Willa caught the man’s wrist when he swung a third time and squeezed hard enough that Russ heard a pop. “That’s the Grand Master of the Karlian Order you’re swinging at.” Her tone warned by itself, but she added, “I’d be a little more careful.”
“What in the hells are you talking about? A rat cannot be Grand”—
“Not Burth,” she said, still holding his arm.
The chef’s gaze flicked between her and Russ a few times before his rage broke, and recognition un-creased his brows. “Oh. So this shindig is your doing, huh?” He relaxed and wrenched his arm from Willa’s grip. “You have made my kitchens hell. First the convention, now this, whatever it is. How long can we expect you to stay, may I ask?”
“Not much past tomorrow, I’d imagine,” Russ said. Butterflies buffeted through his gut as he envisioned, in a not-so-distant lifetime, eating breakfast with Lillie. That could be their first meal—a simple breakfast. The day after next, maybe. Or the next day, or the day after that.
The mustachioed gentleman huffed, then his gaze flicked to Burth. “Be careful naming them. Makes those things exceptionally hard to rid yourself of when the time comes. If you’ll excuse me, I have pumpkins to prepare.” His feet clomped across the carpeted hall.
Russ watched the man walk away, perturbed by the near-miss with the knife. He knelt and inspected the slice in his pant leg—clean through the fabric but nothing more—then petted Burth. “Troublesome little fellow, aren’t you?”
The serren leaned into his fingers on a spot under his ribs.
“You good to hang out with Willa for a while?”
Burth nodded, then shook out his fur and ears. “Yes, yes.” He bounded toward Willa and hid behind her left leg, peeking from behind it to watch the chef.
“I’ll watch him,” Willa said, bemused. “Come on, little one.”
Burth followed her. “I many things, but a little one is not one of them.”
Willa laughed.
“Hey,” Russ said. Willa turned to face him. He nodded toward Alerix. “Not sure you two have met.”
“No,” said Alerix. “We haven’t.”
Willa said nothing.
“Well—now you have,” said Russ. “Alerix, how ‘bout we take her into the fold. I’m sure her knowledge could be of use.”
Skepticism powdered the Warden’s face. “We’ll see. If that’s your wish, Grand Master.”
“It is. Get that Passa woman from Arnin, too. And Willa”—her ears perked at her name. “I need to talk to you later.”
Willa’s face remained expressionless. She nodded before she turned around a corner.
“Good luck, Grand Master,” Alerix said.
Goddess help us all to do what is right. Russ entered the room, where a wired tablet waited for him at a table.
1
On the screen, Russ saw a chair’s back. “Your Majesty,” he said.
The chair turned. Brech held a tablet on his left palm, a monogrammed piece of paper in his right hand. A floating bot hung off to the side of his head, to which the king presumably had dictated in the Grand Master’s absence. He smiled when he saw Russ, who took a seat at the workspace set up for him.
“Russell Hollowman, with my own eyes, and already dressed for bed I see.”
“At your service.” Russ pulled his chair toward the desk. “And I woke up in these.”
“I am glad you woke up, thank the gods.” Brech set what he held on the table in front of him and dialed a point on his right temple with his middle finger. “For the time being, I’d rather hoped we’d eschew titles and formality, the circumstances being what they are.”
Russ gestured an easy uncaring. “As you please.”
“Excellent. Now before we begin, a Leynar informed me of your change in appearance. My staff have counseled me to confirm your identity the next time we spoke, should a time such as this come.”
Russell smirked. “What did they have in mind?”
“We settled on asking you about gifts. One you got for Denard on his”—Brech picked through a stack of papers and found the one he wanted—“twelfth birthday. That’s at least what it said in the royal records.”
“Goddess,” Russ said, thinking back. “The scepter keeps record of all that?”
“Oh, yes. I could tell you what I had for breakfast on the winter solstice fourteen years ago if you’d like. The doctors also keep track of when I shit. Trust me, it’s hardly the most invasive thing I go through.”
Russ sighed. “Ah, that’s either that pin I got him or those pumpkin seed starters—I don’t suspect those ever went anywhere, though. Pinny told me your gardeners couldn’t get them to.”
“Which one, if you had to guess?” the king asked, impatient.
Russ paused, then said, “No guess. It’s the pin.”
Brech looked to his left, behind his camera. “Satisfied?” A second passed. “Leave me, please.” His gaze followed the person who retired from his study, then it returned to Russ. “So, apprise me.”
Russell recollected for half a dozen seconds, considering whether he should start chronologically or in order of importance, and of what to keep to himself.
“Russ?”
“Sorry, tryin to figure out where to start.”
“How about you assure me you have a plan, and we’ll go from there.”
“The beginnings of one,” said Russ, and he explained, in digest, what had happened since he left Arnin, all the way to what he’d discussed with Alerix, leaving out more personal details. By the time he’d caught the king up, forty minutes had passed. “I’m having people trained in tactics devise strategies with what we have, but it’ll be a spread-thin fight. Especially if M’keth sends—I guess even a fraction of what he has.”
“How much is it?” Brech sounded earnest.
“Like I told you, it’s the main hive—and so close to Keep this time. The demon lords have kept them well out of the way in the past.”
“Gods,” the king said, his voice traced with helplessness. “Once again, I turn to the only question I feel is any use to you: how can I help? I’ve been trying to remember for the past four or five days—it’s all a blur—what my father did during the War, and I’ve realized I really can’t. At first, I concluded it was because he hadn’t included me in his counsels, that he hadn’t wanted to burden me. But over the last few days, it’s come to me that perhaps he honestly couldn’t do a gods-damned thing, and he left it to those who could. If nothing else, I’d just like to be able to relieve my people.”
“I’ve got the best here workin on it. We’ll have a member of the new guard with one of the old in every instance. That’s what I’m thinkin presently anyway, if enough of ‘em show up. I’ve deputized a few lieutenants—people I trust. We’re gonna try to keep this contained as much as we can, Brech, but I can’t predict how much good it’s gonna do.”
“Any time you can buy us is better than none. You know, you’re a hard man to get a hold of when you want to be. I had meant to catch you in Karhaal, but the damn storm. I tried to contact the Undertaker after my announcement to let her know of your arrival, but communications, magical or electronic, had shorted. Even for my private channels, she was predisposed.”
“I’m sure I had somethin to do with that.”
Brech laughed. “Yeah. Sorry she kept from you what she did—sensitive information. It wasn’t up to her whether she told you. Though she was become with grief, in a word, when communications opened the afternoon you left. I’d have preferred to hold a council with both of you.”
“To tell us what?”
“What I’m about to tell you now. As Grand Master, you have the right to know what’s been going on.” The king sighed. “The Chamberlain and I didn’t get along well in your absence, I’m sure you’re aware by now. For years after I took up the scepter, the leadership at Karhaal proved incapable of much anything, wanted to do nothing in your stead. I had hoped Manifeld would be different, but every time I proffered help, he
viewed it as an attempt to usurp power from him. Nothing, I assure you, was further from the truth.”
“What did you want?” Russ asked, steady in his questioning.
“While you were gone, I tried to devise a weapon—something we didn’t have last time, have never had—so if another War broke out, which my counselors and electors assured me wouldn’t happen”—
“No reason to think it would. Wars happening this close to each other”—Russ shook his head. “It’s never happened.”
“Yes,” said Brech, “but I didn’t want to leave however-far-down-the-line empty-handed. It was more than me, more than us. It would be my legacy. Nobody took my concerns seriously at Arnin, and Karhaal wouldn’t have anything to do with me, despite my pleas for assistance. Eventually, even I fell out of favor with the idea.” A wistful smile spread across the king’s face. “But the gods sent a sign for me to not give up on my endeavor in the form of a Leynar. My guard had arrested her over in Yarnle for practicing holy magic outside the Order.”
Russ crossed his arms. “Why were your little birds on the lookout for that?”
Brech shrugged. “Searching for you.”
“I used holy magic,” Russ said, plain. “Within Keep.”
“We didn’t think you were in Keep.” Levity poked through Brech’s annoyance. “That’s hardly the point, Russ.”
Russell waved his hand gently in front of him to gesture for his Majesty to go on. “Please.”
Brech shook his head, smirking. “This woman, she confused me at first. Told me of her vision and how the gods themselves had inspired her. Leyna herself, she said, told her she could lead the next fight if she figured out how to meld Ley with Light.” He chuckled. “She spoke in poetry for days.”
“Poetry.”
“Like a lunatic. When she finished, and I could finally get a straight answer from her, I asked why we hadn’t done what she suggested before. Where I expected a glib answer, she spent the next week and a half showing me why it couldn’t have worked. My guards had confiscated charts, files, so much data—dioramas even—and she brought them all in and showed me how they connected. My own apothecaries, scientists, and mathematicians worked through it in the days following. They found a few small faults, but nothing the whole didn’t take care of. I’d hoped she’d be the one who showed you, but by the time I got through to her, you’d already left.”
“Show me what?” Russ asked. Despite himself, irritation needled at him.
“Russ, our world literally changed.”
“Like”—
“Yeah,” Brech said. “The physical makeup. There’s always been a struggle, and that struggle exists in two parts, the first of which was Order and Chaos.”
“You sound like a Leynar.”
Brech puffed. “Are you surprised? I’m married to one, and right now the person with most of my thoughts is a woman whose name I don’t know and who’s leading up the largest secret research investiture the scepter has ever undertaken. What she told me, in short, is the gods had kept Ley and Light separated until such time that their divided power wouldn’t be enough to fight off that of the nether.
“But”—Brech rubbed the tips of his first two fingers against his thumb—“the gods sprinkled a little something else into the pot for us, and They gave this—woman—the wherewithal to discern Their mystery. Because you know the gods: They can’t give us Their knowledge freely; we’re too stupid to take such a hint. But there in the margins, the outliers gain the edge, and we unlock—a new Understanding.”
“So when the shift, for lack of a better word, happened,” said Russ, “is that what triggered the escalation?” Did this new power cause the birth of D’niqa’s kind? “Did the Undertaker know?”
“She didn’t know, but her formula gave a greater probability to our ability coming first. It couldn’t have happened unless the gods changed the fabric of our reality, pushed one thing, which shoved another”—
“That’s probably making a logical leap or two to get to that point. How do we know the gods did it? What if it happened because of something the demons did?”
“Might have, but that only opens the philosophical argument of whether anything anyone does is the gods’ doing—by virtue of us being Their creation. And what happened first is a matter of dragon-and-egg, as the Escalation Question always is. Regardless, the math made little sense before, proverbially and concretely. When we gained the ability to combine Ley magic and Light, we unlocked the capability to combat the demon’s new powers, including the new breed—this D’niqa you spoke of. She matches a description close to what the Undertaker derived from her formulas. What we’re left to figure out is how to best use this new gift.”
“But Brech, this brings up a far more sinister query: Did the gods mean to tamper with such a thing?”
“There’s always the possibility they didn’t. Acin’s”—he waved his hand at the side of his face and threw it off screen—“always causing mischief. Could be Her, but we’ll never get a good answer from the gods or be able to trace the origin of such a thing to its source anyway.”
Russ smiled. “Who needs Acin when you’re capable of causing mischief just fine?”
“You mean how?” A small automaton buzzed through a window over the door and dropped off a physical memo, of which the king took hold, glanced at, then set aside.
“All this business with the Undertaker and Karhaal.”
An incredulous mask dressed Brech’s face. “I had no choice. You’d disappeared to gods-knew-where. Manifeld was less than useless. If I hadn’t taken matters into my hands—imagine if the escalation had happened and I had done nothing. Where would we be? Any of us.”
“As your friend, Brech, I understand why you did what you did. Hells, I’m the reason for it. But as the Karlian Grand Master, I advise you to exercise caution in your next steps. The scepter has already overstepped its bounds in establishing a presence at Karhaal, and to continue to push for ingresses”—he sighed, unable to blunt the accusation—“some would consider that breaching the Accords.”
The king watched him. “I’m aware, and I look forward to figuring out such things alongside you. The Undertaker has already made me wise of the no-confidence vote in Manifeld, and once we’re past this little skirmish”—
“Hardly a skirmish.”
“But you said yourself M’keth is still a spirit. Who’s to say he can do more than project himself? So long as he’s not corporeal, there’s a chance we could end this in short order.”
“We?” said Russ.
“Yes, we,” Brech said, amused. “Your dear friend—Kendra? She stopped by Arnin a couple days past and cited a fairly-ancient rite, one that secures a person a meeting with the monarch in times of desperate need. And not just with me—my entire high council. A plucky girl, that one. She had a rune ring.” He eyed Russ in mock, if not bemusement. “Not a stretch to wonder from whom she got such a trinket.”
“Then I take it not everything I told you was your first time hearing it.”
“Correct. Kendra told me I was honor-bound to secure bodies for the Grand Master of the Order in a time of War. Nothing I wasn’t aware of, but she wouldn’t leave until I got word out to the Towers. I don’t know when they’ll respond—if they’ll respond—but suffice for me to say you will have an army soon enough.”
“Soon enough isn’t now, Brech.”
“No, soon enough is what it is.” Giddiness washed over the king. He stood and angled the camera to see him better. “There may be no need for an army anyway, once I’ve finished my project. During our last meeting, I told you of a—certain something—I’d commissioned, a weapon of sorts. One that will hopefully attenuate this War enough that most won’t even know it happened. Sparse chance, but that’s the dream, at least.”
Russ proffered interest: “What have you made?”
“It’s huge, Russell. Imagine a ship the size of a small city. In the sky. One that can generate and fire so much energy—Ley-Light, as th
e Undertaker calls it—that it decimates anything it touches. From low-orbit.”
“Orbit?” Russ said. “Enough goin on down here. We’ve stayed outta the skies. What do the dragons think o’ this?”
“I have a pretty good relationship with them despite my electors trying to muck that up. Yarnle especially, with their collective air-traffic restructuring.”
“Brech, I’ll be honest with ya”—
“I trust you always will be,” the king said.
“It sounds dangerous.”
“Of course it’s dangerous. It’s all dangerous. Leaving the void to live is dangerous. But we’ve struck a chord. This is it, the final escalation, the final War. It’s what the gods made our planet for—to test the melding of two godly energies, I know it. And we’ve done it now, figured it out, reached the magnum opus of this game. We could do it—make this M’keth’s and the demons’ True End. As Grand Master, you made the promise to defend Coroth with your life. I’ve made my own personal vow to keep this planet out of the demons’ hands, and I will withstand the gods themselves before I let us lose.”
Russ cocked his head. “You at least sound convincing.”
Brech laughed. “Yeah, I’ve been practicing that. All the good it does us right now.”
“You can do as much good at Arnin as I can here. Keep media attention away from the fight, if you can.”
“I’ll try, but”—Brech’s mouth hung open while he struggled to find his words. “I’ll do what I can.” Behind him, three jeweled mechs buzzed out of a cracked-open window above the door that led into his room. “If you need anything from Arnin, tell Passa. She insisted on taking this job.”
“Did she?” Russ said.
“Yeah.” Brech remained quiet a few seconds before he continued. “Anything. Your friend made her way to High Tower after Arnin, so I’ve heard through the lines. I don’t know if they’re planning something, not that the Mesiter has ever let the scepter, or the Order as far as I’m aware, in on his dealings. In the least, I can assure you, you have the full support of Arnin and Karhaal”—he scoffed. “I don’t need to tell you that.”
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