There was a symmetry to it, a self-conscious poetry. Even when we had first planned it, I hadn’t been sure that we weren’t being unnecessarily cruel. The worst of it, bringing the prince and her consort back into the palace through the very passages by which they had escaped, wasn’t even Aemillian’s idea; he’d no more known how I would bring the prince back than he’d known how I would get her out. I had always imagined that, if it came to this, I’d come up with something better. But then, I had always hoped that it wouldn’t come to this.
I had always hoped that Elana would become a sellsword living under the Namoran King’s Writ or, better yet, vanish into obscurity. She could have lived among the elves, if she had wanted. Or become an explorer and gone off to Shendryl, or to wherever it is that tea comes from. Or devoted her life to one of the remote sanctuaries of the Triumvirate. But, no. She had to have her father’s empire.
I had not lied to Elana when I said that her father had not failed. Gustinos had not been a bad emperor, not on the scale of bad Vencari emperors. He wasn’t even as bad as the Inimbris that the first Traianum had overthrown.
But neither had he been a particularly good emperor. Third of his line, he had done nothing equal to the works of his forefathers. Gilgardos had seized the throne and made the great trade treaty with Naal that had brought horses and so many other wonders from distant Shendryl. He had also implemented the first wave of the Traianum Dynasty’s so-called reforms, chasing the ecstatic cults from public life and banning the drugs that they used to induce visions – and which so many others used for simple pleasure. Dorian Traianos II had enacted his own “reforms”, adding the Court of the Sun and the Triumvirate Mysteries to the official imperial cults of the Five and the Seven; he had also commissioned the labyrinth and the Order of Truth-Seekers, as well as countless lesser civic projects.
Gustinos had been a great patron of the imperial arena, and an adequate patron of the arts. But had done little else save levy taxes that favored his allies and bring further unpopular reforms … and he had lost the Wolfwar. His only chance of restoring his popularity and re-asserting the vitality of the Traianum Dynasty would have been to invade Namora or Naal, or to wage war against the monsters of the Serpent Grasses. If he had ever considered doing those things, he had not set those plans in motion soon enough for his rivals.
Few Vencari dynasties lasted four generations. All of the Great Houses had considered Traianum spent. House Solirius had merely been the first to strike. If Aemillian had not seized the throne when he did, at least one other house would have made a serious attempt before Elana reached her legal majority.
Now Elana sought to do what no other House had done in the nearly thousand-year history of Vencar: reclaim the imperial throne from a usurper. And, having seen her court-in-exile, it was quite possible that the allies she had gathered – to say nothing of those that she would have gathered against any other enemy – would likely overcome any usurper who was not the Great Wizard Aemillian Solirius. With me and the other Prince’s Fighters at her side, she could and would overcome any enemy, even this Great Wizard.
But was I on her side?
When I had walked these halls last, ten years ago, I had been certain of my loyalties and my purpose. The Traianum reforms had been an insult to the gods and had needed to be repealed. I had agreed that the Traianum dynasty was spent. I had agreed that attacking the palace with an overwhelming force would spare the rest of the country a bloody civil war. I still believed that the first and the last was true.
I had not understood House Solirium’s elders’ insistence that the Traianam house be excised so thoroughly. Perhaps Aemillian would have fought harder against that part of the plan if I had been willing to stay – for my plan to leave had been confessed, by then – but I was not and he did not. But the plan to cultivate a resistance, rather than wait and see who and what arose, had made sense. And perhaps I would have agreed to any plan to escape the scrutiny that I would fall under once Aemillian was emperor.
Now, as I walked a twisted reflection of my own departure from the palace, my heart was stained with guilt and doubt and fear even as the walls and floors of the imperial palace were splattered with the oily miasma of the Shadow Realm. The choices I was making today would shape the future of Vencar more than I had ever imagined.
Who would I betray?
Whoever I betrayed, I betrayed myself, too.
I would never, ever be clean again.
< Previous Chapter| Home | The World | Next Chapter >
Thank you so much for reading!
New chapters drop every Sunday morning barring unexpected circumstances. New maps and art drop when I finish them, any time except Sunday morning. For the inside scoop, other stories set in Dathl’lyr, access to new chapters six weeks before they go public, and/or a look into all the other things I do, please consider joining my Patreoncampaign! Don’t like Patreon or just want to support my work? Drop a tip in my jar over at Ko-Fi!
Leave a Reply