Tarrin Kael Firestaff Collection Book 3 - Honor and Blood by Fel ©

by James Galloway (aka Fel)

  "Allia told me that you probably wouldn't answer if I tried, but I just couldn't help myself," Keritanima confessed. "I've missed you so much, I just couldn't go another day without hearing your voice."

  "I've missed you too, Kerri." The sandstorm was almost on top of them, and it was getting bigger, stronger, and nastier every moment. "Sister, I have to go. There's a huge sandstorm bearing down on me, and I have to get to some shelter before I get buried in sand. I'm in a pretty dangerous place, so please don't contact me first. Let me call you. You may give me away when I'm trying to hide from something I'd rather not face."

  "Well, alright, but I'm not used to taking orders from a commoner," Keritanima teased.

  "Say that again when we're face to face," Tarrin retorted.

  "I'm not that stupid, my brother," she laughed in reply. "Go find someplace safe, and I'll be waiting to hear from you. Be well, my brother, and be safe. I love you."

  "I love you too, Kerri," he said quietly, then he let go of the amulet before he stayed longer than was safe for him.

  It wasn't as bad as he thought. He stood there for a moment, looking the fury of the desert in the face, and all he could feel was...contentment. He had heard from his dear sister, a sister he hadn't seen in a very long time. And despite his fear that it would make him feel worse, it had the entirely different effect. Now, he felt, whole. He knew that even though great distance separated him from his sisters, they were as close as his heart. Their love was with him, and sometimes, that was all that mattered.

  Throwing the scarf given to him by the girl in Sargon over his face, he let Sarraya snuggle into his hood, pulled the cloak around him, and started towards one of the Goddess' Fingers, a shelter from the howling winds approaching him. He padded into the Desert of Swirling Sands, one of the most dangerous regions in the world, with nothing but high hopes and expectations. He knew that it would be a hard trial, that his optimism would soon die away, but that was the future. And the Cat did not worry about the future.

  Now was all that mattered. And at that moment, Tarrin was content.

  To: Title EoF

  Chapter 5

  If anything could have changed the mood in the room, that was it.

  Keritanima took her hand off the silver amulet around her neck, blowing out a sigh of the most profound relief. A smile graced her muzzle, the first smile since the day she took the throne, a smile that came from the heart. It was the one thing that she truly needed to do, with all the insanity that was going on in Wikuna, one of the few pleasures she could afford herself at the moment. Those with her in her inner sanctum, the ultimate privacy of her bedchamber, became visibly relaxed. Of course, Binter and Sisska, Miranda and Azakar knew her well, so they understood just how important it had been for her to contact her brother and sister. It was something that she needed to do to take her mind off the issues confronting her.

  It was also something that she'd been meaning to do for a while. With the battle for the throne over twenty days ago, she should have been contacting them that night after putting down her father's hasty rebellion. But one thing led to another, problems piled up on her desk, and she'd been sidetracked by the astounding amount of work that had inundated her since presenting the nobility with the document that would hamstring their power.

  And that had been her main headache. Wikuni nobles being what they were, they accepted the constitution with graceful smiles, read it, then immediately threw it out the window and began plotting ways to either get around it, invalidate it, or even get rid of Keritanima and put a monarch on the throne that wouldn't change the order of things. This, Keritanima had expected. She just didn't expect it from every noble house. Even the weakest of them were beginning to look for ways to put obstacles in Keritanima's path. The only houses that weren't causing problems were house Eram, since it only had two members and she totally controlled her sister, and house Mation. Praki Mation was absolutely terrified of Keritanima, and would do absolutely nothing to bring her wrath down on her. What seemed like a personal insult was that Sheba was doing it too! Over the twenty days, Sheba and Keritanima had more or less buried the hatchet. Had even nearly become friends. But now the former pirate was doing the same thing everyone else was doing, and that hurt the Queen more than a little bit.

  Their roadblocks had been both subtle and blatant. Noble ships suddenly clogged all the harbors in northeastern Wikuna, strangling trade. The commoners that Keritanima had invited to help with the transition were harassed on the streets, misdirected, blockaded in their homes by agents of the nobles, and a few of them even assassinated. Nobles were continuously late to those meetings, forcing endless delays and changes in plans. And Keritanima had it on good authority from Jervis that many of the nobles had met among themselves, and were cooperating. And that they were attempting to hire every mercenary, sellsword, and two-bit footman they could find. If they couldn't convince Keritanima to give up on her idea of a Republic, they were more than willing to fight her over the throne.

  This infuriated the new Queen of Wikuna, infuriated her in a way that few things could. Her entire goal right now was to return to Sennadar, return to her brother and sister and be a family again, to help them in their mission for the Goddess of the Sorcerers. The nobles were delaying her wishes, and they should have learned by now that getting in Keritanima's way was a very unhealthy thing to do. She may have given away a portion of her own power, but she was still Queen of Wikuna, and her power was nothing to be dismissed.

  But it shocked her that the nobles would be willing to take it to the ultimate level, civil war. If they'd just read the damn thing! Read it and understand it, see the opportunities for prosperity that rested within the pages! By surrendering some of their power and paying taxes, they would get the opportunity to take their house fortunes and quadruple them within twenty years. But they were so stubborn! All they could see was that the radically aligned new Queen was taking away their status as true nobles, as someone above the common man. They were so arrogant!

  Perhaps that was her error. She expected them to be receptive to change, and that simply wasn't going to happen. They wanted to keep their power, to keep their feeling of control, to keep their arrogance. They wanted things to stay the same. They didn't want to take a chance on something that they didn't understand, didn't want to understand. They wanted to stay in the closet.

  Well, that was tough. She couldn't leave Wikuna without the Republic, because she couldn't trust the nobles not to mess things up in her absence. If she left before then, odds were there would be a new monarch on the throne before her ship reached Sennadar, and they'd be sending assassins by the score to eliminate her. Then they'd just tell the people that Keritanima's ship sank, and that would be that. She was the Queen now, and she took that responsibility seriously. She wouldn't leave Wikuna at the mercy of a new dynasty of bloodthirsty tyrants.

  Keritanima leaned back in her chair at her desk, as Binter and Sisska played chess on the chest Keritanima kept at the foot of her bed, Jervis watched the battle in keen interest, and Azakar helped Miranda wind a ball of yarn, sitting in a new rocking chair in the corner. Binter and Sisska never changed, from their kilts to their leather harnesses, but Jervis' attire had improved since coming into the new Queen's inner circle. He wore a spotless gray waistcoat that matched his fur, and his everpresent pocketwatch now had a gold chain holding it to his vest. Miranda still wore daring dresses, but she still continued to wear simple dresses of her own making rather than jewelled or extravagant gowns favored by the nobility. Today's dress was a cream-colored dress with a white sash, with a neckline that quite nearly reached the sash. For Miranda, it was an "older" dress, a dress she wore when showing others that she wasn't as young as she looked. Few young girls could possess Miranda's impressive attributes. Miranda did not let others forget that she was a commoner, but she also didn't let them forget that she was a beautiful young woman either. Azakar wore a simple brown doublet and leather breeches, the doublet carrying an embroi
dered Royal crest over his heart, clothing that would easily go under his armor if he had to quickly don it. The crest marked him as a Royal servant, and it gave him protection and authority within the Palace. Miranda had been dabbling in knitting lately, so her everpresent shoulder bag was now filled with ivory knitting needles and balls of yarn of every color.

  Yes, that certainly seemed to be the problem. The problem here was that she was the only one trying to abide by the new rules. She had been acting under the powers she afforded herself by the new system, when nobody else was. The Parliament was not yet formed, and in reality it was Keritanima making all the decisions. She had been doing it to get a feel for it, to get an understanding of what she had to do to make it work. The nobles weren't playing by the new rules, because they didn't want to have any part of the game.

  If nobody else was going to play by the rules, then it would be silly for her to do it alone.

  Yes. She could see that if she couldn't persuade the nobles with honey and sweetcakes, then she would stuff it down their throats with a ramrod. If they wanted to play one last game of political chicken, she would be more than willing to oblige them.

  A plan already began to form. The nobility ruled because they had titles and money. All she had to do was take away what made them different from the common man, and give them a real reason to fear her. It was very simple, very effective, and it would probably solve all her problems inside twenty minutes once she began.

  "Jervis," she said in a commanding tone.

  "Yes, your Majesty?" he replied immediately, looking up from the game.

  "Summon Mayor Trent. Also, ask sashka if he would be so kind as to talk with me."

  Nobody commanded sashka. Keritanima was well aware of that. The Vendari weren't truly arrogant, but if Keritanima ordered the subject king of Vendaka, it would be an affront to his honor. Damon Eram had made that fatal error, had alienated the Vendari, by whose suffrance a Wikuni monarch actually ruled. Keritanima had no intentions of following in her father's footsteps.

  "I'll arrange it. What time would you like to meet them?"

  "As soon as is convenient for sashka," she replied. "Here."

  Jervis raised a brow. If she was going to summon them to her private chambers, then what she had to discuss with them was something that she didn't want known.

  "I know that look," Miranda grinned. "You're cooking up something, aren't you, Kerri?"

  "I'm tired of the noble houses trying to sabotage things," she said with a fret. "I'm going to deal with them."

  "That sounds final," Azakar noted.

  "That'll be their decision, Zak," she told him casually. "How they want to play the game is their choice, but they have to live with their own rules."

  Miranda giggled. "Uh oh, that is final," she said, winking in Keritanima's direction. "You want help?"

  "No, I've already wrapped this plan up, Miranda. It's pretty simple. Thanks for the offer."

  "With your Majesty's permission, I'll see to the summons," Jervis said.

  "Go ahead, Jervis. Try to get them here by lunch, but don't press sashka."

  "You misunderstand sashka, your Majesty. If I tell him you wish to speak with him, he will drop everything and come to you."

  "Probably, but I'm not going to order him."

  "Order him if you want, your Majesty. He bows to your crown, so he will follow your orders willingly. Don't let the fact that he literally put you on that throne cloud reality."

  Keritanima made a face at the rabbit. She never forgot that it was sashka that put her on the throne, and that was probably why she always treated him with deferrence. Mainly because she was more than aware that sashka could take her right off of it. Unlike her father, Keritanima had a full grip on the true political situation in Wikuna.

  "I don't like ordering friends, Jervis," she lied to cover the truth.

  "Spoken like a true Queen," Jervis smiled, then he bowed and made his way out.

  "Care to enlighten us, Kerri?" Miranda asked.

  "It's simple, Miranda," he told her, turning in her seat to face them. "I'm going to give the nobles a taste of what they're doing to me."

  "Clever," she applauded.

  "Thank you. All I need to do is give a choice between a Republic and total head-crushing oppression."

  "A good plan, Majesty," Sisska said. "But your own Constitution will not permit it."

  "It hasn't been ratified yet, Sisska," Keritanima said smugly. "Until Parliament ratifies it as law, it's only law if I want it to be. I've only been following my own rules to show the nobles that I'm serious about it. But if they don't want to follow the rules, then I see no reason why I have to either."

  Miranda gave Keritanima a strange look, then literally fell out of her chair laughing. "Beautiful!" she managed to wheeze. "She's going to make them ratify the Constitution, if only to save themselves from her!"

  "Simple, isn't it?" Keritanima chuckled with a wicked glint in her eyes.

  Miranda continued to laugh, kicking the floor with the heels of her feet in glee. "Beautiful! Beautiful! I can't wait to see the faces of the house leaders when they realize that they're causing their own suffering!"

  "That's what you're going to do?" Azakar asked. "Scare them?"

  "Zak, I'm going to fix it so they demand that the Constitution be ratified," she said, flexing her fingers in an ominous manner. "Part of the Constitution is designed to protect against tyranny. I'm going to give them a tyrant to motivate them."

  Azakar looked at her, then he suddenly laughed. "That's evil, Kerri."

  "Thank you. I try."

  "Perhaps putting her on the throne was a bad decision, lifemate," Binter noted to Sisska.

  "I think not. At least we can put her over our knee and spank her if she oversteps herself," Sisska replied seriously.

  Keritanima gave her Vendari bodyguards a wild look. Humor! Humor from Vendari! Again! What was going on with those two?

  "Wait a minute, Kerri. If you're going to be a tyrant, won't it affect the commoners?" Azakar asked.

  "I'll make a politician of you yet, Zak," Keritanima winked. "It could, but it's not going to come to that. If I do things right, everything will be settled tomorrow. You forget that I don't have to carry through on my threats. All I have to do is make them. I'm sure that the nobles will understand that if they don't stop interfering, my threats will come true."

  "What if they don't?"

  "Well, then things will get messy. I'm going to plan for that, so the nobles don't take it out on the commoners. I won't let my people suffer over what's going to be a personal spat between the Queen and her nobles."

  "They'd do that to their own people?"

  "Zak, to a noble, a commoner is, at best, only a tool, or at worst an expendable asset. They don't see them as people, and that's what I intend to change. Unlike most nobles, I trust the commoners alot more than I do the nobility."

  "That sounds like Yar Arak," he replied. "All that suffering and pain just so the rich could get richer. I never thought I'd see that here."

  "It's not as obvious here, but it does happen," she replied seriously. "But I think you'll see things changing in Yar Arak."

  "What, Tarrin wiped it off the map before he left?" Azakar asked in a cold tone. He had been a slave there, so his opinion of the empire was a very sour one.

  "No, they have a new Empress," she replied. "Tarrin killed the Emperor."

  "He didn't!" Miranda gasped.

  "He did," she affirmed. "Jervis got those reports two weeks ago, but he wanted confirmation. Tarrin killed the Emperor, and it seems that he destroyed large swaths of the city to boot. I can only imagine what drove him to that," she said, closing her eyes and feeling a bit of pain for her brother. "He killed thousands, Miranda. Thousands." She opened her eyes and sighed. "Anyway, after all that, he took the Book of Ages from the Emperor's wife, who it turns out happens to be a Demoness."

  Azakar gaped at Keritanima, but Miranda put a finger to her chin in thought. "T
hat's why he was so destructive. If I remember my mythology right, no mortal can harm a Demon. To fight something like that, he'd have to let everything go and face it with everything he has."

  "Most likely," Keritanima agreed with a somber expression. "Anyway, that Demoness decided to come out of hiding. She's ruling openly now."

  "That's supposed to make things better?" Azakar asked acidly. "The largest empire in the world, ruled by a Demon?"

  "Of course it will," Keritanima said. "Jervis' initial reports out of Arak are favorable. This Empress Shiika has started her rule by trying to fix the mess caused by all the old Emperors. I'll bet that the Demoness has been the wife of the last ten or twelve Emperors, and her domination of him made him listless and not fit to rule. And that caused the degeneration of the Empire. Now she's trying to fix that. She's rebuilding the destroyed areas, and she's trying to do something about the armies of homeless and poor."

  "Killing them off?" Azakar asked with a rather nasty look.

  "Putting them to work," she replied. "Anyone can work a day's labor and receive a hot meal, a good day's pay, and a bed for the night, at the Crown's expense. It's a good way to get started, I have to admit. Shiika is expanding the workforce to repair the damage and giving her poorest a chance to dig out of their holes. The Imperial family is rumored to have more money than any kingdom but Wikuna, so she can certainly afford it. She may be a Demon, but I see already that this one is smart. She's already identified her most pressing problems, and she's moving to correct them. I think Yar Arak is in capable hands."

  "It just seems unnatural," Azakar complained.

  "From what Jervis has told me so far, so is Shiika," Keritanima told him. "She's not your usual Demon. She seems to lack the viciousness and pure evil common in Demonkind, but I wouldn't doubt that she's not a very nice girl if you get her mad. I guess she just proves that anyone can be different from their kind, even a Demon."

  "Who would have guessed that a Demon could be something other than evil?" Miranda mused.