7
Lamia looked down at Bartroi, who had followed his glass in toppling to the wine-stained carpet. Her older brother had already stopped breathing; he didn’t so much as twitch.
On a whim, she flexed her fingers and took her own glass, from which she had not drunk a drop, and poured the contents over Bartroi’s head.
Her brother still didn’t move.
“Gracious, I must say I’m surprised. To think, he hadn’t taken a single measure to protect himself.” Until that very last instant, Lamia hadn’t abandoned the possibility that Bartroi was feigning death, but her caution turned out to be astoundingly misplaced. He had died for one very simple reason: He was not careful.
Lamia flung the empty glass on the ground and then smirked at her brother’s corpse, her red eyes narrowing. “All these years you spent preparing…only to die a dog’s death. You truly were a stooge, Brother.”
Lamia had never understood Bartroi’s thinking, what delusion he was laboring under. He spoke of some revelation he felt she had given him, but as far as Lamia was concerned, she’d only played the simpleminded younger sister, giving him a little push—a push in a direction that would be advantageous to her. And even she had never dreamed that it would result in no fewer than ten potential adversaries never even entering the competition.
“Although to be fair, all ten of them would probably have been burned alive had they dared to grasp the Bright Sword.”
She just didn’t know what Bartroi was thinking; he seemed to believe that he could invoke a blood relation as the one and only reason she should protect him and his cohort. The hubris of believing one could save others was an amusement permitted only to those who wielded power. The moment Bartroi had decided to cozy up to someone stronger than him, the very instant he had elected to use his wits in an attempt to cultivate their sympathy, he threw away his own best hope of making his wish come true.
“And that’s why you’re dead now, dear Brother,” Lamia said.
O citizens of the empire, be strong. The unwritten rule of the Empire of Volakia, the custom of might, which held that the strong had the right to torment the weak. By this custom, the stronger would feed upon the weaker—even be they a member of the royal family. And the strong were free to capitalize on the deaths of the weak as they saw fit.
“Your Excellency, we’ve safely overpowered them,” a man said in a rasp as Lamia continued to stare down at her dead brother. They were in Bartroi’s mansion, where Lamia had been invited as a guest, but the man who appeared in the reception room didn’t belong to the household staff; he was one of Lamia’s agents. He was elderly, with a luxurious head full of white hair, and intelligent eyes tucked among the deep wrinkles of his face. He addressed Lamia as “Excellency,” the term of highest honor in the Volakian empire: he was Lamia Godwin’s master strategist…
“Beautiful work, Belstetz. I presume you didn’t have any problems?”
“None at all. As Your Excellency indicated, Master Bartroi kept the bare minimum of personnel here at his mansion.”
“Hmm. Interesting. Imagine, we were blood relatives, yet it never occurred to him to protect himself.”
“ ” The man she called Belstetz bowed respectfully and was silent. Useful people did not speak out of turn. Lamia hated the elderly, but that was because so many of them were so thoroughly incapable. As long as they knew how to handle themselves, she didn’t mind their existence. Still, she felt the elderly were too eager to speak in general, and the best way to handle them was to shut them up.
“That, at least, is something I admire about my dearly departed father’s dedication. He knew that expiring pathetically on his deathbed would cast a pall over all his achievements. And we wouldn’t want that.”
No matter how strong and virile in youth, age made fools of everyone. It was Lamia’s opinion that the system of imperial succession, which replaced the ruler before that could happen, was supremely logical. She, too, hoped the curtain would come down on her life before she grew old and her intelligence and beauty withered.
“Although, I do plan to make it last as long as I can,” she commented.
Belstetz paused, then said, “—Very well, Your Excellency. If you have no objections, shall I continue with the plan?”
“Yes, please do.”
The strategist wasn’t interested in entertaining Lamia’s stray remarks, but in continuing his work. She didn’t blame him for that nor reproach him—she only nodded and winked.
Bartroi was dead, and the moronic siblings he’d rallied to his cause had lost their standard-bearer. Already unqualified to take part in the Rite, bent as helplessly as branches in the wind, they had only one choice: to seek someone new to guide them. They would find Lamia.
“We’re dealing with a cabal brought together by my brother Bartroi. I can only assume their heads are empty, every one. When they hear our brother is dead, it will be a simple matter to wrap them around my little finger.”
He was just as foolish as the siblings who, misjudging their own ability, had attempted to grasp the Bright Sword and been destroyed; that was Lamia’s true opinion of Bartroi. However, in that his foolishness had ultimately resulted in at least some advantage to her, there was admittedly a measure of value in his life.
As she made to leave the room, Lamia stopped and turned back toward her brother’s corpse, his face still buried in the floor. “Say, Bartroi… Dear Brother. I want you to know, I didn’t hate you—not really.”
There was no answer—of course there wasn’t. But Lamia wasn’t looking for one. She wasn’t trying to apologize or somehow salve her conscience. She was simply offering a report.
“You were just the easiest to manipulate. The most susceptible to the innocent blathering of a sweet little girl.”
She was letting him know that it had all been nothing more than an opening gambit, a strategic move made when she was still very young. It was her last gift to the dead man, and then she sinuously glided out of the room, leaving the rest to her strategist, who stood with his head bowed. By the time she emerged from the door of the mansion and started boarding the waiting dragon carriage, she’d already forgotten her brother’s face.
Then she smiled sweetly. Her attention was already on her next objective. “Now, the pruning is done. I can’t wait for what comes next, Prisca.”
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