Redmond Marr tapped the arm of the intricately carved ebony chair with a long white finger. Ran his thumb around the end of the worn armrest, picturing the dozens of Counts and Countesses that had come before him and sat in this very same spot. He worried at a fragment of Frekifold mutton that had become wedged between his molars with his tongue. A mutton sheep that had been born, raised and slaughtered in fields that should, by right, be his, unopposed.
His teeth squeaked as he ground them together, as he willed the gods to shuffle his mother, Countess Vanora, off her mortal coil so that he could simply inherit the High Seat. It would make things just that little bit simpler. Would mean that he was, in the eyes of those who mattered, the highest ranking of Fallaros’ six tribleland leaders––doubtless, much to the annoyance of the Counts and Countesses of Arifold, Keldland, Aldinfang, Skyvolla, and Kynthwaite. A legitimate inheritance would give him slightly more breathing room when he declared the Imperator and his Vansgriman army allies. I would mean that by the time that the other leaders of the five tribelands had finished fucking about, spending tedious weeks politically manoeuvring and arguing about how best to turf him from the High Seat, it would already be too late. The Imperator’s armies would already be at their doors. They were, after all, already on their way.
“Just die, you old whore, just die,” he muttered, staring out of one of the grand arched windows that gave the top of the tower the best views in Castle Dreymark. He poked at the last cold pieces of collar butt on the plate that sat by his elbow on the antique table. Pressed down with the flat of his knife and watched the grease run from the meat. “Just damn well expire already.”
He could feel the prickling of perspiration on the back of his neck. He ran a hand over his oiled back hair. Cleared his throat, irritated at his own nervousness despite being alone in the room.
Alone for the time being.
Redmond eyed the circle of copper, three feet in diameter, that was levitating an inch off the surface of the pool of mercury that stood in the middle of the floor. It was a hugely expensive bit of thaumaturgy and one of Castle Dreymark’s biggest secrets. It’s existence was also why this room, sitting at the pinnacle of the tallest tower of the castle and was completely off limits to anyone who was not direct blood of the current Count or Countess, had never been cleaned by any of the castle’s numerous house-keeping staff.
Redmond recalled how he had tried to sneak up here with Fia and Arlen when they had been children. Recalled how, even as a five year-old, the other two full-blood siblings had treated him with barely veiled scorn. Arlen, being a year older than Fia, seven years older than Redmond, and the next in line to the tribeland of Frekifold, had been the kinder. Fia, unpredictable, uncompromising and wild even then, had only been halted in making Redmond’s life a living torment by the restraining word of Arlen.
Redmond allowed himself the rare indulgence of letting his memory transport him back through the haze of time. Back to his bitter and hated youth, after his father had been exiled from Frekifold and forced to flee the isle of Fallaros for fear of his life. Back to the day when Arlen had died. He recollected the look on Fia’s face when she had seen the arrow protruding from Arlen’s chest, his blood speckling the bright grass. That mix of astonishment and dread when she’d grasped what she had done. The soul-rending guilt, the unbridled panic, disbelief and self-revulsion that Redmond had seen painted across her heart-shaped face, had been the sweetest thing he had ever witnessed. So pure had that joy been that it had almost been a tangible taste on his tongue. It had left him shivering and numb with disbelieving rapture––like a headful of fresh ground rabbit’s-foot––the whole of the lonely ride back to Castle Dreymark, so that when he had been brought before the Countess Vanora to tell her what had happened to her children, his white face, shaking hands, and the tears of joy that had been in his round, wide child’s eyes had been mistaken for horror and shock.
That had been the day that his world had changed. That had been the day he had learned to mask the twisted feelings of his true heart.
Redmond felt a stirring in his loins at the thought of what he would do to Fia when he got a hold of her. Imagined what her face would look like when he leaned in and whispered the secret he held above all secrets.
“You are losing control of the situation, Viscount Marr,” a calm and perfectly articulated voice said.
Marr jerked. Felt the warmth seeping from his groin into the pit of stomach turn to cold ashes.
The Imperator stood in the middle of the bronze disk––or, at least, the thaumaturgical projection of him did––while below him the mercury bubbled and sent up coils of steam.
There had been no gaudy clap of thunder or flash of light. It was that aspect of thaumaturgy that Marr found so unnerving, and why he despised witches so. One moment the air had been empty, the next it was filled by a figure that looked to be made of smoke made solid.
“You appear uneasy, Viscount Marr,” the Imperator said. “Is it the quiet, insidious nature of thaumaturgy that unsettles you so, perhaps?”
Marr loathed how the Imperator was able to know his thoughts, even before he himself seemed to.
The witchery was life-sized and perfectly lifelike, coloured as the man himself must be coloured, wherever he might be.
“Unlike the average fete day prestidigitator, witches have never been reliant on spectacle,” the Imperator continued amiably. “Their reputations, and the fear the common folk have of them, are built on action alone.”
He let the sentence hang like a snare in the air.
He was a man of average height and build, slightly shorter than Marr himself. He was dressed in a strange, tight-fitting uniform of white trousers tucked into shiny, white, cavalry boots that rose stiffly above the knee. His upper half was attired in a way that Marr had never seen; a crisp white shirt with a tight collar worn under a strange white vest that looked to be crafted from some thick material divided into plated segments. Overall, the Imperator wore a sleeveless hooded cowl that fell to mid thigh, the hood of which was pulled up so that the man’s face was obscured in thaumaturgical fog. Marr could just see the ivory butts of two of those awfully efficient pistols, the effectiveness of which he’d had so brutally demonstrated to him in his last meeting with one of the Imperator’s messengers. They sat in a cross-draw position at the man’s belt.
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If Viscount Marr had been a stupid man, he might have commented on how the Imperator’s reputation leant one to believe he’d be a man seven feet tall and built like a barn; dark and formidable as a banked storm. In a way, he had been hoping that he would be. It would have made being ordered around in his own tribeland slightly more palatable if the man giving him the orders and dosing him with threats at least looked the part.
“You are losing control of this chain of events which we have set in motion,” the white-clad man repeated.
“Losing is not lost!” Marr retorted, trying to preserve some of his noble dignity.
“And now you are failing to retain your temper,” the Imperator said serenely. “Pray, find it quickly before I decide that waiting for you to get a grip on things is more trouble than you’re worth.”
Redmond Marr ran a hand across his oiled hair again. The style that he had emulated from the late Captain Gray, though he would never have admitted it, of course.
“My apologies,” he muttered.
“Are worth less and less, and are getting irritating,” the Imperator said. “You are, remember, an expedient means for me to get what I want––which conveniently procures you what you want. Don’t forget though, it would only require me to expend a few thousand more lives and, more aggravatingly, a little more of my valuable time for me to renege on our agreement. I would scour your land as I’m currently decimating the savages of Toropuku, and it would give me as little pause as scraping mud from my boot.”
Marr’s pale tongue traced a couple of circuits of the inside of his mouth. Flicked across the backs of his teeth as he strove to find the words that would give a satisfactory account of his recent actions, or inactions, whilst not giving away just how much of a dog’s breakfast this whole affair had turned into. He doubted very much that the Imperator would be sympathetic if he found out the reason that Gunn, their chosen scapegoat on whom the instability of Fallaros was to be hung on, had evaded capture was because Marr’s own half-sister had helped him escape.
“I recently received word that the hunting party I sent out to intercept Gunn was itself attacked,” he said, mustering as much haughty disgruntlement as he deemed believable.
The Imperator stepped forward. Although his projection remained in the same spot, Marr found his heel rising to take a step backwards.
“I think that you should elaborate,” the Imperator said, his voice conjuring images of ruffled sheets of ice overlaying raging mountain torrents. “Though, judging by that exiguous attempt you are making to mask your trepidation of how I’m going to react, I can already guess what this means.”
Marr tried to surreptitiously swallow the lump of unease that had coalesced in his throat.
“Captain Gray and his troop were overlong in their return,” he said. “So, I sent out a squad of trackers to ride the road and find out what was delaying them. As it turned out the entire party of outriders was waylaid and slaughtered, including Captain Gray, who appeared to have been systematically… dissected.”
The Imperator moved not one iota. Dressed as he was all in white, it was only the smooth caramel-coloured skin of his hands, and the almost imperceptible undulation of the witch-smoke, that showed that the figure standing before Marr was not a marble statue.
“It is to be assumed that he was tortured for a reason,” came the thoughtful reply eventually. “And it would be a safe assumption to make that he divulged everything he knew about everything. Men often do when they see pieces of themselves being cut away.”
Marr said nothing. Suddenly, the piece of lamb stuck between his back teeth was more nauseating than annoying.
“This Captain Gray, was a trusted companion, confidant and warleader of yours, was he not?” the Imperator asked.
Marr remembered the undisclosed feelings and appetites that the mere presence of Gray had aroused in him. He had not yet admitted what the man’s brutal murder meant to himself yet. There had been no time to ponder it.
“He was,” Marr said.
The Imperator’s head tilted to one side and rose slightly, as if to better see Marr’s expression. For a moment, the thaumaturgical fog concealing his face shifted and Marr caught a glimpse of a strong jaw covered in a beard the colour of old ivory.
“And his death has angered you fiercely?”
“It has.”
The Imperator considered this. He placed his dexterous-looking hands casually on the pistol butts at his waist.
“It might be worth remembering that to seek eminence and dominion over the weak is the greatest and most righteous vengeance a man can pry from this world,” he said. “To stand above all else and look down upon it is why we were brought into being. Mountains were made to remind us of this.”
Marr didn’t answer. He had always hated being lectured to. To be sermonised in the most private sanctuary that the leaders of the Frekifold tribeland had grated on his pride. He set his teeth and jerked his head in a nod of agreement.
“That being said, this failure on your part does nothing for my waning confidence in your abilities, Viscount Marr,” the Imperator said, with a venomous gentleness.
If the snake could talk to the bird, so would it’s voice sound like, Marr thought.
“I assure you that now—”
“Now? You are days behind, Viscount Marr. By now those longriders who follow Gunn will no doubt have been running hither and yon through your lands, raising ire amongst the villagers and peasantry. From what I know of Fallaros, and Frekifold in particular, the rustics and grazers are hardy folk. Not averse to laying down the shovel to pick up the sword.”
“I think you overestimate Gunn’s––” Redmond began to say, his fury at being treated like some incompetent half-wit beginning to bubble at the back of his throat.
“I think it is more likely that you have made the error of gauging Gunn against a false standard of measurement, boy,” the Imperator said coolly. “You have reckoned that he’s motivated by the same things that you hold dear; power, wealth, the acquisition of land, and the subjugation of those you deem inferior––but there is something else that burns hotter than any of those fuels. Retribution.”
“I––”
“You will do everything you can to find Gunn and rectify this situation,” the Imperator said curtly. “I was hoping that this conversation would leave me feeling optimistic that the north of Fallaros would fall without a fight when my armies finally landed there. However, I see that even in what should have been a calm and hazard-free sea it cannot be all plain sailing. Remedy this, Marr. I have ways to impose my displeasure that you cannot even begin to fathom. I have seen, and know of things, that would spin your tiny mind in your skull if I were to try and convince you of them.”
Marr’s fists were clenched impotently at his side. He watched the hated, arrogant, white-clad bastard, who held every hope Redmond had for himself in his palm, turn away from him. The witch-smoke began to fade.
Before he could stop himself, Marr spat, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
There was a trace of amusement in the Imperator’s voice as he answered over his shoulder.
“Why, I am the future, Viscount Marr,” he said, and was gone.