His enemies changed, but his speeches remained the same.
“Truth comes from the Fates, not from books,” he said when she confronted him with evidence his allegations of rampant crime among the refugees. He rammed his finger onto the top of the book hard enough it nearly toppled out of Helfria’s hand. “These books were written by Faeir Sages, whose knowledge most certainly does not flow from that source of ultimate truth. These same Sages broke away from us the moment I cast light on their heresy. I will not allow our kingdom to continue to be swayed by their words. ”
“These books were written by scholars using compiled knowledge from the events themselves, you buffoon.” Helfria gawked at him and pulled back two steps to keep him from accosting her once more. “You’re not even going off reports from your own men. You just think these things and then you say them to all the people out there and… they believe you.”
“Was it not you who petitioned your father over and over for this, Senator?” Andronicus asked her, stalling in the hallway. “You and your fellows at the table, all deciding that the monarchy must fall; stealing power from the descendant of Throm Caelum, your own blood, and giving it to the people. It was your idea that the uneducated masses could govern themselves better than a royal leader bred and trained for governance, correct?”
“You’re misleading them for your own purposes. You’re corrupting the point of a republic.”
“Corrupting?” Andronicus changed his stance. She now gained the extent of his attention, as uncomfortable as it made her. “Senator, I am not partial to a woman holding leadership over men; I’ve never hid this notion. But I’m getting the impression you think that is why I barely tolerate you. That impression is laughably inaccurate.”
Andronicus leaned in and suddenly Helfria wondered how close the nearest guard stood. “The truth is, I could care less about your gender. What makes it difficult for me to abide your incessant prattle is that you preach democracy to the people, yet deep down you want lordship over them. You don’t truly believe the people should have say over their lives; you just want to disperse the responsibility among a dozen kings instead of laying it all on one.”
Helfria glowered at him, refusing to give ground despite his attempts at intimidation. “Is that how you justify misleading those who idolize you as a beacon of faith, High Paladin?”
Andronicus turned, signaling an end to the conversation. “Those who seek the Fates are never mislead in their voyage.”
On the desk in front of her sat piles of papers: Texts on Faeir culture and trade negotiations and books chronicling the wars and stories from within the Wilderness. On top of everything important, laid the letter she could not get out of her mind.
After years of working together as Senators, Gaius had finally began his courtship of her.
He had put work in to the words, lining out his feelings juxtaposed by some rather cold logic about the benefits of their relationship. Within the text she could see both Gaius the bachelor and Gaius the intellectual. She might have preferred he focused only on his need for her, which he spelled out marvelously, and left out the political fruits of their union; but it pleased her that Gaius thought of such things. Her aunt had abdicated her title to abscond with a man after being swept up in legendary passion only to return to her parent’s estate a year later and quietly retake the mantle of Duchess.
She fancied Gaius as well, though she felt embarrassed at giving in to such an obvious pairing. Rumors of their non-existent romance erupted among Commoners the minute the two eligible Sabans shared the Senate table. Helfria turned twenty-seven that year however, and despite resistance to her mother’s nagging about a husband, she yearned for a family of her own. Gaius was a Citizen, a Senator and a veteran. Her parents could not find a more suitable match for her.
Procrastinating further, Helfria allowed herself to dream of what a life with Gaius might look like, what kind of parents they might be and whether she could still manage her career.
“Senator, I must interrupt.” A stern knock shocked her from her fantasy, agitating her as a Royal Guard soldier entered her office.
Helfria stifled her rage at the interruption. “At ease… and speak.”
“It’s your father, Prin- Senator. Andronicus is speaking out against the crown and the King went to the square to confront him.” The soldier motioned in an escort group. “Andronicus has the crowd, Senator, and the speech… it’s bad.”
Helfria grabbed the envelope off her desk, fearful the staff might browse it while cleaning, then stood to join the escort. “I need you to be specific, soldier. Tell me what the High Paladin is spouting. Take me to the square.”
“Senator, we’re taking you further into the keep to join your family,” the soldier replied.
“Bullshit.” Helfria winced at the coarse word that escaped her lips, but continued. She could apologize for her manners later. “I am the firstborn Caelum and a Senator of Rellizbix. If there is unrest, my place is beside the King. Your place is safeguarding me. Now are you up to that task, soldier?”
The soldier cut short his reply and replaced it with a deep, calming breath. “We will escort you to the square, Senator. Please remain in the center of us and follow my commands once outside the walls.”
Helfria nodded. From a young age, Caelum children understood that once outside the walls, the Royal Guard escort called the shots. In a crowded setting, the Royal Guard was tasked with the utmost protection of the royal family, a charge that necessitated their ability to command in fast, stressful situations without waiting for orders. Helfria would turn, duck, run or freeze at the soldier’s command outside the wall, trusting that any order was meant to keep her safe.
Until they left the safety of the keep, however, Helfria made the orders and she meant to join her father.
The roar of the crowd deafened her as they approached the platform. Thousands of Sabans and Twileens had gathered to hear or protest the High Paladin. Over their cries and shouts, she could make out a heated argument between her father and the Paladin.
“The people who pay their dues, who walk the line and trust in the Fates to guide this nation have been let down by your inattention and incompetence. You ignore the petitions of your Citizens and put the safety of your Commoners at risk and they have had enough, Your Majesty.” Andronicus knew not to point directly at the King, but his dramatic gestures flirted with that taboo as he verbally battered her father.
“You have no idea how to lead a nation, High Paladin. You feed comforting lies to those who prop you up and cast everyone else out with the chaff.” King Helfrick turned to the people. “People of Rellizbix, you have seen that he is willing to abandon the Faeir, that he is capable of committing atrocities in the name of war and now he turns against our own people. How long before he decides you unworthy of defending?”
Andronicus laughed and shrugged at the crowd. “What can be expected from such a mendacious monarch? More lies and half-truths. He says I abandoned the Faeir, yet I remained right here while the fire-worshippers fled to their mountains along with their unfaithful protectors. He says I have committed atrocities against the Greimere, as if such a thing mattered. And yet, a year later we have seen nothing of the barbarians.
“I am not turning against our people. If the Denizens wish to be a part of Rellizbix, they must earn it like all of you do every day. Only when they show their loyalty, as you all have, will I acknowledge them as my people.”
“Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!” the crowd chanted.
Helfria looked out over the crowd in awe. She did not want to give credit to the realization breaking through. She did not want to believe what she knew the people sought.
“You all know what is best. You know the solutions to your own problems better than any man with a crown living high above you.” Andronicus riled the crowd up even more, so that his voice could barely be heard by Helfria merely a dozen feet away. “The Greimere are shattered, but I am done losing good sold
iers and Paladins to retake land for people who will never be grateful for the sacrifice. If the Denizens want their home back, then they can retake it!”
“Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!” the cheers continued.
“I don’t believe this,” Helfria muttered, moving forward.
Her escort put his arm out. “Stay in the center, Senator.”
Helfria halted and stepped back within the box of soldiers. “Do they not see what he’s suggesting? We massacred the women and children of the Greimere only a year ago. If we send the refugees back across the Pisces they’ll all be killed.”
“Let your father handle this, Senator.”
Helfrick closed his eyes and shook his head. After a deep breath, he held up his hands for silence. The crowd did not respond to his request, instead continuing their raucous displays. Still, Helfrick held his arms aloft, waiting minute upon minute until, one after the other, members of the crowd eventually quieted. Even Andronicus held his tongue, apparently interested in what the King had to say to his bold proclamation.
“Good people, I have spent all of my life in the defense of this nation. I have bled for this nation and comforted soldiers on the field as they die in service to this nation. I beseech you now to hear me out.” The last of the shouts died out then as the King appealed to their patriotism. Even in their fervor, the people of Rellizbix respected the king who personally put his life on the line for his country. “Times are hard now; harder than perhaps they have ever been. There is more than enough for the best of us to be scared about. But it is times like this when we show who we truly are.
“In the days of Throm Caelum when the barbarians snuffed out the lost races and threatened the annihilation of the Faeir and Twileens, Sabans rose to their defense. We were nothing then; simple nomads in furs, crusted with dirt, with no magic and no steel. We owed no allegiance to these races too weak to withstand the brutality of war. Yet Throm united the Sabans to hold their shields in front of the Faeir and Twileens. To hold their shields against the tide of darkness. That is who we are; that is who we have always been. Hard times will not change that.”
The crowd murmured and several heads nodded. Others looked at each other with something resembling shame. Andronicus glanced about, suddenly looking much less confident than when Helfria first boarded the platform. Helfrick had reached them.
“The Denizens cannot retake the Wilderness, no one is foolish enough to believe that. This plan from the High Paladin is genocide wrapped in false righteousness. It’s a method to dispose of the helpless without getting dirt under our nails. That is not our way.”
Helfrick turned and took the shield from the closest Royal Guard’s hand. Lifting it high over his head, the king slammed the bottom point of the shield through the wood of the platform. The board splintered as he embedded the heavy pentagon of steel into the stage before him. Kinetic energy vibrated through the shield and those in the front shied away in shock.
Helfrick’s roar rippled through the crowd like thunder across a field. “I am a Saban, descendant of Throm Caelum, and I will hold my shield in front!”
The crowd erupted before him. People clamored for the stage, as if they had momentarily forgotten that royalty stood unprecedentedly close to the general public and just now came to their senses.
Helfria’s knees shook and her eyes grew hot. Twelve years ago, before she had left for college in the East and mere months before Invasion, something in her father changed. Light drained from him as the war with the Greimere began and even after General Tiberius returned from foreign lands victorious, Helfrick remained sullen. He never smiled, rarely ate with his family and neglected his only son, Kranston. During the last half of her teens and throughout her adulthood, her once mighty father acted as if he lost something precious to him as it slowly destroyed him.
Now, for the first time since she was a girl, she saw her true father; the King of Rellizbix. He had broken free from whatever spell kept his spirit in hibernation. Helfrick Caelum stood radiant in the brilliance of the evening sun, before a hostile crowd he had turned like only a king could. Helfria struggled to keep from running to him as the tears broke free.
“Captivating words, your majesty. Truly inspiring.” Andronicus stepped forward, his calm voice a stiletto sliding cleanly through the celebratory cheers of the invigorated crowd. “Unfortunately, they’re but lies; the fresh link of an unfathomable chain of deceptions stamped with the name CAELUM.”
The crowd went silent and Helfrick glared at him with a lion’s scowl.
“I have held on to this information, hoping never to use it, but I underestimated you, Helfrick. I thought your gradual retreat away from leadership to be a subtle break from the lies, but now I see it was merely cowardice.”
“Guards, arrest this slanderer,” Helfria cried out. “Andronicus, have you slipped into insanity?”
Andronicus reached for a bag held by one of his Paladins and pulled free a scroll, unlocking it and allowing it to unravel. As he did, Helfria saw the color drain from her father’s face. As the Royal Guard closed in about Andronicus, his Paladins shielded him.
“I hold in my hand a treaty between Rellizbix and Greimere; one of dozens.” Andronicus kept to the front of the stage while his men strained valiantly against the push of soldiers. “Look to the bottom. Witness the King’s own hand adorning a contract that bids the barbarians to attack Rellizbix.”
Some of the soldiers attempting to reach Andronicus faltered at these words. The High Paladin continued. “Within the text… an exchange of goods. Rules of engagement that are agreed upon by both sides. There is even a timetable; it’s all plotted out. The King brags of defending our Denizens, but his line has been condemning them to slaughter since the dawn of this nation.”
“Senator, we are moving.” The soldier commanding her escort grabbed her arm and began forward.
“I’m not leaving my father, I don’t care what you command.”
“General Regulus gave the signal, Princess.” The soldier hugged her close to him as they increased their pace. “Helfrick doesn’t have a say, either. We’re getting you both to the keep. Now.”
“What is going on? What is Andronicus talking about?” Helfria ducked into her father’s side as they came together in the gateway of Inner Thromdale.
“Get me up on the wall, Regulus. I have to address the people or I will lose them.” Helfrick collided with Regulus, shoving away from Helfria.
“Dammit, Helfrick, Andronicus just displayed the fucking Treaty to the entire Kingdom.” Helfria had never heard anyone outside of her mother and Andronicus call the King by his first name. Regulus ignored his breach of decorum and continued. “If you go on the wall now, arrows will greet you. You’ve already lost them, my King.”
“Father, what is this? You’ve been making deals with the Greimere? I don’t understand.” Helfria grabbed her escort’s shoulder to steady herself as the ground began to waver beneath her.
Helfrick gazed through the closing bars of the gate as Commoners swelled against it. Then he looked back to his general. “Get my family to safety, Regulus. I must speak with my eldest.”
Chapter 36
“How long has this been going on, Father?” Helfria ignored the directing motions of their escorts as they entered the 1st Regiment’s castle armory at the base of the keep. High above, inside the keep, General Regulus rushed to secure the rest of their family. Within the armory, two guards left her and the king to their privacy to take up positions outside the door.
Helfrick braced his hands against the table, lifiting his head enough to stare at her from deep under his brow. “We call it the Treaty. It’s been a tradition since the third century. This is the first time that it has gone off the rails and it is all my fault. I should never have sent men over the Hell Cliffs.”
Helfrick pounded his fist against the table, startling her. “How could I have known he was still alive? That they would have harbored him at all? That he had this in hi
m?”
“Father this is too much to handle all at once.” Helfria found a decanter and poured a goblet, not caring what it contained as long as it burned. She took a long drink of the warm wine and coughed as she wiped her mouth. “We’ve had diplomatic relations with the Greimere for centuries? They’ve been invading us for what… an agreement? All those Denizens fleeing their homes… the soldiers dying in combat…”
Helfria paused, looking up from her goblet. “Who are you talking about who survived? What does that mean?”
She shuddered and jumped from the table before her father could explain. “The Warlord. You know who it is, I knew it. Who is he? Why is he breaking from the agreement with you?”
Minutes before, she stared in awe of her father as he returned to his full and former glory and became the man she had idolized. Now she glared at the unrecognizable fraud in front of her who merely looked like the King. “What have you done?”
“The Greimere wanted to give up after a handful of failed invasions. Draymmond Caelum, great-grandson of Throm, feared this would lead to the unraveling of our kingdom. Without a unifying threat, the Faeir and Twileens would no longer need an alliance. The Sabans still had nomad in their blood and Draymmond foresaw them returning to their solitary tribes. We needed the Greimere to keep fighting us. And, as we found out, the Greimere had desperate needs of their own.”
“So you struck a deal,” Helfria finished. “A deal that sent the Greimere to their death over and over and stuck the Denizens in a perpetual fear of displacement. And you stood before all of those people and pretended to care about the refugees?”
Wrath of the Greimere Page 27
