Serenity knocked on Lord Cymryn’s door.
One of the two guards opened it and let the group in. “He’s in the back.”
Serenity nodded and headed that way. When he got to the room, he saw that Lord Cymryn was writing in a bound notebook. Serenity tapped on the door. “Do you have any star charts that show inhabited worlds?”
Lord Cymryn jumped, glanced towards them, and set the notebook on a side table face down. “Star charts? What would you need those for?”
“We need to plan the trip. I also want to see what I can about the route Senkovar thinks the World Eaters are taking. I’m not sure “in a line” really makes sense in space?” Serenity doubted it was a true line; not only was there no reason for that, since a planet would let you turn in pretty much whatever direction you wanted, the odds of multiple planets really being in a line with each other was pretty unlikely unless the line was really wobbly and wide.
“Plan our route?” Lord Cymryn sounded puzzled. “I know Senkovar thinks the World Eaters are traveling through space instead of using the portals, but we don’t have a ship.”
Serenity shrugged. He should have mentioned it earlier, not that he’d really had the chance. “I do, now. A present.”
“What sort of ship?” Lord Cymryn sounded dubious.
Rissa stepped forward. “An Aru’tsa’lkeet transport-class vessel. It came with a space yacht package that I’m pretty sure should really be called a smugglers’ special, the best engines they sell and extra shielding and inertial damping mods to make using the engines safer. I wanted to get a better weapons package but that wasn’t available with the engine; apparently there isn’t enough space for a second powerplant and the only weapons that are compatible with full engine use with a single powerplant installation are the capacitor-fed lasers.”
Rissa seemed to want to continue but stopped when Lord Cymryn started sputtering at her. “You have a ship. A ship that can carry all of us with a new Aru’tsa’lkeet engine. One of the fast ones. Where in the Emperor’s name did you get that?”
Rissa shrugged. “Aru’tsa’lkeet, where else? I managed to pick up a partly-complete project or it’d be another couple years before I could take delivery.”
Serenity noticed Rissa didn’t mention the cost savings.
Lord Cymryn didn’t seem to be up to noticing anything, based on the fact that his mouth was still open. He didn’t seem to be capable of putting two words together for a long moment.
Rissa grinned cheekily at Lord Cymryn. “I’m tired of being separated from Serenity, so I figured out a way to not have to be. We’re going to have to send the Death’s Wings back to Earth soon, but it’ll only be a couple weeks before it can be back here. Senkovar seems to think that’s plenty soon enough.”
“That’s, yes, that will work.” Lord Cymryn still didn’t sound like he was completely with it. “Why do you keep being so surprising?”
Serenity glanced at Rissa. When all she did was shrug, Serenity decided to answer the question seriously. “You keep making assumptions about me that aren’t true. I’ve never lied to you. Misled you, probably, but never lied. I haven’t told you my full history and I doubt I ever will, so you probably need to get used to being surprised.”
Lord Cymryn stared at Serenity for a long moment before he asked a question that seemed to come from nowhere. “In a war between Earth and the Empire, who would win?”
Serenity shook his head. “It depends. You have to define winning before I can answer that.”
“Define winning?” Lord Cymryn sounded incredulous. “We conquer you or you stop us, what’s to be defined?”
“How much of Earth are you willing to destroy? How much of the Empire will you accept being depopulated? For that matter, what attacks are you willing to use? If you send Tier Three and Four soldiers, Earth will almost certainly win. If the Emperor himself comes, he can destroy a great deal but I doubt he will capture much. I also doubt he’d like the consequences of that.” Serenity wasn’t sure if Cymryn knew what a pyrrhic victory was, but that was the outcome he thought was the most likely if it went to full war. “If it starts small and stays small, I have no idea who would win but my guess is Earth. If it goes big, you may win but you will lose more than you gain.”
Sometimes, a threat was the only way to get through to some people. At this moment, Cymryn seemed to be one of them. Serenity hoped he’d believe the threat; Serenity meant it. He didn’t want to have to follow through, but he would if he had to.
Lord Cymryn shook his head. He didn’t seem intimidated. “We wouldn’t commit anything we can’t afford to lose. That doesn’t mean we want to lose it, but it’s not that bad.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Ah, that explained it. Cymryn hadn’t realized Serenity meant the consequences would be elsewhere than on Earth. “Why would we fight only on Earth? There are ways to open reverse invasion portals; even without those, Earth will have more ships soon enough. If you think you’re going to blockade the planet, well, you could block this ship but most of your ships aren’t Aru’tsa’lkeet-make.”
That made Cymryn look a little worried. “Do you even know where the Empire is?”
Serenity shrugged. “I have an idea of the sector, but we don’t really need that. Earth is good at navigating the stars; even if we weren’t, it’s not that hard to buy star locations. The Empire’s worlds are mostly not secrets.”
Lord Cymryn looked even more worried about that.
Serenity decided to go ahead and worry him farther before reminding him that it probably wouldn’t happen. “Earth also isn’t alone; there are other worlds that will respond if Earth is attacked. They’re worlds that the Empire hasn’t considered worth the effort, but that doesn’t mean they’re weak.” Serenity shifted his frown to a slight smile. “I doubt it will come to that, however; I’m not expecting a war with the Empire.”
Lord Cymryn seemed to sigh and relax as he looked down. “I hope not. I’m just not sure it can be avoided.”
Serenity shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. This Emperor is pretty smart, if a bit hot-tempered. By the time-”
Serenity cut himself off. He didn’t want to talk about the next Emperor, the one who made the rules forbidding undead in the Human Empire. That was centuries away; who even knew if it would go the same way this time? Maybe they’d get a different Emperor that didn’t try to conquer everything to bring it under his domain. Maybe the current Emperor would survive longer, who knew?
“The Emperor is the peak of Humanity.” Lord Cymryn looked stiff and formal, like he’d been shocked. His eyes weren’t on Serenity; instead, they were on the two guards who still stood near the door.
Serenity glanced at them and raised his eyebrows. Maybe the current Emperor wasn’t as good as he remembered; he certainly didn’t remember having to watch his words. Though, come to think of it, that might have been because Vengeance was completely unimportant to the Empire. Lord Cymryn wasn’t.
Serenity grinned. He had to admit that he liked tweaking peoples’ noses when he could get away with it and right now he could. “Then I guess it’s a good thing that I’m neither human nor an Imperial subject. I don’t have to look up to him as the peak of everything I can be.”
Serenity didn’t look up to anyone as the peak of everything he could be. Everyone was different, after all. He’d be better at some things and worse at others.
Rissa stepped between the two men. “So, about that star map…”
Lord Cymryn chuckled. He seemed relieved that she’d changed the topic. “Yes, let’s get to planning.”
----------------------------------------
It took weeks for Ann to make her way across Eadsyt to the seat of the Mimir. Along the way, she found that her vaunted status as a Valkyrie was worth little more on Eadsyt than it was elsewhere, similar to the reception at that first town. Even the few who said they believed her required her to pay.
Ann had to repeatedly stop for her guards to deal with minor dungeons to gather the Etherium to keep traveling. Even with the stops, all too much of that travel was on foot; much of the time, they couldn’t afford the cost of a lift by flyer. It was faster to delve for a couple days and walk for a couple days to the next dungeon than try to get the Etherium together for the whole group.
By the time they were three day’s flight or another two weeks’ walk from home, Ann had no patience left. She had her guards delve for five days straight; she even delved with them on three of the days. Three more of the guards died, but they managed to gather enough Etherium for her to travel the rest of the way by flyer.
The guards would just have to walk.
When Ann finally reached the entrance to the Mound, she was dusty and tired. Worse, she’d had to put up with being looked down on by merchants for the past three days. She didn’t even have her guards because they were so slow! She was positively ticked.
She stalked up to the entrance.
“You can’t go in there,” a voice called out from behind her.
Ann swung around to see who the idiot was. What she saw ticked her off even worse; it was an Aspirant! An Aspirant dressed like he’d never seen a day’s work in his life. She snarled, “Why not?”
The Aspirant sniffed. “Peasants aren’t allowed on the Mound. You should-”
Ann’s fist made contact with the dumb Aspirant’s nose. She hadn’t even thought before punching him. She shook her hand as he staggered back, his hand over his flattened and bleeding nose. “Never get in the way of a Valkyrie.”
Ann ignored the Aspirant and stalked through the doorway. Of course she knew it was spelled to only allow people who were supposed to be on the Mound there, but she was a Valkyrie! She even still had her sword, unlike that useless Vala who couldn’t even predict when danger would come from the locals.
Ann’s first stop was her room. It should have gone well; she’d left a few things there for when she came back from Earth, even if she’d been told not to leave anything she actually wanted to keep, but there was some other girl there! She even claimed it was her room!
The stuff wasn’t there, either. Ann had to head to the general storeroom to get fresh clothing. At least the bathing room had enough room in the evening; the other Valkyries were either still at practice or were walking the Timestream, doing their duties.
With the clothing situation straightened out, Ann headed to her fourth stop: the Mistress of Memory. She needed to know what had happened on Earth, that there wasn’t a Valkyrie there and they’d have to work with the stupid Vala, if she hadn’t also been kicked off the planet. Ann still didn’t know how that happened.