The late sun was beating down over the root fields in the grounds of Castle Bakh, and the lowlies were toiling in their silken shirts, rounding the root into wooden carts. The machines watched through red eyes from the border wall half a mile hence.

‘I’ve spoken to Morgan,’ the Wiser said, as he glided into the marble hall. His robe cast a vague shadow in the eve’s late glare. ‘The nurse says she is in good stead. I thought wise to move her to the infirmary, for now.’

Count Bakh did not deflect his gaze from the speckled machines across the fields, out past the balcony. ‘I am grateful for your counsel, Brakkis. That is why I pay you for it, handsomely. But do not pretend to be so familiar.’ There was a menace in his throaty tones.

‘Yes, My Lord. Apologies.’

‘A fine evening, wouldn’t you say. The eve of war’s end.’ The Count’s menace subsided.

‘Wish that it were war’s end, My Lord. But Ellaga does stand to fall tomorrow, if that is your meaning.’

Bakh pulled a glass, laced with Marbal whiskey from within the folds of his robe. ‘I meant it both ways,’ he said matter-of-factly, and took a sip from the glass. ‘It’s near, Brakkis. I can taste it on the air. It’s like cherry blossom on midwinter’s eve. The long night of war won’t reign forever. The machines lose another world tomorrow. Soon enough, they shall lose a second, then a third.’

‘Sadly, my profession does not pay to be an optimist.’

Count Bakh shrugged. ‘True enough, I suppose. A Wiser never earned his keep seeing the best of a situation.’

Brakkis looked half-amused at this, then promptly remembered his place.

‘You were telling me of my daughter,’ the Count continued, taking another swig of his liqueur.

‘The Lady Morgan rests for now. She seems healthy. The midwife says so.’

‘But, how is she?’

‘She seems in good spirits, My Lord. As content as one can be when faced with such uncertainty. She is anxious, to be sure, but I trust she will be fine.’

Bakh smirked a little. ‘Good. She is a strong girl.’ Then, his weathered features soured. ‘Growing up without a mother, it does that.’

The Wiser, Brakkis, moved closer to the Count, bowing his head as he did so, whether in deference or to shield his gaze from that of the sun. ‘If I may be candid, the Lady Tressean would be proud.’

Count Bakh glanced to an oil portrait of a fair-haired Lady that hung over them. Her sharp eyes never failed to stare and Bakh felt the weight of her judgement. How he craved her company now. The final days of the machines’ occupation were surely the longest and loneliest. Having everyone look to him for a semblance of calm while the invaders occupied their home. He had relied on her counsel more than any of his Wisers, and there had been a few. Brakkis was but the latest. She clasped a book between her narrow fingers, and he imagined her nod wordlessly in affirmation, that whatever he was doing was right. Between her watch and the glass in his hand, Bakh felt a shade more prepared for what tomorrow brought.

‘She is,’ he said finally. ‘Do you anticipate the High Leger’s success tomorrow?’

Brakkis’ eyes flickered, as if momentarily taken by the lurch in topic. ‘I consider it a reasonable possibility.’

‘You’d make a fine politician, Brakkis. The day I get a straight answer out of you to matters of business…’

Brakkis almost seemed proud. ‘I deal in probability and possibility, My Lord. What may be and could be. Prediction and prophecy are for mages and fools alike. Regrettably, I am neither. The machines have scarce reinforced their occupation, yet their yield from the mines has increased, which suggests…’

‘It suggests they are resigned to losing Ellaga.’

‘Would seem so, My Count, yes.’

‘But would milk the dreyfys for all its worth until then.’

‘I’m informed we’ve intercepted many freighters carrying the herb off-world.’

Bakh smirked again. ‘Funny, isn’t it, that we’d go to all this,’ and he gestured the room and out on to the fields, where his denizens still toiled, and to the south where, no doubt, the Sovereign army of the Sign prepared for their onslaught, and liberation, at sunrise, ‘for a herb.’

Brakkis was unimpressed. The lines in his brow dug into his forehead. ‘Dreyfys fetches more than a pretty price to the underlings of society, My Lord. Men have killed for it. Refined, even more for the rich.’

With a swoop of his robe, the Count glided to the balcony’s edge out the open window, not paying his Wiser the courtesy of a passing glance. He leaned across the stone; his eye was caught by a handmaiden on a hedged path twisting through the gardens below. ‘Have you ever tried dreyfys, Brakkis?’

‘Perhaps.’ There was a feigned ignorance in the Wiser’s tone. ‘In my youth. I don’t recall.’

‘I remember when my father was Count of Ellaga… Only fifteen or so, there was a long summer of drought. I never saw him, at all, those months. I spent more time in the company of my mother’s housestaff. It was long, and hot, and awful. I cried, but I saw my friends once a week. It was scarce an escape. More, a fleeting distraction. I hated it. Because I dreaded its ending within a moment of seeing them. But they were what I lived for.

‘When the rains came in the autumn, I was overcome. I didn’t even wait for the staff’s permission. The rain was thick, you know. When the sky over the hills looks like it might be falling down. My friends and I ran into the forest down there.’

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

‘My Lord, I—’

‘We ran across a dreyfyll tree. In ecstasy that we were, we took it in turns burning the wood. The fumes were… Well, I’m not sure what the word is.’

Bakh felt his Wiser shift towards him. ‘Potent.’

‘Makes you feel like the heavens themselves. One of the other boys- Erken, his name was- he lay a log down, about half the size of you or I, and bathed his head in the fumes. We sat away, told him to stop before he even started choking. To start with, he was just laughing. Someone ran to get help. Of course, the guards didn’t listen; we got dragged away for desertion.

‘I visited him in the infirmary a few days later. He was restrained. Unintelligible. Aggressive. Violent. Beyond angry. Bit several of the nurses. Attacked me at his bedside.’

‘My Lord.’

‘They burned his body a few days later.’ Bakh’s eyes traced the slope of the fields across the horizon. ‘Imagine a weapon of that stuff, concentrated and dispersed onto the field of battle. The machines need never fire a weapon again.

‘If I had my way this world would have burned a long time ago, and all the dreyfys in the universe with it. But instead we mine it.’

‘I should think the Sign have learnt from their error, My Lord. But rare that it is, the herb curries the favour of those you have to convince to destroy this place. It’s like asking a fish to drain the pond he swims.’

Bakh scoffed. ‘You flatter them. More accurately, it is asking a junkie to destroy his supply. Such needless loss of life to come, because the Cardacs[1] of the Sign use dreyfys. And I’ll be blamed of course. The Sign know my opposition to Ellaga. They know I drag my heels to hell to govern this damned place,’ the Count said nonchalantly. He turned from the veranda and glided to the centre of the hall. Marble columns encircled him, capped by ethereal figures reaching into the air. Between them all, the figure of his wife watched with that teaching look. He paid her a loving glance and darted from the hall with the clack of his Wiser’s footsteps in tow.

‘Should I have the storm-keep prepared?’ Brakkis said, almost panting as he chased Bakh down a stairway to the bowels of the castle.

The Count raised an eyebrow. ‘For why? If the machines had any interest in attacking the castle, I daresay they would have done so before the High Leger arrived.’

‘Not to say there won’t be incidental casualties.’

‘I see no need, personally. I’d prefer it that my staff weren’t abandoned to fend for themselves.’

‘My Lord, I must—’

‘—You may insist what you like, but I am responsible for these people’s safety, more than you are for mine. That is the end of it, Brakkis.’ The Count growled, pausing in his stride to stare at the Wiser.

Brakkis merely bowed.

‘Busy yourself with the Pian for now. She has some duties for you. She is at the chapel, in prayer with the children.’

Brakkis bowed in farewell. ‘In tahr on vannar, osh on arrar, meon niem… My Lord’

The Count stood in silence for a moment. His features slackened. ‘You know I never cared for the old tongue. Nor Winter. Men made in blood and magic.’ He nodded tellingly at Brakkis. ‘With their prayers to false gods.’

‘Men made for war,’ Brakkis corrected. ‘And a war they’re winning us.’

'Men made for war never made the world a better place in my experience.’

Bakh did not afford his Wiser the time to reply and beat a hasty retreat towards the castle’s infirmary. The walls were potted by candlelight and the portraits of the Sign’s Lords and Ladies of Ellaga past, few of whose names he knew. Toimyn Bakh had spent many a day’s schooling reciting the titles of his ancestors, but each had passed through him as soon as it was spoken. It had caused his tutor a great deal of irritation. He wondered how many there may have been were it not for the dreyfyll forests past the castle grounds. This was a grubby, little planet, beyond Reacher’s Rim. The drug was the only value it had. How cursed it was that Bakh was consigned never to leave then, forced to guard the thing he despised.

Was it so awful he hoped that tomorrow’s losses were great enough to make the Sign question the value of this place? Perhaps, he mused.

These circular thoughts mired the Count’s decent, until at last he was greeted by a corridor, jutting out onto the infirmary ward. This damned place is too big for my legs, he lamented. A dozen beds stacked up either side of the bricked hall, each shrouded by a white curtain. A squat nurse called Po scurried up to him with a sheepish look.

‘M’lord,’ he squeaked.

‘How’s my daughter?’

Po didn’t answer, instead extending an arm in deference through to the end of the ward. The Count silently followed to a single occupied bed, where a girl with mud-coloured hair was lying.

‘That’ll be all,’ he said, and Po obeyed, scurrying the opposite direction. Bakh stared at the girl for a time. She caressed the bump of her belly which was plump and round with petite hands. Then, she looked up, and her face split into a wide smile at the sight of her father.

‘Father,’ she said. She moved to embrace him but with a lazy hand he prodded her back onto the bed.

‘No, rest,’ he said in jest. ‘You can hug me when I have a grandchild,’ he added, moving to sit on the end of her bed. ‘You know my father’s father had only boys. And I was my father’s only child. I’m so proud to have a daughter. I should hope you do too.’

The girl slipped back into the clutch of her pillow. ‘I’ll be happy either way.’ She caressed her abdomen. As she did, the Count leaned across her to peck her forehead and her face looked reassured.

‘We’re going to win tomorrow, father. You know that right?’

He smiled. ‘Well, if enough people tell me, it must be true. I don’t want you to worry about it. Just rest. You’ll get your share of the war when I’m gone, though heavens I pray you don’t.’

His daughter had the strength of iron. She had an infallible optimism. It was almost infectious; almost. He was sure it would sour when Ellaga passed onto her. He dreaded the day, and not because it meant his own death; that had felt long overdue. No. But for the Count, his daughter was alone in this world. She had no siblings. The boy who fathered her child was taken by fever winter last. And when she became Countess, her Wisers would whisk the child away into the care of the house staff, as they had for him. He sighed deeply at this train of thought and the girl reached out a hand to him.

‘Whatever it is, don’t worry about it now,’ she said omnisciently.

The Count smiled. ‘It’s everything and nothing. The irony is there’s quite nothing I can do now but wait. Tomorrow will come and go, the sun will still set. I am helpless.’

‘You should rest.’ Her hand reached up to caress his cheek. Sleep was alien to him these days.

‘Giving me my own advice, eh.’ He wondered if he should tell her that he couldn’t sleep anymore. That it was all too much. ‘I thought you would know by now I’m a hypocrite. You have this to look forward to.’ He gestured his withered face. ‘Though I should hope after tomorrow, our burden will be a little less. Without machines patrolling the grounds.’

‘I’ve barely noticed them since they arrived,’ the girl said matter-of-factly. ‘I’m not sure I’d notice if they left to be honest.’

‘The fact of their being is as worse as anything,’ the Count said. ‘Like when you know there’s a spider in the room. Even if you can’t see it. Still awful.’

He paused. His shoulders slumped tiredly. Bakh leaned across to kiss her again on the forehead and she seemed to understand well enough. What he would give for her to stay safe, he thought. The lands and titles, the damned war; they were of no value next to her and his grandchild. He turned and skulked after his own shadow down the ward, parting her with a seamed smile.

He traipsed on and up to collapse at the desk of his study, where for the next eight hours he hoped he might pretend to get some sleep.

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[1] Cardacs were parliamentarians of the Sign, sitting members of the lower House of Many in the capital city of Ji’Ho J’Hey