Emperor Hektorious the Holy of House Makedon, God of Storms, and Divine Sovereign of the Farantine Empire had conquered half the continent, slain dragons and mastered the winds. He could crush iron with his hands and shake mountains with his fury. But today? Today he couldn’t muster a single shit to give about his 10 o'clock council meeting.
Hektorious resisted the urge to smite his alarm clock as he rolled out of bed, rubbing his bleary eyes. His servants had already prepared a bath for him which he slid into, the near boiling water sending waves of steam off his softly glowing skin. He submerged himself in the lilac scented water and closed his eyes, pretending that he could spend his whole day in the gilded tub.
Eventually the breakfast bell brought him back to reality and Hektorious clambered out of the bath. He made his way into the dressing room and hordes of emissaries from the tailors guild swarmed him in an instant, each presenting a different and wildly ostentatious outfit.
He sighed and pushed his way past them to his usual attire, a white military uniform with a purple cape. He cleared his throat and the sea of satins and silks froze. Hektorious held up his uniform by the collar. “I’m fine with the usual. May I ask for some privacy?” he said in an apologetic manner. They dispersed dejectedly and Hektorious sighed once again. He supposed that if he wished it he could simply order them to never come again. It was extravagant and wasteful, since clothes tailored for someone of his inhuman height would never fit anyone else. Still, he enjoyed the parade of outlandish costumes every morning. At this point any variety was welcome.
He adjusted his cape, grabbed his crown off of the hat rack and headed out of his chambers and to the kitchen. Hektorious felt his fatigue lift as he caught a whiff of the wafting scent of spices and exotic flavors. He entered the kitchen through the mahogany double doors and the sounds of clanging pots and pans, sizzling fat and unintelligible screaming greeted him. Hektorious felt a grin creep across his face. Chef Jakoby was in one of his moods again.
Despite the fact that Hektorious was a seven and a half foot tall deity with glowing skin and Jakoby was a short and portly fellow with spectacles and a darker complexion, the screaming chef’s presence commanded the room and not one of the cooks noticed the emperor enter. He winced as Jakoby began another pointed tirade. Some poor lad who couldn’t have been over sixteen had lost control of the chili powder jar, pouring a mountain of spices onto the scrambled eggs. Jakoby drew himself to all five feet of height, looked up at the youth and barked “YOU LITTLE SHIT!” The boy cowered and Jakoby continued. “If you don’t replace that omelet in the next five minutes you whimpering dog, you need not worry about the burning pits. I will beat you so badly that even Farouk won’t find a FUCKING SCRAP OF YOUR SOUL TO BURN!”
He drew in another deep breath to continue, but Hektorious cleared his throat, silencing the kitchen. Jakoby whipped around to face whoever had the gall to interrupt him and found his Divine Emperor standing in the doorway with a wry grin plastered on his face. Instantly the cooks dropped to their knees and began to pray for his forgiveness and mercy as Jakoby stayed standing and waved a spatula in his direction. “What the fuck are you doing in my kitchen? You’ve a breakfast with the Vorish and Abdullid ambassadors in twenty minutes!” Jakoby turned and smacked a nearby cook with his spatula. “And get up you shits. I already told you last week that Lord Hektorious doesn’t want your mewling prayers.” The cook stood, cringing away from the irate chef. “I’m sorry sir that must have been your last staff. You fired them last week see, we were brought on two days ago Sir,”
“You’re right. I’d apologize, but incompetent cooks tend to blend together.”
Hektorious felt his momentary good cheer fade at the mention of his duties. He had forgotten about the damned ambassadors. “I’ll be quick. I'll just fry up some bacon or something.”
“Absolutely not my lord. I’ll not have my Emperor cooking up his own food like a servant.”
Hektorious actually enjoyed making his own food, but he didn’t want to offend his friend so he let the subject drop. “At least one dish before I go” he said, grabbing a plate. “These breakfasts are always light on the food and heavy on the talk.” Jakoby shook his head. “We’ve sent all the food for the breakfast over to the dining hall already. All that’s left are the eggs for the servants which you’re welcome to if you can stomach that shit.”
“Eggs are fine. May I take these off your hands?” Jakoby nodded and Hektorious shoveled the spicy mixture onto his plate.
He dug into the eggs as he walked through the great wooden doors. The silence of his halls was a startling contrast to noise and smell of Jakoby’s kitchen. Sometimes in mornings like these, the palace felt abandoned. Hektorious knew that nearly two thousand people shared the walls of the castle with him, but his palace had grown so big that you could walk for hours without seeing one of them. You could also walk for hours without finding a proper waste bin, Hektorious thought as he finished his eggs. He disposed of the fork and plate behind a decorative plant when he was sure no one else was looking, promised himself to retrieve it later, and entered the dining hall.
The Royal Hall took up nearly a third of the Heavenly Palace, and could easily fit a lesser castle within its baroque walls. Titanic tables carved from single trees stretched across the marbled floors and hundreds of multicolored banners hung from the ceiling, each depicting a past victory of Hektorious and the Court of Makedon. A few hundred feet from him, sat the royal table on a raised dais in the middle of the room. Nearly twenty feet long and bone white, the table had been carved from the skull of the immense dragon he had slain three hundred years ago. It served as a grisly memento for Hektorious’s duel with the dragon king Aisirrath the Voiceless Flame, and a warning to all who would think to oppose The Radiant King.
Hektorious thought that having a skull for a table was incredibly disturbing, but his son Apollus had spent months carving it, and had been glowing with pride as he presented his morbid gift. Hektorious had originally planned to use the grisly table for only a year or two before locking it away in some vault, but it had become a national spectacle that even royalty would travel hundreds of miles to see. Of course it made dinners slightly awkward when the ambassadors of the Draconic Union were served food and drink on the skull of their former monarch, but at this point there’d be an outcry if he so much as covered it with a tablecloth.
Empress Propenna sat at a silver throne on the head of the table. She was as always, intensely focused and extremely beautiful. She was flipping through folders upon folders of paperwork, spending little more than a second on each page. Hektorious knew that was all she needed to memorize their contents. She wore the same green gown she had worn the night before, which sparkled with the golden light emanating from her skin. Her long brown hair was tied in a bun underneath her gem-encrusted crown, and she towered over her handmaidens even while bent over the piles of paper scattered across the table.
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She looked up as he approached, her piercing green gaze softening as it came to rest on Hektorious. “Good morning Hektor” she said in a warm but wavering voice. As Hektorious approached the dais, he could see bags under her eyes. He clambered up to the table and sat in the ornate golden throne beside her. “You’re exhausted” he said. “Propenna, did you sleep tonight?” She nodded, still examining the pile of paperwork. “I indulged for about an hour at three. You were already asleep when I entered our chambers, so I napped in my study.” Hektorious reached over the table and grabbed a stack of documents, each covered in scribbles. “Here. Let me help you with this” he said as he tried to make sense of the weblike drawings that spanned the page. Propenna snatched the papers back in a green blur. “Don’t you worry about these. They’re just schematics for the Vorish-Adbullid bridge we’re discussing at breakfast. I wanted to be sure that I could negotiate properly, so I’m memorizing everything we have on it.” Hektorious took her hand, and she looked at him, startled. “Propenna, you amaze me more and more each day, but I’m a little more than an average king myself. Let me at least lighten your load.” She laughed and went back to the papers. “Nonsense, it’s not worth your time.” Time spent doing what exactly? He wondered, as swarms of servants poured into the room and prepared the hall for breakfast.
The meal lasted two hours, and Hektorious spoke exactly three times during the course of conversation. He didn’t really understand the engineering behind the bridge, nor the costs required to build it, so he kept silent as usual and let his wife do the talking. He’d been doing this for nearly eighty years, and it had become second nature to him. After the empty plates and dirty napkins were cleared and even the finest points of negotiation were exhausted, Hektorious and Propenna excused themselves and walked down the barren halls of his castle towards his meeting.
As they walked, Hektorious felt the stale winds of the dusty hallways coil around him, the dry air practically begging for flight. The meeting was set to take place in the Crownspire, which was a long and tedious climb up a hundred flights of stairs. If he flew however, it would be a matter of minutes. He gathered the winds beneath him as they silently screamed to be set loose, but he realized that he was with Propenna, and she couldn’t fly. Sheepishly, he severed the tendrils of air snaking around him with a thought, scattering them in a cloud of dust and a chorus of disappointed whispers.
Crownspire was the tallest tower in the castle, and situated as it was on the Divine Mountain, probably the tallest tower in the world. The climb was annoying even for gods, and exhausting for mortals. A mechanical lift would have been trivial to install, but the climb kept his nobles from growing too fat and Hektorious had never trusted machines. Except the automobile Hektorious thought idly to himself as they reached the top of the staircase and neared the sounds of shouting leaking from the dark wooden door of the council room. I like the automobile. He had crashed his repeatedly, but he was sure he’d get the hang of it sometime.
Propenna flung the doors open and they entered, the commotion fading back into silence. “Anyone have any good news?” she said as they walked across the disorganized mess of a meeting room and sat in their thrones. Baron Darikus, a tall man with a bushy mustache and the nigh-imperceptibly glowing skin that signified his status saluted. Over the centuries, every noble house had incorporated divine blood into their families, from both Hektorious’ descendants and the Abdullid survivors of Farouk the cruel’s line. The entire second estate had been transformed into semi divine beings, who while lacking the immortality and sheer might of a true god, were still superhuman. They called themselves Godblooded, which Hektorious found ridiculous. But, if being his great great great grandnephew twice removed made them proud, it was no real harm to anyone so he humored their silly titles. Propenna nodded at Darikus and he dropped his salute. “After much debate, the statue subcommittee has decreed that the newest monument will be of your son Prince Aschelon slaying the great boar of Sanrioch. Unfortunately we have yet to decide on the emissary who will take the news to him. Prince Aschelon doesn’t have a radio or phone, and is known to be reclusive, so it’s a serious matter on who we send.”
Hektorious couldn’t help but remember when a serious matter in a council meeting meant Farouk had burned another city, or slaughtered one of his armies. “I’ll go.” he said. “I haven’t been to Aschelon’s forests in a while, and I’d like to congratulate him personally on his magnificent hunt.” Darikus, taken aback by this suggestion smiled nervously. “My emperor, surely the job of a simple messenger is beneath you.” Hektorious stood from his seat, towering over the richly dressed men and women before him. “Are you telling me what I can or cannot do?” he asked softly. Darikus spluttered behind his bushy mustache, and Propenna kicked Hektorious lightly in the foot, the motion hidden beneath her dress. “Hektor, perhaps what Darikus meant is that a simple messenger would simply send the desired message.” Hektorious sat back down, resisting the urge to kick himself. In a childish display he had nearly shown favoritism to one of his children, upsetting their centuries long balance of power. He hated his stupidity, he hated looking foolish in front of his wife, and he hated being the most useless man in his own empire.
He withdrew from the discussion, and the meeting continued. They picked a young count with a penchant for hunting to inform Aschelon, and began to plan a new residential district in the growing city of Tomos. Hektorious requested some papers and a pen, but before he could even finish sketching out a single block, Propenna revealed a leather bound book of designs penned by their daughter Hamera. Of course the plan was brilliant, as was typical with Hamera, and it was unanimously chosen as Hektorious crumpled his paper up and tossed it dejectedly in the wastebin.
In the time it took him to sit back down, the council had already begun discussing a small workers rebellion that had taken place the night before. Laborers had barricaded their factory and living quarters, demanding higher wages and better conditions. Darikus and a few other councilors suggested negotiation, but it seemed the majority favored crushing the strike. Propenna stayed silent, merely observing the discussion as it grew heated. Hektorious stood once again, silencing the crowd with a dismissive wave. “I will ride forth. The workers and the nobles who own the factory will listen to me, and if negotiations fail I can put them down without risking a single soldiers life.” He smiled, feeling his long forgotten sense of purpose return in a swell. He was no engineer or urban planner, but this? This was something he could do. Fantasies of factory owners and union leaders thanking him for their newfound cooperation and prosperity danced across his eyes, but they were dashed away as Propenna laughed. “Love, that’d be like swatting flies with artillery. We can just send out a company of regulars with a cannon or two, maybe a mage. We don’t need you to put down some unruly workers.”
Hektorious felt his spirit drop like a puppet with its strings cut. He removed his crown and placed it onto a nearby table. The council had started up again, and not an eye was on him. “No,” Hektorious said as he walked to a massive window overlooking the sprawling capital city of Askenia below. He unlatched the great iron windowpane, and a torrent of icy wind spilled into the room. It danced round his ankles like a puppy begging to play, humming silent songs of freedom. “You don’t need me” he said, stepping up onto the windowsill. Before anyone could react he jumped, cracking the stonework beneath his boots and sending him soaring out into the morning air.