“And this is my royal engineer, Osyrus Ward.” The emperor motioned to the old man behind him. “He is very excited to meet you.”
The old man wet his lips with his tongue. “Tell me, exile, how long ago did that injury occur?” He pointed to the place where Bershad’s collarbone had broken the skin. The moss had rubbed away during their journey to Kira, revealing the pink skin beneath.
“What do you care?”
“It appears to be several months old,” Osyrus Ward said. “But I believe it happened much more recently. Two weeks? Maybe three?”
“Fuck off.”
Osyrus Ward smiled. “What do you use to speed up your healing process?”
Bershad felt his stomach turn.
Osyrus paused, lowered his voice. “Moss, perhaps?”
Bershad didn’t know what to do. He’d been asking people about unnatural healing for years and gotten nothing for it except idiot prophecies from backwater shamans. This was the worst possible time to finally meet someone who knew what was happening to his body.
“Do you know what the moss means?” Bershad asked.
Osyrus Ward smiled. Turned to the emperor. “That is all I need for now, Emperor. I know you have much to discuss with our guest. However, when you are done speaking with the exile, I would very much like to have some time alone with him.”
“That really depends on the exile,” the emperor said, keeping his eyes on Bershad. “That will be all, Osyrus. We’ll speak later.”
Osyrus Ward bowed even though nobody was looking at him. Instead of moving toward the door, he turned and walked to the wall of books. He lifted a latch hidden on the inside of a shelf. Something released deep inside the wall, then an entire shelf rolled to the side, revealing a winding staircase down. Osyrus went inside and disappeared just as the books slipped back into place.
“The man loves that passageway,” the emperor said. “Took a year to build it and cost a fortune, but before my father died he told me that keeping Osyrus Ward happy was the key to a long, healthy rule of Balaria. I have found that to be accurate advice thus far.”
Bershad shifted a bit, but didn’t say anything.
“That’s not what we’re here to talk about, though,” Mercer continued. “We’re here to talk about your presence in my palace.”
“I can explain that, actually,” Bershad said. “That Papyrian widow got me drunk and drugged me back in Almira. I woke up in a bathroom of this palace and was just wandering around looking for the exit. Total misunderstanding.”
There was a pause. Mercer’s eyes didn’t move from Bershad’s face.
“You’re funny,” Mercer said, although he wasn’t smiling. “Under different circumstances we may have been good friends. You could have told me stories of your heroic endeavors while I served you expensive wine and tender meat. Maybe arranged for a servant girl to fuck you senseless before you passed out.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It does,” Mercer agreed. “It really does. But, under the current circumstances, I don’t see a living legend full of interesting stories. I don’t see the man who slew a Green Horn in Levenwood one morning, and then rode to Vermonth and killed a Thundertail that same afternoon. Nor do I see the young lord who got a bunch of innocent people killed in Glenlock Canyon and got himself exiled.” He paused, scratched at his beard—just under the spot where the scar lay almost hidden. “I see an intruder who murdered two of my sentries and then attempted to kidnap my brother’s bride-to-be, on the eve of her wedding, no less.”
“Well, to be fair, I was under the impression you assholes had kidnapped her first. This was meant to be a heroic rescue type of thing.”
Mercer seemed to consider that. “Nonetheless, we have a problem.”
“Yeah,” Bershad said. “We do.”
“There are essentially three options. Would you like to hear them?”
Bershad lifted his wrists until the iron locked. “It’s not like I can get up and walk out on you.”
Mercer nodded. “Option one. I cut off your head and send it back to Almira in a pinewood box. That’s the simplest option and”—he leaned forward, as if confiding a secret to a friend—“if we’re being honest here, that’s my preference.”
He waited for Bershad to react. Bershad just sat there.
“Option two. I turn you over to Osyrus Ward, who always has use for ‘live specimens,’ as he calls them. And the old man is particularly interested in you for some reason. Says he’s been keeping track of you for a very long time. So this is a tempting option as well. Like I said, keeping Osyrus happy is a good way to keep ruling Balaria.”
Again, Bershad said nothing. He tried not to let the notion that Osyrus could answer the questions that had plagued him for years—and he was waiting down a flight of stairs—distract him from the job at hand. One thing at a time.
Mercer released a weary sigh. “And option three. Truly, this is more my father’s idea than mine—he never could abide a wasted asset. Even from the grave he manages to influence me. Fathers are irritating that way, don’t you think?”
Another silence. Mercer dangled one arm across the back of his chair.
“Option three is I put you to use.”
“What, as a servant or something?”
Mercer stared at him. “No. Not as a servant or something.”
“Good. Because I don’t think I’d be so good at that. A cook, maybe I could manage. Rowan made a pretty decent stew and I picked up the ins and outs of it over the years—”
“Do you think I’m just going to let you walk out of here after what you tried to do?” Mercer interrupted. “You have lost. The fool’s errand that brought you here is worth less than the shit in your hair. Kira never wanted to leave in the first place.”
Bershad thought back to the look on Kira’s face when she rang that calling bell. It wasn’t fear or anger or contempt. It was conviction.
“How’d you know I was coming?” Bershad asked.
Mercer smiled. “What makes you ask that question?”
“A servant’s bell usually brings servants. Kira’s brought soldiers.”
“Ah.” Mercer steepled his hands. “I could tell you, but I think you can figure out the answer for yourself.”
Bershad thought about that. “Garwin survived the Red Skull attack at Argel.”
“Correct. The baron sent word from the rubble of his city as soon as you headed into the mountains. There wasn’t much reason to bother hunting you down when it was unlikely you’d survive the journey through the Razors. And if you did, I knew where you were headed. Right down to the room. I certainly applaud the feat, though. It was very well done.”
Bershad clenched his jaw—it pissed him off to be manipulated that easily. Made killing Mercer a lot more attractive. But before Bershad made his move, he wanted to be sure that Ashlyn was right about the man.
“What use for me did you have in mind?”
“The people of Almira love you. The Flawless Bershad. The Destroyer of Dragons. You’ve killed, what, fifty-two lizards? Fifty-three?”
“Sixty-seven,” Bershad said. “I’ve fallen behind on the tattoos.”
“Sixty-seven. How very impressive,” Mercer said, looking the opposite of impressed. “What would you say if I told you that I’ve developed a weapon that makes dragonslayers obsolete?”
“I’d say you’re delusional.”
“Far from it.” Mercer pointed to the map on the wall. “Do you see those red areas? Those are the last remaining dragon warrens in Balaria and her colonies.”
It was a similar map to the one Ashlyn had shown Bershad in her castle. Tanglemire was by far the largest red mark, but there were half a dozen smaller ones sprinkled throughout the Balarian colonies.
“Not many left,” Bershad said.
“Perhaps not, but Tanglemire is still massive. Far too large for a dragonslayer to wander in and accomplish anything besides a quick death. But I have designed a new kind of ballista that will make sho
rt work of the dragons who will soon be arriving for the Great Dragon Migration. The machines are reloaded with a pressurized charge rather than a hand crank, which allows them to kill a dragon every thirty seconds. I’ve built hundreds of them.”
“Where are they?” Bershad asked.
“Not far from here,” Mercer said.
Bershad looked at the map. There was a good highway leading from Burz-al-dun to the warren, but judging from the number of checkpoints marked on the map, it was a long journey. Midsummer was less than three weeks away.
“If they’re in the city, how are you going to move them across Balaria so quickly?”
“Ah, of course something like this would be impossible in your country. You would have needed to start moving the ballistas a year ago. But a straight, paved road can do wonderful things. Plus, there’s a royal wedding tomorrow. Quite the affair—ministers and generals have come from all over the empire to celebrate. And each of them brought a retinue of porters with them. After the wedding, I’ll update the porters’ seal codes so they can travel across the country and move the ballistas into position. Using a celebration for ulterior motives is hardly a unique idea among rulers.” He smiled to himself, as if that was the punch line to some private joke. “It is certainly a logistical undertaking, but my seals make it easy.”
“Why bother with ulterior motives and secrecy? Thought you had absolute control over your people and all that crap.”
“First, nobody has absolute control over anything,” Mercer said. “Second, killing the great lizards en masse has never been possible until now. The very notion is inconceivable to the people of Terra. I do not want to waste time convincing the small-minded bureaucrats of Balaria that this will work. They don’t need to understand my methods—they just need to execute my orders. In my experience, it’s more productive to simply demonstrate a paradigm shift of such magnitude. I used the same strategy with the seals.”
“You and those fucking seals,” Bershad said.
“You don’t like them?”
“They’ve caused some problems.”
“Well, seeing as you are an intruder in this country and this palace, that’s part of their job,” Mercer said. “My father developed the original apparatus, but he only envisioned them as a way to seal the Balarian border against resource-leeching foreigners, hence the name. Those early iterations only included a physical description and a fixed pattern of punched holes. Crude, but effective, so far as it went. But I saw their full potential. I updated the design to include a series of internal gears that rotate through multiple hole patterns in a specific sequence. You wouldn’t understand the particulars of the mechanism, but the result is a system for controlling travel privileges for every citizen of Balaria. I can adjust access to the different districts of the capital and—more relevant to this conversation—access to the highway checkpoints all through the country, anytime that I please.”
“You seem awfully proud of yourself.”
“It is my legacy.”
“What happens to your precious legacy when you die?” Bershad asked. “Or did you design a mechanism to prevent that, too?”
“The relentless passage of time is one of the few certainties in this life. Aeternita claims us all eventually. And while my younger brother Ganon certainly knows how to entertain the ministers, I sometimes fear he lacks the fortitude to carry on my work.” Mercer shrugged. “But I’ll address the consequences of my death when it becomes a more pressing issue.” He motioned to the sentries in the room. “As you can see, I’m quite healthy and well protected.”
Bershad grunted. If the emperor died in this room, the dragon cull died with him.
“It’s all very interesting,” Bershad said. “But it doesn’t sound like you need my help. Why tell me all of this when you’ve kept it a secret from your own people?”
“I don’t need your help to clear out Tanglemire.” Mercer licked his lips. “But there is one last place in this realm with an abundance of dragon warrens. I believe you are quite familiar with it.”
Bershad narrowed his eyes. “The Dainwood.”
“Yes. I want you to cross the Soul Sea and help me cull those warrens.”
“Not sure if you’ve heard, but King Hertzog and I aren’t on the best of terms.”
“Hertzog Malgrave is dead,” Mercer said. He paused to let that sink in. “He died of a lung ailment not long after you left Almira. Ashlyn Malgrave is the queen now.”
Bershad hesitated. “I’m not on the best of terms with her, either,” he lied. If the emperor knew how close he was to Ashlyn, or the reason she’d sent him here, the conversation would be over and a lot of swords would be drawn.
“No matter. If Ashlyn had accepted my marriage proposal she would have become the most powerful woman in Terra, but she has taken a different path. I do not expect her to rule Almira for very long.”
“You’re going to overthrow Ashlyn because she wouldn’t marry you?”
“I don’t have to overthrow her myself,” Mercer said. “The high lords of Almira are doing that for me. They just needed a little push. All I had to do was slip a disgruntled lord a name before I left your muddy country, and the mechanisms of politics and greed took over. That lord hired Garret the hangman to carve instability across your homeland. And Garret never leaves a job undone. In that way, he is one of the most reliable tools in Terra. His work has already put Ashlyn’s reign on the precipice of disaster. While we are talking in this room, she is under siege at Floodhaven. Cornered. Desperate. Out of options.”
Bershad frowned. He’d been imagining Ashlyn safe in her observatory this entire time, studying dragons and mapping out their migratory patterns. Instead, she’d taken control of a country that was halfway turned against her. The news was a shock.
“How do you know all of this?” Bershad asked.
“Ashlyn Malgrave isn’t the only person who can train a pigeon to cross the Soul Sea. After that, all you need is a literate pair of eyes on both coasts. And I have plenty of those.”
Bershad stayed silent. He wished Mercer was lying, but it didn’t seem like he was.
“After Ashlyn is deposed, Kira will have the strongest claim to the throne,” Mercer continued. “Who better to escort her back home than the most famous hero the realm of Terra has ever known? Hertzog may have hated you, but the other lords will embrace you, especially since the commoners love you so much. You can ensure a peaceful transition of power, and then you can ensure that Almira never needs to put another pair of blue bars on a man’s cheeks. After the dragons are gone, what would be the point? You can bring Almira into the modern age.”
“Modern age? Your country is nothing but desert between here and the border. Owning the world doesn’t mean anything if you’ve turned it to shit in the process.”
Mercer narrowed his eyes. “You sound just like her.”
“Who?”
“Ashlyn Malgrave. Droning on about the importance of preserving dragon populations.” Mercer waved a hand through the air like he was swatting away an annoying fly. “Meanwhile, her country is beset by disease, poverty, and rebellion. I cannot believe she could be so ignorant of the greater good. Did you know that only five in ten commoners born in Almira live to see their second summer? In Burz-al-dun, that number is nine in ten. There is no hunger in this city. No disease. Everyone has a job and everyone has a place. Even the lowliest pipe setter enjoys the luxuries of dragon oil on my streets and in their homes. Providing these comforts at the expense of some reptiles does not make me a villain.”
“You can sit here and tell yourself that you’re slaughtering the great lizards to keep your people comfortable, but we both know that’s a lie.”
“Is that so?” Mercer said, mouth tight.
“You’re doing it because you need more oil to stay in power. You’ve destroyed all the other warrens, and now you’re starting to panic because without the fancy lanterns and mechanical gates, your little system of control in Burz-al-dun might not work
so well. Might be your precious mechanism of control falls apart on you.”
“You cannot improve the world without control over it,” Mercer said. “Ashlyn Malgrave doesn’t understand that, which is why her city is under siege right now and Burz-al-dun is not.”
“Might be you’re right,” Bershad said. “But killing the dragons in Tanglemire will solve one problem and create a thousand more down the line. You’ll destroy Terra.”
Mercer smiled. “I won’t deny that the dwindling numbers of dragons has had an impact on my empire. There have been crop shortages in Lysteria. A grain famine in Ghalamar. And those damn monkeys went insane and tore apart the southern lands. But such is the cost of progress, and the oil I get from the Tanglemire cull will guarantee my dominion, but it will also open the doors to far greater advancements. Things you can scarcely imagine, exile. And I refuse to hunch down beneath the yoke of human plight and misery because I am afraid of disrupting the natural order of things. Burz-al-dun is a bastion of health and prosperity. A single, bright light in the dark. Don’t you want to see these achievements brought to Almira?”
“Not really.” Bershad shrugged. “I spent some time in your city. Not for me. So how about you take your third option and stick it up your ass?”
Mercer’s face twitched.
“I’d have thought you’d be uniquely sympathetic to eliminating the creatures that have caused you so much strife, but I don’t need to change your mind, exile. If you won’t help me, I will simply kill you and move forward with my plans.”
Bershad knew it would be safer to go along with the emperor’s plot for a while. Gain his trust, then snap his neck when the opportunity arose. But he’d never been much for subterfuge and deception. Or patience. He had a chance now. He was going to take it.
“Kill me then,” Bershad said. “Because I wouldn’t even help you up from your fucking chair.”
“Pity.” Mercer stared at Bershad with his eerie gray eyes. Behind him, the sun was casting an orange-gold sheen over the looming buildings of Burz-al-dun. “I had such hopes for you. But you and Ashlyn Malgrave are both clinging to an ancient world that will soon cease to exist. She will fail as the queen of Almira, just as you’ve failed your mission to rescue Kira.”
Blood of an Exile Page 39
