“Well?” Isaura asked the masked man who stood in front of her in the privacy of their command tent.
Taen shrugged. “Well, they didn’t see me, or if they did they didn’t recognize me. I’ve met Prince Sado half a dozen times at least, and… nothing. Of course, that was always without one of these.” He tapped the black and white mask over his face. “Do you like it, Prince Isaura? I wore this one to a Pas’en festival the day I took care of Prince Rasgen’s father. Of course I took it off to do what I needed to do, and wore it when I wanted to be remembered. I left a nice duplicate in the right dupe’s place and then…” Taen drew his finger across his throat and made a brief choking noise.
He sighed contentedly, “Good times, good times.”
Prince Isaura rolled her eyes, “Yes, yes it is a very nice mask, but the important question is, did you overhear anything useful?”
Taen’s laugh was somewhat muffled behind the half black and half white jester mask, the twisted smile obscured his lips enough and changed his voice, but it was an obviously vicious laugh. “Useful, oh useful things, I love useful things, whether they’re short term or long term useful, like Karlo, like the Red Shadows… but the funny thing, Prince Isaura, Aubin, is that whether something is useful or not isn’t always obvious.”
“That would most definitely be… a yes, then.” Aubin surmised, cutting to the heart of the matter.
Taen slumped, “You’re no fun, Aubin, you’d think at your age you’d know to let your visitors enjoy themselves.”
Aubin’s severe expression and thinly tightened lips did not waver, nor did his quiet stare.
Taen finally sighed with exasperation, “Yes, yes I did, though how useful is up to you. The former Prince is desperately in love with the Duchessa, and I do mean desperately. He keeps giving her these long mooning looks, honestly it’s funny. Back when he was a Prince he could have had almost any woman he wanted, now he wants the one who owns his fucking balls.”
‘Great, Taen is in one of his moods, he must have really enjoyed himself.’ Isaura tapped her foot slowly so as not to give away her displeasure.
“I take it that isn’t reciprocated then.” Aubin half asserted, and half asked.
“No way, who knows what the bitch wants, but it isn’t what he’s selling. Love makes people stupid, really stupid, and you can use that one way or the other.” Taen slapped the back of his left hand into the palm of his right and emphasized, “As long as you’re not soft about it. Now do you want me going back to Pas’en or what? I can mix in with the camp followers if you want… but if I have to do that again, it’s going to cost extra.” Taen held out a palm expectantly, and he was not disappointed.
Aubin’s dry voice cut through the sound of clinking coins in the little brown sack. “I always assumed you considered it a bonus.”
Taen laughed behind his mask, “Oh Aubi, just because it’s a bonus, doesn’t mean it isn’t extra work, now do you want any of them dead this time, or do you want some information?”
Prince Isaura didn’t need to think it over. “The bank of Pas’en has been overly cooperative. Remove the head of it. Blame someone that will create conflict. Oh, and… the Prince has been far too cooperative as well. Either kill him or get him killed, I don’t care which, and when you’re done, go to the cities to the north of here and start dropping hints into the right ears that she is a problem that needs to be dealt with. You know, the usual sort of things, like what you did with… I’ve forgotten their name, but the daughter who ended up being a popular whore for the Prime Minister.”
“As you like. The war season is coming up, I’m sure a few could be persuaded that a vulnerable renewed city would make a great target for captives.” Taen’s smile was cold and cruel, though hidden by the mask, they could hear it in his voice. “Still, wouldn’t it be more practical to just kill ‘her’? Rather than just the ones around her?” Taen asked with a snap of his fingers.
“Good luck with that. She rarely sleeps, is usually very closely guarded by very dangerous people, and brought down Bracer in single combat. I would like her dead but… I don’t want to lose an asset like you trying to get there, just to fail.” Prince Isaura gave her caustic appraisal, and Taen thought that over with an uncomfortable nod.
Aubin leaned forward from his stiff position and spoke very, very slowly. “Just take care of the rest, and take care of it soon. After their performance on the battlefield… I’m afraid that reputation for being perfect slaves may reverse itself, then people will start to remember what it took to bring Komestra down. Add to that that she has some very… very strange magic at her disposal. We don’t want that getting out. Either we hand her a defeat that gets her killed, or we cripple her some other way, but whatever we do, we can’t let this disruption continue.”
Taen rolled his eyes, “I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’ll reach out to Saelin, I think he got out and I’m fairly sure I know where he operates out of, he might not remember me…” The unmemorable man chuckled ironically, “But he’ll welcome a job that pays well.”
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“Now… do you want to write that all down? Last time nobody wrote anything down I had to argue my expenses with you for an hour, do you have any idea how tedious that is?” Taen grumbled.
Isaura’s face went as sour as Aubin’s, she snatched a piece of paper, her quill, and scrawled swiftly, “Pay Taen whatever he says.” She pronounced it out as she wrote it, then gave him a look of mild annoyance, “There, that will do, but just to be on the safe side, take it off.”
Taen gave a lewd laugh, “That usually has another meaning entirely, majesty.”
Neither the Prince nor Aubin laughed.
“Humorless, everybody here is humorless.” Taen groused and yanked the mask off with annoyance.
“Now as I was saying, the music in Pas’en is just the best…” Taen went on nonsensically on an unimportant topic, and within minutes, they’d forgotten the earlier conversation. Within minutes of his departure after idle smalltalk, they’d forgotten what he looked like as well.
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The most unusual thing to Nua in their ride over the open ground was how at ease she felt with Sado beside her. Her pulse didn’t race with the reflexive fear that haunted her nightmares at the prospect of sleeping with a human close to her. She even permitted him to take a shift at watch alone while she rested, and not once did she feel the impulse to grind him into the dust if he stepped slightly out of turn. If anything, the more time she spent with him at her left hand, the more she regretted her previous behavior. So much so that it ate at her. ‘You really were a bitch, he spent all that time learning the written language and preparing the sacred book for you, and I’m sure Solution was anything but nice about it. Do something decent for him when you get back.’ She thought as they rode in comfortable silence over the last leg of the journey. The grass became patchwork as they went, and the air more humid.
“Swamps.” Kaiji said when she saw that they were looking around, “Don’t worry, if we keep going how we are, it will be fine. But this is part of why Fen’sai was never conquered, the various swamps make traversing most of those areas difficult, you really have to know the land to fight there, it isn’t kind to armies. You’ll burn up half your mana just fighting disease. We’re skirting them right now, Da’nak doesn’t have that problem at least.”
“Is there anything else I need to know, Kaiji?” Nua asked, and her servant was quick to answer.
“Yes, my lady. Queen Vexia loves power plays, she will test your patience, she’s ‘extremely’ dangerous, a more powerful magic caster than I am, and fanatical about protecting our race. She might sacrifice one or two of us if she has to, but on the whole… she’d trade ten thousand of you or a hundred thousand humans to save one of ours.” Kaiji was almost ‘admiring’ in how she said it, though she hung her head as she continued.
“If you have to, use your slave as a bargaining chip, a knife to my throat, and you will be able to walk out without any problem. Her people are her one true weakness… if you threaten to end my life, she will let you go, but she will remain your enemy until one or both of you is dead, even if you don’t actually kill me. Even if I later confess I told you to do it, she will never forget.”
“I understand.” Nua said with slow discomfort, “I will use you if I have to, but if it comes down to it, I can’t just take your life. I’ll find some other way out. Even if I have to cut our way through.” She patted her knife with slow reassurance.
“Thank you, my lady.” Kaiji replied with a faint blush coming to her purple cheeks, and she felt a warm, contented glow in her breast that carried them all the way to the city.
Da’nak was utterly foreign to Nua’s eyes except for one feature: unlike the grey stone of the north that rested on a high slope that was built to channel water, or the many hills of Komestra that had been made by human hands over the great plains, the plains here had a singularly massive lake that reminded her eerily of the capital of her homeland. However, that was where it stopped. In the center of that lake was a massive plateau that seemed to rise out of the earth like a pillar intended to hold up the sky. The city itself sat atop the pillar, seemingly overlooking all the world.
As they drew closer, a distant roaring sound reached her ears, and Nua turned to Kaiji with a curious look. “The falls.” Kaiji explained and pointed ahead of her to where the lake sat. “The water runs from the lake, up through the center of the plateau where it rises to the top. It then runs through the city in four places, and tumbles back down to the water below. Supposedly this plateau was raised by the demon who created our race, but nobody knows that for sure. If it was, he required magic far beyond the highest tier we know of.”
Nua accepted that in passing, but slowed her horse down to extend her time spent appreciating the view. “By the bones of my lord, it is truly beautiful.”
She wasn’t exaggerating, the city seemed to have been carved out of the upper portion of the plateau, and as they drew closer, her sharp eyes detected clear indications that some of the city was carved into the outside of the plateau itself.
“How big is it…?” Nua asked as she tried to figure that out for herself.
“That isn’t the only one.” Kaiji said with a sense of pride despite earlier general denigration of the city, “There are two smaller ones beyond there in smaller lakes where food production takes place. If you were to walk from the largest to the most distant and smallest, it would take you about an hour.”
“How do they get resources up there?” Nua asked the practical question, and Kaiji gave an indulgent smile to her mistress.
“My lady, Da’nak is almost entirely self sufficient. Demon-elves are hardy enough that we could survive most weather conditions completely naked if we had to, not that we would enjoy it. But our food is grown there, and most families have their own private miniature garden as well as a standard part of their residences. What little is imported is raised through platforms lowered by chains. Even the Tlalmok Empire would have trouble taking that city.”
Nua detected a hint of pride in her servant’s voice, and pointedly reminded her, “It will be mine as well.”
“Command me, and I will help you take it. You come first, my lady.” Kaiji said and bowed her head deeply.
As they drew closer, and the roar of water crashing into the lake below grew louder, she also got a closer look at the plateau itself, and it was enough to make her think it had been raised by magic. The flowing wide stone was bedecked with many colors as if some master painter had come along and decided that it made for a marvelous canvas, at the same time, she also saw hints of green sprouting up from the tops of the city itself. ‘Gardens. Kaiji was not joking… Da’nak is an impressive place. I hope I don’t have to destroy it. But if I do… how do I do that?’
It was a question she was asking herself all the way to the lake where a series of piers dotted the edge where small round coracle boats waited with bored looking demon-elves standing in the center of each one waiting for passengers.
When they were perhaps a three minute ride away, Kaiji darted her hand out to grasp the shoulder of her mistress. Nua stopped her horse with a sharp tug on the reins, followed quickly by Sado. The horses whinnied in protest, but any question died on Nua’s lips at Kaiji’s grave expression.
“Please… please be careful, mistress. I will not accept losing you here.” Kaiji begged and squeezed the hand that remained on Nua’s shoulder. “And that goes for you too, Sado… I didn’t spend all that time looking after you to see you end up being tossed off the walls of Da’nak like a rotted fish.”
“No… not to worry, I don’t plan on picking any fights.” Nua replied and patted Kaiji’s thigh.
Sado rolled his eyes, “You worry too much, Kaiji, everything will be fine.”
“Somebody has to worry… I adore you both… but you’re both bad at it.” She smiled at their sheepish looks, and pointed to a building near the docks, “Come along, the stables are there, we’ll store the horses, and I will show you the place of my birth.”