Dawn came. People stepped out of their homes, cautiously at first, and saw Talepolis still standing. Banners of black and blue fluttered in the wind in place of the black and brown of Aghram. Oni soldiers kept watch from the walls and streets. They chatted jovially with their human and oni comrades in spite of their horns and inhumanity. For several hours, as the sun lazily made its way into full view, the residents of the city took in a morning that they thought would never come. They were alive.
They cheered, but not for our victory. That fact must have dumbfounded many of the soldiers as they drank their coffee during their morning shift. No, the people cheered the appearance of Imperial banners and Imperial uniforms where they had expected ashes and destruction. The night prior, they had cowered from barbarians. Now they knew that this was internal politicking of the Empire, whatever was sticking out of some of the soldiers’ foreheads.
Maybe they weren’t truly safe. Maybe another invasion would come. But today was just another day. At least it would be once they finished their celebration and went back home.
As I watched from one of the citadel’s balconies, I couldn’t help but admire the orderliness of the people pouring back out to the sprawl. There was another mass of people at the rear of the city, as those who had fled into the mountains returned. A mass of carts, laden down with goods and foodstuffs, trailed out into the foothills. I’d exempted all imported goods from taxes for the day but the guards still inspected all the carts entering the city. Hopefully they weren’t chasing bribes from the merchants.
I realized that it was about time to actually handle my newfound duties as this city’s ruler. Glancing behind me, I saw the patiently waiting figure of Legislator’s Jared’s chief aide. I sighed. Taking up my duties meant I had to hold court—or as close to it as I cared to get.
“Tell him that I will hold a closed court, purely for military affairs. Consider this to be a standing session for the next week or so,” I said, calling on my childhood education and what I had observed in my knighthood. I had always hoped this knowledge would never be useful.
“Of course, Your Grace,” the aide replied with a bow before he left. He referred to me as a duke, a title I had effectively given up through rebellion. It said much that he still used it. Was this a sign of how I was going to rule? Would people pretend that I was still part of the Rogistran Empire?
I began my slow descent to the throne room. If the legislator had talent, then he would already have wrangled together everybody who mattered. He would have pulled them from their safe rooms and barracks once the order to surrender came from the citadel. Now all he had left to do was cull the ranks of advisers down to who I needed to deal with. My head throbbed at the idea of dealing with this mess of a city. I wanted to avoid the minutiae for as long as possible.
Delegation was a privilege of the rich and powerful. I was damn well going to make good use of it.
“Not dressing up, sir?” Terry asked me, matching my stride as I passed him. “You haven’t even cleaned your armor. Beard looks a bit burnt, too.”
I glared at him. He grinned in return. Behind him, the half dozen knights that acted as my bodyguards did their best to keep a straight face.
“Keep that up and I’ll demote you,” I said in a low voice.
“You know he takes his facial hair seriously, Terry,” one of the other knights muttered, shaking his head at the shocked look on Terry’s face.
A small troop of soldiers and aides picked up behind me on my way to the throne room. It gave me an excuse to move slowly enough for the legislator to set things up. I had a few chats with familiar faces. I wasn’t putting things off, not at all.
Eventually, I found myself in the throne room. Terry and the knights stood guard around one set of entrances. Yasno’s and Hish’s oni were at the others. Somebody had forced Hish’s unit into a uniform this morning. I noted that Hish and her oni looked a little more scarred and beaten than most of my soldiers.
Legislator Jared beamed at me from beside the throne, his balding head and plentiful golden jewelry gleaming in the bright light of the room. Things were so settled here that I wondered if I had tarried too long. Other than my own officers, there were less than a half dozen attendees: two grim-faced military officers in Imperial and Aghram uniforms and crests, a bored-looking dwarf no doubt wishing he was back in his foundry, a sorceress, and a teenager whose uniform cut so close to his body that it would probably explode overnight when he had his next growth spurt.
“Did Otwin bleed out his administration, or am I missing something, Legislator?” I asked, striding over to the throne. I gave it a considering look.
The sorceress spoke first. A blatant breach of protocol, and the legislator made no effort to hide his irritation. “For all the problems Marshal Otwin caused, blood and thralls have not been part of them.”
That caught me off guard. “No thralls?”
“He brought his own. I understand your soldiers separated them while taking the citadel,” she continued.
I exchanged a glance with Ilsa. The sorceress seemed a little too naive for my liking.
“Grand Magister Farrier is correct,” Ilsa said, her lips pursed. “However, we are still undertaking routine checks of all individuals known to have been in contact with Otwin. Although he may be dead and his thralls freed, other vampires may have been with him. We won’t risk any thralls sabotaging us from the inside.”
The two women exchanged glares. A grand magister was the highest-ranking title for a mage in the Empire, save for the archmages. Farrier was head of a tower but also likely one of the most respected mages in the city. For her to be challenged by a mere military mage did her pride no good.
“It’s standard military protocol in the Empire, Grand Magister. No disrespect is intended,” I intervened. “We checked for thralldom on every member of the royal court in my time there. Vampires are not to be underestimated.”
Farrier bowed in response to my words. “As you say, Your Grace. The mages of Talepolis shall assist.”
Coughing, the legislator answered my original question. He also pointedly directed me to sit in the throne that was normally reserved for the prince or, presumably, whoever the head of the province was. The governor? I had yet to hear the new titles of the Empire. It mattered little.
“The… change of power led to many experienced hands moving onto a new future. Those who remain are largely process-oriented. They are better suited to managing affairs in the city at large rather than in court, Your Grace,” the legislator said. “New future,” “process-oriented,” “managing affairs”—if only I had the tongue for such speech, which said so much while also sounding so very alien.
I could at least understand the political speech he was using, even if it would never slide off my tongue as easily as it did off the legislator’s. The administration of the princedom was inherently political, given how integrated it was with the court. The purge had deposed not just the princes and emperor, but also a large number of political figures. That left very few people who knew how to run the court. The new rulers had removed the political element but the talent was collateral damage.
The surviving part of the administration comprised the people who did the real work: administering taxes, running the markets, helping the nobles and merchants in day-to-day matters, writing reports, and other such boring things. These people could tell me the size of a harvest or how many weapons we could produce in a week. But one didn’t ask them to make any decisions. Blank stares would be the response if I asked them what weapons we should be producing from the foundries.
A shame. The talent necessary to run courts and make difficult decisions was rare, even if those people did have egos large enough to make it difficult to squeeze more than two of them into the same room.
Was this why a marshal was running the province? Otwin had been a military figurehead but had run the province. Why was there no governor? No wonder he had been having such a hard time dealing with both me and the t
roubles farther south.
I wondered if the Empire had rotted more than I had previously guessed. There was scarcely a member of any court in the capital who could not be considered politically aligned. Everything was political there. If the conspirators purged everybody in the capital, then it would explain why the response to my rebellion had been so anemic. A bureaucracy was nothing without bureaucrats, and the Empire was the largest bureaucracy. It was like trying to run an army without officers. Not even the greatest general could command every soldier by himself.
I hoped that what I had left of the administration in Talepolis wasn’t completely useless.
“So, this is our administrator then?” I cocked an eyebrow at the uniformed teenager.
“Yes, Your Grace. Harold Farrow, Your Grace. I will do my best to provide whatever advice is necessary for the good of the Empire,” the teen said, slapping his chest in a military salute. The Aghram officers grimaced at the show. Civilians weren’t supposed to salute, even if I did hold both military and civilian titles.
This could be fun. “The Empire, you say. What if I said I don’t care for the Empire?”
The officers gasped. Everybody else seemed unsurprised, even the legislator.
“Then I shall serve the city and whatever you build, sir. Glory to the conquered and the conqueror, as the kaisers once said,” the teen barked, staring dead ahead.
Laughter filled the room. It took me a moment to realize it was my own. “Very well then. Keep on, Administrator. It’s been some time since I’ve heard somebody talking positively about the time before the Decline.” After all, the warmongering kaisers weren’t exactly popular.
I looked around the room, then to the legislator, who nodded at me. With a great sigh, I sat on the throne. Whatever my title would be, I was competing with the Empire in terms of strength. That meant I was claiming the throne in all ways but being crowned emperor or prince. The authority was necessary right now.
“Legislator, I have several matters to handle for now. The first are reports on what has transpired since the city was taken. The second is the rapidly approaching army of Marshal Lyria of Taranth. The third is about the usage of the foundries. Anything else?” I said, dispensing with whatever court formalities there probably were. Many, no doubt. The legislator shook his head in response to my question.
Yasno was first. He stepped up, his armor having been cleaned, unlike mine, and read off his usual detailed notes. No doubt he and Aaron had been sharing them earlier.
“Damage overall is minor. The outer wall sustained serious damage only to one gatehouse. The citadel is unharmed. Almost all buildings within the city haven’t even been scratched. The fires we set were put out without incident, besides some burnt foliage and charred roads.”
There was a rather loud cough from one of the officers, the one in the Aghram uniform. He gave the oni a reproachful look. “That report is accurate but leaves out two things.”
“There’s a bloody great hole in the inner wall,” the other officer yelled. He wasn’t a local; his accent placed him from Taranth.
“Yes, that’s one. I was referring more to the loss of life among the defenders,” the Imperial officer said.
“I was getting to that,” Yasno said, his face still blank. “The damage seemed more important, and the hole is rather obvious.”
“You made it,” somebody muttered.
“We did, and it will need to be patched somehow. This week,” I said, leaning my head on one fist. “Yasno, continue.”
He nodded, looking back at his notes. The other officers did not look mollified, but they remained quiet.
It took longer than I would have liked to go through the full report. The officers continued to interrupt. There were more dead than I had expected. I suspected that was due to the sheer violence we had been forced to use but left this unvoiced. The defenders had thought barbarians were going to burn their city to the ground. Now I controlled the city and was acting like an Imperial general with some nonhumans under him. The circumstances had changed but reality hadn’t. Those soldiers would have to remain dead.
The tension that had caused this violence would not go away instantly even if everybody now knew better. The behavior of the two officers made this clear. They were here, clear and belligerent. This was the second transfer of power in under a year. There could be a third. That fact was escaping the soldiers. They were merely soldiers, after all. I had killed a great many of them last night, and they were bitter.
So trust was not a thing I could easily lend the locals. Fortunately, I did not really have to. Most of Talepolis’s soldiers were of poor quality relative even to an average Imperial regiment. Ordinarily, the elites carried the battle and everybody else contributed by maintaining formation and following orders. I didn’t even trust these soldiers to manage that.
“Your soldiers are tired, wounded, and confused about what is happening. Furthermore, they are in a very different situation than what they have been trained for,” I said, rubbing my beard as I considered my words carefully. “There will be another great siege shortly. They will contribute, but it is training that they need. A lot of it. My soldiers have gone through it. Most soldiers in the Imperial military do as well. No magister-general will accept soldiers without a certain level of training.
“Until we start putting Talepolis’s soldiers through more rigorous drills, I don’t think it’s worth risking their lives against veteran soldiers again. We saw the results last night.”
My officers all nodded. As did everybody else in the hall, save for the two local officers. The pair watched everybody else in the room side against them. They seemed to realize that the crushing defeat they had received on the battlefield last night was not to be repeated and reluctantly nodded in agreement.
With a single clap of my hands, I moved on to the next item on the agenda.
“We have a week. Maybe a day or two more,” Miya said, frowning. “Our scouts are pulling back rapidly to avoid the enemy cavalry and dragons. It’s clear that Lyria will be here shortly.”
“She’s not slowing down?” I asked. The mood in the room turned grim. For Talepolis, Lyria’s arrival had been a beacon of light until my victory.
“The opposite. She is no longer spending time burning land. Instead, she is marching directly for the city. She even decamped overnight while we were still short of the inner wall, according to our scouts.”
I clicked my tongue. So she had already decided that I was going to take the city soon enough. Or perhaps I was overestimating her intelligence. Perhaps it was her hatred driving her. The timing might be a coincidence.
Looking around the room, I was alone in that thought. The looks of shock on the locals’ faces told me they had not been communicating with Lyria. That meant nothing, as she had access to the spy networks of the mystic foxes and didn’t need to rely on ordinary intelligence-gathering methods. Those fluffy-tailed nuisances were everywhere. Illusion magicks powered by spiritual techniques made them nearly impossible to find. They even had specialized communications that did not rely on magetalk. I had a contact who could help me with them, but he went dark not long before the emperor was deposed.
After this siege, I needed to enhance my intelligence network. Relying on an old contact who might have been eliminated to facilitate the assassination of the emperor was not wise.
Finally, I looked at the dwarf in the room. He had ignored us the entire time, hands behind his back. He had a red beard that came down to his chest, silver and brass jewelry interwoven in it, as was typical for dwarves, and muscles that bulged from his plain white overalls.
“Overseer Malenko, I take it you have no issues in working the foundries around the clock for a week,” I said.
“Hoh? And what’s your overtime policy? How do you make sure people don’t fuck things up while hammering swords bleary-eyed?” he boomed back at me with his arms crossed. “I’m the one responsible for ensuring the finest foundries outside dwarven hands stay runnin
g for another century.”
“Another century?” I said with a raised eyebrow. “Getting a bit ahead of yourself. I’ll liquor you up if you like, but it’s your problem to keep them going. Last I checked, dwarven foundries don’t stop.”
“Dwarven ones don’t. Human ones do.”
“I’ll hammer the stuff myself if I have to, you realize,” I said, crossing my arms in return at him.
We stared at each other from across the room. A pair of muscle-bound brutes of completely different stations and races, one in armor and the other in overalls, glared each other down. The rest of the court stared in disbelief and the legislator had difficulty picking his jaw off the ground. Silence reigned.
Moments passed.
Chuckles broke the silence, then laughter. Uproarious laughter. Malenko’s voice roared out, his eyes closed and mouth wide open as he burst into open peals of laughter. It had been a long time since I heard him laugh so much.
“You probably could. Runes, you’re making some dragon-slaying stuff now? I’m guessing your current set is all about demons and oni, given you’ve been grinding them into paste up north for as long as Talepolis has been a city,” Malenko said once he calmed down. He looked at the dumbfounded faces around him. “Calm down, you children. I’m a dwarf. Who do you think taught this fool how to smith those runes?”
“Your master, you blithering old fool,” I spat.
Malenko pointed a stubby finger at me. “I definitely remember teaching you a thing or two along the way.”
Waggling my finger in response, I said, “It’s rude to point fingers at your elders.”
“Don’t elder me, old man.”
Eventually, Ilsa stopped our bickering. It was safe to say that the foundries were good to operate for the week. Malenko was good people, although it was surprising to see him still hanging around here after so many decades, given he was at the age to be at the apex of his talent. Dwarves talented in smithing and crafts rarely remained above ground in the Working, the second-last phase of dwarven life where they toiled away to contribute to society. Dwarves had five codified phases of life they steadily worked through and Malenko was deviating from them.
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