George Tiberius Bellatrix, the brief, and uncrowded, King of Carrow, scowled with barely suppressed fury as he signed the abdication documents, sitting at the head of the gaudily carved oaken table on which treaties and proclamations had been signed in years past. High ranking Carrow priests and nobleman stood around him in the audience chamber of Greyspire Palace, the chamber which the King had once ‘owned’ by his very presence, his authority absolute and unchallenged. Princess Ardria, also sitting at the table with the Brigadier, Chancellor Den Wilks and General Adam Briggs, all dressed in fine ceremonial clothes that made been made for them since the surrender had been agreed, thought that forcing George to abdicate his crown here was an unnecessary act of humiliation that would leave him feeling aggrieved and resentful, possibly storing up trouble for the future, but apparently there were procedures that had to be followed for this sort of thing. A couple of centuries back, Prince Benwell, following the death of his uncle, King Wenford, had forced his cousin, Prince Horramell, the rightful heir, to abdicate in this room, in this manner, thereby forming a precedent that had to be followed. She could probably have insisted that they do things in a slightly less public way, but she still, wasn't secure enough in her authority here to make waves in that way.
She had thought for a while that the country's nobility might want to keep George as their King, which would probably have meant more problems for Helberion in the future once he'd recruited another army. The country still had plenty of spare manpower, due to the perilous state in which the drought had left the agricultural industry, and if George could have recruited enough farmers before they fled across the border it wouldn’t have taken long for him to bring the military back to its pre war strength. King Nilon's betrayal, on top of the reputation that he’d already had, had soured the common people towards the entire royal family, though. They wouldn’t stand for another Bellatrix ruling over them, and the nobility had had enough sense to recognise that anyone who tried to stand with the Bellatrixes would probably have ended up hanging from the same scaffold as them. It had been they who'd ‘encouraged’ George to step down, therefore, and after a few days of ranting and raving he'd eventually come to see that he'd had no choice.
He had to sign twelve copies of the document, each of which would be kept by a different dignitary as proof that the abdication had taken place, and then each of the twelve copies had to be signed by the same dignitaries, to testify that they had witnessed the ceremony. Finally, George had to stand and say out loud to the whole room that was abdicating the crown of his own free will. The whole procedure took nearly three hours, but such a monumental event could not be rushed and it made sure that everyone present understood the magnitude of what was taking place.
When it was finally over, everyone stood and footmen entered to carry the heavy table and chairs out of the room until only the throne itself was left, the large, golden chair that the monarch occupied on state occasions. The chair that George had never sat in and now never would. Guardsmen then entered to escort George and his retinue out of the chamber. They had been promised comfortable, secure lives in estates in the north of the Kingdom. They would want for nothing, but they would be watched to make sure they didn’t try to gain a following among the nation's nobility in an attempt to regain the throne. If they did, Ardria would have no choice but to order their execution.
All that was left now was to decide who the next ruler of the country would be. There were several noble families who claimed a historical right to the throne, usually citing brothers and cousins to a king who'd ruled several centuries before, but none of them had a strong enough case to banish all doubt and make all the other contenders back down. The prospect of civil war had loomed over the conference table around which the dignitaries sat, and it had eventually become clear that the only way to ensure a peaceful future was to choose someone that the common people could rally around, an outsider whom everyone could accept. It had been decided, therefore, that the country would merge with Helberion to become one country, ruled over by King Leothan and, one day, by his daughter Ardria, beloved of the people of Carrow.
There were still many details to be worked out, of course. Leothan wouldn’t be able to rule the new country from Marboll, because that would look too much like a takeover, a conquest, and not even the Princess’ most ardent supporters in Carrow would stand for that. Neither would he want to rule from Charnox because it was a hideously ugly city. The palace itself was all very fine, but the city that surrounded it was a nightmare of narrow, claustrophobic streets and huge blocky buildings. Leothan would rather have ruled from a cow shed. A new capital would have to be found, therefore. Somewhere near the geographical centre of the new country, which would put it within the current borders of Carrow, but Leothan didn’t mind that. There were plenty of small, pretty towns with nearby mansions that could easily be upgraded to become the seat of a head of state and whose current occupants could be persuaded to move out with promises of new lands and titles.
Then there was the problem of what currency the new country would use. Banks were still a fairly new innovation, but representational wealth was well established and coins had not been made out of precious metal for several decades. People on both sides of the border were nevertheless in the habit of keeping large stores of currency hidden on their property, often buried in clay pots in their gardens as a precaution against burglars. The abolition of either currency any time in the next fifty years or so would therefore wipe out the life savings of a great many people. The only solution, it seemed, was to accept both currencies as legal tender for the foreseeable future, with a fixed exchange rate between the two. Then there were the guilds, often duplicated in the two countries and both claiming to be the sole authority in charge of their particular trades or services, and in Carrow the Kings had made money by selling monopolies in the supply of particular goods and materials for over a hundred years. Abolishing those monopolies, as had been done in Helberion almost as soon as they'd broken away from Carrow rule, would create an economic crisis, but allowing them to continue would drive several Helberian companies out of business. And then there was the army. Merging the two armies would mean expecting soldiers to serve shoulder to shoulder with men who had been trying to kill them just a few months earlier...
Leothan and his advisors had their work cut out for them, therefore, but nothing could dampen the King's joy at learning that his daughter was alive and well. He was still in Marboll, overseeing the rebuilding of a city that would soon cease to be the capital of a country. If there had been any way he could have been in Charnox, to be with Ardria during the abdication ceremony, he would have been there, but the distance between the two cities was just too great and the volatility of the political situation meant that the abdication could not be delayed. Just knowing that he would see her again, one day, put a new spring in his step and a smile on his face, though, a joy and delight that transmitted itself to the whole city. The whole kingdom!
The King was humming to himself as he set out the pieces on the Glory board, therefore. “Do you know, I haven't played Glory once since the war started,” he said to his guest, sitting across the table from him. “That was with your predecessor, Arwin Tsocco.”
“Yes, he told me,” replied Olwen Thorpe, the new Kelvon ambassador. “He said he used to enjoy playing against you a great deal.”
Leothan looked up at him, a smile on his face. “You know him then?”
“He paid me a visit when he learned that I was to be his replacement. Wanted to give me a few words of advice, tell me about some of your little eccentricities.”
“Tell you how to handle me, you mean.”
“Well, yes.”
“So, how did he tell you to handle me?”
“He said it was important to let you win at Glory now and then, to keep you in a tractable frame of mind.”
Leothan stared at him, then burst out laughing. “Yes, that sounds like him! So, how's he doing these days? How's he getting on with his redfruit plantation?”
“Very well, he says. He’s loving it! A much slower pace of life, with the staff doing most of the actual work. All he has to do is go see what they're up to now and then and figure out what he's going to do with all the profits. He says he's hoping to sell his first harvest next autumn and finally get back some of the money he's sunk into the place. Redfruit is expensive at the moment. The way the Radiants screwed up the weather to give Carrow that drought caused crops to fail all across the continent. Arwin looks set to make a killing!”
“Maybe, but as weather patterns return to normal all the other plantations will be harvesting crops as well. They say the rains are returning to Carrow. All the farmers who fled the country are returning to their land, ploughing, planting crops. Before long, they might be the breadbasket of Greater Helberion!”
“Is that what you're going to call your new country? Greater Helberion?”
“Well, no. Far too inflammatory. We'll probably call it Carberion or something horrible like that. The diplomats are still thinking it over. I'll probably go with what they say will cause the lease disaffection across the whole of the new country.”
“That would probably be best. You know, this new country of yours will be the second largest, most powerful human nation in the world, second only to the Empire itself! You've got people all over the world sitting up, taking notice. Wondering what this whole thing means for them.”
“The Empire has no need for concern, we have no great imperial ambitions. Even if we did, it’ll take us a generation at least to sort things out here, get the new country running smoothly, and even then, the Empire is still three times our size. Tyron can't possibly think we're a threat to him.”
“Empires survive by thinking generations into the future. All that paranoia about Helberion stealing our export markets, not all of that was the result of Radiant agents trying to stir things up. There are people back home who genuinely worry about who will be carrying the biggest stick a century from now.”
“Well, that’s not something I'm going to worry about. I'll be happy if we get enough crops harvested this year to feed everyone in Carrow and Helberion. It'll be a long time before I allow myself the luxury of thinking more long term than that.” He looked up and, just for a moment, saw the doubtful look on the other man’s face. Then Olwen Thorpe smiled, appearing to accept the statement. He raised the glass of kelnish wine the King had previously poured for him and took a sip from it.
“So,” said the King, thinking it time to change the subject. “How are things in the Empire? I hear the negotiations are going well.”
The Ambassador scowled. “The leaders of the People’s Movement are making outrageous demands! More power for local authorities, seats on the Constituent Assembly, prosecutions for abuses of authority. They want a whole new branch of government to whom even the Emperor himself would be answerable! Well, they won't get that, but Tyron might end up having his powers curbed to a considerable extent. He's not happy right now, I can tell you.”
“At least you're talking,” said Leothan. “That's the important thing. Talking is better than fighting. I haven't heard about any more acts of sabotage, any more riots. Is that because there haven't been any, or...”
“There haven’t been any,” replied the Ambassador. “The whole movement seems to have settled down since the Emperor agreed to meet with them for talks.”
“Since Lord Benjamin Hedley died,” added Leothan, giving the other man a sharp look.
“Well, there's still no proof that he was involved, but privately, yes. Witnesses have come forward, saying there was almost always at least one Radiant floating above his house. There are, apparently, some irregularities with his finances. One of the missing imperial agents suggested a possible connection with Lord Hedley in his last report before he vanished. Privately, yes, I think it’s likely he was connected with the affair, but there's nothing concrete we can bring before a court of enquiry, and since the man's now dead, the prevailing mood seems to be to let the whole thing just slip away and be forgotten.”
“You might not want to say that to the Brigadier, if you ever meet him. He's absolutely convinced that his former batman saved the Empire.”
“The mere suggestion that the Empire is that fragile would be damaging. The official party line is that the Empire is as solid as a rock and that it would take more than one traitorous nobleman to bring it down. The most important part of stability is the appearance of stability, as you know very well, of course.” Leothan nodded his agreement.
“Speaking of the Radiants, what are we going to do about them?” asked the Ambassador. “We have these Electric Messiah machines in every large city now across the entire human world, and the creatures seem to have retreated to their own territories for the time being, but it won't stay that way. They need humans to adopt, to make new Radiants. They're going to have to come back, they have no choice, and there are still humans who want to be adopted! There needs to be some kind of official arrangement worked out with them. Between them and someone who can represent the entire human world, someone whose judgement every human nation would trust.”
“I was thinking the Brigadier might be a good choice. If he went to a Radiant territory with representatives from every human nation...”
Olwen Thorpe smiled. “I was hoping you would say that. Emperor Tyron would certainly be happy with the Brigadier taking charge of the negotiations.”
“Then it’s agreed. As soon as the situation in Carrow is stable enough. Ardria has her own bodyguard of Helberion troopers now, she's in no physical danger any more, or at least no more than she would be if she were back here, but the Brigadier himself is a stabilising influence. Just having him there during these transitional times... Still, I think we’ll be able to spare him before long. There’s literally nothing in the world more important than our relationship with the Radiants.”
☆☆☆
Soonia Darniss stared at the small cottage doubtfully. It stood all alone in the middle of flat, empty moorland, land so poor that not even grass would grow on it. Bare rock poked through in places, and everywhere else the soil was so thin that it could only support a few scrubby, stunted patches of Heather. On her journey here, she had been reliably informed that the nearest other habitation was twenty miles away. The only sound was the wind whispering across the low, rounded hills and the distant cawing of a crow.
This was where she was supposed to spend the rest of her life? She was a Duchess! She deserved a palace! And she deserved staff who would obey her, not prison guards. They weren't called guards, of course. There was a cook, a gardener, a handyman and a stable man, but they were all retired army men and any one of them was strong and fit enough to physically overpower her any time he wanted. It was a prison in all but name, but it would be a comfortable one, a mark of King Leothan's gratitude for what she'd done for Ardria in Carrow. She smiled to herself as she remembered the sour look on his face as he'd pronounced her sentence. He would much rather have thrown her back into the dungeons, but Ardria had made her a promise and the keeping of promises was something that the Regis family took seriously.
“Do you wish to enter?” asked the stable man from his seat at the front of the carriage. Darniss had already forgotten his name. Fram something, she thought. She sighed and opened the door. At least she'd be able to see her daughter, Louisa, and her family, including the two grandchildren she’d never seen. Every conversation she had with them would be carefully monitored, of course, to make sure they weren't plotting something. That infuriated her, but perhaps there would be something she could do about it, given time. She was still Soonia Darniss Pardew, born to rule, and they wouldn't be able to keep her living the life of a dotty recluse for ever. This was just temporary, and far preferable to the hangman’s noose. She would rise again! The Pardews would rise again! She knew she was getting on in years. It was unlikely that power would return in her lifetime, but her daughter, or one of her children, would see the return of the Pardews to glory, and they would remember her as the one who had made it possible.
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As she and the stable man walked to the small cottage, she turned her head to look at him. There was something familiar to him. She'd seen him, or a close relative of his, during her time as a Matron in the King’s service. She'd discovered something juicy about him and made a note of it as something Carrow could use. What had it been?
“Excuse me,” she said, “but did you ever have occasion to visit Paisley Palace?”
The stable man hesitated before answering. They were supposed to limit their conversations with her as much as possible, but remaining silent would have been impolite. “Not me,” he said. “My brother, Colm, was a member of the palace guard, though.”
Memory returned with a snap and she smiled to herself. “Ah yes,” she said. “Colm Dennor. I remember I had a file on him. He had that nasty gambling problem, didn't he?”
The stable man immediately tensed up with hostility. “He did nothing wrong!” he said angrily, and your stay here is now going to be rather less pleasant than it would have been, he promised himself. You've just made an enemy.
“He stole from the palace to pay off his gambling debts,” added Darniss. “I became aware of it rather quickly. I took notes and I had him followed. I know what went missing and where it ended up. I gathered enough proof to have him thrown in prison for many, many years.”
The man glared at her. “Ah, you’ve decided to kill me,” said Darniss with a smile. “I'm going to have an accident. Choke on a rabbit bone, perhaps, to keep me from talking. Unfortunately, Lord Krell kept scrupulous records, and every report I ever sent back to Carrow is stored somewhere in his data archives, gathering dust until Helberion agents stumble across it during the course of their investigations. They're going through them with a fine tooth comb, you know, and it’s only a matter of time before they find mention of your brother. Killing me won't save him.”
“Then why are you telling me?” asked the stable man. “Is it just to torment me? Maybe I'll kill you anyway, just for my own personal satisfaction.”
“Not at all. I want to help you. I know exactly where Lord Krell stored my dispatches. I can tell you where. You can go there and set fire to the place. Your brother will be safe, and so will every other Helberian I gathered dirt on over the course of my illustrious career. I want so little in return.”
The man glared furiously at her, but there was fear as well. She was trying to manoeuvre him into a trap. Could he find a way to wriggle free and still save his brother? “What would you want?” he asked. “Hypothetically.”
“So little!” said Darniss, her voice soft and reasonable. “Just the chance to meet with my daughter, in private. Without anyone listening.”
“The King has expressly forbidden that.”
“He doesn’t have to know. Please, it’s such a small thing I ask for. What would be the harm?”
“And in return you'll tell me where Lord Krell keeps his records?”
“Later. In plenty of time before the King’s agents find them. It'll probably take them months to sort through everything. I want to meet with my daughter first, explain to her who she is and the glorious history of her family.” And the glorious future that lies ahead if she does what I say. “I'll be expecting to receive a message from her two or three days later. A message containing code words telling me that she's followed my instructions.
“What instructions?”
“Nothing you need worry about. No need to give me your answer now. Take your time, think about it. Just remember that the King’s agents are moving closer to Lord Krell's records every day. You may not have as much time as you think.”
“You bitch! The King should have executed you! I should kill you now!”
Darniss stopped and turned to look him straight in the eye. “Then do it. Put your hands around my throat and kill me now. I'm just a frail old woman. How can I possibly defend myself?”
For a moment the stable man looked as thought he might. Darniss made herself stand straight and lifted her chin, as if offering her throat to him. The stable man actually lifted his hands, but then he turned and stalked off towards the house, his whole body radiating desperation and fear. Darniss smiled to herself and followed him.
☆☆☆
Three weeks later, the Brigadier was riding at the head of a column of soldiers and dignitaries from a dozen countries making their way towards the nearest area of Radiant territory. On one side of him was Thomas Shanks, the scientist, who looked as though he was still not quite comfortable in outdoor travelling clothes or, for that matter, with being outdoors at all. The Brigadier thought that he had the look of an indoor man, a man used to the warmth and comfort of a controlled environment and for whom a cold breeze or a light shower would be discomforting enough to ruin his whole day. Even now, in what the Brigadier thought was a warm, sunny day, he had his collar turned up and the top button of his thick, heavy coat fastened, and the Brigadier had to control his face to keep a smile of amusement from appearing there. He had insisted on coming, though. If mankind was finally about to confront the Radiants and hold them to account for their crimes, then the Hetin folk absolutely had to be represented as well.
In contrast, Mason Pettiwell, the Kelvon diplomat riding on his other side, was having a much happier time of it. He was a large man with a ferocious shock of red hair and a wide handlebar moustache, and he was one of those people who would happily chat to anyone nearby about anything that crossed his mind. The Brigadier had taken an instant dislike to him, but was diplomatic enough to try to hide his feelings. He wished he would ride further back, with the other dignitaries, where be wouldn't have to suffer his grating personality, but as the representative of the Empire Pettiwell seemed to think that he was, in fact, the leader of the mission and that his place was at its head. He seemed to think that he was being gracious in allowing the other two men to ride alongside him.
The other dignitaries from smaller countries were behind them, each one accompanied by an assistant and a servant, and behind them was a wagon, drawn by four horses, containing a functioning arc oscillator. The hissing and bubbling of its water cooling system was clearly audible above the creaking of wood, the tramping of nearly two hundred iron shod hooves and a couple of low voiced conversations between the men of his military escort. Two other wagons further back carried enough spare parts to build two complete new machines and enough chemicals and acids to keep the batteries supplying electricity for several days, and even if the batteries ran out, the machine could be powered, if necessary, by a hand crank operated by two men.
They were travelling through Wilterland, on almost the same route the Brigadier had followed while on their way to find a cure for the Princess, and as they went the Brigadier kept noticing landmarks he recognised from the first time. That was the river where they'd stopped to fill their water bottles and into which Spencer had ‘accidentally’ knocked Harper, to the great amusement of everyone except the Brigadier himself. There was the spot where they'd made camp for the night the day after a snake had panicked Cowley’s horse and made it throw him off. As they rode past, he saw a circle of stones where someone had made a camp fire and was almost certain that it had been them. Yes, there was the tree he'd slept under, the one that had dropped a dead branch on his legs in the small hours of the morning. The mood had been so different back then. Then, they had been angry at what had been done to their beloved Princess and full of anxiety as to whether their one desperate hope of saving her would succeed. Every word they spoke, every smallest action or gesture, had revealed the powerful emotions seething just beneath. Even he, the Brigadier, had been fearful and anxious, even though he'd taken great care not to let the men know. Malone had guessed, perhaps, but he'd said nothing to anyone. He had always been good at keeping the Brigadier's secrets, and the Brigadier missed him terribly. He’d been offered another batman to replace him, but he had turned the offer down. It would have been unfair on the young man to make him try to fill shoes that nobody else could fill.
Now, though, the mood was one of grim determination, a determination to punish the creatures they now knew had ultimately been behind the attack on the Princess. To make the Radiants aware of how serious a mistake they had made. The banter among the men would have sounded light hearted to the casual listener, but underneath it was a cold fury as every man among them remembered the lives that had been lost because of the Raidants’ actions. Friends and brothers blown up by artillery fire, or torn apart by the tentacles of a Radiant or, worse, thrown back to their animal forms, everything that had made them who they were ripped from them and cast away with casual, contemptuous indifference. The Radiants had treated humans like animals, and now a reckoning would be made.
“Are you sure that machine of yours is working?” asked Pettiwell, looking past the Brigadier to see the man riding on his other side. “How do we know it’s still producing these emanations that you claim are so unbearable to the Radiants?”
“If it’s not, I suspect we’ll soon know about it,” replied the scientist, trying to pull the collar tighter around his throat. “We must be well inside their territory by now. How much further is it to their city, Brigadier?”
“We should get there some time today, tomorrow morning at the latest, if we keep up our present pace,” replied the Brigadier. “If they’re going to try something, it'll be soon.”
“An earthquake, you mean,” said Pettiwell, stroking his moustache thoughtfully. “Or a hurricane, to throw the wagon containing your wonderful machine far over the horizon, leaving us all helpless and defenceless...”
“The soldiers are all armed with incendiary ammunition now,” pointed out the scientist. “Even without the arc oscillator, we're well able to defend ourselves.”
“Against a tornado? Or a stampeding herd of wild oxen? The old stories say they can control animals too, and we've passed several sizeable herds on our way here.”
“I'm hoping that they want to talk as much as we do,” said Shanks. “Yes, they could kill us if they really wanted to, but stampeding herds of animals can't get through our city walls, and the arc oscillators are hidden in basements, well shielded from the fury of even the fiercest tornado. They can't visit our cities any more unless they come to some sort of agreement with us.”
Pettiwell grunted. “How do these things work anyway? What are these strange emanations that the Radiants cannot stand?”
The scientist could only shrug his shoulders in bafflement. “We're calling it radio, after the devices the Hetin folk used to deter the creatures, but we have no idea whether the two are, in fact, the same thing. The apparatus definitely radiates something, though. We’ve seen it in our laboratories. When I was building the second device, just after the Radiant attack on Marboll, I noticed that there was a spark appearing between the graphite contacts of the second machine before I connected it to a battery. A small spark, much smaller than the one in the first machine, but there nonetheless. I think that it’s the spark, the current creating it alternating in direction a hundred times a second, that produces the radio effect, and that it somehow induces a spark in the second machine. I suspect that it does something similar in the brains of Radiants and adopted humans, and that that's what they find so painful. Imagine if someone jabbed a pair of electrodes into your head and ran a current across your skull.”
“So why doesn't it have the same effect on us?”
“I suspect that it’s because they communicate by telepathy. Maybe their telepathy works by radio. The arc oscillator, then, would be like a bright light that dazzles a sighted man but has no effect on a blind man.”
The Brigadier said nothing during this conversation, but something the scientist said had him thinking. If one arc oscillator could detect the emanations of another, then perhaps they could be used to send messages, wirelessly, across great distances. A wireless telegraph! Communication between a commander and distant units of his armies that couldn't be severed by cutting a wire! What was more, the commander could sent messages simultaneously to many different lieutenants, co-ordinating their actions, and any of them could send messages to all the others at the same time appraising them of a change of circumstances! Of course, the enemy could also intercept these messages if they also built a radio machine, but a series of code words could ensure that they wouldn’t understand the meaning of what was being said. He would have to talk to the scientist, when he could get him alone sometime, and see if such a thing was possible, and if it was, over what kind of range messages could be sent.
The scientist was clearly in a good mood, despite being outdoors, as anyone listening to his conversation would have been able to tell. Not only was he about to strike back against the creatures that had destroyed the civilisation of his ancestors, but King Leothan had promised the Hetin folk a secret homeland within the borders of Helberion, in gratitude for the man's help in saving the Kingdom. The Brigadier remembered the man's look of astonished disbelief as Leothan had pointed to a spot on a map spread out on a table in the briefing room. “That, there, is the village of Sutton's Field,” he'd said. “It’s one of the towns hit by the Radiants on their way to Marboll. Everyone in it was cursed back to their animal forms. The place is now completely empty, but everything is right there, waiting for people to move in. There are crops in the fields waiting to be harvested, herds of cattle and sheep, schools and hospitals waiting to be used. So long as you can find a couple of hundred of your people willing to go there, you can have a village occupied only by your own kind, where you can live openly, without fear of non-Hetins discovering you.”
“That would be wonderful,” Shanks had said doubtfully. “But people would still visit the town occasionally. We’d still have to keep our children out of sight at all times in case some casual visitor saw them.”
“Would that matter?” The Brigadier had asked. “You could have a radio machine of your own, a supply of incendiary ammunition. You wouldn’t have to fear the Radiants any more.”
”It's not just the Radiants we're afraid of,” the scientist had replied. “How would normal humans react when they found out about us? People tend to hate and fear anything that's different. I know that the people of this kingdom are better than most, they follow the splendid example you and your ancestors have set, Your Majesty, but in the end they’re still people and there are so terribly few of us. We have to remain hidden! Your offer is kind and generous, your Majesty, but I don't see how it could work!”
“Look at the map,” the King had replied, tapping it with his finger. “Sutton’s field is located in a closed valley, surrounded by hills through which no road passes. It is a dead end, no-one goes there who doesn’t live there, or who has contacts with someone living there. No merchants would need to go there, you could travel to other towns to buy and sell. You could be trained to do your own building and repairs, at cetera, so that no tradesmen would ever need to go there. I can make sure that those people who do occasionally have to go there, doctors, detectives at cetera, already know about you and are sworn to secrecy. I can find trustworthy people, people I know won't betray you. There is room in the valley for the town to grow as your population grows. A quite sizeable city might stand there one day, occupied entirely by Hetin folk. By the time the world at large finds out about you, there will, hopefully, be enough of you that you can stand up to the occasional bigot.”
“There's the occasional bigot, and then there's official discrimination. You are a just and fair King, Majesty, and Princess Ardria will be a great Queen, but we must give thought to who will be ruling the Kingdom a hundred years from now, two hundred years from now. Once the general public knows about us, there will be no way to hide. They only have to make us remove our clothes and our anatomical differences will be there for all to see. They could hunt us to extinction!”
“I suspect you are heading for extinction already,” the King had replied softly. “Am I right?”
“Even we don't know what our numbers are, but I suspect you are right. We may only have another few generations.”
“So you have nothing to lose, right?” The King had smiled at him, and Shanks hadn't been able to keep from smiling back. “I'll pass on your offer to my contacts,” the scientist had said. “They'll pass it onto their contacts and so on until most of the Hetin folk know. Then it’s just a matter of seeing how many of them like the offer. I can tell you that nobody will be going to Sutton’s Field unless they know that a great many others are going as well. It may be a year before we know for sure.”
“Then I'll make sure you get that year. I'll have the whole valley placed off limits. Some cover story about the place being contaminated by a chemical leak. There's a chemical plant a few miles away that was hit by the Carrowmen during the war, isn't that right, Brigadier?”
“I believe so, Majesty. The Applefrost plant. It uses some quite nasty chemicals, I believe. The story should hold up.”
“Excellent! We'll keep the place empty for you, Mister Shanks, until your people decide whether they want to move there. If they don't, I quite understand. Centuries of hiding isn't a habit that can be shrugged off overnight. You people can go on living the way they have been, and we’ll all hope for the best for them.”
The scientist had looked for a moment as though he might be overcome with emotion. “Your Majesty, I can't tell you how grateful I am for this extraordinary offer! If my people don't accept it, then I believe they will have shown themselves to be unfit to survive. Unworthy to share this world with you and your people. I refuse to believe that all our spirit and courage has been drained from us by the Radiants, that he have become a species of rabbits, only capable of hiding. I'll make them take up your offer if I have to drag them there by the ears!”
A rare smile touched the corners of the Brigadier’s mouth as he remembered the King's expression of amusement at the mental image thus formed. He realised that Pettiwell and the scientist were still talking to each other, but that he'd lost track of the conversation as he'd indulged in the reverie. “It's only a matter of time before they come crawling back,” the diplomat was saying. “If they think they can survive as independent countries, they’re out of their minds!”
“I imagine you're hoping that they come crawling back,” Shanks replied, with some amusement, the Brigadier thought. “After all, if two provinces can break away from the Empire and flourish as independent countries, other provinces might get the same idea! Before long, there might be a cluster of small, new countries where the Empire used to be!”
“Leaving Greater Helberion as the largest, most powerful human nation in the world! I imagine that would be very much to your liking, but I’m afraid I must disabuse you of the notion, Mister Shanks. The benefits of being part of the Empire are far too great to be lightly thrown away. Listania and Ukrann broke away because of the machinations of Radiant agents, stirring up discontent. Now that those agents have been discovered and removed, the west will soon see the error of their ways and sue for membership once more...”
“Quiet!” the Brigadier suddenly said, staring ahead. “Someone in our path.” The others looked, shading their eyes with their hands, and saw a tiny dark speck on the horizon, almost lost in the shimmering heat haze. “Those Above, Brigadier!” said Pettiwell in surprise. “You must have the eyes if a hawk!”
“Not at all. I was just paying attention.” Pettiwell and Shanks shared an amused glance at the mild rebuke, then returned their gaze to the man standing there, clearly waiting for them, while the Brigadier rode back to alert their escort.