Interlude X – Willful Traitors, All

Cui

King Cui was a smart man. It came with being a King—one did not survive long in his position without being at least a little bit of a genius.

Of course, even with his boundless wisdom, there were some things he—as an educated, twenty-first century man—did not know. He did not know how to farm, for example. Though of course that was something better left to his lessers anyway.

It’s true that he was not born a King. He had not been taught the finer points of court etiquette, or how to convince the morons surrounding him that, ‘no, the gods didn’t exist you idiots, stop wasting our resources on ritual sacrifice!’, or even how to properly build an army.

But he had always been a fast learner, and faster still when it was his life on the line. War, as it turns out, was an excellent teacher.

And if there was one thing the War had taught him, it was that loyalty was nothing compared to greed.

The Song King had dangled the prize of the Sunset Kingdom in front of Wen and Olivia and so, without a moment’s hesitation, they betrayed him. They left him and his kingdom for dead, while they turned their sights on the prize to the south.

Traitors, they were. And now they are dead, long buried, their pitiful ‘kingdom’ absorbed into the Sunset Kingdom. The just consequences of their betrayal.

The thought allowed him a moment of glee, before he ruthlessly quashed it.

Even now, months later, the betrayal still burned. But he would not let himself feel neither happiness nor anger at them—for they were dead, and dead they would stay. He would not allow them even the immortality of memory.

But they had taught him an important lesson—your allies were only allies while it was convenient to them. The moment it stopped being convenient, they would drop you without a second thought.

This was only reinforced by the actions of the Pharaoh. Once the war was over, the Pharaoh helped himself to the greatest of the spoils—he took the lands of Wen and Olivia, which was only fair, but to take the Wustenreich as well? To take lands that would allow him to expand further north and south while their Oasis’ were left with the paltry, rebellious lands of the Song? What true ally would do that!?

Well, Cui could see the writing on the wall. Joseph was boxing him in—forcing his Kingdom to stay small and weak, while his expanded endlessly in all directions. He knew that the Pharaoh already only saw him as a vassal state—one that did not grant tribute or fealty, perhaps, but a vassal all the same.

Cui would not allow his people to be ruled by a foreign tyrant.

So, when the Pharaoh sent along his little spy—he knew what Kaiden was, the boy was hopelessly bad at hiding it—he sent them along to the guest house, a building perfectly designed to learn secrets foreigners would rather keep buried.

Hidden passages were built behind the walls, extending beneath the floorboards. Some even extended all the way to his own palace, allowing his own loyal spies to sneak between the two buildings easily. By the time they left, every secret they had would be known to him.

It wasn’t paranoia if they were really out to get you, after all.

He was restless that morning, as he waited for the first report to come in. He knew he had to be patient—it wasn’t like they’d spill all their secrets immediately, after all. He’d get daily reports on whatever they said, but, still. The wait was always the worst part.

But, finally, his spies arrived.

“Report,” he ordered to his spies, the three of them standing in a hidden side room in his palace. “How goes the investigation?”

The first spy stepped up, bowing to his King. “My King. We have troubling news.”

He knew it. “Speak, then.”

“To begin with, Lord Kaiden is not the leader as we had expected—instead, it appears that he is reporting to one of his guards, a woman named Gamila. We assume she is the true spy, and that Lord Kaiden is simply here to cover up her actions.”

Oh, how he hated being right.

“Have they said anything important?” he asked, lowly, a familiar anger creeping up on him. It turns out the sting of betrayal is still as sharp as ever, even long after he had prepared himself for it.

“Not as of yet. Lord Kaiden was apparently worried that he might have tipped you off with one of his questions, but they have yet to reveal why they have come here.”

Ah yes—the brat had asked about Aniruddha, the traitor. That bastard who had fled to the old Song lands, inciting rebellion amongst his people. They must be working together, obviously! No doubt, the traitor had already sold himself to the Pharaoh, and they must be planning to overthrow him with that puppet king!

He could not allow that.

“I want someone listening in on their conversations at all times,” he snapped at his spies. “A guard, a servant, anyone! And make sure they are loyal beyond any doubt. When our visitors are in public, make sure they are never alone—and when they think themselves alone make sure they are not. Alert the guards and prepare the soldiers! Tell them to prepare for war!”

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He would protect his people from all foreign oppressors!

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Aniruddha

Once, Aniruddha had thought of Cui as his brother. His friend, his comrade in arms, his ally, if nothing else.

Those days were long behind him.

Aniruddha’s capital had been sacked during the war, forcing him and his people to take refuge in Cui’s. And there they’d remained for months, starving and fighting off the siege by the Song army while Cui left them, living it up in Sun’s Rest.

That, perhaps, could have been forgiven. Much as the fact clung to his darker thoughts, at the end of the day one of them had to coordinate with Joseph, and he’d merely drawn the short straw.

Then Cui had come back and acted as though all the land they had taken belonged to him.

Cui had not fought. He had barely participated in the war itself! And yet he came strutting back into the city after two months of nothing and acted as though he had single-handedly saved them all!

It was the Sunset Army that had drawn away the Song. It was their people in the city who had stubbornly held on long enough for that to occur.

Cui had done nothing. And then he sat on his throne, arrogantly declaring all the lands taken in the war his, and began treating Aniruddha like a subordinate.

Oh, how that had burned.

He managed to tolerate it, for a bit. He bit back his anger at his condescending way of speaking. He ignored his grand feasts and parties. He had better things to do, after all. Smoothing over relations between the newly conquered peoples and their own. Reorganizing and rebuilding all the homes and farms that had been destroyed during the war—on both sides, unfortunately. Turns out burning down cities during a war just meant you’d have to rebuild them yourself later on—and enticing merchants back to their lands assuring them that the war was long behind them.

But as the days turned to weeks and weeks to months and nothing changed…

Bitterness swelled in his heart.

And then came the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“My King,” one of their servants turned administrators stepped before Cui, during one of their council meetings. “We’ve gotten word from one of the eastern cities. Apparently they haven’t been getting enough food to go around, as their farms are refusing to grow enough food. They’re asking for a tax cut, at least until they can get back on their feet.”

Oh, he knew which one that was.

“That’s the city of Song Cua Toi, yes?” Aniruddha hummed, tapping his finger on the table. “It’s the only one big enough for that to be a problem.”

The real reason was because he and his army, in their rage-fueled revenge march through the Song, burned and pillaged at much as they could until Joseph informed them of the end of the war. The capital had been hit especially hard, and they had—uh, they’d salted a good portion of the fields as well, just to be petty.

Not the best of actions, in hindsight.

The servant nodded at him, looking mildly surprised. “Yes, My Lord.”

My Lord. Not ‘My King.’

He bit his lip and shook it off. He had more important things to focus on right now.

“Very well, tell them we accept,” Aniruddha nodded at him. It was only just that they’d give them the time to recover properly.

“Belay that order,” Cui cut in. “They will pay their taxes like they are supposed to, and I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“What!?” Aniruddha yelped, turning to his fellow King in shock. “What the hell are you talking about!?”

“We can’t afford to cut taxes this year,” he told him. “We’ve barely got enough to feed our own people, remember?”

“We could have enough if you didn’t keep throwing your damn feasts—”

“Oh, not this again…” Cui groaned, as though they were arguing about wasn’t people starving to death.

“Yes, this again,” he hissed. “If we don’t cut taxes, then what should we do about the people starving, huh!?”

“Eh,” Cui shrugged. “Let them starve. It’s their punishment for all they did during the war—if they didn’t want to starve, they shouldn’t have attacked us in the first place.”

Aniruddha spluttered, before turning back to the servant. “Ignore him—my fellow king has clearly gone mad. Cut taxes—that’s an order from your King.”

“No, it is not,” Cui snapped, leaning over the table to glare at him. “I will not have our people starve just because you are fool enough to throw it to our enemies!”

“They are no longer our enemies—and we have more than enough food regardless,” Aniruddha waved him off, before turning back to the increasingly nervous looking servant. “Now, go let the city know it won’t have to starve under our rule.”

Cui slammed his fist on the table. “Listen to your King, damnit!”

“My King,” he hissed, spinning back around to glare at the man. “My King? Since when were you my King?!”

“Since you let your own lands get destroyed during the war!” Cui growled at him. “Now, begone! If you aren’t going to do what’s best for this country, then you don’t deserve to participate in these meetings!”

He dared to—

In that moment Aniruddha had seen red and, though enraged, held on to enough of his wits to merely storm out of the palace instead of strangling his fellow King right there.

And as he did, his people—the ones who had followed his orders, during the siege. The soldiers he’d sat besides on the walls, who remembered their King who stood with them night and day, who did not step down from the walls for weeks at a time. The civilians who remembered his charity, as he’d desperately tried to feed them whatever scraps he could, never taking even a crumb for himself. The people who remembered the King that was first out the gate when they turned the tables on their enemies, leading their righteous charge to reclaim their homes.

It was these people who saw their King humiliated by his fellow monarch. The monarch who had, when war came knocking on their doorstep, abandoned them for safety in the south.

He returned to the palace within the hour, his people rioting behind him.

What fight there was was short and brutal. In the end they lost—not enough soldiers on his side, not enough time spent planning what they were actually trying to accomplish. By nightfall he’d been chased out of the city, forcing him to flee all the way to their newly conquered territories.

Now he was no longer even a King.

But, not all was lost. And sometimes allies could come from even the most unlikely of places.

He walked the streets of the old Capital of the Song in broad daylight, not worried for his safety. He nodded at a guard as he walked past, knowing he’d never rat him out—not that he could, anyway, since the governor Cui had sent to oversee the city had long since been killed.

The King didn’t know—or at least couldn’t do anything about it. After all, all the way out in the capital, he didn’t get more than a single report from the eastern territories each month.

Eventually he came across the old palace, where the King used to rule from. With a nod to the guards standing on either side of the door, he entered, stepping into the throne room.

And there, sitting on the throne as though he’d never been deposed in the first place, was Quang Chang, the King of the Song.

“Quang,” Aniruddha grunted at him, crossing his arms. “I’ve finished gathering the old soldiers from the other cities here—we’ll be ready to march in a week, should all go well. Until then, we’ll await your orders to begin.”

“Excellent work, my ally!” Quang smiled wide, standing from his throne. “Excellent indeed! That means it is soon time, is it not?” the fallen King smiled, reaching out his hand. “Come then, my ally—let us take back our Thrones.”

Aniruddha smiled grimly back, clasping the man’s hand in his own. “Aye. Let’s.”