He was born soft, but war hardened him into a man. He was changed. When he had no wars left to fight, when there was no one left who would come for his life, he was lost. His body began to forget its strength. “What can I do now that my battles are won?” he wondered. And the Everswamp answered him, “Now you see what lies in your heart of hearts. Now you know why there will never be peace so long as you live.” And where there were no enemies, he came to see many.
-The Legend of the Bogman
Holcort, Grackenwell
Holcort was awash in golden sun on the day Kimbel made his triumphant return. The sky was blameless blue and a brisk wind whipped through the capital, churning up the hibiscus petals that common folk tossed on the road ahead of the royal convoy. “Good to be home, Your Majesty?” Ulther asked. He sat opposite the king in a covered carriage, something of a ceremonial necessity for the occasion, though Kimbel much preferred to travel by open horseback.
“Very,” Kimbel replied. He breathed in the windswept scents of the Grackenwelsh capital, the sunbaked bricks, the ever-present moss, the iron in its many flavors. “The desert savages have their caretakers now. I’ve established a provisional government and a portion of our military will remain in the region to keep them in line.” He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his cushioned seat. “I’ll never have to set foot in that dull sand pit ever again.”
“I hear the Archipelago has been quiet ever since their conquest. Hopefully Zan Vayonado doesn’t give you any trouble, either.” Ulther slid open the shutters to look out the carriage’s window. “Such a lovely day.”
Kimbel grinned to himself. “Shame Terry won’t get to see it.” The ex-prison guard, ex-tormenter-turned-prisoner was in the carriage’s rear cargo compartment, bound and gagged in a wooden box beneath a crate of cranberries. Kimbel was merciful enough to carve air holes in the box with his dagger.
“I’m quite surprised that you’ve kept him alive this long, Your Majesty,” said Ulther, neglecting to pry his eyes from the sights outside the carriage. His lack of attention when speaking to his superior was a minor disrespect. “How much longer until you rid yourself of that dead weight?”
Kimbel waited for his right-hand man to meet his gaze. In an instant, it was apparent Ulther knew his transgression—he bowed his head to await his king’s answer.
“He’ll die when I’m good and ready,” the young Garrotin answered. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Ulther nodded with the proper respect. “Of course.”
The convoy clopped and rolled to the entrance of the castle and the king disembarked. A team of four guards unloaded Teralt’s box and followed behind, not unlike the four pallbearers who toted the dead body of the Qardish king in a coffin of gold and diamonds. Fitting, Kimbel thought, that he gets nothing but a box of wood. He’ll be just as dead soon, but he won’t get a burial. It’s the pyre for him.
The throne room was crackling with a cozy fire and looked spotless as ever thanks to the slaves’ daily rigorous cleaning regimen. Kimbel dropped into the luxurious throne and motioned for the guards to unbox and string up Teralt by chains like a prized fish. They raised him up just enough that he was unable to kneel or sit on the stone floor—he could only stand or bend his frail legs awkwardly.
The man was a dried husk of what once was Teralt. Muscles and fat had melted away and skin now hugged bone, except where it sagged loose like that of a much older man. His hair was unkempt, greasy, stricken through with gray. He shot no challenging looks at the men who roughhoused him. He walked where he was led without protest, and he said nothing anymore. His mouth had fewer teeth than it once had, but he didn’t smile anymore, either. Bruises of red, purple, and green bloomed all over his body like the spots of some exotic animal. His eyes were dim and dimming every day.
“I bore of you,” Kimbel sighed. He settled into the throne that was his father’s for only the second time ever, feeling thoroughly at home in its velvet. “I was afraid this might happen. Perhaps some men don’t break as clean as others. Perhaps I’ve simply bent you so far you’re coming apart slowly like green kindling, and just as useless. This is no fun at all.” Teralt stared at the wall and said nothing. “Perhaps I’ll kill you soon.”
The throne room was quiet for a while, save for the comings and goings of guards and noblemen making preparations for King Kimbel to hold court. Teralt’s dry tongue poked out of his mouth, lively as an old tortoise emerging from its shell, and licked the broken skin of his lips.
“All right,” Teralt said finally.
His submission brought the king no joy. It unmanned him. Kimbel let it stew and fester for the remainder of the morning, what motive Teralt could possibly have for acting the way he did. Far worse had been done, in the storied history of Grackenwell, to other prisoners, endlessly defiant ones who died struggling against their captors, spitting in the faces of their executioners with their final breaths.
Maybe Teralt was trying to trick him. Maybe he envisioned some life-or-death struggle against Kimbel when the time came, when the boy drew within striking distance. What would the man have to lose? Or maybe Teralt was not the ox of a man that Kimbel thought. It stood to reason that all his cruel showmanship served as an armor of sorts, encasing the cowardly man he truly was inside—the man Kimbel had revealed to the world.
Before the young king had a chance to ruminate further, and before court had even formally begun, the front doors of the castle burst open. The doormen accepted a frantic slave—threw him to the floor. He wore a gray cowl tattered at the edges, along with a black eye, and Kimbel recognized him as one of the ambassadors sent to Dridon.
“It’s about damned time!” Kimbel whooped with laughter. “I thought you two had defected to the south! There was no way that little mouse would have ordered your executions. Now, where’s the other one?” He twirled his knife delicately against the tip of his left forefinger.
“Your Majesty,” said the slave, “Cral has been killed. Raiders in Zan Vayonado, in the wilderness.”
Kimbel nodded once. “A known risk when you embarked on your mission, to be sure, but an unfortunate one. He died in service to the great nation of Grackenwell. Now, what did Rhoda have to say about my offer?”
The slave bowed his head. “She did not accept your immediate offer. She requested more time to think.”
“That’s a no, then.” He scoffed and spat on the floor. A few moments later, another slave moved in with a mop to clean it up. “If she thinks she can make me wait on her approval, then she believes she has some sort of power or equal footing.” He pressed the point of the knife into the meat of his forefinger, indenting it repeatedly, just shy of breaking skin. “I’ll have to make Dridon aware that they will not challenge my absolute power. Nor will they take my fleeting leniency for granted.”
Then, in the midst of the assembling noblemen and military officials, a silky-haired man dressed in exquisite red robes snorted to his friends, a haughty little grin playing at the corners of his thin lips. “Power?” he snickered quietly.
But not quietly enough.
“You, the lady in red!” Kimbel barked. And that red colored his whole world. “What did you just say? I can’t quite hear you from my throne!”
The rich man backtracked as best he could, every trace of joy and humor draining from his face like blood from an open wound. “Y-Your Majesty, I meant no—”
“Oh, my mistake. He’s nothing but a soft, pretty man! Guards, break his nose.”
“Your Majesty!” cried the nobleman. “Please—!” But the crunch resounded through the throne room, a line of blood spurting out from the now-crooked ridge on his face. It took three of his friends to catch him from stumbling.
“Now kill him,” said Kimbel.
The nobleman coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. “King Kimbel, please! I beg you!” Four guards circled him, fists closing on the hilts of their swords. The man’s friends took a flinching step back. “Please!”
“Stop.” The guards sheathed their swords and dispersed, returning to their assigned posts. Kimbel watched with mounting satisfaction as the nobleman struggled to stand on his own two feet again, this time without the help of his friends, gingerly holding his broken nose and the crimson gunk that poured of it. “How’s that for power, you deficient, soft-crotched little man? Do you think that because I am not yet grown that I don’t deserve your full and unbridled adoration as your king? Am I not to be worshiped because I bought this crown with my own blood and my father’s ashes?”
The man held his frilly hat against his bleeding nose. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. Please forgive me.” He was crying.
“I am the king because I killed the king,” Kimbel went on. “I killed him with an audience. I never hesitated. Not when I knew what needed to be done—not for an instant!” A palpable hush fell over the court that still had yet to begin formally. “I am the true heir of the Bogman, every bit of my power paid for in blood and sweat. And I will have a legacy as immortal as his!” Kimbel paused to catch his breath, wiping a drop of frothy spit from his chin with the back of his wrist. “Grackenwell has already annexed the desert. I’ll do the same with Dridon. In a few years, this Stone Continent will be my Stone Empire. Our ranks will swell with Dridic knights turned soldiers, and their commoners will become new slaves. I’ll amass an army the likes of which this world has never seen. We’ll conquer Myrenthos, even Qarda... even Xheng Yu Xi before my reign is over.
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“The time for Grackenwelsh mediocrity is at an end. The time for cowardice is behind us. Just as I took power from someone inferior to me, so too shall we take it from those lesser than us. It’s the natural order, after all. I will make Grackenwell greater than it has ever been! And I know just how to begin.” Kimbel returned his attention to the slave ambassador. “As promised, your payment awaits you, honored servant. Tell the others in the royal slave quarters. Tell them I sent you.” He grinned magnanimously.
The slave beamed with tears in his eyes, bowing and pressing his forehead to the floor. “Oh, I thank you, Your Majesty. I thank you!”
“Send in four more volunteers on your way out.” Kimbel tossed his dagger into the air and caught it by the hilt. “Tell them that greatness awaits those who would answer the call!”
***
Hane was brought to the castle just after supper. Vicious winds tore across Holcort and howled like wild animals. The weeping willows outside the castle swayed and bent, their green braids dancing sideways.
The guards led Hane into the throne room, and the frail old slave cooperated. He was withered away now. Skin gnarled over with whippings old and fresh. Kimbel’s attention was elsewhere, discussing strategy with his most decorated generals, as the slave and his guards waited their turn.
“Castle Tern is a remarkably fortified structure,” said General Cadwynh. “Outer and inner archer towers, moat network with drawbridges, palisades, and, of course, the walls. All other factors aside, the walls alone warrant a sustained siege by cannon fire. Long enough to make us damn well vulnerable to counterattack.”
“We’re not storming the castle,” Kimbel sighed with a roll of his eyes. He scratched an itch in his ear with the point of his dagger. “Rhoda hesitated. Castle Tern will no doubt be wary of invasion. I’m sending four more slaves to assassinate her instead. They’ll go as ambassadors again.”
“Assassination, Your Majesty?” Cadwynh replied, walking the fine line between respect and disrespect. “Under the guise of diplomacy? Don’t you think that’s a bit... dishonest?”
You know what we do to liars in Grackenwell.
“Horse shit,” Kimbel replied matter-of-factly. He stood his ground. “My diplomacy is no more or less honest than anyone else’s. I communicated to her the opportunity to surrender on my terms. She made her choice. If she dies now because of it, then she dug her own grave. Next I suppose you’ll tell me an archer is dishonest for sending an arrow to do his killing for him?”
A quiet beat. Then General Rigart stepped forward, a softer-spoken man with close-shaven blond hair, lean but tall enough to intimidate. “Your Excellency, might I inquire as to what you hope to accomplish by sacrificing four slaves to assassinate their queen? Does she not have a son of fighting age—could he not take her place? Could he not take charge of the military forces as you yourself have done? Why not make a coordinated military strike while we still retain some shred of surprise—make a real show of power while we can?”
“So many questions,” Kimbel chuckled. He mulled over his response, carefully plucking each word he would need from the vines of his mind. He sensed a shade of his father within him. Will I be a wise king? “Dridon is a stagnant nation that subsists on its own comfort and habits. Losing their queen of over a decade will scatter their ranks like a kicked anthill. I met her son once, the prince. He’s a prissy little girl. He’d sooner raise his hands in surrender than raise a weapon against me. He’s of no concern.”
General Cadwynh nodded, smirking. “The king speaks the truth. Princess Lucanh, more like.”
Kimbel took a breath, feeling his persuasion working. “Four volunteers have already come forward. Draw up your battle plans if you must, but let us hope we never need them. We’ll need all the forces we can muster if we’re to conquer Qarda, so I’d prefer to avoid an internecine war with the south. We’ll just be killing our own future soldiers and slaves.” He looked the wrong way at the wrong time and caught Hane’s good eye staring at him plaintively. “Now leave me be for the night. All of you.” The guards began to escort Hane away but Kimbel motioned for their attention. “Not you.”
“So good to see you again, milord,” Hane said. His voice was raspier, weaker than it had ever been.
A guard knocked him in the back with the butt of his whip. “He’s the king now, old fool. Address His Majesty as such!”
I suppose I do owe that in part to you, Kimbel imagined himself saying. But to confess such a thing in the presence of anyone but Hane would be tantamount to thanking a slave, and Kimbel refused to humiliate himself in that way. “Imprisoned for refusal to work, is it? You’d think someone of your rotten old age would’ve learned by now.”
“I suppose my reputation precedes me, it does,” Hane chuckled to himself. The guard struck him in the back again.
“Careful,” Kimbel said simply. “That’s my property you’re bashing. And he’s got a lot of missed work to make up, remember.”
“Apologies, Your Majesty,” said the guard, bowing deferentially. “I only meant to ensure he afforded you the respect you deserve.”
“Your attention to decorum is noted and appreciated. Now, please give me a moment of privacy with my newest personal prison. Find Ulther and send him in.”
The guards released the slave. “At once, King Kimbel.”
Shortly thereafter, only Kimbel, Hane, a stone-faced Teralt, and the doormen guarding the entrance remained. Black shadows danced without rhythm or sound against the firelit orange walls. The wind wheezed outside.
“You will always be inferior as a slave, old man,” said the boy king with his nose turned up proudly, “but I was under the impression that this type of foolishness was beneath even you. Explain yourself.”
Hane grinned his stupid grin, made more of the absence of teeth now, and nodded. “Missionaries from the south, milord. Trinitists. Why, they let me read a copy of the Triptych and told me all about their three-headed god. Read about their faith, sure, but never had it straight from the source, have I? Converted that same day, I did. Took a vow of peaceful resistance. Learned that from the Book of Heights, I did. Never too late to make a change, eh?”
Kimbel scoffed. “So, you’ve taken to a foreigner’s fable and managed to humiliate yourself more than I thought possible. There is such a thing as a noble slave, you know. Not hard to be one when you serve the king himself. But you’re nothing but an old fool, and now you’re my problem instead of my father’s. You’ll be withering away in the dungeons of Castle Holcort for a long, long time until I figure out what exactly to do with you, and don’t expect a pardon on my part. It won’t come.”
“The law states that he must be executed,” said Teralt. The silence that followed oozed like pitch, thick and slow and black.
Kimbel scoffed again. He rocked his knife back and forth by the hilt as it sawed a wider slit in the cushion. “I am the law.”
“You’re a king. A king.” Teralt cleared his dry throat. “Highest power in the land... but not a god. We have no gods here in Grackenwell.” He spoke like a dead man, but not one raised to life from the depths of death in the Everswamp—more like a dead man who had no interest whatsoever in a reversal of his fortune. “Better liked kings than yourself have had unfortunate accidents during court. Out surveying their kingdom. On a hunt. Who knows?”
“That mouth of yours is back with a vengeance, Terry. What happened—your balls drop again?”
“I fear yours have not, Kimbel.”
Ulther’s hand grabbed for the handle of his whip, his face scrunched up in anger. “Your Majesty, shall I?”
Kimbel smirked. “Do it.”
His right hand man marched angrily across the throne room with his boots thundering against the stone floor, drew his whip, and struck Teralt several times. The man didn’t even make a sound. Didn’t even flinch or twitch like he used to do. His blood dotted the floor, but he kept this newly inflamed sense of pride at getting under Kimbel’s skin. “I don’t even feel it anymore,” he taunted.
“Oh, I think you do,” Kimbel lied, taunting him back. “I think you just hate the miserable cockroach you’ve become so much that you’ve come to understand how much you deserve it. That’s why you don’t protest. How about that display, by the way? I don’t even have to sic my men on you—they ask my permission! I’m so beloved that my subordinates go out of their way for me. And you really think they’ll make problems for me if I let a slave rot in a cell rather than kill him?”
“It’s not you. It’s the law.” Teralt tried to spit out a bloody glob of spit, but his mouth was so dry that it clung to his lower lip. “Some might like you, but they love stability over all. You already usurped your father... Now you try to bend their law?”
The king shrugged. “Then I will rewrite the law. Simple.”
Finally, a smile from Teralt. A rare and unnerving sight to behold. “You’re soft, Kimbel.”
Ulther tensed up. “Your Majesty—”
“Leave it,” Kimbel cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Let him speak.”
Teralt grinned his red grin, eyeing them both. “You’ll never rule with an iron fist. Your fist is nothing but ice. Cold, sharp, unfriendly when it has to be—but only when the world is cold to you. You melt at the first hint of warmth.” His eyes were wide like his smile now, brimming with joy or some demented kin of it. “A king rules over years, not over moments. Your dear old father is dead. You mustered that much—in the moment. Now what?”
Kimbel ground his teeth. “I think you might have finally overstayed your welcome, Teralt.”
“Any softhearted boy can kill the man who would kill him. You can even kill a mean bastard like me—remember how I whipped you in jail? Oh no. What will you do when it comes time to kill a sweet old man who’s been nothing but good to you your whole life? One who never held any power over you?”
“Hold your tongue before I cut it out of your head,” he said through his teeth.
Teralt kept pressing him. “That will be your true test. But Kimbel, I doubt you have even the stones to kill me, boy. You might stomach another season with me and then throw me in the jails and that will be that. If you even live that long. The noblemen are already bold enough to laugh at you in your presence. How much longer until your loyal thugs do the same?” A weird, guttural laugh escaped him then. “We’re going to be friends for the rest of your life, Kimbel. You can whip me all you want, cut off any part of me you want. The sight of me will still torment you every day just like before!” He laughed his ghastly laugh again.
A sound filled Kimbel’s head like some great metallic weight grating against stone, and then his burning anger boiled over into a smile, subdued and placid. Ulther appeared at his side, ready to do his bidding. “Fetch my valuables,” said Kimbel, “and have them brought to my chamber at once. I feel about ready to retire for the night.”
“As you wish, King Kimbel,” Ulther replied. He clapped his hands and a short while later, a team of slave attendants began hauling crates of belongings to the king’s bedchamber where Kimbel would lay his head for the second time.
Kimbel ripped his knife from the cushion and made for the door, past Hane, his boots clunking on the stone floor, toward Teralt and the guarded doorway behind him. “You,” he said. He held out his hand as he walked, stopping a pair of crate-bearers. “I want you to prepare a bed for Teralt at once.”
The two slaves exchanged a look in an apparent attempt to communicate, through body language, how best to about-face and move their supplies elsewhere, and it seemed to occur to one of them to ask where to prepare the bed when Kimbel grabbed a fistful of Teralt’s hair and slit his throat.
Arcs of dark blood spurted across the room halfway to the throne. The chained man made a horrid wet noise and moved with the urgency of a fish out of water. Then he was still. It was so quiet then that all he could hear were the flames of torches flickering and the drops of blood hitting the puddle on the floor.
“Pack his bed with plenty of the driest straw,” Kimbel continued. “Put it in the courtyard. I’ll come to see the embers of the pyre in the morning.” He wiped the bloodied knife on his own pants and smiled at Hane, who trembled visibly, a delicate, dried-out hibiscus petal in a quickening breeze. “I’ll see you in the morning as well, old man. We’ll figure out what to do with you then.”