My battle with Tisiphone had left Rome's capital mostly destroyed. I had to pity those Olympians that had been forced by statute to build using gold as a display of wealth, but at least the foundation and framework for the buildings was substantive, built on an infrastructure of support beams created with Adamantium.
The metal wasn't as strong or adaptive as Silinium, but it was perhaps the next best thing. It had a tensile strength that managed to include enough flexibility that giant towering edifices could be constructed, at least when those buildings weren't clad in gold.
I could have destroyed the city completely. My control over metal was so absolute that even the enchantments carved into Adamantium girders could not have stayed my hand if destruction of Rome's Capital, Ephesus, had been my goal. But it hadn't been, the entire purpose of treating Caesar with the same disrespect he had our contingent had been to create a distraction. I wanted him and his people focused on me so that Lord Aesin and his Aziza could disperse and find evidence for who had killed my daughter.
Caesar's invoking the Gods and summoning the Furies was unforeseen, but the results would reverberate. His decision to attack using the goddess Tisiphone would have an even larger consequence for Olympus than he might have imagined. He thought me inconsequential, my Rank of Princes contemptible, but I had managed to hold my own.
I had battled a goddess to a stalemate, and Lord Aesin had made sure to task a few Aziza to record the entire battle.
Our fight had lasted for days, as I used Ephesus to my advantage. My ability to maneuver throughout a city made of metal makes it easy to play my game of cat and mouse. I have to admit the entire orchestrated event had been profitable. I made sure to liberate gold from across the city as I danced on the edge of defeat.
I wasn't sure what I would do with so much of the metal, on Talahm it wasn't worth much more than the ground it was found in. Silinium was so much more practical and useful. But it would serve as a further insult to Caesar and Olympus. That a Sidhe mongrel could liberate so much wealth and do so without any consequence would make a joke of Olympus' vaunted strength.
I made a mental note to inform those Sidhe that used prose as a weapon about the theft. It would be an even further insult when epic poems and chronicles began filtering across the Cosmos. A moral fable, a story told that proved wealth was relative, and gold, when measured against the dignity of a Ranked Princess, proved that no amount of gold could replace fair treatment and respect.
Perhaps I would use my ill-gotten gains to create an economic incident in one of the Asgardian worlds. Olympus' gold serving to unbalance an Asgard economy had possibilities, especially if I managed to convince the Asgardians that the immense amount of gold flooding their markets came from Olympus. I would have to work with Lord Aesin on that. He was tricky enough to pull it off and had the staff make sure our efforts could never be traced back to me or Talahm.
The Sidhe did not have a trickster God, but if Aesin ever managed to gain enough experience to ascend, he would be well suited as a Sidhe God of deception and trickery. Lugh, also known as Llew Llaw Gyffes, also known as Lugus, was the closest we had for now. His crafting of 300 wooden cows and filling them with poison to kill Bres, a traitor to the Tuatha de Danaan, was the only instance that recounted the use of treachery.
He was one of the early Kings for the Sidhe before he leveled and reached Rank: God. His divinity was based on the concept of Nobility. Noble as an ideal. Gracious, charitable, honorable. It may seem a disconnect to associate him with these concepts as well as deceit, especially when you consider the story of Bres, but nobility, at times, requires sacrifice.
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Lugh was willing to sacrifice his reputation as honorable and noble to bring justice to a traitor that had forced the Sidhe to submit, to work as slaves for the Fomorians, and had weakened us enough that other Pantheons could demand our Gods enter Sleep.
"Have you spoken with His Majesty?" Lord Aesin asked me.
"He spoke with me earlier this morning," I informed him.
"What are your plans then?" He asked almost gleefully anticipating my response. I imagine he would enjoy the continued freedom to continue his own type of fight. Mine had been public and destructive, but he had been just as active, infiltrating and stealing a vast amount of information and secrets.
"You will be staying?" I hazarded a guess.
"For a bit longer. I think we have gathered all the information we can about Sieph's disappearance, but we have found some interesting information that proves that Talahm isn't the only world and people Olympus has exploited. I will need to consider where to focus my people until I return to Talahm," he mused.
"I have sent information to Talahm. Tadeus has already begun interviewing those surviving members of your retinue now that we know that Sieph was missing before your people were attacked. We will need to retrace the route you took, try to find out when Sieph had gone missing. Now that we know we have been asking the wrong questions, someone is bound to remember something odd about that night."
Sieph.
It had been a long time since anyone had spoken her name out loud in my presence. People referred to her as my daughter or the young woman. I'm not sure when I realized that by not giving voice to her name those who thought they were softening the pain, only added to my grief.
For so many years Sieph was not only dead, she had been dismissed, her existence almost erased, by the well-intentioned people that spoke with me. By refusing to utter her name, they diminished her and lessened who she was as a person. She had become nameless, a person without identity or purpose, and they did so to placate. My grief, my goals appeased or ignored as the ravings of a mother driven to the extreme by grief.
I never mentioned my anger, my fury at those who rationalized their action with sentiments of kind intentions or attempts to soothe a distraught mother. I never spoke of how their refusal to say her name was a slight they lobbed at Sieph. I never allowed the pain to show as they plunged dagger after dagger into my soul.
She was talented, even more than I was. She had already begun to claim control of her domain, to understand the metal in all its aspects before gaining full access to System. She had been so young on that night she had gone missing so long ago.
Not yet an adult.
For all these years I had thought she died never having truly lived.
"The others have all safely made it back to Talahm?" I inquired.
"The world portal remained undamaged, even withstanding the destruction that you and Tisiphone managed. They were the first to leave the world as soon as it was safe."
"Alright," I sighed, weary and ready to leave this place.
"You should use the Summerlands to return," Lord Aesin suggested. "Caesar has placed a bounty on your head. I doubt anyone would risk it after you fought Tisiphone to a draw, but people are greedy, and you never know what some idiot might try for the promise of wealth."
"Then there is no better time like the present," I agreed.
"Lord Aesin. You have no idea what your revelation has meant for me," I said offering my thanks without saying the words. For Sidhe, the simple expression of gratitude could be used as a weapon, a twisting of meaning that placed you within the power of another.
"Thank you."
The Sidhe did not say the words 'thank you' often, but for this, I was willing to owe any favor to Lord Aesin. We had learned long ago that appreciation and thanks should be carefully shared.
He had given me hope once again.
His investigation had discovered that my daughter had not been killed that fateful night. That information was worth any price he might demand. A simple declaration of thanks was the least that honor demanded.
I didn't think Aesin was the kind of person who would use those words against me, but if he was, it was a price I would willingly pay.
Even if he never called in the marker my thanks gave, I would find a way to return this favor. For what he had done for me and my House, was a favor.
He had restored my heart.
My House's soul.
I would see him rewarded.
And as I gazed at him, casting [Portal: Summerlands], I wondered briefly if a Knocker Princess should consider taking an Aziza Spy-master as her consort.