Chapter 28: The Emperor’s Visit

Truth is the hard to grow crop in the fields of life. Weeds and pests named rulers or cheats plague it. The very people who cultivate it can destroy it with their own ignorance and bias. Even who it survives till harvest, it might not even taste good. And yet, truth is the all enduring food that feeds the empty minds of the masses and makes them strong.

Truth frightened Ani, and he liked that.

The Tomb Fortress’s ambient low droning hum had been replaced by the clattered walking off the soldiers. The war room stored more than scrolls and tools of war today. Officers from all corners of the empire marched about, commanding not soldiers, but artist. Today was a marvelous day. Today was when the Emperor would grace Ani’s home.

No one truly knows the Emperor but everyone knows his face. A person larger than death, a miracle of a man.

The Emperor found a real taste for emotion. A collector of art from the lands he conquered, he loved the paintings and sculptures that depicted the extremes of emotion. Powerful and moving works brought him happiness.

Ani in response, commissioned several craftsmen to construct a wall sculpture in his honor. Chistling the faces of downed Iozians, the craftsmen worked day and night to complete the work on time. Taking two months to complete, Ani had been so delighted with the result he paid the ten men who made enough money to create their own schools of art, which they promptly set up with the walls of the fortress. Hopefully their effort and his own would be enough, Ani thought.

Even now, the war continued in these halls so far beyond the war zones in the Oligarchy. Ani and his Assassins stationed themselves in the war room while the slaves and servants put the last decorations in place. The screams and roars of hate could never be escaped, not for a day and not for a moment. For Ani, his body drowned in his sickness, but that wouldn’t stop him from participating.

In fact, Ani aided the war effort through alternative means. His plan was to speak with the Emperor then speak with two contacts deep in Iozia. But that was neither here nor there.

A glowing gem was on his necklace. Insomniac green was the phrase Ani used to describe it. Every time he took a drag of air, it grew fainter and dimmer.

Soul gems and the preservation of a soul is much like cooking. You can maneuver certain traits to make flavors, shift or remove organs to make a delicious dish.

But it must be realized, you turned a living being into something that is consumed. None of its voice, mind, or body remains. Try as you might, you can only make something new, and not maintain the dead.

An elder assassin carried a tray with fine wine and Ani’s favorite food, lamb dumplings. He requested it, but the sorcerer couldn’t muster up the bravery to do it in front of his men. Ani didn’t feel empty enough to do it.

“Master Ani. Your food is finished. Please, eat.” The assassin asked, keeping firm eye contact on his lord.

“No. I’m not hungry right now.” Ani coughed hard in his gauntlet, with the assassin backing away and covering his mouth. When he was finished coughing, the assassin returned to him. Ani’s face stuck still, like a mountain meeting rain. The elder shifted his jaw and prepared a voice for Ani.

“Master, I beseech you. You’re not doing well, you must eat.” Ani looking through the slits on his metal mask studied the face of the elder assassin. He didn’t abuse his position or speak in an ill tone. He was kind, trying to help a friend take care of himself. Grabbing the edges of the tray, he broke apart a dumpling and inserted it into his helmet.

The sorcerer remembered life before, how speedy he could be. Now, he could only chew bits and pieces of the food he so often refused.

Ani knew that the assassin was quite sad upon viewing him, so he opened up his journal, full of stories and humor. He devised a joke to tell.

“Have I ever told you what happened to my son?” Ani beckoned with a hint of mystery.

“No Master. I never knew you had one”

“Ah. My son died a long time ago, before the Assassins were made.” The sorcerer sunk down in his chair, allowing the elder assassin to come closer. “One day not unlike this one, he got hit by a speeding wagon.”

“Poor boy.” The elder stroked his beard like one would stroke a widow.

“That is not all. He woke up in the hospital and he ran all around, like a headless chicken.” Ani made the movement with his fingers, which brought the attention of the soldiers in the room. “He stopped and saw the head doctor, and how horrible it all was.”

Most of the soldiers felt pity, but the elder and middle aged assassin soon realized what was to follow.

“He said ‘Doctor! Doctor! I can’t feel my legs!’ The doctor responded ‘I know! I amputated your arms!”

A roar of laughter released, the pressure of the story fading away. Having to push himself off his chair, Ani used his weakened might to stand up. The laughter gave him a bit more courage and enough energy to join them in the battle plans.

Rudimentary, the soldiers built a mock replica of the Iozian city of Uvi Jantok. Ani guessed that having the men be the one to build and make the map and it’s parts would better improve their mood as well as smooth out the rough edges of the plan. After all, the battle could involve their deaths and they would make sure that wouldn’t happen.

“I am amazed, Master. It is not often we make war, we only commit it. Why do you have us lead it?” A young recruit asked.

“Ah. Too many clans only see you as a number to be traded. I don’t deal in numbers or lines on a graph. I deal in people. Moreover, those Patriarchs forget that we are finite.” He said, grabbing a figurine off the replica map. “There are only so many metals in the world. There are only so many trees to be grown. And there can only be so many tools. Breaking them is hardly an advantage.”

“I see. By employing us you make sure tools are used and stay alive to keep being used.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.” Ani nodded and returned back to the replica.

The soldiers laugh at the creation of their targets. The soldiers cut up ration boxes for walls. The soldiers snapped bark and shavings to form forests. The soldiers talk about the funny face an assassin drew on the edge of the map.

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The soldiers took off rings and compared their size to the hills they made with paper mache, making sure they were accurate. The soldiers made conversation, learning that Roinaa’s wife had given birth to twins. The soldiers break off crayons and smear blue to form the Yutai Basin. The soldiers cheer about the accomplishments of Isri’s son, who became the slave officer of the Patriarch of the Wuqadue Clan.

The soldiers don’t think about the people in this makeshift model of a city. That right then and there they are living. Fathers sweat and sweat until the sun falls and go back to the farmhouses where their families live. Mothers hold their children, teaching them how to cook or show them the drawing a priest made when the two got married.

The soldiers don’t think about the walls of Uvi Jantok, not about the stones that made that same wall which came from a quarry ten miles away. The quarry that had been there ever since there was a name for Periatus. They don’t think about how the men cut stones with axes and points, blasted water to cut them into exact shapes, and transported them to the city.

The soldiers don’t know what the walls mean to the people, the walls that always were in the life of a boy named Aurelato, the walls that he used to throw a ball against. Those walls outlived the scribe Din Cai, a worldly man that lived for seventy years, all in service to the Oligarchy.

The soldiers don’t think that in the walls of Uvi Jantok that there are two hundred thousand lives going on, running and walking about. They don’t think as a soldier places down a rock to represent an aqueduct that people drink from that aqueduct, that the water brought nourishment to the people.

For now, they are soldiers, giants over the models. These men are fathers and brothers who now wore armor and picked up spears and shields. That these same men will fight brutal, dirty, nasty, the only way to fight.

That the people of Uvi Jantok don’t have histories and lives worth living. The soldiers don’t believe they exist.

Ani did. Ani, in his tightened bowels buried underneath his armor, wished to scream. To scream with all the pain that his Clan went through when the disease burned them like dry wheat. He could choose to scream out “Stop! These are people! All is well!” He could house all the people he onced loved that had crossed into the river of stars, just by saying that truth.

Ani didn’t. Ani thought about the people, and how in only a month that their lives would change. That his men from a world beyond them came, saw, and culled.

Ani admitted a terrible thing to himself. That the Oligarchs, the Iozians, that his enemies, weren’t like his men at all. That the Oligarchs spared even the smallest sympathy and effort for those they had believed to be wrong.

He was scared that perhaps, the true reason the Tripolians continued to exist, was because the Iozians allowed them to. He was scared that he couldn’t choose not to believe it.

Ani took a bite into his dumpling. It didn’t taste good anymore. He liked that. He liked that the Oligarchy was so pathetic, so weak that it felt necessary to fraternize with opponents. Ani smiled underneath his mask, a smile that no one could see. He smiled, because unlike the Oligarchy, he and his men would give them no quarter.

“Master Ani?” The middle aged assassin brought an end to his glee.

“Yes? What is it?”

“The Emperor is here.”

A spell fell on the room, depriving all emotion. Soldiers all ceased and staring at their master, faces full of blankness. No happiness, no fear. Only neutral nothing.

The sorcerer put down the tray, only managing to finish a single dumpling and take two gulps of wine. Ani wordlessly exited the room, and stepped to where he knew the Emperor was.

Ani’s breath contained no cough or sneeze. His body felt lighter, like he was a bird flying into a storm. Yet, the armor finally became heavy to him. Emblems and icons of a family that had long been dead were visible to him. The mosaics that he had made when he was a young child, when he wasn’t the master of the war. He stopped by the windows, the same glass panes he looked through all his life.

There was a field his eyes came to when he was daydreaming. A lonely field of tomatoes that no farmer in the fortress took care of, and yet it remained.

Ani reached out to the overgrowing and untamed tomatoes. All other open patches of grass were claimed but not that field. When the plague came, the dying farmers couldn’t maintain the fields and a famine took the fortress.

But not those tomatoes. They lived though no one would support them. They were survivors. They survived when no one else did. And they grew, their vines creeping onto the walls like a serpent.

Ani wondered for a moment, what it would be like to be that same tomato. Not a silly idea, he knew. He wouldn’t know the disease, he wouldn’t know so many men that would become corpses. All he could be was something to be grown and to be eaten.

He liked that idea. A simpler existence, feeding people. Helping people.

In fact, he quite likes helping people.

A laugh came from him, how very ironic it was to compare himself to a food that feed when he created the plan to starve the Oligarchy.

Further and further, closer and closer as he walked to the Emperor, his insecurities faded away. He felt young again, bouncing and motivated like all youth are. Ani couldn’t think of any discovery that could shake him, not one unknown that would ruin his mood. That would ruin his perception of the world.

He was a straight line in a crooked world, Ani believed.

Ani believed, just like those tomatoes, that the Tripolians would survive the world and come to strangle the Oligarchy like barbed vines.

“Ani Arma.”

It was him. The sorcerer straightened and wiped any oddity off himself. He pulled at the end of his gauntlets. He brushed the lips of his mask. Ani aligned his form to the statue of his father, right along the many others of the Patriarchs of his family.

Before him, a tremendous miracle he knew as the Emperor came into sight. The now and future Emperor of all the Tripolians.

“Ani… how long has it been?

“Long enough.”

“You speak the truth. How are the lungs? You look a lot bigger than usual.”

“Well enough sir. Well enough.”

“I suppose you’re right. You’re enough for me, and enough for the empire. Walk with me, will you?”

“I will.”

“Good. Not that I dislike your Snake Skins, but I think they have something against me. It’s not like I killed them. Well, not all of them.”

“Haha. I suppose you are right sir.”

“Indeed. Tell me, how does the plan go?”

“Quite well. I have devised a brilliant plan and have added facete two as per your instructions.”

“Good. Relay the operation.”

“Operation Stomach Breaker. Main goal, burn Iozian fields of both crops to feed themselves. Secondary goal, steal and destroy enough Silphium to cause a population crisis within the Oligarchy, crippling their growth and starving their people.”

“And what will this accomplish?”

“Destroying their fields will cause mass famine, resulting in their armies being undersupplied and needing to be recovered. Destroying Siliphum will cause a baby boom, resulting in the death of many mothers, therefore reducing the population of Iozians.”

“Well done Ani! To be quite honest, I half expected you to chicken out, but no! What a terrible and clever plan!”

“Thank you sir.”

“No! Thank you!”

“... I don’t understand…”

“What don’t you understand? No one is as smart as you, Ani. No one is as bright as you. That is why you’re my friend!”

“...friend, sir?”

“Yes! As in, my equal. No other rulers, no other clan, no other man comes as close in terms of usefulness in contrast to you, Ani.”

“...really?”

“Really. By the way… you can call me by my actual name. If you wish, I would of course need your consent. Haha!”

“...I see…”

“...what’s wrong my friend? …There is no need to cry.”

“No… it’s just… I didn’t think I would ever hear that.”

“Aw, Ani Arma. I never expected such a killer to be one for emotions. I love it!”

“Hehe. I suppose that is something interesting about myself sir.”

“I suppose too.”

“...”

“Is… all well, my friend?”

“Yes. Yes, all is well , sir.”

“Is there… Anything you wish to tell me? Or show me?”

“No, your grace. All is well.”

“Understood. I will be taking my leave.”

“Yes sir.”

“...Ani?”

“Yes sir?”

“When I go away, don’t go into the world as a jaded and cynical man. But as someone who valves life and cares in spite of the horror, without falling victim to the naive trust in others… or in human nature.”

“...yes sir.”

“And Ani?”

“...Yes sir?”

The Emperor laughed to himself, at the cruelty of the joke he was going to tell. He knew it would leave Ani in stitches.

“ To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment… is harmless.”