Onimeus watched the way the headmen adventurers drilled the new soldiers and the old, the constant running in heavy equipment, the way they did pushups in a square so that every set of feet was on somebody else’s back. They worked together to rise, and the weakest held everyone else back. ‘A better metaphor for a city or an army or a family or anything… I couldn’t have imagined. They all rise together, or their potential is limited at best, or they fall at worst.’
Sergeant Vargas approached him and rendered the salute his mistress had taught to him. “They’re looking better.” He said with some confidence in his voice while looking over the set that was clashing with practice swords and shields.
“They look like undercooked meat.” Onimeus groused, “But… it’s part of the process. At least some of them were more than mere militia.”
“Fair enough, but at least they’re getting there, in a few weeks, we’ll…” Sergeant Vargas stopped when Onimeus extended a document to him.
“What’s this?” He asked with his knuckles white from the pressure of clenching them together. His mistress’s seal on it set him to immediate tension as if she’d appeared behind him at the worst possible moment.
He tore it open and read it over. “Is she serious?” He raised his eyes from the document to Onimeus and went back to the document.
Onimeus nodded in slow and uncomfortable doubt. “Yes, tomorrow squad leaders will be training intensely while all the other soldiers are sent to the bank of Pas’en to open accounts.”
“They wouldn’t need accounts unless…” Sergeant Vargas looked out over the unit behind him.
“Right, they’re going to have money of their own.” Onimeus folded his arms in front of his broad old chest, daring the younger man to doubt his statement.
Sergeant Vargas stepped in close and whispered through clenched teeth. “But we’re slaves! You don’t let slaves have things let alone money unless you’re going to let them buy their freedom. She’d have to be insane to let that happen, we must be reading this wrong!” He exclaimed in a rough, hoarse whisper with his eyes bugging out of his head.
Onimeus reached into his pouch and pulled out another document. He held it aloft, the seal broken. “The pay sheet. Plunder divided up after every fight, distributed first according to merit, the bravest, strongest, special commendations… then the remainder divided up among the whole for sale and division by rank. Nobody will believe it till it happens. After it does though? They’ll train like monsters and fight like demons for her.”
“What is ‘she’ getting out of all of this?” Sergeant Vargas asked as he stared around him like something had to have the unknown answer.
“The pay for every job is all hers. Also, per Kaiji’s orders, we’re only buying Komestrans. In a week, we’ll be notable, in a month, formidable, in a few months? We’ll be unbeatable. Pas’en’s mercenary captain will be a mercenary general, one that may unbalance everything.” Onimeus looked over to the closed off building where undead horses stood unmoving, waiting, waiting for the day when he could order a charge the likes of which the fifty cities had never seen before. A shiver went up his spine that pleased him to no end.
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Freyjin watched her girls sleep in her bedchamber, they were covered with a simple blanket, over a fairly simple straw stuffed mattress that had a black bear fur covering it. The wood was simple too, smooth but no finish, no polish, no shine. But it was theirs, their space. In a room in the mistress’s great estate, where she was safe, where they were safe.
She went and drew out the latest order of her mistress, and looked at her girls almost in tears. She read it over again. ‘Go and buy a teacher. Every child under the age of twelve will be allotted a fixed set of hours to learn reading, writing, and mathematics.’
“Even free… we didn’t have this…” She said for what was not the first time as the unprecedented generosity struck her heart and she flipped to the next order. ‘Acquire the following materials and use the small building behind my manor as a temple to my god.’
She didn’t bite her lip to keep back from her words. “Our god. Our god, my mistress.” And she cast out her worship of the stars from her heart, before tucking the sleeping little ones, just a little more tightly.
Her departure and return went even more smoothly than she expected it would, an iron collared nobleman’s son purchased for fifty silver due to his rank and education, discounted by ten as a favored customer deal, and he was taken away. That was all it took, and Freyjin found herself explaining to a young man of long red hair and green eyes, what his role was to be.
“This room is to be where the children of the mistress will be taught.” She swept her hand around the empty room. You will be allotted a silver per week for supplies out of my budget.” The room was still a bit dusty, but that didn’t explain the quixotic look in his eye as he stared from one spot to the other.
“Is there something wrong, Loras?” She asked with a furrowed golden brow.
“No… no, it’s just… this room is a bit large, isn’t it? How many children does the Duchessa Aiwenor have?” He folded his hands in front of himself and added, “And even for a noble’s child, it won’t take a silver per week for simple school supplies. It seems excessive.”
He tapped his sandal clad feet on the floor, scattering a tiny bit of dust enough that it was visible in the beams of light that shone through the windows and illuminated the entire place. The interior wood was lightly colored, and as such, it seemed to glow like the sun itself.
For a moment Freyjin was left speechless, until she understood the nature of his question. “The answer to your question, is in how many children she has purchased. She wants them ‘all’ educated. She has birthed no children of her own…” She shut her eyes tight and turned away, wondering if she had just lied. ‘Has she? Is that the cause of the pain I see? Is that the cause of why she beat me as she did, all of us? Did she have… and lose…’ Freyjin shunted the question aside, and faced the new teacher.
“She’s educating the children of slaves? Strange choice isn’t it? Why bother? Most of them, the boys at least, will end up being sent to the Tlalmok at some point. And for the girls, well how much education does it take to scrub a floor or mend something? She’s losing a lot of labor this way.” Loras’s words were cut off by the sudden slap to his face.
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“Shut up.” Freyjin spat with venom that stunned him more than the blow itself, he brought his hand up to his cheek and touched it as if he couldn’t believe what she’d just done.
“You forget yourself, slave! You are no longer Loras, son of the Baron. You are Loras of the iron collar in the House of Aiwenor!” Freyjin raised her chin to make her bronze one stand out. “You answer to me when not answering to her! And I will not… not hear you say my daughters have no future but that!” She reached up and grabbed the loop of his iron collar and yanked it toward her face, he bent and found himself staring into her beautiful face of fury, “This is not the world you know. I don’t know what the mistress plans… but in a handful of weeks I’ve already seen the impossible! Don’t think I won’t send you back to the block and replace you as ‘unfit for noble service! See what fate you end up in after that!”
The looming spectre of mines or farm service or worse, passed before the slightly built young man’s eyes and the stark reminder of the loss of his status, stared at him seething with the promise of violent retribution if he stepped out of line again.
“Right ah, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean it that way, it’s just, this isn’t how slaves are managed…” Loras rubbed his throat when she released her grip.
“Abandon what you know, terror and hope are both dangerous things, and I’ve had both at the mistress’s hands, which one you get, depends on what she sees in you when you eventually meet. And to answer your question, including my three, there are thirty children belonging to her soldiers and servants, currently living on these grounds. Put together a list and I’ll have a house servant fetch what you’ll need, but start by cleaning the rest of this building… by yourself. You’ll find a bucket and a rag out back, along with a pump for water.”
“Yes… Steward, I will obey.” Loras said with a humble eye, and went to be what was once impossible to imagine.
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Taen savored the sun on the back of his neck. He savored the wind blowing lightly, caressing his cheek. He savored the smell of wet grass, and even the sound of squelching from the mud that his newly acquired horse was walking through. He looked back over his shoulder, the peasant couple he’d cheated out of their startup funds had long since given up ‘looking for him.’
He let out a pleasant, knowing laugh, the faint sound of their grousing as their wagon and his new horse parted company would keep him laughing for days. ‘Better my hands than yours, idiots. At least my horse will still be with me until I sell it, you’d have lost your ‘everything’ in a few days at best. I just sped up the process.’
A few days of travel was all that it took. Uneventful, and simply peaceful. He savored every moment of departure from Pas’en, because it was further proof that he’d gotten away with what he intended, with a great deal of information to go with it.
But no moment was better than facing the great high walls of Kai’sen again. Fifteen feet thick if they were five, with enchanted ballistas every twenty yards. The great double gate at the front was the definition of security. Beyond that were two inner walls and a final last refuge in the form of the Prince’s castle. It could house a third more people than it had.
He passed through the gate, soldiers were more numerous than Taen expected at first, they paid him no mind, but then, he could dismiss that as less an effect of his own natural talent and more along the lines of ‘everybody is relaxed because we won the damn war’.
He made his way to the palace, taking his sweet time, the paved streets of the hill were kept cleaner than ever before thanks to the large number of newly acquired Komestran servants to do the work, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t find himself up to his ankles in sewage.
The city of Kai’sen was unique in that it was laid out in eighths rather than in quarters, each eighth was laid out according to the natural flow of the hill that the castle spread out from. The stone buildings of Kaisen were unique in that, unlike the gray granite walls, they were made of red stone dug from one of the canyon walls near to the city where the long river flowed throughout time immemorial. When the sun struck Kai’sen just right, the city was aglow like the heaven promised by the Starwatcher faith.
It was through that dim glowing beauty that he traversed the streets, past the market district and clear through to the noble district. When he reached the palace, he simply pulled out a letter and extended it to the guard.
A moment later he was on his way to Prince Isaura’s own inner sanctum, and within a few minutes of dropping him off, the guard who brought him had already forgotten why he’d even come to their chambers in the first place.
He put on the mask to hide his face, and knocked.
“Enter.” A soft, feminine voice called out.
Taen obeyed, closing the door delicately behind him. Alone with Aubin and Isaura, Taen bowed politely. “My Prince, I am successful, but I did lose most of the Red Shadows. Not that they mattered, I’ll select a new batch of criminals for the same purpose the next time I visit the city.”
Prince Isaura’s green hair didn’t so much as sway, such was the calm ease of her acknowledging nod. “Make your report then.”
Taen did exactly as she said, reporting on the wealth, the purchases she was making in slaves, the noble status, it paused at the discussion of Bracer. “He was a powerful headman ranked mercenary. She brought him down?” Isaura’s black eyes turned up to where the old dark elven advisor, Aubin, stood calmly at her right hand.
“My Prince, before Bracer fell from public grace, he was roughly equal to Prince Sado in combat. Sado killed one hundred of our men by himself at the Battle of Komestran Fields… but that is barely relevant.” Aubin’s aged voice was hypnotic in its soft depth, Isaura could not help but listen to her oldest and most trusted advisor.
“Explain.” Isaura asked.
“I am old… my Prince, very old.” he brushed the long white hair down his back, around to his front to drape over his chest for emphasis. “I know ambition when I see it, and these are the marks of ambition, I believe her disruption of Pas’en’s economy and her buying up of both land and slaves are deliberate, calculated acts.” He stroked his sharp chin thoughtfully and closed his eyes to focus on his thoughts.
“So that makes her a problem for Pas’en. We should ignore Prince Rasgen’s request, or at least send him a denial of it.” Isaura said abruptly, her slender, youthful human hands stroked the armrest as she sensed Aubin’s disapproval.
Aubin finally finished thinking, and answered with his slow, measured pace that at once revealed his age by how he sounded, and his wisdom by what he said. “No, I think we should do the opposite. We should sell the land we’ve acquired, we can’t work it, we can’t defend it, it’s too far away and we’d be inviting disaster on our people by settling anyone there. We were going to sell it off anyway to closer cities, instead I suggest we sell it, but only in exchange for some of these new foreign coins. Melt them down so we have a reserve in the treasury for the next war.”
“Sell it all to Pas’en so they can sell it all to her? That would give her one third of Komestra’s ruins as well as the surrounding land… what could she do with that much?” Isaura’s youthful voice went an octave higher and tension manifested itself in the way her fingers clenched the armrest.
“Taen, how much wealth does she have?” Aubin inquired, only to find himself surprised when Taen bowed.
“That I do not know. The slave we captured stopped talking as soon as her owner returned.” Taen said, and explained the events as he knew them.
“That’s a concern. Most slaves would do anything for what Taen was offering, she wouldn’t? It could be a one off, like… like me.” Aubin remarked and touched the purple tagged bronze collar on his throat. “I don’t want to leave you, I have loved this house for a thousand years.”
“Aubin… you don’t have to leave… I just…” Isaura reached out and took his hand in a sudden snatching motion and held it tight, only for him to interrupt his Prince.
“Never.” He said with finality absolute, and the subject was gone, allowing him to forge ahead.
“We should try to take another that she’s had, or test the waters at least, perhaps check if we could buy the freedom of one of them. To see if they would go or wish to stay. I admit I am concerned though, loyalty is dangerous, people will act out of loyalty the same way they will act out of hatred or worse, love. For now the disruption is confined to Pas’en. And it may stay that way if she makes more enemies. But we should lay the groundwork for some form of opposition. Go on, finish your report, Taen.” Aubin waved a hand from behind his back, out to the front of himself, inviting the continuation.
Taen did as he was bade, relating everything he found out, all the way down to the moment of his departure.
“You’ve done a wonderful job as always, Taen. A true treasure of Kai’sen, we can’t thank you enough.”
“My Prince, as long as you pay me enough, I’ll accept even the most meagre of thanks.” Taen bowed deepy with a hand in front of his waist and a greed filled smile on his face.
“You can always count on both, as long as you provide results like that, Taen.” Isaura replied with calm courtesy. She looked over to Aubin, “Draft a letter of sale to Prince Rasgen, for all the lands ceded to us inside and outside of what was Komestra. Also, see Taen well paid before his mask comes off again.”
“At once, my Mistress.” Aubin replied with equal calm, and with a masked Taen in tow, he left the office to reward Taen the Unknowable, for yet another successful mission. However as he made his way to the treasury dispensary, a nagging doubt of the unknown plagued, not the least the largely unknown nature of the hand the captive spoke of. ‘Taen is dangerous because he remains unknowable, in that sense, every stranger is just as powerful as he until we know them. The last new predator to enter our pond became one of the three great smugglers, and this one brought him down. All that means is a new problem. I hate new problems, I really, really hate new problems.’ Aubin’s train of thought did not change from where it had set, until he went to sleep, and thoughts troubled him no more that night.