Chapter 28 – The Rulers of the Future
Tyer Melanc prided himself on two things: his ability to prepare for nearly every situation, and his taste when it came to luxury. These two areas of his life had intersected when he had begun carefully crafting his plan to defeat Zaphyr and Zull. He had begun by selecting where he would hold Sir Kyr and the rest of the twins’ friends, the location for his true, final trap. After taking some time to find all the options available in Veb and consider them, he had chosen a large house and an adjoining compound, surrounded by a tall stone wall. In addition to the obvious security benefits, the house came with several other amenities. Contained within this compound was a garden, a marble gazebo, and a smaller building for servants to live in apart from the main house. The house had only recently belonged to an extremely wealthy merchant who had died without leaving behind any heirs, Melanc had been told.
It had nearly bankrupted him, but Melanc had purchased the house and, with the aid of his blood-controlled thralls, had moved in the day before the twins and their allies had arrived in Veb. Once they had done so, he had waited for them to arrive. He hadn’t needed to bide his time for long: he had been walking through the streets, idly shopping, when he had seen quite by accident Zaphyr and Zull, along with an imposing fat man dressed in gaudy clothes he surmised was Vard the bard. For a moment he was unsure what to do, until Zaphyr saw him and waved cheerfully. He waved back, realizing that they weren’t even aware of his existence.
Immediately after he was out of their sight, he sent out the servant he had converted, the first thrall he had made in Veb, to keep the twins occupied and test their skills, so he could see for himself what they were capable of. Simultaneously, he had sent the rest of his men to the farmstead where the twins’ allies had been hiding, guided by his secret spy within their ranks. Taken completely by surprise, his thralls had managed to overpower them and bring them back to his new house. He had lost a single man in the process, whose body he had quickly disposed of, though there was a remaining stain of blood on the wall of the barn which he could not remove.
Melanc himself lounged in the shade of the gazebo, leaning against a pillar with a self-satisfied leer on his face. Meanwhile, everyone else around him stood out in the sunlight, blinking rapidly as their eyes tried to adjust to the sun’s return after the storm’s end. Behind his prisoners was the garden, small but excellently manicured; rows of flowers alternated with trees, whose branches hung low, bright with green leaves. Beyond the garden there was the house itself, a squat, imposing structure, built of gray stone, with glass windows glaring out like the eyes of some great monster. The damp breeze following the storm, mixed with the heady aroma of the flowers, filled the entire compound with a soothing haze that made one want to relax and enjoy the joys of nature. It clashed brutally with Melanc’s intended purpose for that garden, a fact he thought only heightened its artistic nature through its irony.
Now, standing in the garden as the last of the storm blew over, he studied his prisoners. Sir Kyr, Vyle, Henriks, and Velen, all stood there with their hands tied behind their backs. They were all bruised and beaten from their capture, but they had been taken so utterly by surprise that they hadn’t had a chance to resist and so hadn’t been seriously injured. Melanc had taken extra precautions with Sir Kyr, using a metal muzzle to lock his jaw shut and chains to restrain him. Four of his thralls, random people he had encountered in the city and poisoned with his blood, stood behind them, daggers ready to slit their throats should any of them try to make any moves that he considered dangerous.
Standing just behind Melanc were Shaw, the man within the ranks of Vyle’s forces who he had bribed to serve as his spy years previously, and Sangue. Shaw was grinning nervously, confident in Melanc’s control of the situation, yet still deeply fearful of Vyle’s wrath. Sangue looked more like a walking corpse than a living person, her veins showing clearly through her pale, almost transparent skin, and her teeth were now stained to a rotting black color, looking like they could fall out of her mouth at any moment. The blood bindings dotting her arms and legs were blurred, as if the morning rain had washed them partially away.
“Well, I’m excited to finally get to meet the infamous Sir Kyr in person,” Melanc said, picking up a metal pitcher and goblet waiting on a table besides himself and pouring himself some chilled wine. He sipped it, made a disappointed face, then turned and passed the goblet to Shaw who, unsure what else to do, drank from it as well. “I’ve heard so much about you, Kyr. A genuine hemomantic ‘abomination,’ stronger, faster, and tougher than a man.” His pale, bland eyes, which seemed to look through them all, focused on the bandit chieftain. “And you, Vyle. You’ve eluded capture by the Empress and her men for years. You are practically a living legend. I’m almost disappointed in how easy it was to capture you both, truthfully. I suppose it shows you should never believe the stories you hear.”
“You never would have found us, much less taken us without a fight, if it weren’t for him,” Vyle said, before spitting at Shaw’s feet. Shaw jumped back, his expression changing to one of terror.
“Temper, temper, Vyle,” Melanc said, tsking loudly as if he were talking to a particularly stubborn student. “Shaw here has provided me with a particularly valuable service. As a guest in my home, you should treat my other guests with the respect and dignity that they deserve.”
“He’s a traitor,” Vyle sneered. “He deserves nothing but a rope and a tree.”
Shaw blanched, dropping the goblet to the floor with a loud clatter. Melanc sighed, and with a flick of his wrist one of his thralls stepped forward, knelt down, and began cleaning the spilled wine. Ignoring this, Melanc said, “I’m going to have to ask you to be more respectful than that, Vyle. I had intended to keep all four of you alive to serve as bait, but three could work just as well for my purposes. Another word from you, and I’ll make one of your friends throw themselves from the highest building in Veb. Perhaps I should start with Sir Kyr. It would be interesting to see if he could survive the fall.”
Sangue spun to face Melanc, the snarl of rage on her face combined with her unhealthy pallor making her look like a leering gargoyle carved from stone. “Argus Vyle and Sir Kyr are mine,” she told him, her voice a guttural growl that contrasted sharply with her pale, ghoulish appearance. “I will kill them both. No one else has that privilege. Is that understood?”
Melanc slowly turned to look at Sangue, his calculated disinterest the exact opposite of her own seething fury. “I hardly see that you’re in a situation to demand anything, Sangue Phlegm. After all, you failed to defeat the Tyrill twins and their companions, something which I am quite confident in my own ability to do. I am letting you go with your life, which is more than charitable on my part.”
“You would dare speak to me in such a tone?” Sangue snarled, practically frothing at the mouth, “I…I…,” Sangue was cut off before she could truly begin ranting by a loud and laborious bout of coughing, flecks of black, foul-smelling, oil-like matter coating her hands as she tried to cover her mouth. She wiped it away, but the stench remained on her.
“As I said, you are in no position to demand anything,” Melanc said, poking Sangue lightly in the chest as he did so. “Oh, you are certainly stronger than me, but I am a true hemomancer. It would be easy for me to break the last of your blood bindings, as weak as they already are.”
Sangue stared at Melanc with genuine terror. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“I admit, it would bring me genuine pleasure to watch you thrash about on the ground and scream as your internal organs failed, one by one,” Melanc said casually. “But it would also make quite a mess, and I just purchased this property. So, I am giving you the choice: either walk away right now, leaving Vyle and the twins and the rest behind and not looking back until you’re beyond Veb, or I can snap the last narrow thread holding you to the land of the living.”
Sangue wrestled with this, face twitching as she tried to resist her urge to grab Melanc and tear him apart right then and there. Instead, spluttering to herself, she turned around and stormed across the garden, walking towards the gate in the stone wall separating the compound from the rest of the city. She punched the door, hard enough to shatter it into two pieces which flew off their hinges. She stormed through where the door had been just a minute before, then turned and walked out of their sight.
“Well, it appears I will have to add getting that door replaced to the Master’s expenses,” Melanc said dryly. “But I’m glad she had enough sense to make the right call.”
“You just let a psychotic madwoman with the strength of a half dozen men and the knowledge that she will be dead in a handful of days loose into the city,” Henriks blurted, incredulous. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“I think you are examining the event in the wrong light,” Melanc said amicably. “I just removed a psychotic madwoman with the strength of a half dozen men and the knowledge that she will be dead in a handful of days from the potential equation of my assassination attempt. Life is all about control, Henriks; it’s about organizing, analyzing, and commanding the things around you. The easier it is to predict what any element in a situation will do, the easier it is to control it, and thus maintain your greater control of the environment. Sangue was both unpredictable and powerful, and so I did the most efficient thing I could: I made her leave.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“And what about the rest of us, more predictable individuals?” Henriks asked. “What do you intend to do with us?”
Melanc smiled and it seemed to Vyle a genuine expression of happiness. Which only made it more chilling. “I’m so glad you asked that.” He snapped his fingers, and another of his thrall thralls emerged from his house, carrying a metal tray on which sat four small chalices, each filled with a small amount of blood. “What I’m going to do is turn each of you into my thralls.”
Vyle recoiled as much as his bound position would let him, and both Henriks and Velen said, “No!” Sir Kyr, muzzled as he was, silently glared at Melanc, his eyes alight with a bitter inner fire.
“I hope you are all excited to see what I have prepared for Zaphyr and Zull,” Melanc said. “Because you each have a part to play in it.”
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Prince Grevel sighed melodramatically, rolling his eyes as he lounged back in his seat. “What is the point of this?” he whined, fidgeting nervously with the buttons on his uniform as he did so. Prince Grevel was in his private apartments, lounging on his couch, with his personal manservant Zilar waiting attentively behind him, in case he needed anything. When he had first heard that General Steroth would be instructing him in matters of state, he had been eager to learn everything he could. That enthusiasm had quickly waned once he realized exactly what General Steroth’s lessons entailed.
“Prince Grevel, please try to pay attention,” General Steroth said, standing before the prince, his back ramrod straight as he walked slowly back and forth across the chamber. The Prince’s personal quarters were dominated by two pieces of furniture: his enormous four post bed, and the emerald-green couch which he currently lounged on. Between those two items, a variety of carpets from across the empire of all colors and sizes were spread around the floor without any apparent pattern or theme. It was across this sea of carpets that General Steroth paced, as agitated as Prince Grevel was bored. “Now, as I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, the Duchy of Hyll, while ostensibly a part of the Kingdom of Lyth, effectively acted as a sovereign nation in its own right for centuries, profiting off its immense mineral wealth and strategic location in the center of our continent, just to the North of Waed itself, to make a fortune the envy of its larger neighbors. It kept these neighbors at bay through a combination of clever alliances and-”
Prince Grevel groaned loudly, cutting Steroth off mid-sentence once more. Steroth, clenching his hands tightly behind his back, said, “Prince Grevel, if you cannot pay attention to these lessons, then I will have to discuss your behavior with the Empress herself.”
“Why don’t you do just that, Steroth,” Prince Grevel said, smirking from where he lounged. He flicked his unkempt, blonde hair out of his face with a wave of hand, then added, “While you’re at it, why don’t you discuss with her how utterly worthless your lessons have been. I feel less prepared to rule now than I did a month ago.”
“What?” Steroth spluttered. “I have been doing my upmost to teach you everything I can!”
“No, you haven’t,” Grevel countered angrily. “I thought when the Empress commanded you to teach me rulership, that you would be doing just that: discussing politics, or how to govern provinces, something along those lines. Instead, all you’ve been doing is lecturing me on history, history, and yet more history.”
“If you are to rule well, you will need to be able to make well-informed decisions about your subjects,” Steroth said as calmly as he could manage. “In order to do that, you will need to be aware of the context surrounding each of the many lands that make up your realm. Thus, you need to know the realm’s history.”
“Ugh,” Grevel said, laying a hand over his eyes to shield himself from the afternoon light pouring through the window outside. “Couldn’t there be a quicker way to do this? Auntie isn’t going to be around forever, after all, and the more I know when she finally dies, the better off the empire will be, right?”
“In the future, you will refer to the Empress with more respect, Prince,” Steroth said, his face slowly turning red with suppressed fury. Zilar winced, gaze darting back and forth from Steroth to the Prince, oblivious to the general’s wrath. “And, regardless of how much we may want it, there is no shortcut for learning. You will have to study, just as every ruler before you has done, if you wish to rule well.”
“So very boring,” Grevel muttered, shifting on his couch as if preparing to fall into a deep sleep. “It makes one wonder, Zaril, if all this hassle of kingship is really worth it.”
“I wouldn’t know, Sir,” Zaril said, eying the increasingly irate Steroth nervously.
The general took a deep, calming breath then slowly walked over to Prince Grevel’s bed, besides which stood a small wooden table with a porcelain vase filled with roses atop it, along with Grevel’s personal journal, which every member of the royal family had their own version of. Calmly and deliberately, General Steroth picked up the vase, turned around, and hurled it at Prince Grevel. The vase struck the side of his couch, shattering into a thousand pieces, scattering flowers, shards of porcelain, and water across the carpets. The shock and noise of the impact so close to his head was enough to startle Prince Grevel, who sat upright, eyes wide and focused directly on General Steroth’s face.
“I want you to listen to me, and listen very closely,” General Steroth said. “Do you think you can do that?”
Prince Grevel nodded several times, trying to resist the urge to whimper childishly as he did so.
“You don’t deserve the throne, Grevel. You don’t deserve anything, as a matter of fact. You are a worthless excuse for a human being, and you have accomplished absolutely nothing of value with your life. You wallow in luxury every day, without contributing anything to the empire that your aunt helped to build when she turned Waed into the greatest force the world has ever seen.” He picked up the prince’s journal, a small, plain black volume. A momentary flash of panic crossed Prince Grevel’s face. “I doubt you have ever even written in this.”
“That’s not true,” Prince Grevel muttered, crossing his arms. “I write poetry in there, sometimes. Pretty good poetry.”
General Steroth set the volume back down. “Which only furthers my point. With all your talent, all your intelligence, you do absolutely nothing, and that makes it even more criminal. If I had my way, you would be stricken from the royal family and thrown out onto the streets, to beg for a living. Then, maybe, you might learn some worthwhile skills.” General Steroth paused, then coughed, hacking and wheezing as he clutched a hand over his mouth to cover the worst of it.
Once the coughing fit had passed, he continued, “Fortunately for you, however, I do not do as I think is best. I am loyal to the Empress, and the throne on which she sits. Now, someday, that throne will be yours, and if you choose to laze about all day, leaving the governance of your empire to curmudgeonly old busybodies like you think me to be, then I will follow those orders as dutifully as I have followed those of your aunt. But that day has not yet arrived. Until then, I follow her commands to the upmost of my ability, interpreted as best I can. Do you follow me?”
“I believe so,” Prince Grevel said, his expression unusually thoughtful as he watched General Steroth pace angrily before him.
“Good. Now, your aunt has commanded me to try and teach you everything you need to know to take the mantle of leadership. So far, I have tried to do so by being reasonable and polite, but no more: should you disrespect or disregard my lessons again, you will be living my barracks with my men, eating the standard rations of a solider in my army, until I feel that you have sufficiently learned your lesson. There will be no additional warnings. Is this understood?”
Grevel jumped to his feet, eyes wide. Bitterly, he said, “That’s hardly fair, General!”
For the first time that day, General Steroth grinned, seeming to relish his position of authority. “Whoever told you that life was fair, Prince Grevel? The Empress did not, and none of your tutors have. Certainly, I have not.”
Prince Grevel tried to think of something else, something biting and witty he could say in response, but could think of nothing. At last, he meekly sat back down on the couch and said, “Please, continue the lesson, General Steroth.”
“Of course,” Steroth replied amicably. “Where was I? Oh. Yes. Hyll, a semi-independent duchy in the North, was protected by its mercenary army, fueled by its great mineral wealth. For centuries the dukes expertly wielded these advantages to defend their unique position…”
The lesson went on, Prince Grevel paying rapt attention to everything that General Steroth said, evening interrupting occasionally to request clarifications or ask questions, some of which were insightful enough to surprise General Steroth. Once the lesson concluded several hours later, General Steroth walked over to Prince Grevel’s couch and reached out his hand. At first Prince Grevel flinched away, but he reconsidered, took the General’s hand, and shook it reluctantly. General Steroth smiled broadly, and said, “I am very pleased with your progress today, Prince Grevel. You showed a level of wisdom, attention, and insight that I hope to see in all our future lessons. Should you persevere and try your hardest, I do believe that we will make an excellent ruler out of you yet.”
“Thank you,” Prince Grevel said hollowly.
“The future of our kingdom is in your hands, Prince,” General Steroth said seriously. “Don’t forget that.”
“I promise you, after today, I won’t,” Prince Grevel assured him.
The General studied the prince’s expression for a moment, then, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, gave Prince Grevel one short bow before turning and marching out of Grevel’s chambers, leaving him alone save for his manservant. Grevel returned to his former position, sprawled on his couch, letting out a self-pitying sigh as he did so.
“Zaril?” Prince Grevel said, staring up at the ceiling, which was painted to show a battle scene from Waed’s ancient history. The scene depicted a king, one of Grevel’s ancestors and a hemomancer in his own right, using his skills to heal one of his wounded general as his elite guard held the enemy forces at bay. The scene’s symbolism struck Prince Grevel as ironic, and he couldn’t help but smile as he waited for his manservant’s response to his inquiry.
“Yes, Sir?” Zaril said dutifully.
“If you could be so kind, please take a note for me,” Prince Grevel instructed. He waited until Zilar had paper and a quill ready, then said, “Remind me that, in the future, something will have to be done about General Steroth.”