by Beth Reason
Chapter 26
Bradwin sat on a small cot in a small room he never knew existed in his home. He looked around the simple space with wonder and confusion. How could he have an entire room in his own home and never even know about it? Were there others? And, if so, how many? It was fascinating. Simply fascinating. The door opened and Udin walked in. It had been a long time since Bradwin saw any other people, maybe even a few days, and he jumped up in excitement when he saw his longtime right hand man. "Udin!" He tried to thrust his hand forward in greeting, but the antique metal shackles that bound his wrist and feet brought him back to reality. "Have you finally come to your senses?" he asked, with all the authority he could muster.
Udin looked at the man. Just a few days before, he was on the top of the world. People cowered before him and tripped over themselves in their scramble to make him happy. And now what was he? He was a tired, small, old man. Had Udin really feared him? Had Udin really sold his soul to do this man's bidding? Not for the first time, he felt nauseous with self-reproach. "Sit," he commanded.
Bradwin struggled with himself for a moment before sitting. It didn't matter what he was. In his current situation, he had no choice. The sane part of his brain that only seemed to surface once in awhile over the last few days knew that Udin was his only chance to get out of the mess he created for himself.
Udin took a chair and sat stiffly in front of Bradwin. He had thought carefully about what he was going to do with his life in the wake of the nation's worst upheaval. He thought about who he was, who he had been, and what he wanted for his future. Though a subject of great importance to himself, Udin had no illusions that Bradwin would care. However, since their fates had been tightly entwined for so many years, Udin felt he had to spell it out for Bradwin. He felt he owed him that. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Perhaps Bradwin owed it to Udin. Whatever the reason, Udin had thought long and hard and decided that he had to be the one to level with his former boss.
"You are about to face a trial, and I will not be there to defend you."
Bradwin's eyes went wide and he tried to make sense of what Udin was saying. "Excuse me?"
Udin shifted in his chair. The guards outside Bradwin's makeshift cell had warned him that the old man seemed a little touched in the head. Physicians had assured everyone in the Council that it was simply due to old age and stress, but as he looked at the foggy eyes of Bradwin, Udin wondered. "You heard me. You will face a trial for your crimes."
Bradwin scoffed and shook his head. "Crimes? Please. I have committed no crimes."
Udin stared at the man. "You're joking, right?"
"I have done nothing but lead my people."
It suddenly dawned on Udin that Bradwin honestly believed that, and he was stunned.
"Yes, I grew drugs," he continued when Udin sat there and stared. "I freely admit that. Do you know what we got for them? Hm? A few small herbs from us, and they gave us food. Cloth. Security."
"Those drugs killed people," Udin said. "Lots and lots of people."
"Not people," Bradwin said heatedly. "Savages."
"Human beings!"
Bradwin scoffed and wished he could go back to pondering the rooms of his house instead of having a circular conversation. "Don't act like you weren't a part of it."
Udin did many things over the years that were less than honorable. He covered Bradwin's ass, because that was his job. "I did my job. Nothing more, nothing less."
"And what do you think I was doing, hm? The Council shot down the procreation restrictions and opened our borders for female imports. Our population has grown, while our crops have remained the same." Bradwin tried to spread his hands, but only managed to wiggle his fingers. "What would you have me do, hm? Tell me, Mr. High and Mighty. Tell me what it was I should have done."
Udin shook his head. "Plowed the alfalfa fields to grow grains. Ease the ridiculous state ban on animal protein consumption. Hell, for that matter, just trade fair with the Borderlands."
Bradwin looked at Udin and shook his head. "At what cost?"
Udin scoffed. "Don't give me that bullshit, old man. We're the richest nations in the world. We could have spared a little to keep ourselves from starving."
It occurred to Bradwin that perhaps he shouldn't have kept some things so close to the chest for so many years. Udin was a very clever man. Perhaps he could have seen all of this coming. If only he had let him get closer, he would know what he was saying now. "It's not about money, Udin. It's about our very way of life."
Udin looked up and quirked an eyebrow.
"Think about it. They're savages." When Udin's mouth opened, Bradwin rushed on, not letting him speak. "No, now you just listen to me. They are. They do not have an electrical grid. Most of them shit in the outdoors, for goodness sake! You saw my granddaughter, and that was with Tenet doing his very best to make her cultured and teach her a modicum of respectability."
Udin snorted. "He didn't seem to be trying that hard."
"No, he didn't," Bradwin said, suddenly feeling on top of the situation for the first time in days. "That's my point. He's gone native himself. They got their claws into a boy who was...well, he never would have been a leader or a great man down here. But even you have to admit, he was the pinnacle of cultured breeding."
Udin gave a shrug of concession. The only scandal he had to cover up involving Tenet was his leaving. Until then, Tenet gave every appearance of perfection.
"And in just six years, they stripped him of his breeding, his culture, that inborn regal quality that was his very pride. Don't you see, Udin?" Bradwin sat forward, needing at least one person to understand. "If I opened that door, all of this would be gone. Not the money. But us. Our very culture would be stripped."
Udin hated that he could see the reason behind the old man's words. It was warped and twisted, but it made a sick sort of sense. "We opened trade with the Third Worlds."
Bradwin laughed, feeling a surge of hope cut through the inane musings he'd intentionally used to occupy his mind in his tiny cell. He had worked with Udin long enough to know that at least some of what he was saying was getting through to the man, and he held on to that hope with both hands. "And they are all the way across the globe, are they not? They can remain their own culture, a mystery, an interesting vacation destination for the bored upper echelon." Bradwin sat straighter, feeling more and more like himself with every shred of doubt he saw in Udin's eyes. He was making his case. If he could sell it to Udin, then the man would sell it to the rest. "The Third Worlds are a novelty, nothing more, because they can be. They are so far away they remain 'us' and 'them'."
"You don't think very much of our people."
Bradwin gave Udin a bland look. "Until you decided to go on this recent moral journey, you didn't, either."
It was a fair point. Udin spent most of his days lying to people, and they ate it up. He would tell the biggest, most incredibly unlikely whopper, and simply because he said it, they believed him. The system was designed to control puppets, and the public was, by and large, blindly accepting of their strings. There were no uprisings, no citizen revolts. The Council quelled any murmurs of discontent and were able to do so because the average Southlander or New Canadian believed whatever pile of shit the Council shoveled their way. Whenever he stopped to really think about it, Udin was both thrilled and outraged by the naivete of the general public.
So Bradwin really did have a point. However, as Udin thought of the casualty reports he'd heard from Jiti Ton's men at the front lines, the outrage overtook any old amusements he used to have at the public's expense. A blind, trusting people could never have a war. They pretended they were trained by the Academy, that they were the ultimate soldiers, that their forces could not be beaten, and they kept that hubris simply because they'd never been challenged. They never had to prove themselves. The Council was very good at paying for peace in private while bragging about their muscle in public. The soldiers who followed Bradwin's selfish command had n
o idea what they were walking into and a slaughter ensued. There were losses on both sides, but for every one Borderlander soldier that fell, Southland lost ten. It was a blood bath, and Bradwin had to know it would be. He had to know.
Udin sat and quietly fumed for a moment before he could speak. "You were always good at justifications, I'll give you that."
Bradwin felt that tiny tingle of fear again, but quickly tamped it down. "It's not a justification if it's the truth. If we opened those borders, there would be nothing to stop that savagery from invading."
Udin snorted. "They didn't want to invade. They only wanted you to stop poisoning their people."
"They aren't people!" Bradwin bellowed, his frustration getting the better of him. He took a shaky breath. "Udin, listen to me..."
"No," said Udin calmly. "For once, you listen to me." He sat forward, his face inches from Bradwin's. "For years I did as you asked. For years I looked the other way about the drugs and the strong arm tactics because I let you talk me into thinking it was for the best. People were eating, they were wearing the pretty clothes they wanted, and they seemed happy. Why rock the boat?"
"Exactly!" Bradwin said.
"And then two days ago, you launched a war we could not win. You sent seven thousand soldiers to the front lines to be slaughtered."
Bradwin's jaw ticked. "I'm sure those numbers are inflated..."
Udin jumped up, suddenly needing to either hit him or move. "You said they had bows and arrows and spears. You sold this war to the Council with 'proof' that their numbers were smaller than ours, that they were so backwards that we'd easily roll over them."
"But..."
"No!" Udin yelled, coming to a stop in front of him again. "I said I was going to speak and you will listen. You lied. Plain and simple."
"Like you never have."
"Not on something that would kill people!" Udin stood back and tried to get hold of himself. "Seven thousand, Bradwin. That's more than the entire population of the corn and wheat sectors combined. Seven thousand men, fathers, brothers, sons. And you knew. You knew they had greater capabilities. You knew you were sending our boys into battle expecting sticks instead of guns." He shook his head in disgust. "How in the hell could you do that?"
Bradwin had enough. He forced himself to stand in spite of the awkwardness of being shackled. "Now you see here. I am still the Exalted Leader of the..."
"Oh, you hadn't heard?" Udin said simply. He waited for the implication to dawn on Bradwin. "Ah, so you hadn't heard."
Bradwin's eyes flashed shock for a second, his heart doing that odd slamming thing in his chest once more. "I have done nothing but serve my country," he insisted. "How could I possibly know that they were so well armed?"
"Cut the bullshit," Udin sneered. "We've found your secret intel. We've got irrefutable proof. Witnesses, electronic transmissions...hell, we've even discovered your little private army."
Bradwin was too stunned to feel anything. "They'll never talk," he mumbled.
Udin laughed. "They already have! And thank god on that, too, because without their information, we'd still be losing men. We wouldn't know how to communicate with the Borderland forces and call a halt to this idiocy. As it is, it'll take a miracle to get them to allow us to travel over their lands for our migration, if we can even get the transports working again..." Udin shook his head. The sheer amount of work before them as a nation was staggering. "And you knew. You knew and you could have stopped it like that." He snapped his fingers.
"At what cost?" Bradwin demanded. "Society itself, that's what. Our society would have crumbled. Everything we know and love would have been gone."
Udin was done. He had hoped to break through, to appeal to the old man's intelligence, if nothing else. He hoped...hell, he didn't really know what he hoped. But it was clear that Bradwin either couldn't or simply wouldn't understand. "And maybe that's what we've needed all along, boss. Maybe all this needed to change. Have you ever thought of that?"
Bradwin scoffed. "I didn't see you object to the silk suits you wore to lavish parties, or the extra money I gave you to buy my wife that fancy perfume she likes!"
Udin began nodding as Bradwin spoke. "That's right, I didn't. But none of that shit killed people."
Bradwin shook his head slowly. "Oh, you poor, dumb fool. You honestly believe that, don't you?"
That old familiar feeling of guilty discomfort weighed heavily in Udin's stomach. There was nothing more to say. The truth was out there between them and nothing could change the past. After a long moment, Bradwin sank back onto the bed, his body crumpling when the hope fled, and Udin ran a shaking hand through his hair.
Udin noticed the chair he'd been sitting in got toppled when he jumped up, and he carefully righted it back under the small wooden desk. It struck him again how barren Bradwin's accommodations were. He was being housed in the servant quarters. An armed vehicle the Council acquired from the bounty hunting league would arrive the next day to transport Bradwin to a ship. He'd cross the ocean and spend his days in a holding cell in the Third Worlds while the Council cleaned up the mess in Southland and figured out a way to keep the people from frying in the unforgiving Summer sun. Udin had a meeting with Jiti Ton that very morning, and it looked as if the Borderlanders were open to negotiations.
"I have been offered a position as your defense attorney," Udin said at length. Bradwin didn't even bother to look at him. "I passed. Instead, I am taking a position as a liaison between the International Council of Nations and the Borderlands."
Bradwin blinked. "You're working for them?"
Udin nodded. "Yes."
Bradwin let out a bitter laugh. "I wonder if they know how quickly you'll stab them in the back if it's in your best interest."
Udin expected Bradwin to lash out. If he didn't get out of the room soon, Bradwin would start getting more and more vicious. It was time to leave. He turned and rapped on the door for the guard to let him out. "I leave tomorrow, as do you. I highly doubt I'll ever see you again, though I'll be sure to give the Council a full and honest testimony."
"Make you sure you tell them about your role in all this."
"Oh, I will," he said honestly. "I was just a lackey doing as I was told. I'm sure they'll see it my way since you so completely pulled the wool over their eyes as well." Bradwin snarled and spat a string of curses that once would have scared Udin. Now, from a broken old criminal, they sounded pathetically harmless. Udin shook his head and sighed. "You know what? I'm glad they left you alive." The door closed off Bradwin's swears and Udin wished he felt better about the interaction.
"Was it as cathartic as you hoped?" asked Irmara. She sat outside the room and listened to the entire exchange. She had wanted to go in and give Bradwin a piece of her mind, but since it never did any good in all their years together, she didn't want to waste another breath trying. She stood and walked down the hall with Udin, openly holding his hand and not caring who saw.
"Not really," he admitted. "I think...I think he honestly truly feels like he did the right thing."
Irmara sniffed. "You give him entirely too much credit."
"And you never gave him enough," he pointed out. "He'd not nearly the buffoon you took him to be." Irmara stopped in her tracks and stared at Udin. He took a few more steps, then stopped and turned. "What?"
"Udin, the one thing Bradwin is not is a buffoon. He never was, and the fact that you believe me so stupid as to be taken in..."
Udin grabbed Irmara's hand again and brought it to his lips, kissing it quickly. "I do not think you are stupid."
Irmara felt the frustration bubble up inside. When she heard that Bradwin was finished, her whole life changed. Though she was certain that the Council would not find her in any fault, all the Bradwin's funds would be stripped. She would be forced to abandon all of their properties. She knew she had a slight chance of appealing to their old time friends on the Council to retain at least one house in Southland and one in New Canada. However, even
if she could, she would live the rest of her life on their whims. Just as it had been as a child in a poor village, her life was once again not her own.
And then Udin burst into her room amid the blackened chaos. He sat with her until the muscle spasms that held her captive had eased and brought her to his own room to recuperate. By the time he returned many hours later, she had calmed her mind and made her plans. Though she never before saw Udin as anything but an intense dalliance, he was now Irmara's only option. He would not be able to give her the good life she had known, and that was now her bitter reality. However, he actually loved her. She had believed he would do as she said, as her other lovers had, and that was the best she was going to get.
Udin thought her stupid, though. He thought her meek. Over the last couple days with him in constant contact with her, his opinions of her became clear. He thought the same as Bradwin had for all their marriage and the knowledge was like a kick in Irmara's stomach. He was kissing her hand and apologizing, but they were hollow words and she knew it. His eyes held the truth. Udin believed no better of her than Bradwin had and her mind reeled. Instead of Udin being her ticket out, the reality was that once again, she was no more than someone's prize. Irmara felt the metallic taste of bitterness in her throat as they continued down the hall to her rooms to pack. She had a mad urge to pull her hand away and run, but run where? She had nowhere else to go.
Udin stopped at her door and gave the guards the order to open the suite. Since the electrical grid had been utterly destroyed by the long range Borderlands weapons, guards were posted in place of the electric locks they all knew and used. The guards let them in and Udin began to point out what was private property and what was to be left with the estate to be destroyed as the Council saw fit. He rattled off his lists, but became aware that Irmara was not answering. "What's wrong?" he asked, frowning with concern.
Irmara should have run with Tenet. She should have begged his hunter wife to bring her, too. She could have adapted. She could have gone without the fancy clothes and the pretty decorations. Sure, it would be a hardship to eat their root vegetables and meat. But it wasn't like she hadn't done that before. She was a native born girl, after all. She was born into a world with no electricity and hard work. Hadn't she told herself she missed it over the years? She still could run. She could make up some lie and take off for the border with others she heard were doing just that. She could beg entry, play on Tenet's fame. She was a native girl once. She could live that way again.
The very idea turned her stomach.
"Nothing," Irmara said, pasting on her fake smile. "I was just thinking of all of the horrid years in this house and how I shouldn't miss one single thing."
Udin grinned and pulled Irmara to him. She was stiff in his arms, not free and giving as she once was. But they were in a period of upheaval. Her whole life was changing, and in truth, she was handling it better than he could have expected. So she was holding back. So she wasn't as warm as she could be. Like everyone else, she just needed time, and he could live with that. He finally had her for his own, and all those whispered promises made in the hazy warmth of afterglow would finally come true.
Irmara let Udin pull her close and she pressed her fingernails into her palms behind his back until she felt them bite into her flesh. She felt his hand slide down her back to cup her bottom, and she closed her eyes tightly and let out a well-practiced moaned. She felt his response and knew he was about to throw her to the bed and take her. He needed it. He needed her. And since she had a list of things she needed from him, she let out a girlish giggle and pretended.
