It was a banquet fit for kings, but even so it was a minor function at the court. One of the upper nobility had declared an open dinner in celebration of some birthday or important date- he didn’t know it, but then again he didn’t really have to know it. The important thing was that it was happening, and that it was an opportunity.
It was a possibility for him to create the sort of sentiment he needed. Here at the dinner table, where words flowed as freely as wine… he spoke with a slight slur as if partially drunk, but made sure to keep well away from the wine. A single wrong word could lead to suspicion, and he wasn’t very good with alcohol. Some tolerance, sure- it was one of the more unfortunate things he’d had to do while training for the position, but still.
This was the most important thing he’d ever done in his life. It needed to be done, and he wouldn’t let something so simple as alcohol get in his way… “I- the Nola… they’re all around, going and doing things. Did you know they attacked my ship? They wanted the money… thought it wasn’t in a letter of credit. They wouldn’t know…” A few noblemen listened attentively to his tale of woe as he weaved it, but most of them paid attention to their own meals and their own conversations.
That was fine. All he needed to do was make his way over to the ambassador’s table without making a fuss. Several people had already been whispering that he’d rustled through their papers, or had at least hired someone to rustle through their papers- they clearly didn’t know anything about the Nola agents if they thought he would have been that sloppy- but the suspicion was out. There was definitely something going on in the palace.
Things were happening… “The city-Nola… maybe they hired the boat, eh? The mainland Nola were audacious enough to attack inner Xhyolok, so who knows?” He found the act of pinning the blame on an ethnicity, much less his own ethnicity distasteful, but-
There was no right.
There was no wrong.
Humanity needed him…
One of the noblemen, a rather rotund fellow who looked for all the world as if he were some sort of sinkhole for food, nodded toward what he’d been saying, face alight. “As if! The Nola are a vermin. We pushed them out of here once, and they should have had the good sense to stay out.” How Laeo longed to correct him… but that would give him away. That would break the very essence of what he’d come to do.
He couldn’t do that… he needed to do everything right. Humanity- humanity and God. Against those who would deny their connection to the greater world- He’d started to understand what Arctic was actually fighting for.
The Eternity Falling needed to return. They were isolated here, without the power of Polarity Light. A little pocket of expanse, a tiny moment of infinity. Shadows of… they needed hope. “The Nola aren’t just the Sakaxhy’s enemy. They are the enemy of the Ilyaochi, the ancestral enemy of the Orroyelans. Surely you understand where I’m coming from.”
“Of course! Combine our forces, and even the Sakaxhy and their devilishly efficient fleets won’t be able to stand against us. We could divide up the land, maybe?” That was a blow that was almost too much. A perfect reaction, but one that cracked his mask and forced him to take a large bite of bread to hide it.
Someone slipped into the chair beside him and he glanced over, surprised. Nobody willingly wanted to sit with them- power was a thing that was earnt, and all the power was toward the front of the room. Next to the ambassador. Paquel, however, just gave him a wry look, leaning in closer as if she was going to kiss him. Instead, though, she whispered into his ear. “Lord Ofikiso is a famous weapons manufacturer. He’d be delighted with a war with Nolabo… I’ve got a seat for you.”
“Where?”
Her whisper dropped in volume until it was almost nothing at all. “By the ambassador. Just like you wanted… but in exchange, I want to know what’s actually in the bag.”
Laeo laughed- not at Paquel, rather just to diffuse suspicion. He locked arms with her, pulling him away from the ever watchful ears of attentive audiences and into the tumult of the banquet floor. “Two million xhyodaked, neatly wrapped up in two one-million letters of credit.” It was a ludicrous amount of money, totally fake, but it existed in paper all across the world. When people actually went to count out their gold twenty years in the future they’d be in for a big surprise.
“You’re kidding. No government would ever send an agent with that much cash to throw around.” She stared at him, but he didn’t recant, there was literally two million coins in those bills. Enough to fund armies. “You’re not kidding. The Sakaxhy must be really serious about this.”
“Well they’re probably getting bodied in the Gallant seas right about now, so I’d expect they’d like some help.” She didn’t understand… she still thought that he was a Sakaxhy agent- that wasn’t true. He was something greater.
He was one of the ones who saw the true struggle. He was one of the people who’d looked down on the world from above and seen that this is what he needed to do, no matter the cost. It was a mantra, repeated in his head as he sat down in a seat a few feet away from the Nola ambassador, waiting until someone inevitably brought up the Nola rustling through their papers. He just had to be patient…
As he waited he listened, engaging in small-chat that was mostly anti-Nola propaganda but also the occasionally refreshing conversation about forestry or fishing or taxation or any one of these things that he’d been trained to understand at the vaugest level. It was the sort of thing he would have liked to speak about if he wasn’t on a mission to bring his own nation into warfare.
The sort of thing that was the mark of a good politician, someone who cared about their territories and would ensure their productivity. There were a lot of those around the ambassador, competent politicians. People who carried the torch of the Orryelans who’d liberated themselves from Sakaxhy rule three hundred years ago in the first Cerulean War, people who carried forward the will of the original Orroyel who’d pushed out the Nola and inadvertently built the most powerful empire in the world.
An empire he was going to bring to ruin… he loved Nolabo. He really did… just, for once in his life, he was doing something for humanity- something for everyone and everything. Somethin for the Eternity Falling… “...the Nola are looking through my stuff again. Ambassador… his…” It was the chance he’d been waiting for.
Laeo quickly stood, pushing back his chair and exclaiming in a loud voice- “So you’re the one who had those pirates attack me? Trying to kill me wasn’t good enough, so now you search their rooms for that which you can’t have?”
He made as if he was going to stalk off in anger, but a single word stalled him. “Wait. You don’t just get to excuse me and leave.” For a second Laeo wondered if he’d pushed it too far and the ambassador was going to challenge him to a duel mission be damned, but he should have had more faith. For the agents of Nolabo, the mission always came first. Always, except…
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Laeo stood facing the ambassador of his own country, willing himself to give absolutely nothing away. This was the most important moment of his entire plan, and if he botched it he’d be dead, the world would be dead. “Rifling through papers? Looking through their effects? Explain yourself.” He hadn’t needed to demand, though, because the ambassador fell beautifully into his trap. He’s seen the dirt-
“It clearly isn’t me. I’m of extreme cleanliness. These people were dirty and unprofessional enough to leave obvious clues…” There was a hint of suspicion there, but not enough. In the moment, the ambassador was trying to get himself out of a hole. He didn’t have time to ponder the implications of evidence. “If you want to look for a culprit, it’s not this Nola.” He scoffed in disgust at the very idea of applying the values of one Nola to all of them, and Laeo couldn’t help but agree. Internally, at least.
The mission would not be jeopardized. “Search the Nola quarter! If they’re there, they’ll be found. Surely you won't let them get away with looking through your belongings?” It was a powerful move to play against these nobles. They wouldn’t be riled against the Nola, not for anything except purely political matters, but they certainly had important papers that they’d be upset someone was looking through.
Now that the target of their attention wasn’t the ambassador, they were free to spend as much energy toward it as they wanted. Some poor Nola in the nola quarter would be a good target for the hate of the nobles…
There was no right.
No wrong- he repeated it in his head, a mantra as the nobles piped up one by one in support of a brief military incursion into the Nola quarter to look for his suspect. He knew what was going to happen… knew what would be. He felt the power of those eyes, the greatest nobles of the realm agreeing with him. Just by that he knew he’d gained power and legitimacy.
This was the deepest he’d ever gone. At this moment, he was in essence Sakaxhy nobility, with all the powers, responsibilities, and strengths that came with that. Through Arctic he could have a heretofore impossible amount of legitimacy.
Then, something unexpected. The ambassador spoke once again. “Laeo, was it? Lord of the Sakaxhy? I’m sure, as our resident expert, you’d be fine in leading the expedition into the quarter?” It was an attempt to get the others to dislike him if it went wrong, but in the moment- despite the surprise- he could deal with this.
Laeo, scion of Nolabo, painted fake anticipation over his face. A mask of falsehood… “I’d be delighted to lead.” He was… deep memories, painful memories. Bright eyes that spoke of death- the words of the sibilant. He was a savior. He… he wasn’t a traitor. To Nolabo, maybe, but not to humanity. Not to the Eternity Falling. He executed a quick bow before the high nobles of Orroyel, hiding his discomfort. “In fact, we should go as soon as possible. Tomorrow?”
………
Buildings stretched skyward, neat brick and quiet, spaces, the shadows between cobbled streets. It had a distinctive feel, seperate from the Orroyelan court or really even the city as a whole… neat buildings, layed out with a definite plan and structured with all the care of a people were, in this foreign place, unified. The Nola quarter…
He swept through the clump of buildings at the head of a police force some two hundred strong, dragged up from the dregs of what he could find. How he would like to spare these people… still. He needed to inflict on them pain, and in that pain, they would respond. There would be bloodshed, a sacrifice against the power of Arctic-wishes… At the moment, though, this was a light place.
Shadows clung to the stones and the corners and the jagged decorations, and in those shadows he saw the death of so much… Still, he forged on, careful to make sure that his force kept behind him in a tight formation until they reached the center. Curt instructions were given, Sakaxhy-style military tactics that left most of the policemen befuddled, but it was important. The verisimilitude that would give him might be the difference between life and death…
He watched the soldiers drain into the dark crooks and allways and the beautiful hope of Nola displaced, and thought… he felt, looking out with that mask of steel and eyes of ice, silent. Unnoticeable, but also he was the night-
Laeo had seen the night, and as the investigation spread out beneath the glittering stars and the tumbling fragments of moon, he felt it… and then the screams started. Deep rending cries of pain, all around him. The sound of swords and terror- he hurried away in the opposite direction, meeting up with one of the bands he’d send out there who were harassing the owner of a printing shop… for a moment he harassed her too, before continuing- all he needed to do was to be seen with enough people to prevent suspicion.
He needed their trust, even as they screamed- of course it didn’t quite work out like he’d hoped it would. The police, while disunified, weren't idiots, and they started to converge on the source of the commotion. Laeo hoped Arctic had enough sense to escape before too many people saw him.
Screams.
He tumbled around the corner, coming face to face with a creature out of nightmares, a glittering, red-splashed jaggedness of steel and glowing eyes. Arctic faced him, eyes bright with all the cheer of something horrifying- then he disappeared, fading into the shadows as dark eyes watched from buildings constructed during Orroyel’s long disunification…
Old places, scared eyes, darkness. It might have been his imagination, but he almost felt as if he could hear the quiet hum of Arctic’s miniature-god, the ship that had taken him above understanding and made him into his own little atrocity. Because acting allowed him, because he needed to and because he needed- he kneeled beside bodies mangled and the rent dead, and wept…
The march back to the court was an aurorus one. Nobody who’d seen Arctic had survived, but even so there were injuries. Broken bones from thrown rocks, plenty of scrapes and bruises, and even one man knocked unconscious with little hope of waking. It was like an army returning in defeat, exhausted and bloodied. A conquered force marching into the pearly white stone of the Orroyelan court, all its carefully manicured beauty, the perfect expression of hatred-
If this didn’t rile the court, then nothing would. Blood on white stones, stepping, one after the other, until he knelt on the stones in front of a horrified, half delighted crowd. Those who’d feared, they had their vindication. Those who’d gone, they had their hatred. Paquel had her delight that it’d worked out according to plan…
The Nola ambassador strode forward, pushing some of the most important Orroyelans in the entire court out of the way in his haste to see what had happened. He wore a mask of horror, but also of sympathy, carefully cultivating the same sort of force that Laeo had hoped to turn against him and sending it crashing back towards Laeo. It would be too waves, not canceling each other out but just passing each other by, and in this moment it would be down to who made the bigger waves.
The ambassador stopped before him, looking down with narrow eyes. “The Nola attacked you? Really, with all their trade agreements and their deep ties, you’d think they’d be a little more careful.”
“Hate is a strong thing.” Laeo winced and looked down at his foot- he’d stubbed it on a stone, ostensibly by accident but he needed that injury. It would be another card in the hand… “The Nola won’t need trade agreements when they control all Royeleo.” He gave a weak smile, as if he’d been vindicated, knowing that he was the vindication. Arctic was the blood, and he was saving them… through death, life. There was no right…
The ambassador only looked down with slightly narrowed eyes. “Arrest this man.” Laeo barely kept himself from smiling. He’d gotten the ambassador to overstep his bounds- now he’d either have to recant or face the wrath of the other lords… his background, artificial though it was, had enough reality to give him that upper hand. To provoke-
Iron-strong hands grasped onto his wrists and pushed him roughly into the ground as the policemen he’d taken with him bound his arms and Laeo realized he’d made a potentially deadly miscalculation.