The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (47 page)

Sergei sighed and put the oily paper down. He rubbed his temples, trying to banish the tendril of pain budding above his eyes. Recently, his head was hurting too much, too often. He was stressed and frustrated. Now this nonsense.

The thing was, he was planning to strengthen the faith, but he wanted to make sure the priests worked with him and not against him. It was easy to ignore earthly matters and your vow to your king when you swore a higher oath. In the end, the patriarchs served themselves.

His father had not quite understood that. Neither did he, for a long while. The last year had sobered him.

The king reached for a quill and touched the shiny indigo ink in a small bottle. The surface was jellylike, hardened with the cold. Sergei had refused to heat the room. The last thing he wanted was a hot, sooty fire choking him.

No, he would not bother replying on his own. Genrik would scribble a formal reply. One full of dishonest apologies and a hope for better future cooperation. But he would surely summon some of the under-patriarchs and holy brothers in the city for a meeting. He wanted to learn which one of them might have reported all those lies.

He pushed the ink bottle with his thumb, and it made a soft thrumming noise as it slid over the polished wood. He was too distraught to write to Vera just yet.

The winter had officially wreathed Roalas and its surroundings, come early by several weeks. Snowstorms usually hit a few days before the year’s end. Well, at least this year, the Parusite troops would spend the freezing nights lodged in warm barracks.

Sergei leaned back, the chair top digging into his shoulder blades, and closed his eyes, thinking. He tried to understand if his purpose, his role in Athesia, was making things better or worse. The common people had a shelter over their heads, they would have food till the spring, and the streets were safe. The Caytoreans seemed bent on scheming, but they wanted him in their fold. He was being wooed by the nomads, and he had blessed that Eracian count’s cause with secret military aid. He was the king of the world, and still, he felt wretched.

What am I supposed to do that will make me feel good?
he wondered.

So far, he had listened to Lady Lisa and tried to make peace. It was working. The Athesians were his people now, and
he had a duty toward them. Every day, there was less tension and animosity in Roalas’s alleys and taverns. The unusual sight of seeing the conquerors walking with their defeated enemies in the same patrol no longer seemed a forced act. Law and order had returned to the land.

Any king should be proud when he did not have to stake half the population along the highways just to make a point.

But he feared his peaceful mission was going to shatter like brittle glass. He could feel it. A sort of premonition that was part instinctive, nocturnal dread after a dreamless night and part hard experience that told him wars never ended this easily, this cheaply. Losing his son was a personal disaster for him, but it felt like preparation for greater madness that was yet to come.

Helplessness, of the worst kind.

The Kataji ambassador had left Roalas last month without an answer in his hand. Sergei had decided it was best if he did not make business with the tribesmen just yet. After all, their gods and goddesses were different. They shared the same ancestry with the clans from the Red Desert. Not the kind of people you made friends with or trusted with your life. He recalled the saying he had been hearing from his childhood: never turn your back on the Kataji; they might stick a knife in there, or worse, mistake you for a goat. As a young boy, he had thought the reference to be funny. Later, he found its coarse, unsophisticated phrasing an affront. Then, he had learned how simple and utterly insulting it really was.

Another person to head for Eracia was that cursed count—no, viceroy—taking with him a promise of national harmony. Sergei was glad to be rid of him. He would have yielded to even further demands from Bart, if only to see him leave Roalas. Unfortunately, he had not taken the murders away with him. Now he was left with two survivors of the woe council, and they eyed one another like ancient foes.

That left him with the subtle matter of leaving the Territories exposed to the Kataji invasion, should they choose to retaliate against his apathy. The dangerous idea of financing Under-Patriarch Evgeny’s army sounded like the simplest solution. He would annul the protest from the clergy in Sigurd, as well as ensure the nomads did not venture south.

Only, last year, Sergei had learned there were no simple solutions to kingly matters.

He looked into the corner of the room. A bodyguard stood there like a statue. One of Borya’s men, a member of his own household. The man paid no attention to trivial, nonthreatening details. It was as if he did not hear or see things happening around him, and yet, if Sergei commanded him, he would react immediately, without hesitation.

That kind of dedication was a unique privilege—and maybe even a curse. To utterly devote your life to another, to put your needs, passions away, to become a ruthless, precise killing machine.

“Ludmil,” Sergei called.

“Your Highness,” the soldier said.

“Tell me one thing, what would you do if you were me?”

The bodyguard frowned for a moment, then straightened his expression to one of blank professionalism. But there was a minute change to his stance, the sagging of his shoulders, the nervous twitch of gauntleted hands. “Your Highness?”

“Your family has served my family for four generations. Is that not so? I remember your grandfather around the court, and then your own father rode with King Vlad in the last war. Is that not so? He died before the city gates?”

Ludmil let out a quick breath through his nostrils. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“What would you do? Would you make peace with these Athesians? Would you try to make peace with that Emperor
James, who claims to be Adam’s son? Would you let him hold parts of this land for the sake of peace between our two nations?”

The bodyguard reached up and tilted the helmet on his head with one big, ungainly armored finger. “Your Highness, I do not know anything about these affairs. I am only a soldier.”

Sergei smiled. “You are a soldier who knows more about court affairs and politics than most nobles. You are around during meetings. You have heard ambassadors and envoys and army commanders speak. You know what they all think. You know what’s out there. What would you do?”

Ludmil swallowed, his neck pressed against his ash-colored steel gorget. “I do not know, Your Highness.”

The king carefully put both of the letters away and stoppered the ink bottle. He pushed the book of prayers to the corner of the desk, aligned it against the corner with his thumb. “Please tell me.”

Ludmil dared turn his head an inch to the side. “I would crush them, Your Highness. Forgive my bluntness. I would destroy this impostor and unbeliever. Your Highness.” He coughed nervously.

“To what end?” Sergei asked. He shoved the chair backward, and it left grooves in the carpet. “To what end? To avenge your father? To make Parus that much bigger? What would that bring you personally?”

His bodyguard squirmed again, leather and plate groaning and rustling. “That Athesian would-be emperor defies your will, Your Highness. He must be destroyed.”

Sergei smiled sadly. “If only I had your conviction, Ludmil.” Then, he would probably be a guard somewhere, idling his life in statue-like moments of singular devotion. A tedious, enviable task.

No help from his household retainers and soldiers. They followed his house not because he led it, he King Sergei, but because it was the house of kings, and whoever ruled it was just as good. Sergei’s own turn at the helm was just coincidence or random timing.

The door to his office opened, and Sasha stepped in, unannounced. She was the only person he allowed that luxury. Ludmil tensed, but he did not draw his weapon. Several of his comrades outside the chamber were charged with making sure no one came through without a challenge. Had there been an attacker out there, they would have heard the clang of swords and the screams of dying.

Sasha was alone, without her priestess friend. Bad news.

She snapped her head round toward the bodyguard. “Ludmil, out.”

Behind her, Vitya, a sergeant of the guard, craned and looked at his king with an expression of chagrin and apology. Sergei shook his head. The door closed shut, pulled by invisible hands.

Once they were totally alone, Sasha slammed a message roll on the desk. “How long will this humiliation continue?”

With exaggerated slowness, Sergei fished out the document and read. It was a waxed paper, used by scouts. Written in the coarse style of a field clerk who valued words by their quantity, it spoke of yet another success of the Athesian army in the north of the princedom.

Sasha huffed. “You will let him take more lands while you sit back and do nothing?”

Sergei gazed at his sister. Sometimes he wondered how they were related. “I am not doing nothing.”

The princess snarled. “Your son is dead. Get over it. Start behaving like a king. This is a bloody disgrace.”

Sergei felt his fists clench. “Mind your language, Sister. I am resolved with Vlad’s death. And I know what I’m planning and doing. It is you who needs to get over things and start behaving.”

“You’re spending too much time with that Athesian witch. She’s poisoned your mind. I should have hanged her a long time ago.”

Sergei closed his eyes, tried to calm his nerves. “If you touch Lady Lisa, I will send you back home and find someone else to govern this land. Do you understand me?”

“Govern? You don’t let me govern!” she shouted.

The king wanted to rise and shout back, but he knew he must not. “You seem to think your role in Roalas is to hang and burn everyone who so much as blinks at you the wrong way. Instead, I would expect you to work with the Eracians and the High Council to ensure favorable trade agreements.”

“You do not need me for that. You have your merchants doing that silly work. My Red Caps bled taking this city, and now you expect them to fawn over these people. You forget, Brother, but Empress Amalia’s body was never found, and she might be brewing a bloody rebellion somewhere. As long as she remains alive in people’s heads, the essence of her rule will not fade away. You are risking everything by your misplaced mercy.”

Sergei lifted the message she had delivered. “They have forgotten her. She’s a nobody. Emperor James is a much bigger threat.” He snorted. “In fact, I would not be surprised if Amalia did not direct her rebellion against him, rather than me, if she were alive.”

Sasha’s face softened a bit. “Perhaps. Or they might reconcile their differences. Tell me, why did you go to this war? Was it not to avenge Parus? What are you doing, then? You’re helping these people lead better lives.”

“So you would kill them all, then?” Sergei asked.

Sasha scrunched her face, thinking. “A considerable number of them. They need to understand the price we had to pay twenty years ago. They need to suffer the same pain, the same desperation.”

Sergei gritted his teeth. “Our late father lost the war through bad planning and foolish decisions.”

The princess was silent for a moment. “Your mercy will doom us all.”

Sergei did rise, but only to pace around the room. “Sister. Things have changed. I thought this war was all about sweet vengeance, but once I stood in this palace and saw Vlad’s body, wrapped in linen, I asked myself, what have I achieved by taking this forsaken city? I gave up my firstborn for what? Some land, a handful of people who had seen three conquerors take chances with their lives in just fifty years? There has to be something else, something bigger.”

“So what do you want?”

Sergei stopped in front of her. “I want to make all this sacrifice worthwhile. I do not want to be remembered as a destroyer. Killing and burning is easy. I want to rebuild the realms and unite them under my rule. I want to restore faith to these people. I want to make a lasting peace with our neighbors.”

Sasha sneered. “You want a place in the books, Brother. Is that it?”

He ignored her remark. “I want to make my life meaningful.”

She nodded. “How do you plan to achieve that? By surrendering to your enemies? By letting some bastard sponsored by the High Council mock you with his little conquest? You are undermining your own authority, here, at home, among the soldiers. You are risking everything by allowing your
weaknesses to show. You are the king. You cannot allow any mercy.”

Sergei deflated a little, sighing. “What would you do, Sister?”

She pointed roughly north. “I would ride and finish that impostor. I would hunt down the ghost of Amalia and hack its head off and mount it on my banner. Only then will you have the respect of the people you rule, and only then will you be able to scribble your name into the history annals. You want to be like Pyotr? Pyotr hacked heads off servants who so much as looked at him the wrong way.”

Sergei looked up at the ceiling. Was there no other way to glory but a river of blood?

He thought of the last man to rule this city. A butcher of the highest order. A man who had done atrocities worth every song, rumor, story, and book chapter. True, he had bought himself almost twenty years of peace by being the most ruthless man in known history.

“Do you only care for killing?”

Sasha smiled. “I want to defeat this James. I already have about fifteen thousand troops near his position. I will take another thirty thousand from the west and south forts and head toward Ecol. He has roughly the same number, but his troops are all amateurs. Meanwhile, you can stay here, build peace with our neighbors, and keep Roalas clean and bloodless. When I return, I hope you will let me do what you wanted me to in the first place, and that is to rule this princedom.”

“You want to go to war?” he retorted.

“Someone has to,” she hissed, almost sweetly. “I am just as concerned about peace. For some reason, this conquest has changed you, and you no longer see clearly. It’s not about chivalry and visions of prosperity. It’s about spilling blood.”