Authors: Edward Lazellari
What a sorry lot,
thought Callum. How was he to fight a war with this rabble? His best officer had his own schemes and couldn’t agree on tactics; his cleric was lost between two different faiths and depressed over his wife; he had a minstrel and a fool—utterly useless; a private detective who was halfway dead and whose motives Cal could never be sure of; and his best sorcerer, albeit brilliant, was still a student and green in the ways of warfare. And Tilcook, the amiable colossal cook who served in the army for fifteen years before coming to work at the palace, who would have been a great boon to Cal’s efforts, was either dead or refusing to show up for duty. Everyone had his or her own agenda—everyone wanted something that Cal couldn’t give.
Balzac had Daniel cornered by the window overlooking Park Avenue. He hovered over the prince like a predator. Cal’s opinion of jesters was not too much higher than that of musicians. They always made him ill at ease, as though they knew more than he did about everything; a perpetual smirk lay beneath whatever expression they chose to wear like a mask and with Balzac Cruz, doubly so. He was affectionately known among the palace guard as “Ball Sack Cruise,” but no one would call him that to his face. Some of the palace guards were indebted to him, having borrowed money to offset gambling debts at the Phoenix Nest. Where a jester found the coin to finance loans to dozens of guards was beyond Cal’s understanding. Cal never liked it, but graft and usury were part of the culture. Aandor did not have anticorruption efforts like the NYPD. Half the city guard took bribes from local crime chiefs. Cal wondered what changes he could implement if he returned in one piece … if they ever repelled Farrenheil.
Though Cal didn’t know why, he didn’t like seeing Balzac alone with the prince. He was being possessive, but considering the effort and personal cost in reclaiming the boy, he’d come too far to ignore his instincts now. He joined them with a smile, hiding his own suspicions like a jester. Daniel looked grateful for the interruption.
“Ah, my lord MacDonnell,” Balzac said. “Am I correct in understanding that we know the location of our friends from Farrenheil?”
“Perhaps—nothing’s been confirmed,” Cal said.
“What a marvelous advantage. I hope that your dear wife has not suffered at the hands of those brutal thugs.”
“Lord Dorn is an earl and councilor in his uncle’s court. He’s very familiar with the rules regarding hostages of noble standing.”
Balzac threw him a sad smile. It struck Cal as thin, like a single coat of whitewash on a bright red wall.
“Your faith in your fellow nobleman is admirable, my lord,” said Balzac. “But hostages in Aandor are given, not taken, and the rules of protection apply to those who voluntarily submit to their hosts. I do hope you are right, though … that the whispers of Farrenheil’s contempt for etiquette and the laws of the continental concord are … exaggerated.”
For a fool, Balzac said very little by way of humor to lighten the mood. Cal couldn’t find one sincere note in any of this man’s utterances. Perhaps they were just never meant to be friends. “Would you mind if I spoke to the prince for a moment?” Cal asked. Balzac bid them a gracious adieu and left to torment Tim, who was too anesthetized by drink to find anyone annoying at that moment.
“Thanks,” Daniel said. “He creeps you out, too, right? Like he’s always saying one thing, but he’s really thinking another.”
“Yeah.” Cal smiled, admiring the kid’s good instincts. “Thanks for not turning out dumb.”
“Huh?”
“I’m in a lot of hot water for losing you thirteen years ago,” Cal admitted. “It was my responsibility to raise you safe and make sure you understood the world you came from. Your family has a long history. I was supposed to prepare you to run a kingdom. Two kingdoms, in fact … your mother has only two younger sisters, and her father is the archduke of Bradaan. Your grandmother died giving birth to your youngest aunt, and the archduke vowed never to remarry. So no trueborn sons means you would inherit that kingdom independent of the continental accord that governs our continent.”
“From the way you talk, though, Aandor is the prize,” said Daniel.
“We all love our own nations, Daniel.”
“What’s it like there?” Daniel asked. “I mean, you use a sword, so what’s closest with regards to here?”
“Fifteenth-century Europe. Objectively speaking, Aandor is more progressive, the most advanced of the Twelve Kingdoms … by the standards of our world, of course. It’s no accident that Aandor became the seat of an empire that ruled over eleven other kingdoms many years ago. There was a long peace that helped everyone thrive. A rising tide lifts all boats. In many ways, we are trying to reclaim that golden era, but without war and conquest as it originally had been done. So it became a breeding contest instead, and subsequently a cold war.”
“And we were winning?”
“It’s not like others haven’t come close. I won’t lie to you, Daniel … Aandor is just as guilty of sabotaging other kingdoms’ efforts in the past. Each of the twelve houses is distinct; the families have character traits, and those traits and beliefs would influence the entire empire if a particular family attained dominance. So alliances have been formed between families and kingdoms who are similar enough in their ethical, moral, and economic beliefs. No one wants to be ruled by someone whose beliefs diametrically oppose their own.”
“So you guys still have suits of armor and all that?” the boy asked.
“Yes.”
“Jousts?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome!”
“There’s some fine literature and music, too. Our maidens are fair and unspoiled … mostly. We also have cholera, plague, death by infections, and we butcher civilians during war. This is not Disney’s Magic Kingdom. No real place is perfect.”
“Can’t we change that? With what we know?”
“Some of it. Aandor is not a place that embraces rapid change. We’ve been in the ‘fifteenth century’ for three hundred years. The laws of physics work slightly different there. We never developed gunpowder. We have true magic that, honestly, most people will never experience in their lifetimes. Most who do are scared of it and never want to encounter it again.”
“When are we going back?” Daniel asked.
“That’s what the argument’s about. I don’t want you going back too soon. Everyone will be pulling you in a different direction, seeking favors, wanting boons, ingratiating themselves. Even your own parents’ agendas may not be in sync. You don’t know anything of our history, politics, or culture. You might offend without realizing it and start off on a bad foot. I want to give you a few years to catch up. That’s what I meant by ‘thanks for not being dumb.’ I have faith in you, Daniel. You’re not spoiled. You’re a survivor, extremely loyal, and you don’t back down from bullies. I can actually see that new golden age of peace and prosperity under your rule.”
“We don’t want to fuck it up,” said Malcolm, joining in. He had a scotch on the rocks in hand, but his eyes were all business.
“Are our five minutes up already?” Cal asked.
“I get that he’s your charge, Cal. And as role models go, he could do a lot worse than you. But I have a ton of resources I’m ready to commit—I just want assurances of what I will receive for that help.”
“You took an oath, Malcolm.”
“Aye, I did—to fight for the prince with ax and shield. My oath says nothing of my vast wealth and enterprises. Pull that oath thing on me again, and that’s all you’ll have—my ax and shield.”
“What do you want?” Daniel asked the billionaire.
“My people came into existence in the mountains of Farrenheil near the western border of Nurvenheim and the Unclaimed Lands. We’d been there for generations mining, smelting, crafting—since before dwarv and man branched apart. Those mountains made us who we are today. And because we are different, impure—we were pushed out. I want your commitment to recognize these mountains as belonging to the dwarvs. Aandor is in a full-scale war regardless of whether it’s winning or not. So commit your armies to march on Farrenheil at some future point to route them from our mountains. We want our mines back … we want to go home.”
“Uh, how big is our army?” Daniel asked Cal.
“Exactly,” Cal said, as though his point had been made. “Daniel doesn’t even know what resources his kingdom has,” Cal said to Mal. “Yet you want him to commit to treaties. We know even less about the kingdom after the invasion. The whole army could be wiped out—cities, villages.”
“I want a good-faith commitment, Cal. Nothing written in blood.”
“You know that’s not fair, given—”
“Yes,” Daniel said.
Cal and Malcolm looked at the boy, each like they weren’t sure what they’d heard.
“What?” asked Mal.
“I said yes,” Daniel repeated. “I agree to this commitment. The mountains to the west of Fahrvergnügen…”
“Farrenheil.”
Daniel nodded and gesticulated in accord. “Whatever … they belong to the Dwarfs…”
“Dwarvs,” Malcolm said, stressing the ah sound and the V. “D-wah-arvzz.”
“Sure,” Daniel added.
Cal’s lips became a thin line of reproach. “Daniel, you can’t—”
“Sure I can. I’m a prince, not a candidate. You guys are going around in circles here, driving a lot of people nuts with no results.” The others in the room perked up at the change in the conversation.
“Yes, but—”
“Miss…,” Daniel called out to Lelani and motioned for her to join them. “Who am I?”
“You’re Grand Duke Danel of Aandor, Blood of Ten Kings, Prince of the Realm, and Regent of the Empire of Aandor,” Lelani said.
“So either I can make this decision now, and end this squabbling, or I’m really just a glorified hostage in a very nice hotel room.”
Malcolm laughed. “I like him!” he bellowed.
“Daniel, the age of ascension is sixteen,” Cal said. “Your father the archduke still runs Aandor.”
“That’s not really the point. I know I’m not in charge, but if we have the resources to help Malcolm’s people get their mountain back, we should commit to this to access whatever assets he can bring to bear now. If we don’t, we can’t very well blame him for not helping.
“Look … I’m a geek; I’ve played enough strategy games to know holding back resources at a crucial time only costs you more in the long run. There’s a time to make like a squirrel and store your nuts, and then there’s the times you have to commit to the larger plan, take a leap of faith. This situation is a no-brainer. Another kingdom invaded my home, captured my parents, killed my subjects—man it’s weird to say that—and tried to kill me. They evicted Malcolm’s people from their ancestral home. So are we realistically close to negotiating a peace with them? Or prepared to let them go home and say
No hard feelings
? No, right?
“We
have
to take the fight back to their country, otherwise we’re a bunch of wusses and they’re just going to try again. So either we lose and it doesn’t matter, or we win and one of our conditions of surrender is the dwarvs get their home back. We don’t really have anything to lose by giving Mr. Robbe his good faith commitment. There’s only upside here.”
Cal scratched his head. There was a gaggle of things Daniel had not considered, but overall, it wasn’t bad ball-park logic.
Did I just get bamboozled by a kid just shy of fourteen?
“Mal, you know this doesn’t hold water back home,” Cal said. “I can’t believe you’d leverage this situation to your personal advantage…”
“Look around you,” Malcolm said, pointing out the opulent suite in the middle of Manhattan. “No one makes it to my station in life without leveraging opportunities that come his or her way. I have competitors cursing my name from Miami to Seattle. I’m the gay billionaire bastard from hell. The kid wants to commit to my conditions. I take him at his word. He gets anything he needs from me. So what are we doing right now … Today?”
The two went at it again; this time it was Cal’s cheeks that turned crimson with vehement objection. It was about to come to blows, but Scott pulled Malcolm back while Lelani and Colby worked on Callum. When they, too, were at risk of being engulfed by the maelstrom, Reverend Grey interceded and cast a calming blessing over the room. This was the full extent of a cleric’s soothe without physical contact. It worked until Mal, a few moments later, threatened to lop Allyn’s hands off if he ever manipulated his emotions with magic again. Allyn took umbrage to the accusation of using
magic
like a common wizard, and a new round of bickering ensued.
“Hey, there’s some sort of parade going on in the street,” Clarisse said, standing at the window. “Is the circus in town?”
Balzac waded through the group to the window. His face turned ashen. It was the first honest emotion Cal had seen on the man since being reintroduced to him. Clarisse opened the window. They heard the increasing honking of horns as gridlock settled in and sirens in the distance. Police flashers came on in several directions—and then … screams. Everyone situated him or herself at one window or another to witness the anarchy outside. Cal got a good look at Clarisse’s animals. It wasn’t the circus. It was Malcolm being right yet again. Cal caught his sergeant’s stare—their arguments suspended until further notice.
“My God,” Reverend Grey said. “What—what are those?”
“Incoming!” Cal shouted.
CHAPTER 35
THE WAITING GAME
There were no further updates from North Carolina. Cat waited in the common area surrounded by Dorn, Hesz, Lhars, Oulfsan, Tom the minion, and Ilyana, the other female prisoner. Despite Balzac’s boasts of his influence with Farrenheil, Dorn was furious that he’d tried to kill Catherine. He wanted to possess Prince Danel’s bloody corpse before deciding her fate. She would remain among them until Krebe returned. All communication with the farm ceased after Dorn gave the order to kill the boy.
The tension in the room increased tenfold. Cat had no knowledge of her husband’s fate. Perhaps they were deep in the country out of cell tower range—or sunspots were screwing with the satellites.
Ilyana sat gagged on the floor against the couch, her hands and feet tied with rope. Symian had acquired her in the meat packing district on the west side of Manhattan late one night—she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. That was one of the dangers of living in New York. It was Cat’s job to take care of her needs.