Chapter 10 – The Price of Power
Since the Empress had left the port of Varin, she had started her journey back towards Meklis, the capital city of Waed. With her grand tour of the empire finished, she now sought to return before the grand jubilee celebration that her advisors had prepared to mark the momentous milestone for her reign.
Now, partway along that journey, she and the rest of her massive retinue had stopped at an imperial outpost built alongside a major trade route. Like most imperial constructions, the tower was built more with practical purposes in mind, in this case to discourage any bandits in the area from raiding merchant caravans, than for any aesthetic ones. A square, solid tower of stone without any exterior decorations whatsoever, the tower possessed small, easily defensible doors scattered around all four sides of the base and a wooden stable attached to the side of the structure seemingly as an afterthought. The tower was ugly, but effective. For now, the Empress and her followers filled it to its absolute capacity.
The Empress herself sat in the topmost room of the tower, a chamber as bare and utilitarian as the rest of the structure. She relaxed in a rocking chair besides the squat fireplace, staring out the narrow window at the grassy moors beyond. The Empress wore a bright red dress which matched the ruby earrings she wore, glittering cheerily in the firelight. Her wrinkled face was drawn tightly into a perpetual thoughtful stare as she considered issues of state. As an evening mist drew across the landscape, obscuring her view, the Empress looked down at the enormous stack of letters in her lap, delivered from across her empire every day. All of them, she knew, needed her immediate, undivided attention, a state both impossible and all too common.
“Tax disputes in Northern Regel, disappearing caravans in Ar Goll Forest, and now this fire in Varin. Bah. The price of power, I suppose,” the Empress muttered to herself.
A knock came from the door. Craning her neck to look over her shoulder at the door, she said, “Enter!”
General Steroth walked into the room, his gray military uniform as impeccably precise as always, mustache and beard trimmed to exactly within regulations. His carefully calculating eyes roamed the room, seeking possible assassins even here.
“Report,” the Empress said, waving a hand dismissively at him as she did so.
Snapping smartly to attention, General Steroth said, “The fortress is secure, Empress. Your safety is assured, for the night, at least.”
“Dear old Steroth,” the Empress said, chuckling slightly as she did so. “Always seeing assassins in every shadow and revolutions brewing in every whispered insult behind my back. How do you sleep at night?”
“Very, very lightly,” General Steroth responded as he stopped standing at attention and shifted to a more comfortable position, arms clasped lightly behind his back.
The Empress raised an eyebrow at that. “Indeed. Tell me, how are Blyth and nephew Grevel?”
The General coughed into the back of his hand, before saying, “Grevel is downstairs, complaining loudly about the austerity of his quarters. Prince Blyth is currently sleeping, I believe. The trip here, short as it was, exhausted him.”
The Empress clucked her tongue sadly. “A shame about his illness. He was so talented and bright. But now…,” She returned her gaze to the window. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“Indeed,” General Steroth said. He awkwardly shifted his weight from one foot to the other, clearly expecting the Empress to say something further. When she did not, he said, “My Empress, speaking of that, there have been rumors going around through the men and the servants, and even back at the courts…”
“Yes?” the Empress said frostily.
General Steroth swallowed. “They say…well, they say you intend to make me your heir to the throne.”
The Empress stared at him, dumbfounded, then laughed aloud, her laugh high-pitched and twittery like that of a bird. “How absurd!” she told him between fits of laughter. “Someone outside of my family? Hardly. The crown will go to Prince Grevel, as tradition demands.”
Grinding his teeth together, General Steroth said, “My Empress, please reconsider. While I certainly agree that I may not be the best candidate, the boy is hardly fit to rule. While he may be popular with the people, he’s woefully ignorant in matters of state or war.”
“Then I suppose you’ll have to teach him, General,” the Empress said, all humor leaving her voice and demeanor. “I will not break with tradition for you, General Steroth, or anyone else for that matter. You may have served me well for forty years, but you must know your place, same as everyone else in my empire. Is that understood?”
“Yes, My Empress,” General Steroth said blandly. He gave a clipped half-bow to her, then said, “Will that be all?”
“No,” the Empress answered. “How long will it take us to return to Melkis?”
General Steroth considered the question, running his hand through his mustache as he did so. “Assuming that we proceed at a steady pace, perhaps two weeks.”
“I want to be there in a week,” the Empress told him. “My jubilee is in less than a month, and I want plenty of time to oversee the preparations personally. Is that understood?”
“Of course, Empress,” General Steroth said, giving another bow as he did so. “Whatever you command, it shall be done.”
“Very good,” the Empress said, glancing back down at the letters in her lap. “This jubilee will be the largest celebration that the people of Waed will have ever seen. It will be a symbol of unity to citizens from every part of the empire. There will also be far more people gathered in Melkis than usual, and I will be in public for a great deal of time. That will present more risks than even your paranoid defenses are prepared for, General.”
“I am well aware, Empress,” General Steroth said. “It is one of the reasons I advised against such a lavish celebration. It could well mean-” General Steroth’s speech was interrupted by a hacking fit of coughing, which made the Empress glance at him in surprise.
“Are you well, Steroth?” the Empress asked sharply. “I need you in proper health.”
“It is nothing,” General Steroth said with a wave of his hand. “My habit of smoking has finally begun to catch up with me in my old age, is all.”
“Well, regardless, I need you to be even more paranoid than usual during this festival,” the Empress commanded. “Oh, and one more thing. I have been hearing some rumors of my own of late. Very disturbing rumors that I don’t like in the least.”
“My Empress?” General Steroth asked, keeping his expression fixated on the opposite wall.
“Someone in my court has been making quite a stir in the criminal underworld recently, hiring crews of criminals and mercenaries of all sorts, and spending quite an extravagant amount that is no doubt being funneled directly from my own treasury. Whoever it is has been very good at concealing their tracks, and my spies haven’t found any information related to this shadowy figure yet, other than that they have been operating under the grandiose alias of ‘the Master.’ While we were staying in Varin, a local crew of nobody thieves burned down the home of Gerok, my old court hemomancer. Do you see any connection there, General?”
“No, Empress,” General Steroth said, stifling another fit of coughing as he did so.
“I do,” the Empress said, her voice as brittle and sharp as ice. “I know you have military spies of your own beyond my own agents, which, judging from the lack of results, has apparently been compromised. I want you to use those agents to find this mysterious Master. I want him found and crushed as soon as possible.”
“As you wish,” General Steroth said.
“Gerok was a true friend, you know,” the Empress said sadly, glancing out the window once more. “The greatest hemomancer I ever knew. He helped to train Grevel and tried to treat Blyth, before he decided he preferred the simple life of a country healer. Some men were made for greatness, General. Others claim it for themselves with no right to that title. Still others reject greatness entirely, fearing their unworthiness, unaware that such is exactly what makes them the best candidates.”
“I wouldn’t know about such matters, Empress,” General Steroth said.
The Empress snorted. “Hardly, General. You have proven countless times your status as my most talented military commander, despite what you have always said to the contrary. The empire wouldn’t be possible without you, and I won’t hear another word from you on the matter.”
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General Steroth simply bowed once more in response to that statement.
The Empress gave a forlorn sigh. “Very well, General. You are dismissed, unless you have something else you desire to say.”
General Steroth gave a short shake of his head. “No, Empress. I have…personal matters to attend to this evening.”
“Ah,” the Empress said blandly, but her attention had already returned to the pile of letters and other correspondence before her. “Carry on, then.”
General Steroth bowed a final time and marched out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind himself as he did so. He looked down the stone hallway to see if anyone else was present, but aside from the single lone guard standing patiently outside the Empress’ door, who he nodded to as he passed, he saw no one else.
He walked down the hall to the spiral staircase and soon reached the bottom floor, where his soldiers were currently quartered and where he himself stayed. Another short journey and he stood outside the door to his room. He opened it carefully and stepped inside, seeing his bare, utilitarian cot opposite the desk which had an open book open it. He walked over to the book, picked up the quill in the adjacent inkpot, and quickly read the page. It had a list of names, many of whom were in the Empress’ own court. He took his pen and quickly struck off several names from the bottom of the list. He let out a tired breath as he did so, running a hand through his beard. He did indeed have a great deal of work left that evening.
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At the other end of the imperial outpost, down near the stables where the messenger and scout’s horses were kept, a very different council was just beginning to assemble. The only light came from a single flickering lantern set beforehand in the corner between the stables and the main structure of the fortress. The stables and tower connected at a right angle, the wooden stables stretching off, doors open, the inky blackness within made all the stranger by the occasional whicker or neigh from the restless horses within. The fortress itself had only one door facing this side, one which servants would use to come and go without notice. The door had been firmly shut for the night.
Into this lonely scene skulked a haunting, almost ghoul-like individual. He was a sallow, sneering young man, whose dirty, disheveled hair lay pasted against his forehead. He wore filthy, oversized robes whose original color could not even be guessed at. Making his appearance even stranger, the man’s face and arms were marked by countless cuts and other injuries, none of which had fully healed despite their apparent age, instead being coated in sickly, foul-smelling scabs and scars as black as his pupils. The man’s expression seemed clenched in an eternal snarl. Accompanying this was a bestial look in his eyes, the look of someone whose sanity could snap completely at any moment. Slouched over, eyes darting around despite being totally alone, he walked up to where the lantern had been set, then looked around impatiently.
“What kind of joke is this?” he growled. “The instructions said to meet here.”
“I received the same instructions,” a withered, reedy voice said from the surrounding darkness. “I hope that I would not be too bold in assuming that you were not the ones who sent them, then.”
The scarred man whirled around, eyes narrowing as he looked for any sign of the newcomer. “Relax,” the voice told him. “I mean you no harm, good Sir.”
The scarred man sneered. “That’s for me to decide.”
The second speaker stepped forward into the lantern light, allowing the scarred man to get a good view of him. To his surprise, he saw an elderly, stooped man, back bent almost in half with age, with large pince-nez glasses perched upon his nose partially concealing watery eyes. He was supported by a young woman with short blonde hair, her expression studiously blank, who helped him along as he walked. The old man waved to the young woman to stop, which she immediately did, as he carefully studied the figure standing before him.
“Those are some nasty injuries, young man,” the older man observed. “I could take care of those for you, if you so wished.”
The scarred man flinched as if struck. “I won’t have you or anyone else’s poisonous hemomancy touch me!” he spat.
The older man tilted his head to the side, eyes narrowing. “Now, who said anything about hemomancy?”
All three were startled by yet another voice from the darkness declaring, “I believe that the subject was broached by our would-be employer, Sir.”
“Show yourself,” the scarred man practically bellowed.
“Keep your voice down,” the newcomer said mildly. “Wouldn’t want to disturb the sleep of the Empress or any of her guards, would we?”
The old man stiffened, eyes widening in apparent panic. Even the silent woman besides him appeared uneasy. “The Empress herself is here?” he whispered hoarsely.
The newcomer chuckled. “Naturally. Whoever our would-be employer is, he must be either awfully brave or remarkably foolish to convene this little meeting within the veritable shadow of the Empress and all her guards. That, or…but I get ahead of myself.”
Stepping from the stables’ open doors, the newcomer revealed himself to be a particularly nondescript and unassuming looking young man, clean shaven and with a rather apathetic, almost bored expression on his face.
“Were you standing in the stables the whole time?” the scarred man barked.
“Of course,” the bland-looking fellow said, studying his neatly trimmed nails as he did so. “I arrived before any of you, but I wanted to evaluate the competition before making my presence known.”
The old man adjusted his pince-nez, glancing at the young woman besides himself as he did so. “Competition?”
The bland-looking man smiled anemically. “Oh, please don’t play dumb, old man. It takes all the thrill out of the game. You know exactly what I meant: someone with an exceptionally large amount of influence and a great deal of money sent out a message into the underworld: mercenaries and assassins with hemomantic abilities should convene at this spot on this night. Whatever task this shall be, we all shall, by necessity, be competing for it. Regardless, while it appears that the four of us have chosen to answer that summon, I do not see our hypothetical employer.”
As if in response to his statement, they all heard the nearest door leading into the fortress creak as it slowly opened, creating the tiniest of gaps. From that narrow crack in the door, a hoarse voice issued, saying, “I am here.”
All four of the hemomancers turned to look at the door. In curiosity, the scarred man stepped towards it, hand outstretched to fling it open, but as soon as he did so, the voice from behind the door hissed, “If you come a step closer, I’ll kill you where you stand.”
The scarred man growled. “Are you threatening me?”
“Yes,” the voice said bluntly. “And if you wish to prove the truth of my claims, then keep approaching this door.”
The hemomancer considered this for a second, then stepped away.
“That’s what I thought,” the voice said smugly, before breaking down into a fit of coughing that lasted for nearly a minute. Once the coughing had subsided, the voice continued, saying, “you may refer to me as the Master. I have summoned the four of you here for a very specific purpose. I shall begin with you, Zared Choler.”
At the mention of his name, the man with the half-healed wounds started in surprise. “What?” he said.
“Most hemomancers discover their ability at a very young age, but not you. You only realized your potential upon reaching adulthood. You then promptly killed everyone in your village,” the Master said. “You’ve spent the years since then being captured by the Empress’ men, breaking out of prison, indiscriminately slaughtering everyone you come across, and being eventually recaptured. They have tried to execute you four times so far that I am aware of, and you survived all attempts. You are, perhaps, the most powerful hemomancer in the world today.”
“Why bother telling me about myself?” Choler asked, crossing his arms petulantly as he did so.
“To show you that I know what I speak of, and that I am not someone to be crossed lightly,” the Master said. “As for you, Doctor Phlegm or whatever you have chosen to call yourself for the moment, you proved far more difficult to track down. Don’t be so hopeful as to think you could escape me altogether, however. You were arrested for experimenting on your patients, turning them into hemomantic abominations. Your daughter there, Sangue, broke you out of prison, before you both promptly vanished. I believe the Empress’ men have sought you for nearly ten years now.”
The old man and the young woman supporting him nodded their heads. “You speak truly, Master.” Doctor Phlegm said. “The fools didn’t recognize the value of my research, unfortunately, and haven’t no matter where we flee to.”
“The only unknown, then, is you, my fourth friend,” the Master continued. “And I hate unknowns.”
The bland-faced man bowed slightly towards the open door. “Tyer Melanc, professional assassin, at your service.”
“Professional assassin?” the Master echoed, skepticism evident in his voice. “I have never heard of you.”
Melanc smiled slightly at that. “That’s how you know I am a very good assassin, Master.”
The Master laughed at that, his laughter devolving into another fit of wet coughing before he regained control of himself. “Excellent. Now, we must discuss the reason I summoned all of you here.”
The four hemomancers leaned in closer, curious to hear what their mission would be.
“I have my own plans in motion, plans which must be completed before the Empress’ Jubilee,” the Master said hoarsely. “Unfortunately, an old court hemomancer learned the truth of much of that plan. I had him killed, but he passed on that information to his two young apprentices, who are trying to warn the Empress. They must not be allowed to reach her.”
“Children?” Choler said disdainfully. “You’re hiring us to kill children?”
“Not just any children, fool,” the Master snapped. “They are already quite accomplished hemomancers, and they aren’t even fully trained yet. What’s more, they are being escorted by a hemomantic abomination, a wolf man, whom they have somehow managed to tame.” At this, Phlegm and his daughter stiffened but said nothing. “I sent an entire crew of men after them, and the children and their protector slew nearly all of them. No, it will require hemomancers of no small talent to stop the three of them.”
“How much are you offering?” Melanc asked idly.
“One hundred thousand golden crowns to whoever kills both of the apprentices, and an additionally twenty-five thousand golden crowns to whoever kills the wolf and makes him pay for his mockery,” the Master said.
Choler gasped audibly in surprise at that pronouncement.
“That’s enough money to retire and live like a lord off of for the rest of my life,” Melanc mused aloud. “What exactly have these children learned that you would be willing to pay a fortune to destroy them?”
“I am not hiring you to ask questions,” the Master snarled. “I am hiring you to kill them.”
Melanc shrugged. “A fair point. I will take the contract.”
“As will I,” Choler said hastily.
Phlegm talked quietly with his daughter for a moment, then said, “We will take the contract as well, Master.”
“Excellent,” the Master said. “Then go, and may the best hemomancer claim the prize.” The door shut with an audible click, leaving the four hemomancers alone once more.
Choler laughed wildly, saying, “If any of you fools get in my way, I’ll kill you myself. This prize is mine!” Without further ado, he charged wildly off into the night.
“Idiot,” Phlegm muttered. “No wonder the Empress’ men keep capturing him. Now you, Melanc, you strike me as the kind of man who can be reasoned with. Perhaps an alliance is in order…,” Phlegm’s speech trailed off as he looked around, but the fourth assassin had already vanished, disappearing back into the darkness of the stables. Phlegm sighed, looking at his daughter, who remained silently watching him.
“It appears that we are on our own, dear,” he said, clucking his tongue as he did so. “Ah, well. Such has it always been. Come, we have much to prepare.”