by Dante King
“Ayrun,” Lyra said sadly, pulling a necklace of precious stones from the pile. “I believe this belonged to Umbra, your dear wife…”
A blonde, stocky man pushed out of the crowd, his eyes filling with tears at the sight of the jewelry. “She… I gave that necklace to her on our first anniversary,” the man said, beginning to blubber.
“I am so sorry,” Lyra said, pulling him into an embrace. “We buried her outside a cave near the Kang River. Later, once all this is over, I’ll escort the families of the victims to the site so you can pay your respects, or move them to a family plot if you desire…”
The man was now crying too hard to listen to Lyra. His grief consumed him, and I felt a pang of hurt at the sight of his helplessness. I wished there was something I could have done to save his wife. I wish I’d killed Seth the moment I saw him. I’d known there was something off about him — and so had Hazel. I should have let her dispense justice the way she knew how.
An older woman stepped forward, tears streaming down her cheeks. Doubtless she had a missing family member she was concerned about as well. “My son, Symon, has been missing for a week,” she said, her voice a croak. “He went fishing down by the Kang River frequently. May I take a look?”
Together, she and Lyra rifled through the pile. More families gathered around, both eager to have closure and filled with dread to have their worst fears confirmed. As I watched, the old woman pulled a multicolored scarf from the pile and began to sob uncontrollably. I gathered it had belonged to Symon.
Most of the villagers were crying by now. This was a tight-knit group of families, constantly sticking their noses in each other’s business. During the good times that sort of thing could be annoying, but in the midst of tragedy there was nothing that soothed the hurt like having people close to you to share it with. I watched fathers holding sons, mothers consoling weeping daughters and friends doing the best they could.
I had to say something. “Good people,” I said, lifting my voice above the crowd as I climbed back onto the cart. I needed to be above them for this—on my soapbox, as it were. “As much as it pains me to say, the cultivator known as Seth was not a lone wolf. While apprehending him and laying down sentence, he confessed that his activities were known by the Hollow Frog Guild—and tacitly endorsed.”
A big man spit in the road. Citizens erupted with disgust, practically rending their garments in anguish. “Those monsters!” someone shouted. “There is a rot at the heart of the Hollow Frog Guild!”
“They’ve never done anything for us!” someone else agreed. “All they do is get fat off our hard work!”
“They killed my boy,” an old woman wailed. “They killed my boy!”
I swallowed hard, looking over the crowd. This was my moment.
“After dealing with this threat, I am now convinced that the Hollow Frog Guild no longer deserves their control of this province. For the crimes of corruption, abetting human trafficking and murder, they have lost their mandate! I hereby declare Guildmaster Ji guilty of these heinous offenses—and the sentence is death!”
The shocked crowd erupted into cheers. Until I heard them, I wasn’t fully convinced the common people were on my side—but this was a wave that could not be denied. Public support for “Clan Hyde” was at an all-time high, and with this devastating news spreading through the town, people were more than willing to work for a change in leadership.
“Wipe out the Hollow Frog Guild!” A man yelled, throwing his fist in the air. “Clan Hyde is the only Guild in this province! Clan Hyde!”
The crowd began to chant. “Clan Hyde! Clan Hyde! Clan Hyde!”
I couldn’t lie, it felt good to have a whole group of people shouting my name. I’d just declared war on the Hollow Frog Guild in the public square, and this town at least was completely in my corner. No doubt Jinshu would be as well, once Kim told the story of what had happened on the Kang River.
“Things are about to change in this province,” I told the excited crowd. “I will need each and every one of you to help me take control back from the Hollow Frog Guild. But when we do, I promise you—atrocities like the Silent Auction will be a thing of the past! No more slaves, no more murders.”
As Lyra continued handing out pieces of jewelry and clothes to the grieving families of the dead, I walked into the Hungry Herb Tavern. My group filed in behind me, the sound of cheering following us into the nearly empty common room. This place wasn’t my destination, however. We needed somewhere more private, and quiet.
The garden was perfect. Kij met us there, a surprised look on the barmaid’s face. She’d heard all that had just gone down outside.
“Governor Hyde,” she said, dropping into a smooth bow. I wanted to tell her that wasn’t necessary, but I also knew the girl wouldn’t hear of it. “Welcome home.”
Home. That felt damned good, too. “Have the girls put a couple of tables together in the garden,” I said. “We’re all famished—and we need to do some planning. I take it you heard my speech?”
Kij nodded fiercely. “It’s long overdue,” the barmaid said with a nod. “I hope you know me and the rest of the girls will do whatever it takes to bring the Hollow Frog Guild down, Eric.”
“I know. Make sure there’s plenty of food—we’re famished.” As if punctuating the statement, my stomach gave a very undignified rumble. Kij giggled at the sound.
Soon all of us were seated before a feast. The villagers graciously gave us our personal space, and the five of us tucked into rich platters of delicious food. Midway through the meal, the screen door slid back, and Lyra entered, looking as worn out emotionally as I’d ever seen her.
“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the one I’d saved next to me.
She took it with a nod. “Almost all the personal effects we took from the cave have been given back to families in the town,” Lyra said with a heavy sigh. “There’s a few pieces of jewelry we couldn’t match to anyone. They might have belonged to the cultivators Guildmaster Ji had Seth assassinate. They probably came from outside of the province.”
“You’ve done good,” I assured the redhead, filling her goblet of wine. “Damned good. Eat up, Lyra—we’ve got work to do.”
She did. For a time, the sounds of eating and drinking stilled any attempt at conversation. All of us were famished from our long journey—and for cultivators like myself, Anna and Hazel, the tiredness and hunger had more than a natural explanation. The more I ate, the better I felt, until the awful waves of nausea that had been tearing at me since the Kang River began to recede.
“So,” I said, wiping my face with a napkin. Around the table, the rest of the group had either finished eating or were slowing down, so now we could chat. “I just declared war on the Hollow Frog Guild.”
“Hell yes you did,” Anna purred, grinning at each of us in turn. “I am so ready to take the fight to those fuckers, baby!”
“I know. But we have to be smart about this,” I said, looking down at my hands. “It won’t be long before the Hollow Frog Guild knows we know about Seth’s murders. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve got a spy in the town. They could be riding to Guildmaster Ji right now to tell him to plan an attack.”
“We would notice someone leaving,” Lyra said with a frown. “This town is loyal, Eric. You can depend on that.”
I nodded. “Either way, we can’t go out there half-cocked with no plan. We need a strategy to take the Hollow Frogs down. Obviously we’re winning the war for the province’s hearts and minds, but that doesn’t make much of a difference if they’ve got superior firepower to ours. So… any ideas?”
With that, I opened the table for discussion. The group traded nervous glances, as if no one wanted to be the first person to voice an idea.
All except for Hazel, that is. “Kill Guildmaster Ji,” the blonde warrior said, resting a fist on the table. “Cut the head off of the snake and the body will rot. We travel directly to his hideout, sneak in under cover of night, and bathe h
im in his own blood.”
“Direct, simple, brutal,” Anna said, obviously impressed by the idea. “I like it!”
The idea held a definite appeal for me, as well. But I’d just warned the group about going off half-cocked. “I wish it was that simple,” I told Hazel, meaning it.
Hazel frowned. “I don’t see why it can’t be,” she retorted. Then she remembered the other details of our conversation in the cave, and the color drained from her face. “But I will yield to your wisdom, of course,” she said, bowing her head in a very un-Hazel like way. “After all, you are our leader.”
Anna’s jaw nearly hit the floor. “Who are you, and what the fuck did you do with Hazel?”
“Eric is right,” Lyra said wearily. “As much as I’d love for us to ride in, kill the bad guy and save the day, it’s not that simple. Guildmaster Ji’s fortress is the most heavily fortified area in our province. He has high-level cultivators guarding the walls day and night. Nothing escapes their gaze, and there are no gaps in their surveillance.” She smiled sadly at Hazel. “Trying to sneak in will only get you captured, or worse.”
Hazel looked like she wanted to argue, but my words rang in her ears. She needed this group more than we needed her—and she knew it, so she held her tongue and got with the program. “All right,” she said, hiding her displeasure with a big sip of wine. “Then what’s your plan?”
Lyra would have been within her rights to be offended by Hazel’s tone, but she let it roll off her back. “We start small. Work our way up to challenging Guildmaster Ji directly.” She turned around in her seat, clapping her hands once. “Kij! Bring it, please!”
The screen door slid open and Kij entered, carrying a rolled-up map in her hands. With a bow, she unfurled it across the table, using discarded plates and goblets to hold down the folded edges. “Excuse me,” she said, bumping me slightly as she moved my plate a foot to the side.
The map showed the topography of our province. Lyra’s town was highlighted in red, with the Hungry Herb Tavern a friendly looking ‘O’ marking the spot where our group gathered. Other settlements had been highlighted with black ‘X’s—neutral villages, ones that might be turned to our cause. And the red rectangles…
There were half a dozen of them sprinkled throughout the province, each larger than the town in which we planned our strategy. I knew what they had to be immediately, and understood why Lyra had highlighted them. “These are Hollow Frog outposts,” I said, gesturing at the rectangles.
Lyra nodded smartly. “Each one represents a fraction of the Hollow Frog Guild’s power,” she explained, pulling a quill from her robes. She quickly marked up the map, drawing arrows from our town and Jinshu to the nearest rectangle. “With the forces we currently have—and reserves from Jinshu, assuming Kim can sway the townsfolk there—we ought to be able to take this fortress over. From there, we move here and here.” More arrows, pointing to two more rectangles. “We sweep the province from one side to the other, using the bases we take to fortify our power. It’s not as elegant as slicing off the head of the snake, but we eat the Hollow Frog one bite at a time—until it’s all ours.”
Heads nodded around the table at the idea. Even Hazel seemed to be a little bit into it. “It’s a good plan,” I said, looking over the map. “And much safer than risking a full-on assault against Guildmaster Ji’s fortress. There’s just one problem with it, Lyra.”
Lyra folded her hands, taking the criticism much better than Hazel had. “I await your feedback, sir,” she said, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She knew how much being called that turned me on.
Matching her smirk with one of my own, I turned back to the map. “This strategy will take time and effort,” I said, embracing the whole of the province with a gesture. “The effort doesn’t bother me. I’m more than willing to fight for this province and its people. The problem is time. I have no idea how much I have. Eleizer the Peak Supreme God could appear in a cloud of smoke at any minute.”
The thought sobered my group. “And if you haven’t made enough progress…” Lyra murmured.
“Then he obliterates me,” I said, my tone grave. “I doubt he’ll accept any excuses about eating one bite at a time, Lyra. Anything less than total control of this province and a growing army of cultivators will surely disappoint him.”
Anna stared down at the map, her lips forming a tight little line. “Well, shit,” she muttered, shaking her head. “What the hell do we do, then?”
To tell the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure. “We need more power,” I mused, rubbing my chin with a thumb. “The Hollow Frog Guild has more people, more resources — more of everything. We’ve got to find some way to match them in a hurry.”
Hazel pursed her lips in thought. “We have the Cores,” she said with a shrug, thinking. “We could pursue Dual Cultivation with each other for longer sessions, increasing our power. Burn up the Cores in an effort to make ourselves stronger?”
“That would just be wasting them,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s only four of us, Hazel. You, me, Lyra and Anna. Four of us can’t defeat an army, no matter how powerful we are.”
The faces of the women around the table fell. It truly did feel like an unsolvable puzzle. Risk everything to take a strike at Guildmaster Ji with the resources we had—or take our time conquering the province and risk the Peak Supreme God’s wrath?
Talk about a rock and a hard place, I thought. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I found my mind wandering to an image of Kim. Would she have a better idea if she were here? I wished she’d come with us.
“I wonder,” I mused, thinking of the way the Mayor of Jinshu practically threw his daughter at me. How gleeful he was at the idea of his darling daughter bearing the new Governor’s bastard heirs. “You hear that?”
Everyone cocked their head to the side. “What am I supposed to be listening for?” Lyra asked.
“The cheers,” I said, a faint smile on my face. They hadn’t stopped—the villagers were still marching outside the Hungry Herb Tavern, celebrating their war against the Hollow Frog Guild. “These people love me. They want this Guild to become great.” I swallowed hard and let loose the idea that had been rattling in my brain for some time. “I wonder if they’d be alright with their wives and daughters joining the cause?”
You could have heard a pin drop in the garden.
Regina looked poleaxed. Hazel nearly fell backward out of her chair, while Anna licked her lips in a way that was half sexy, half intimidating. Only Lyra seemed to be thinking about it logically. “Are you suggesting we turn the entire town into cultivators?” the redhead asked.
“The female half,” I agreed. “I have the power to give people the gift of cultivation, and we have enough Cores to make it possible. Technically, there’s nothing stopping us from turning every woman in this town into a cultivator the same way I did with all of you. Technically.”
A knowing smile spread across Lyra’s face. “Kim gave you this idea, didn’t she?”
I shrugged. “I won’t lie, watching the Mayor of Jinshu pressure his daughter into lying with a cultivator got the wheels spinning. But I would’ve had this idea one way or another.”
Lyra slowly nodded. “It’s a good idea,” she said. “I think you’d be surprised at how many women in the town will go for it, too.”
Anna started to giggle. “There’s definitely plenty of women in the town I’d go for,” she said, giving me a punch on the shoulder. “You lucky fucking dog…”
“Obviously we’ll start with the unmarried ones,” I said, holding up a hand to forestall her jokes. “Only the girls who’ve come of age and don’t have a husband. Even if they’re betrothed to someone, I’d feel bad about it. I don’t want to take wives away from husbands, or anything like that. Not unless we have absolutely no other options.”
“By the Gods,” Hazel whispered, her mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise. “You’re going to fuck your way to an army, Eric Hyde.”
I started to grin. “Yeah. Yeah, I kinda am, aren’t I?”
The humor of it was infectious. Soon all of us were laughing around the table, as if it were the funniest joke we’d ever heard.
“I’ll start a census of all the unmarried women in the town,” Lyra said, pushing back her chair as the laughter ended. “We’ll start with them and see how many cultivators we get from there. Depending on how it goes, we’ll look into asking wives.”
“Only the women who want to,” I said, making myself perfectly clear. “I don’t want them to feel pressured into cultivation if that’s not a path they want to take. But we make it perfectly clear that every woman who joins our cause will end up covered in glory when we make this province our own.”
The sound of a chair falling to the floor snapped me from my thoughts. All our heads turned to see who’d caused the disturbance. It was Regina, who’d stood up so quickly she knocked her seat to the ground. The dark-haired woman faintly trembled, her hands shaking so badly she clutched the side of the table.
“I know one unmarried woman who’ll gladly sign up,” she said, a smile spreading across her face as she met my eye. “Me.”
I did a double-take. “You’re joking,” I said, the faint ghost of a smile flickering across my face. Was this some kind of prank? “Haha, very funny…”
I turned to the rest of the table, expecting them to be in on the joke. To my surprise, everyone else looked at Regina and I as if they’d been expecting this to happen for a long, long time.
Regina’s voice didn’t waver: if anything, the dark-haired woman sounded bolder than she had since I’d met her. Since we’d freed her from the twin oppressions of the Silent Auction and her wicked ex-husband, for certain.
“This is no joke,” she said simply, searching the gazes of the other women around the table for approval. “It’s what I want, Eric.”
