15
“Hey, how much of what you said was true?”
“ ” Priscilla pensively closed an eye as she looked at him from her place in a luxurious chair, where she was waiting for time to pass, bored. The speaker was a man with a strange haircut—he’d shaved off his hair, but only half of it. He was the saber user, the one Ubirk had called Gajeet. She assumed he had a certain authority, here where proven ability was valued above all. She suspected he could handle himself in a fight. The fact that he seemed to be acting as spokesman for the others made that clear. Although, the fact that he only acted when the true leader, Ubirk, wasn’t present showed that Gajeet’s bravery was something of a sham.
“Don’t be coy with me, noblewoman. Do ya understand the position you’re in? Eh?”
“Spare me your yammering. I think you fail to understand the position you’re in. The very ground beneath your feet is unstable.”
“What was that?” Gajeet demanded.
“You’ve let that rabble-rouser dictate every little thing. You’re unwilling or unable to use your own head. And if you can’t use your head, that means you can’t use the eyes, ears, or nose that go with it. The lot of you got here by covering your eyes, blocking your ears, and plugging your noses, simply letting yourselves be led along by the hand. Am I wrong?”
Priscilla’s attitude never changed despite Gajeet’s attempt to intimidate her. Beside her, Jorah was looking distinctly nervous. As for the thoroughly berated Gajeet, he couldn’t hide his displeasure, but he didn’t look like he was going to do anything rash.
The sword slaves in general appeared to be coming down from the high of taking over the island. A rush of blood to the head was all well and good for starting a rebellion, but now the question of what came next seemed to be looming. Hence why they turned to Priscilla—or rather, High Countess Delacroix—the one person here with the most experience dealing with the empire.
“The capital will do exactly as I said. The Nine Divine Generals will come—precisely how many fingers of the emperor’s hand fall upon you is up to him, but when the generals arrive, this little uprising will be quashed in a matter of moments.”
“Listen to you talk. How many people do you think we have here?”
“It doesn’t matter. And you know it.”
“ !”
No matter how much of a brave front they might try to put up, anyone who had lived their lives in the empire, anyone who had made their living there by the sword, understood this very well. Gajeet and the other sword slaves had no illusions that they could go toe-to-toe with the legendary Nine Divine Generals. They would understand that when they cooled off a little.
“And yet you did this… Why?” Jorah asked, looking at the blanching sword slaves. The question was not quite one of pity, nor of sympathy.
Gajeet gave a listless sigh. A frail man like Jorah could never understand the feelings of men who possessed greater yet still middling strength like himself. A man blessed with wealth and status could never understand the despair of men trapped on an isolated island. Nor could Priscilla. Even if the two of them could be made to imagine it, they wouldn’t understand. And Gajeet didn’t intend to take the effort to try to make them. Thus…
“You curs may take one of two paths. You may continue to let that agitator lead you around by the nose and allow your lives to be snuffed out trying and failing to challenge the Nine Divine Generals. Or…”
“Yes? Or what?”
“Or you may struggle against your destiny and win back your lives with your own hands.”
The sword slaves swallowed heavily, every one of them enraptured by Priscilla’s words. The road ahead of them at this moment could only be a dead end. It was foolishness and nothing else that they had trapped themselves like that, cut off their own way back. But to abandon all hope that there might be some way to break out of that dead end was to forego any other possibility but death.
“ ”
“Try using those heads of yours, which have gone untested until now. Your destiny is your own,” Priscilla said, but as she watched the men try to quicken wits they didn’t have, she could only shrug.
Just as an extra furrow was forming in Gajeet’s brow, a voice called out. “High Countess Delacroix. Won’t you join me on the balcony? You can see the shore quite clearly.” It was Ubirk, who had come back into the room.
“A mundane invitation. But better than being here, I suppose.” Priscilla rose to accept the pretty boy’s offer, but as she did so, she turned to her husband and said, “You stay here. I need no strange suspicions arising.”
“Wha?!” Jorah goggled, but Priscilla ignored him. She’d taken this dangerous role upon herself, and she would see it through to the end. With Jorah’s anxious eyes on her, she followed Ubirk out onto the balcony, where the night breeze brushed past them. The drawbridge remained up, as it had since several hours before, cutting Ginonhive off from the outside world.
But there was something that was different from how she remembered it, too. Namely…
“It looks like the emperor’s troops have camped out on the far shore. You can see little lights over there,” Ubirk said, shading his eyes with his hand. And indeed, fires could be seen twinkling on the distant mainland. When word had reached the capital of the events on Ginonhive and the sword slaves’ demands, the army had evidently been dispatched to surround the lake. The breeze carried a sense of almost palpable anticipation as the soldiers prepared for battle.
“I saw you talking to Gajeet and the others. Not very quick to act, are they? I know how you must feel, I really do. I spent five years convincing them to stop dragging their feet.”
“Don’t venture to compare your sophistry with my grandeur, commoner. It’s disrespectful.”
“Sophistry? You wound me,” Ubirk said. But then he chuckled. “So I’m a disrespectful commoner, am I?” He leaned against the balcony railing. He was making himself awfully vulnerable. Yes, there was a guard some distance away, but if Priscilla sprang into action, the guard would never reach them in time. As Ubirk himself said, he was no warrior. Plucking the pretty boy’s life away from him would have been simple for Priscilla. But then…
“It wouldn’t mean anything, would it? We’ve come this far. Taking my head now wouldn’t stop it. I just gave things a little push.”
“Hmph. A push. And whom, exactly, did you give this push to?”
“Oh, whoever happened to be around. Anyone who didn’t seem to have much on their minds.” Ubirk laughed aloud. Then he took the hem of his own shirt and began to raise it up. It was the simple, rough-hewn outfit of every captive on the island, and as he pulled it upward, it revealed his thin, bony body.
Priscilla frowned, but she soon realized that he wasn’t stripping simply for the sake of it. He was showing her something. Something that explained how he’d managed to fan the flames of this rebellion.
There, in the middle of Ubirk’s chest, was a third eye, closed at the moment.
“The Demon Eye Clan.”
“Precisely. A rare sight, right? There aren’t many of us left. I’m one of just a few survivors.” Ubirk let his shirt drop back down and raised his hands in a teasing I’m gonna get you posture. Priscilla didn’t react at all, but she crossed her arms, resting her elbows in her hands.
Even among demi-humans, the Demon Eye Clan possessed exceptionally rare abilities. They had a third eye, commonly known as a Demon Eye, somewhere on their bodies, and it could grant them a range of powers. It was similar to a blessing—seen another way, the Demon Eye Clan could be said to be a people who always manifested a blessing.
Blessings were not quite magic, and a people who was always born with what was effectively a blessing was a mouthwatering prospect to those who wished to use such powers for their own ends. There had been more than one battle in Volakia’s history to control the Demon Eye Clan. And many members of the clan, treated like treasures to be stolen back and forth, perished in the wars…
“Now the Demon Eye Clan is supposed to be all but extinct,” Priscilla observed. “They’re considered almost as rare as Demons.”
“You’re well-informed. Yes, I’m a member of that rarest of clans. Although, ahem, the reasons the master of the island liked me had nothing to do with my Demon Eye.”
“You’re a prostitute.”
“Embarrassing, but true.” Ubirk scratched his cheek, and for the first time, it sounded as if he was really speaking from his heart.
Priscilla, however, dismissed his shame with a “Hmph. What need is there to be embarrassed?”
“What?”
“All life seeks to carve a place for itself using the abilities it has. And if you carved yours without a weapon, then you must have done it by wits. And that shows that you are not a beast, but a human being.”
To achieve victory when both opponents were baring their fangs at each other was to prove oneself physically strong. But to use intelligence instead of one’s fangs—that showed not physical but intellectual strength. Not that either one was inherently better than the other. Each had its place.
“I see… You’re quite a clever one,” Ubirk said.
“Of course I am, fool. Who do you take me for?”
“Well now, that’s a tricky question.” Ubirk smiled sadly at Priscilla. From the way she talked, the way she puffed out her chest, he suspected she knew what he was going to say next. If Ubirk had manufactured this situation in hopes of capturing High Countess Serena Delacroix, then he would have noticed by now. “Whoever you really are… It’s not High Countess Serena Delacroix, is it, miss?”
“Don’t waste time stating the obvious. Are you just as empty-headed as all your cronies?” There was no particular malice in Priscilla’s answer.
Ubirk’s shoulders slumped. “I thought you might try to play dumb. Instead, you owned right up to it…”
As far as it went, it made no real difference to Priscilla that Ubirk had seen through her lie. She hadn’t expected the cover to last very long. For his part, Ubirk, who was being careful to keep this conversation out of earshot of the guards, didn’t seem to plan on telling the other sword slaves who Priscilla really was.
It was, in a sense, a negotiating strategy on his part. He knew she wasn’t who she claimed to be, but he wouldn’t tell anyone. And in exchange…
“I need you to stay out of my way for a little while, miss.”
“You benighted little boy. Even you must be able to see that your trivial rebellion will be crushed in short order. Drawbridge or no, those forces you see assembled on the far shore will figure out a way to cross the lake sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.”
Ubirk smiled and said softly, “Yes. And time is exactly what I want.”
At that moment, from the swirl of Priscilla’s questions emerged an answer that made sense to her. “So that’s what you’re after,” she said. She saw now why Ubirk had instigated this uprising, knowing perfectly well that it would be quashed. She knew why he wanted to buy this time so desperately.
He looked at her in surprise. Her murmured words had given away that his plan was now known to her. “Well, well. Is that all it took for you to figure out what I was after? And—and! The strange thing is, I don’t doubt that you’re telling the truth. You’re weirdly persuasive that way.”
“—I don’t much care whether or not you find me persuasive. The question is, what are you going to do? Now that I’ve figured out your plan, what comes next?”
“This is a pickle. Here I thought I had the upper hand,” Ubirk said, scratching his head and smiling with a touch of bitterness. Under his shirt, the Demon Eye in his chest was fixed on Priscilla. If it was the Demon Eye that had allowed him to cause this rebellion, then its power must be related to sensing the emotions of others—a dangerous ability.
Ubirk, though, shook his head and said, “No. My Demon Eye doesn’t do anything so convenient. And I doubt it would work on you. So I suppose the wisest course of action would be to silence you…”
“ ” Priscilla didn’t speak.
“…but one nagging doubt won’t let me do that. And so.” Ubirk summoned the guards with a snap of his fingers. Two men appeared, a large one in full body armor and another, smaller, with his torso exposed. “Please escort the lady to a separate room from her husband. And try to be courteous about it.”
“Courteous. That’s a good one,” the smaller man said, a grating laugh that sounded like a buzzing insect issuing from his mouth. “That’s all we ever are around here. Courteous.”
“Well, she is our trump card.” Ubirk turned and looked at Priscilla. His eyes were so deep. It was impossible to tell what emotion they held. “I’m going to have to ask you to stay with us for a while. Although, I admit that might seem like hubris when I consider that the Nine Divine Generals are going to reduce this place to dust.”
“Hoh. So you have a plan? Something that will foil the emperor’s own generals?” Priscilla raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s just say that you have your emperor…and we have our Empress.”
The word empress caught Priscilla’s attention. If there was someone on this island referred to by a word like that, she was either the world’s most ridiculous clown or…
“…someone strong enough to challenge for the imperial throne.”
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login