by Morgan Rice
Luptius listened patiently to it all; there had been a much more democratic feeling in the air, and he had fostered it. After all, Andronicus and Romulus had been tyrants, and this Grand Council had had to bow to them and grant their every wish. Now, with them dead, Luptius relished the freedom, relished not having a single overbearing leader. It was more of a controlled chaos.
Yet they all at least looked Luptius to preside over them. As the oldest of the group, nearly eighty, with the fading yellow bald head indicative of his age, he aspired to be no commander. He preferred to pull the strings behind the scenes, as he had his entire life. There was an old Empire saying, which he lived by: Supreme Commanders come and go—but Council chairs rule forever.
Luptius waited for all the bickering to die down, letting these young stupid men argue until they were blue in the face, all of their arguing focusing on what to do about Volusia. He waited, until finally they all, with no resolution, turned to him.
When he was ready, he cleared his throat, and looked them all evenly in the eye. There was no aggression, he knew, like silence; his calm demeanor was more disconcerting to all of them than the commands of the fiercest general. When he finally spoke, it was with the voice of authority.
“This young girl who thinks she’s a goddess,” he said, “Volusia. Killing a few men does not make her a threat to the Empire. You forget we have millions of men at our disposal.”
“And yet we have no one to lead them,” answered one of the councilmen ominously. “More dangerous, I should think, to have thousands of men behind a strong leader than millions of men without one.”
Luptius shook his head.
“The Empire soldiers will follow and execute the command of the Supreme Council as they always have,” he said, shrugging it off. “We shall meet her out in the field, stop her foolish advance before she gets any closer.”
The men looked back at him, concern in their eyes.
“Do you think that wise?” a councilman asked. “Why not force her to march on the capital? Here we have the fortifications of the city, and a million men strong to guard it. Out there, we meet her on her own terms.”
“That is precisely what we shall do, because that is what she shall not expect. Nor shall she expect our convoy’s offer of peace.”
The room fell silent as all the men looked to him in shock.
“Peace!?” one of them asked, outraged. “We offer her, a usurper, peace!?”
“You just said we had nothing to fear of her,” another said. “Then why would we offer her peace?”
Luptius smiled, annoyed and impatient with the stupidity of all these men.
“I said we shall offer her peace,” he explained. “I did not say we shall give it.”
They all looked back at him, baffled. Luptius took a deep breath, annoyed. He was always one step ahead of this council—which was why none of them were fit to be Supreme Commander.
“We shall meet Volusia in the field and send a convoy to offer her a truce. I myself will lead it. When she arrives to talk terms, she will be surrounded and killed.”
“And how will you manage that?” one of them asked.
“The commander of her army has been bought. He will betray her. I have paid him too well not to.”
A thick silence fell over the room, and he could sense the others were impressed. They all looked to him now, hanging on his every word.
“Before tomorrow is through,” Luptius concluded, smiling at the thought, “this young girl’s head will be on a pike.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Godfrey reclined in a luxurious silk armchair, on a balcony made of gold, being fanned and fed grapes by a host of servants, and he marveled at how much his station had changed. But a few hours before he’d been locked in a stinking cell, on a floor of mud, surrounded by people who would all just as happily kill him as look at him. There had been no way out, no proposition before him but death and torture—death, if he was lucky, and torture if he was not. It seemed he would never rise again.
And yet now here he was, in a shining seaside villa made of marble and gold, on a luxurious balcony perched at the water’s edge, overlooking one of the most spectacular vistas he’d ever seen. Before him lay a glistening harbor filled with shining ships, and at his feet, the ocean waves crashed beneath them. Godfrey was being fed one fine delicacy after the next, and he and Akorth, Fulton, Merek, and Ario were gorging themselves.
Godfrey sat back and belched as he finished his first sack of wine, washing down a meal of venison, caviar and exotic fruits. Beside him Akorth smeared yet another piece of bread with the softest butter Godfrey had ever tasted, and he wolfed down an entire loaf by himself. Godfrey had forgotten how hungry he was—he had not had a good meal in days. And this was the finest food he’d ever eaten.
Godfrey sat back in his silk chair, resting his arms on the golden, intricately carved arms, and he looked up at his captors, curious. Seated facing him, smiling, on the other side of the balcony, sat a half dozen Finians, seated in equally luxurious chairs, observing them. None of them ate or drank. None of them needed to: they had this bounty of food, Godfrey was certain, every day of their lives, and for them, this buffet of delicacies was routine. Instead, they sat back calmly, a smile on their faces, and studied Godfrey and his friends, seeming amused.
Godfrey wondered what they thought of them. They must’ve seemed a sorry sight, he realized. Godfrey was hardly the model of a shining warrior, and Akorth and Fulton were in far worse shape than he, both overweight, eating enough to satisfy a horse, and drinking twice as much. Merek, with his pockmarked face and darting eyes, clearly seemed a criminal, eyes always shifting, looking as if he would steal the silver out from underneath the table. And Ario looked like a boy who’d wandered off from his grandfather’s house and got lost somewhere.
“I must say, you are the sorriest bunch of heroes I’ve ever met,” said their leader, smiling. This man, who’d introduced himself as Fitus, sat in their center, and they all clearly deferred to him. Godfrey wondered what to make of these Finians; he had never encountered anyone quite like them. They sat there, perfectly at ease, with large, twinkling hazel eyes, bright red hair, too pale skin and pale freckles. Their hair was the most distracting of all. It was so bright, and sat so high on their heads, Godfrey found it hard to concentrate on anything else. They wore bright red robes and their long, skinny pale fingers stuck out at the end, as if the robes were too long for them, the fingertips barely touching.
Most of all, Godfrey could see in their faces that these men were rich. Pampered. He had never met anyone—not even kings—who came off as richer. There was something about their presence, an entitled feeling, that left him no doubt that these men were spectacularly rich. And, more ominously, that they always got what they wanted.
Somehow, facing off against these men was even scarier to him than facing off against knights or kings. Godfrey could detect a certain listlessness in their ways, a certain apathy, as if they would kill a man with a smile, and never break a sweat. Men like this spoke softly, he knew, and usually meant every word they said.
“And the hungriest,” Akorth chimed in. “This meat is delicious. Have you any more?”
Their leader nodded, and a servant brought Akorth another platter.
“We are not heroes,” Fulton said. “We are not even warriors.”
“All just commoners,” Akorth said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Except, of course, for Godfrey here,” Fulton said. “He’s royalty.”
The Finian leader turned and examined Godfrey, eyes wide in surprise, and Godfrey felt himself redden; he hated being called that.
“Royalty, are you?” their leader asked.
Godfrey shrugged.
“In truth, my father would rather not have seen me that way, though I am indeed his son—even if the son with the least aspirations, the son never destined for the throne. I suppose none of that matters now, though. My kingdom is far away, across the sea, and it
lies in ashes.”
Fitus studied him and smiled wide.
“I like you, Godfrey, son of MacGil. You are an honest man. A self-effacing man. That is a rare thing in Volusia. You are also a daring and reckless man—and, I might add, a foolish man. Did you really think you would arrive in Volusia and achieve your goals? This seems almost naïve coming from a man of your position.”
Godfrey shrugged.
“You’d be amazed at what desperation can do to a man’s judgment,” he replied. “Better to try than to face a certain death, wouldn’t you say?”
Fitus slowly nodded back.
“It is admirable that you chose to fight for the slaves,” he said, “to take up a cause not your own.”
“I wish I could declare myself so selfless,” he replied, “but truth be told my lord, it was a shared cause. We, too, wish to throw off the yoke of the Empire, and if they had slaughtered the slave village, we would have surely been next. I just chose to take preemptive action instead of waiting to fight in a battle I could not win.”
“Not that he’d do much of the fighting,” Akorth added, with a belch.
“Or that he’d win anyway,” Fulton chimed in.
Fitus smiled, looking from them back to Godfrey.
“Nonetheless,” Fitus said, “you were brave, and your cause was a noble one—however selfish it may have been and however clumsily you went about it. Did you really think buying off the right people would protect your people from doom?”
Godfrey shrugged.
“It has worked for me in the past. In my opinion, everyone can be bought.”
Fitus smiled.
“You clearly have not met the Finians,” he said. “We are the richest race in the Empire. Do you think a few sacks of gold would impress us? This balcony you are sitting on is worth a thousand times your sacks of gold.”
Godfrey looked around, saw the solid gold everywhere, reflecting the light brilliantly, and realized that indeed it was. He had a point.
“I suppose I did not realize the extreme wealth of the Finians,” Godfrey said.
“And yet the riches of the Finians are legendary,” he said. “Your problem is that you attack a people, a region, of which you know nothing about. You know nothing of our people, our culture, our history. For example, you probably assumed that all free Volusians were of the Empire race and all other races were enslaved. Yet here we are, Finians, a race of humans, free, independent, and even more powerful than the Queen. You probably did not know that the leader of Volusia is herself human. We are a people of many paradoxes.”
“No, I did not,” Godfrey said, surprised.
“This is the problem that arises from ignorance. You must know your enemies well if you are to risk attacking them.”
Fitus reached down and sipped tea from a dainty golden saucer as a servant handed it to him, and Godfrey studied the man, wondering. He was more intelligent than Godfrey had imagined.
“Well, I apologize for not reading up on my history before entering your city,” Godfrey said. “I wasn’t really in a scholarly mood—just in the mood to save my life. Perhaps even land a sack of wine, or a random woman.”
The Finian leader smiled wide.
“You are an interesting man, Godfrey son of MacGil,” he said slowly, summing him up. “You wish to appear to be humorous, brash, impetuous, even foolish. Yet I can see by observing you that you are anything but. You are a serious man beneath your façade—perhaps even as serious and studied as your father.”
Godfrey looked at him in surprise, raising his eyebrows.
“And how would you know anything about my father?”
Fitus smiled and shook his head.
“King MacGil, the sixth of the MacGil kings. He began his reign twenty-three years ago, and named his second-eldest daughter Gwendolyn as heir, skipping over Luanda and Kendrick and Godfrey and Reece and yourself. A move that surprised them all.”
Godfrey stared back, flabbergasted at this man’s knowledge.
“How do you know so much about my family?”
Fitus smiled wide.
“Unlike yourself, I study my enemies well,” he replied. “Not just locally, but abroad. I know everything about your family—probably more than you do. I know what happened four generations ago, when your great-great-grandfather abdicated the throne. But I won’t bore you with the details. You see, we Finians are thorough. Knowledge is our trade. Knowledge is our weapon. How else do you think we could have survived here, in a hostile Empire, amidst a hostile race, for nine generations? Queens of Volusia have come and gone—yet we Finians have always been. And while we lurk in the shadows, we have always been more powerful than the Queens.”
Godfrey studied them all with a new respect, seeing the wisdom in all of them, seeing how they were all survivors. Like he. They also had a certain cynicism, a certain ruthlessness that he could understand.
“So why bother with me?” Godfrey finally asked. “My gold can’t buy you. And you already know more about me than I can tell. Why didn’t you just leave us to the mercies of the Empire?”
Fitus laughed, a light, sharp, dangerous sound.
“As I have said, I like you, Godfrey son of MacGil. I like your cause. More importantly, I need your cause. We need your cause. And that is why you are here.”
Godfrey stared back, puzzled.
“We have been watching you from the moment you entered our city,” he said. “Of course, no one enters these gates without our knowing about it. We let you enter. I wanted to see where you would go, what you would do. We watched you place your gold. We didn’t take it, because we wanted to see what you did with it. It was quite amusing, indeed, to watch you escape. When we had enough, we brought you here. We could not let you get killed because we need you—as much as you need us.”
Godfrey stared back in surprise.
“How could you possibly need us?” he asked.
Fitus sighed, turned and looked at his people, and they nodded back silently.
“Let’s just say we have a certain shared purpose,” he continued. “You want the Empire overthrown. You want your slaves free. You want freedom for yourself. You probably even want to return to the Ring. We understand. We want the Empire race dead, too.”
Godfrey gaped, his eyes opened wide, wondering if they were being serious.
“But you live peacefully with them,” he said. “You have control, as you say. You have all the power.”
Fitus sighed.
“Presently, we do. Yet things are changing. I don’t like what I see for the future. The Empire is becoming ever-emboldened; their race is flourishing. There is a new generation of Empire, a generation that does not respect us the way their parents did; they feel more and more that the Finians are a relic of another time, are expendable. More and more their indignities against our people are being enacted. We do not wish to wake up five years from now and discover that our race has been outlawed, imprisoned by this bold new generation of Empire. We like our position of wealth and power very much, and we do not wish to see it disrupted.”
“And what of Volusia?” Godfrey asked. “Will she not use her army to crush the uprising?”
Fitus sighed.
“Our spies tell us that Volusia, even now, leads her men to march on the Empire capital. She is leading them to slaughter. She has become delusional, like her mother, and cannot win. The Empire will crush her, and they will come here, seeking revenge. Which is another reason we want what you do, and we want it now: if the Empire army arrives to Volusia and finds a free and liberated city, with Volusia’s forces all dead, then they will reconsider their vengeance. It is the only hope for survival of our people, of our great city.”
Fitus smiled.
“You see, Godfrey son of MacGil,” he concluded, “we are selfish preservationists, just like you. We are not heroes, just like you. The only thing that Finians are loyal to is survival itself.”
Godfrey took it all in, wondering.
“So then what exa
ctly do you ask of me?” Godfrey asked.
“I ask you to do exactly what you set out to do: to overthrow the Empire. To help your salves—and yourselves—be free. With the Empire dead, and the slaves in power, Volusia will be the first and only free city in the Empire. We Finians would rather share power with the slaves than the Empire. You will act as our intermediary, will tell the slaves the pivotal role we played in assuring their freedom, and assure we all live in peace and harmony, with the Finians, of course, assuming a primary position of power. You are a partner we can respect. A partner we can trust.”
Godfrey welled with optimism at his words, feeling, for the first time since entering this city, that there might be hope for his people after all.
Fitus nodded, and one of his men handed him a quill and parchment.
“You will pen a letter to the slave leader, Darius,” he added. “In your own hand, a hand, unlike ours, that his people can recognize and trust. You are going to tell him of our plan and ask him to follow your instructions. We will send this letter as soon as you are done on the next falcon. It will find him in his camp, in time for tonight.”
“And what instructions are those?” Godfrey asked warily.
“Tonight, we will have all the Empire soldiers slaughtered at the rear gate of the city,” he said. “On our signal, the gates to the city will be open for Darius to lead his men inside. You will tell him to be there, tonight, and to await our signal. The city will be his. And you, Godfrey son of MacGil, will be the hero that made it all happen.”
Godfrey was elated at the thought, thinking of himself, for the first time, as a true hero.
Fitus stood, as did all of his men, smiled, and held out his hand.
Godfrey stood and shook it, and the Finian’s pale fingers were icy cold to the touch, like shaking hands with a corpse.
“Congratulations to you, Godfrey son of MacGil,” he said. “Tonight, the city shall be yours—and your people shall be free.”
