Chapter 18: Sins and The Sinner

The jade-plugged earlobes of the white-robed man swayed disgustingly before my sights, all sounds of ocean waves were drowned out by the sheer volume of the band loudly playing the Coalition Of Sovereign Nation's anthem. The notes all chimed acidic compared to the harmonious harp melodies I was so used to before the coop. It seemed that this was my chance to break some sort of actual way forward in the summit's washing votes.

"Tell me..." I paused to linger for his response. "I am Fawie Urso, Headmaster of the C.S.N.'s general happenings...While it is charming to meet you I must--" Fawie endeavored to crumple his countenance into a smile that quickly tumbled back into the same anxious and blank stare he had earlier.

"Remind me what a peaceful organization such as yours has enterprise appointing my own people as mere slaves AND to spy on me no less." Though Tella was far from present I knew that he was being reprimanded for not even knowing who he was meant to meet.

"Please, my time is very infrequent and problematic for me to manage...I will discuss with you anything you desire after the proceedings--I beg you to consider taking note of those around you more than me." He swayed for a moment on his hobbled right ankle then made his way to the long trek up to the mahogany podium.

Deep violet blossom petals blazed the exotic parrot skin rug he pattered his way so painstakingly slow that I had time to regroup with my entire cabinet...Including the now-heavily ceremonial robed Kyler. "I hear you have been having a good time down here, cousin--May I ask for you to permit us an instance of respite and clarity?"

His sardonic short comment fits well with his large mauve dressings, bedecked like my father while complaining like his brother...I would be glad when the motions of my ascension were over and I could liquidate all old Vascan temporal holdings and authority-- A simple move to bring me close to the Buritians and also possibly grant me access to a more substantial linkage to the goddess. "Do not agonize yourself, Kyler, I do not intend on any more exhibits of my hand...Not with you stalking so pig-nosed."

"You have always been so discourteous, Aunt M--" Kyler eyed me up then down, already seeing my rigid posture while grasping a hand around my king's blade. Yana made an action between us in a request to push our probable fight father from the earshot of the assembly. "What is the meaning of this? We look like children, are behaving like children, and cannot make any crucially needed moves for aid coming into the winter months!"

Yana's voice had swerved to brazen levels of retaliatory bitterness in her mind, tome this was merely more dissent from the forming coop I knew to be brewing behind closed doors...I needed some way of knowing, some way to be among them without the shade of my position.

"Carry on your duties...I need to clear my mind, if any matters are of import then vote as you see fit, Yana." My voice carried more of my weariness than I cared to depict though it did not matter; Only Aygu stayed behind as the sole entrusted powers of my nations fell in line with taking their assigned seats.

My father's apex rival and the facade of his night terrors stood with an unbreaking stare while only twitching his eye, my own regard falling to the still bandaged fingerless hand I had given him. "I would ask to join you...but I don't really care what the answer is."

"Do as you wish...You are as much an enemy to me as this humidity." I curved my body in an exaggerated imperial waltz that caught him off-guard, my only tell being his slightly bulged eyes...I wondered if he hated me for taking his combat ability along with his prowess in self-loving.

Most likely I found more humor in the idea that my father's antagonists were all within slicing distance of his own exiled baby boy than they did. "You still seem to smile despite it all," Aygu rattled through his few sharpened teeth, I could hear the graze of his metal boots on the cold steel of the assembly's semi-domed terrace.

The fragrance of the sea finally sailed toward my nose which quickly took any pretense of the smile the man thought he sniffed from me. "These people reak of frailty and ass kissing...I see why the others enjoy it so much." I watched Aygu speak closely due to his dialect when informal was much more western Buritian than the capital normally dealt with.

It was a sad tale of division how I easily could discern more in Svet than even my own Buriti-Vasco tongue when spoken by one not gripped by subtle culture washing. "What would you do--If you were me?'

To my complete and utter shock, Aygu shifted his stubbed hand across his throat in a flash of his still-holding physicality. "I would bathe the sands with the guts of the men who killed my family," My brow fell nearly to my own vision and I began to pace between him and the balcony to calm myself.

"I wouldn't allow some girl to speak for me because I can't control myself..." The words placed themselves like thorns burrowed deep into my ear canals, if he thought when my blade struck him the last time it scarred him--This time I would make him slate him haughty greed with the digits that fell.

Before my hands took a righteous course to dismantle him once more he held out the same stubbed appendage to me before in a semi-peaceful gesture, not even flinching at my quick movements to my belt line. "You do not know yourself, I dont expect you to do anything but what you were born to do..."

Aygu took up a position much too similar to that of my old tutor, talking down to me as they looked up to the heavens above. "I've been watching you, a lot longer than just when you decided to send me a message with that Durik-fuck Dennis."

So that is what he thought he had over me?! My time in exile?! Months spent wallowing around with the villagers of southern Nak's most dense slums, I knew he had to have known where I was and what I was doing...

In truth, my radically quick rise to power was not all luck--It was clear someone would move on the most extravagant show of division since my own father's rise to the throne. Even miles away in the muddy sands of Nak my ears were assaulted with how many of the insurgent Junta had moved innards in the weeks prepping Dennis's switch from Regent to King of Buriti.

The duration for the sleight of hand and work of build-up was over...Before the end of this summit, my sanity be restored in the form of filtering those out who were my pawns--And those who would find themselves laying head buried in a hyena den.

"What are you implying? That you protected me from the attack of my family? I congratulate you on your victory." I snorted sarcastically before turning back to the podium, Fawi was delivering a long speech on the benefits of education which meant there was still time for this splayed feud. "Wasn't me."

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With just two words the old warlord shattered my worldview, if he had not ordered the strike then it meant...I did not know what that denoted. For one of the first times in my life, I had no answer; No pointed jab or ad hominin based on my own feigned ignorance while building my arsenal...WHO KILLED MY FAMILY?

Knowing my emotive face was enough for words at the moment was enough to make me irate. His dark brown eyes radiated with such nonchalance that it was near impossible to feel the level of indignity that I felt at how little I knew. "You would find it best to help me understand...Or I will bleed you to the last puss-ridden drop of essence you have over the dust of Buriti."

"I am getting tired of listening to you threaten people without action, if I told you what was going on behind your back then we wouldn't be here--" Aygu nudged his chin past me toward Yana, Aiko, and Kyler, All sat behind a large flag of our homeland. "You are busy watching me while those three are busy watching you, kinda makes you wonder when they all have seats...Unlike me and you." He was right, my confrontation with Kyler had been for the same reason; I did not want to risk this being a move to worm his way between my hair and push the others out of the nest.

"That is fine...The world needs those who pretend to hold power in the light while those strong enough to wield power beat back the darkness." My sentence proved valid enough for Aygu to shift into a more comfortable position, his elbows resting on the finely smoothed guardrails.

"So let me try to piece together what I know with what I think you think you know, heh," Even with the near language barrier I could tell he was meant to be funny...I did not find this subject of any hilarity at all, the vein in my forehead could hose a fire with the pressure build. "Me and the other 'rebels' don't have planes stupid, whatever intell the Svets feed you through those shitty radios was garbage..."

This made some sense, though it didn't mean his men were not involved in my eyes. "Because Atlantia has been throwing guns and ammo for decades, the Svets let us didn't care when we took over the west...Only the Basklands." So as I suspected, the frigid buzzards and fat buffalo nations were aiming to destabilize us...None of this absolved him of the coop. "You do realize, my cousin Dennis and his bride-to-be surviving are not miraculous to me--Nor Kyler being away snagging the title of Popa in the Old World." Aygu shot another look toward Kyler before spitting toward the gray floor.

"Well damn, you know a little more than I thought but here is where it gets funny..." Aygu reached into the pocket of his many folded sand wraps, producing a photograph that clearly had seen a much better time before being mangled by this man's greasy hand. With my own two eyes, I could barely make out what was before me...A photograph of my sister smiling happily while a pale-faced Svet dog was planting a slobbered kiss on her head. "What the FUCK is this?" I yanked it from his hand without delay, my own fingers were shaking with rage.

The photograph slipped from my quivering fingers, my mind adrift in a vortex of disbelief and fragmented memories of my lost sister. Alive...My heart pounded, an aching maelstrom of hope and unanswered questions--why had she not reached out, attempted to find me? And bound to a sniveling Svet worm, no less? My gut clenched as I recalled the gentle, secretive glances once shared between her and Aiko, the treacherous pang of jealousy at their intimacy now overwhelmed by roiling confusion.

"The princess of Buriti is sleeping comfy while we mourn her...Whatever happened at the capital was about clearing the Old Guard and your dad for all you tykes to fall in line." Aygu must have taken delight in besetting my sanity with this backlash class of revealing secrets that made me sick to my stomach.

"M-my sister is alive?!" If the Svet king thought war was on the horizon before, he did not understand the unending atrocities I would force his people to endure. "From what the lil boys you called child soldiers have been able to scrape together without dying, yeah."

I began to scratch at the root of my scalp, feeling the tough bases of my many red dreadlocks. Aygu noticed how worked up I had become and took the liberty to place his hand on my shoulder, I met the freedom of his touch to grip his wrist violently while pushing his chest with my free hand.

"You are a rabid wolf...Name me who is not among this coop rather than who is--" My voice barked out with the same volume as I took with the elder in his cart before the storm ate the sand hounds whole, the sky cracked in a similar fashion with a small spell of dry lighting only heard not seen.

Aygu opened his mouth to speak. "Yana is the blood of that fucking light-dog Sankov! Aiko is Dennis' fiance and your grand holy man is his brother...Did you really feel that none of them had something to do with it?" His cutting question was not unfounded in the libraries of anxiety, just as I was going to answer him Tella popped his way from behind a large potted plant sending both me and Aygu flying at him with knives to his throat. "Who is this pale little rat?" Tella's eyes screamed the words he couldn't say for fear of a new orifice. I stood and then lifted Aygu off the much smaller boy painfully with my injured left arm.

"He is lost...A simple slave far from Buriti where he belongs--" The commotion had gone unnoticed by the crowd below, still engaged with the finer points of teaching toddlers to work factory shifts no doubt. "Why do you insist on," I could see fresh welts and marks of beatings taken from whoever put him back up to spying on me.

"Animals...Tella, this is my lead general, Aygu." The older man sized up the boy with his teeth bared, albinism was almost unheard of where we came from--The sear of the north could be likened to that of leprosy among the dunes, a silly backward thinking when many shared our plight

"I see it, turd's got a nose just like an old Nak love-maiden I used to kick around with...Sad you cursed to walk burning." Tella averted his eyes from Aygu, his hands wringing together from the tense interaction he probably had just meant to brush off as a chance meeting. "I'm not cursed...Fawi says--"

The old man...I enjoyed how loose-lipped this boy was around me, a fault to others but if used correctly Tella could be exactly what I needed in my cabinet's shadows. "That pudgy Old World dung spewer?" The remark made Tella flinch from our combined unabashed way of spitting on his master.

"Fawi is a very VERY powerful man--Don' let those saggy lobes fool you." I eyed Fawi carefully as Tella articulated, the portly man's jowls quivering with each syllable tossed into the shaking microphone. The pale boy foolishly revered this supposed titan, I saw only the feeble trappings of a sycophant grown plump on empty flattery.

While Tella attempted to distract me from the bombshells that dropped nearly as hard as the ones I had thought killed my entire family, I did not shift mentally from the harsh reality that I had to quickly discern what Aygu knew. "Tella, in Buriti it is custom to allow the king to speak...Whereas Aygu is our elder it stands that we should make room for his wisdom," The corners of my eyes tightened to slits, teeth not bared much like Aygu's once was.

"I will not talk while this boy is standing here pissing himself, you are child enough in my mind." That was where he was incorrect, this was just a taste test of Tella's loyalty and willingness to grasp meanings. "From this point on he is not a slave of this place--Tella will be leaving with us...No reason to not speak in front of my new aid." Aygu rubbed his fingers across his wrinkled brown, the strain of all the new people I chose to hire without care clear on the man's dark brown skin. "You are a fool to trust so many."

"I would be a fool to trust you when you hide the truth further still, speak now or you may find yourself traded to this Fawi in Tella's stead." Though half joking I kept my tone stern to maintain the air of deadly severity that was still swirling in my lungs.

"Doutros' scales you are so full of threats you can't keep, they may start to backfire on you someday," My patience had run thin, there in my mind was nothing more to talk about than which of the 4 traitors would be dead by the month's end. "Kyler, he has been talking my ear off about some 'plan' that you ruined by just breathing--Told me when we get back if I would still be around if you weren't...I would start there."

Kyler, Kyler, Kyler; From boarding school to foreign delegate to the most magnific position in all of Vasca religious standings, Old Wold to Izmar. Was it really as simple as him taking the steps to take his uncle's throne, could Dennis and he really take all that time and effort my father spent grooming them for rule to only set him alit in bomb-fire?!

The idea confounded me, I had known the 6'8" menace cousin of mine my whole life. Dennis was the schemer, always wrapped in his next idea to defraud the economy with his 'trends' not Kyler...

A pushover even at his massive size that I had beaten to a pulp year after year he visited our palace..."Go and join the others Aygu, I have heard enough from you." My voice remained strong even with his reaction of chuckling while shaking his head.

I watched him make his way down to next to Aiko, her curly brown hair sat starkly next to Yana's perfectly straightened black hair. They both shared a stern look that made me feel that they knew what had been discussed out of their reach, they should pray they knew nothing and found themselves not among Kyler's plot to rid my side of the family tree.

Watching Aiko and Yana's mirrored, impenetrable stares, my jaw tightened imperceptibly. Did their perfect masks conceal allegiance to Kyler's shadowed machinations? Or were they, as he'd naively hoped, lambs unaware of the kingdom's festering betrayals? As Tella's muffled sobs spilled out beside me, I shifted a calculating gaze slightly.

The albino runt had clearly been put through hell as a slave to Fawi from my guess...Carefully, I placed a steadying hand on Tella's quaking shoulder. "Dry those tears," I murmured with less bass than with Aygu, "You've more reason than most to celebrate your newfound freedom."

Gradually, the sniffles subsided into irregular hiccups as Tella raised his pale, blotchy face towards mine. In that fragile moment, I could recognize the first delicate strands of trust...and then I resolved to weave them tirelessly into unshakable loyalty for myself.

Tella's mottled face slowly smoothed under my steady grip, the quiver in his lip fading. As the sniffles tapered off, I gave his shoulder one final, purposeful squeeze before releasing him. Let that be the first fiber in the cord that binds you to me.

Glancing back towards the assembly, my eyes narrowed at the cluster of solemn faces - Aiko, Yana, the lumbering Kyler. One, two, perhaps all three already spun their own webs of deceit.

I pursed my lips. So be it. I would counter their snares strand by strand, unraveling their lies with ruthless precision. By the next full moon, I vowed silently, I shall have separated the snakes from the mice in this pit of treachery. And those slithering serpents...I will make belts of their scaly hides.

END