you want to come in? You’ve been riding all day, I think.”
“I… No. I need to pass on Lady Nair’s message to Lady von Clair as soon as possible.” The messenger looked troubled. After a pause, he saluted again and said, “Thank you for helping us, Bastion.”
Clearly Nair wasn’t in the mood to send help. Nathan hadn’t passed anybody on the way over, and nobody accompanied the messenger.
Something was awry with the relationship between Anna and Nair. History spoke of Vera Nair as a brave defender of the Empire, who fought to the bitter end to protect her country. He’d been here for a day and learned that she might be an embittered defender at best.
Or perhaps something else was at work. Nathan recalled the activity from Champions he had sensed on the far side of Gharrick Pass. The signs had been faint, but was it possible that Nair was being threatened by the Federation? If she was preoccupied with a rival nation, or in danger, then leaving her tower was dangerous. The Federation could seize her tower while she was away.
The messenger left after refilling his canteen at the well and saluted Nathan again.
The keep hadn’t changed while Nathan and Fei had been away. If it had, he would have been worried.
“I’m going to finish what I was doing this morning,” Nathan told Fei. “You should get some rest.”
“Rest? Why? I’ve spent so long sitting around.” Fei pouted. Apparently, a brief tea party allowed her to forget the battle she had fought earlier.
“Just be sure not to push yourself.”
Fei rolled her eyes. “Lady von Clair’s right. You are like a father.”
Nathan froze. “Goddess, don’t call me that.”
Fei stared at him with wide eyes. A broad grin stretched across her face, giving her a genuinely catlike appearance. “Oh? Why not?”
“I’m not that old,” he muttered.
“Really?” Fei purred. Her eyes ran up and down Nathan’s body. For the first time in a long time, Nathan felt self-conscious. He felt that she was sizing him up like a piece of meat.
It was a nostalgic feeling. Most of his lovers had long since stopped sizing him up in his timeline.
Fei remained silent, but her eyes lingered on Nathan’s crotch for longer than he felt was necessary.
“Maybe you should say that you’re experienced?” Fei said after close to thirty seconds of silence. “I’m beginning to appreciate experience.” She licked her lips, her cheeks turning red, and cat ears flattening against her head.
Something told Nathan that Fei wasn’t thinking of a family-friendly sort of appreciation right now.
“Yes. Let’s say that I’m experienced. And that I’m definitely not your father,” Nathan said, looking Fei squarely in the eye.
“Yup,” Fei said.
Then she spun on her heel and walked away. “I’ll see you in the morning, Nathan.”
He watched her, his eyes tracking lower on her body. Her bushy black tail swished back and forth with each step. But his focus was on the toned ass that tail was attached to, and he wondered how different her body felt compared to his memories.
“She’s teasing me,” he muttered, and headed up to his office.
He froze the moment he stepped inside it.
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