Tanya's Third Life as a Barbarian Queen, Chapter XLIX

I will have the chapter as links to download at the bottom of the post. As well as a link to the Google Document page.

Kontia

Tanya, Queen of the Tanaoi

“I don’t see why we should be letting him go, not after the attack.” Colla bemoaned as he brushed my hair. Furea, Art, Colla and I were in what had once been the governor's wife’s dressing room. It had since been claimed by my husbands for their own needs or in rare cases like this, when they wanted to make me more presentable.

“There is no value in taking a willing envoy hostage when we are trying to engage in peace talks with the Saderans.” Furea pointed out as he ran colourful ribbons though my now modified set of mail armour that had been made for me. It had started out as a nobleman’s steel chainmail coat, a piece of fair quality with few adornments and a petty shielding enchantment strong enough to slow perhaps a single arrow somewhat.

It had been a competent piece and its previous owner had been reasonably close in build to myself. Thus I had claimed the armour for myself even if it had required some... minor adjustments for the sleeves and chest region. Now however, the armour had taken on an entirely new form. The steel loops had a coat of polished wyvernscales tied into them turning what had already been a relatively heavy albert comfortable suit of armour into something that even a Lepus would feel over the course of the day.

The scales had been carefully selected and formed an overlapping wall of mana starved hyper dense keratin. The armour had been practically forced upon me by the tribes after the felling of so many Wyvern Knights had offered a glut of Wyvernscale, bone and organs. While I had no interest in putting myself into a position where I would need to use the armour, I had to concede that the production of such equipment was required to not utterly decimate the value of wyvernscales. 

No good had intrinsic value after all, with the glut of supply and the incredible value of Wyvenscales, with just one often being worth more than its weight in gold, there was some risk of me causing market destabilisation...

Well perhaps that was not a risk in Kontia for the moment; trade was slow out here at the edge of the steppe. This was far from Rondel, the city of mages. A semi-autonomous city in the Italica region of Sadera and by far the biggest consumers of Wyvernscale in all the world. If I had access to that market I could no doubt ruin the city simply by dumping my scales onto the market. 

Mages would trip over themselves to acquire the material and could be very effectively fleeced of their wealth before anyone would become aware of the deflationary pressures of putting so many of the scales onto the market.

As it stood I had little doubt that any scales I traded with local polities would eventually make their way to Rondel, but it would take months, perhaps even years. Rondel acted as a sort of gravity well for magical supplies or components, but its pull was not overwhelming. For now any scales I could make use of in industrial processes or in the production of equipment made the scales I had left all the more valuable in the long term.

That meant that the many hundreds of scales used in my armour was a reasonable means of storing wealth. The remaining supply joined a healthy pile of gold and silver in my bank ready for investment and trade.

“They sent their wyverns to attack us while their prince begs for peace. Any Queen of our people would have been utterly humiliated after such a dishonourable stratagem." Colla countered, his passions running hot. It was understandable that he was upset, but his claim was not entirely true.

I had been party to, and victim of, more than a few underhanded tactics being employed in the tribal conflicts of my youth. When the tribes produced roving bands of marauders, who were very often fresh faced children, into the wilds to brutalize each other for honour and respect it obviously resulted in brutality. Night raids, assassinations, poisons being employed before duels and of course a copious amount of hostages being taken and exchanged. There was nothing honourable about dying slowly from a sword to the gut.

“Wyverns that very nearly killed the Princeling.” Furea calmly pointed out. “This was not deception, it was incompetence.”

When the choice is honourable death or dishonourable victory the latter wins every time, it’s the survivors who tell the stories regardless. Even the Lepus who surrender to save their lives have a vested interest in reinforcing the stories told of battles across the steppe. If your enemy is so great, so honourable that they defeated you in fair combat, how could that shame you? Everyone knew the truth, everyone knew how things were actually done, how the world actually worked. But it would destroy their reputation if they admitted it and everyone around them would turn on them and cast them out.

To admit the truth would be to bring shame upon everyone.

Even for the strongest Lepus, life alone on the steppe meant death, few had the fortitude or luck to survive. The lack of food, shelter, clean water and fighting off roving bands who would see smoke rising from a firepit as an easy target resulted in personal strength meaning little. Saderan lands to the south were little better. Even before the war most settlements would not allow a Lepus within the walls and would at times even form parties to attack me on the roads.

The lie of the honour of my people did have one truth however. A single honest institution. The duels of the Tribe Queens. The warriors were expected to enter battle with nothing but a blade, no clothes of any kind were permitted and magic, while not explicitly banned, was taboo. Then the two prospective Queens would, in front of their entire tribe, hack each other to pieces.

It was meritocratic, real, but it just so happened to select not for wise governance but for women who were good at butchering while avoiding being butchered themselves. Or for women who just happened to have greater control of their mana powering the naturally magically enhanced Lepus strength.

Of course while in theory anyone could challenge a Queen, if a woman was unpopular she would often find herself with a knife in her back before she reached an actual duel with the current Queen. Nothing could escape politics, the interplay between social networking and the dissemination of resources.

Still, It was a reasonably meritocratic hierarchy that had produced a stable system of governance for the Lepus tribes for centuries at least... as long as one defines ‘stability’ as constant intertribal raids, horrendous teenage mortality rate and flatlining economic growth.

I did not, despite how I had used this very system to establish my own power.

“Incompetence that has taken hundreds of lives and devastated the city.” Art spoke out, seeming to surprise Furea who nodded after a moment.

“You are right that this is a slight we cannot ignore, but what value does taking him as a hostage offer us? If we do so the Saderans will not parlay with us and will send more legions for us to crush, thus he would be worthless and we would be better served in slaying him and all of the Legionaries we have captured already. It is only in the Saderan's willingness to communicate with us, to trade Saderan lives for members of our race or more bronze for our guns, that any of their lives have value as more than breeding stock for our lesser warriors.” 

I suppressed a wince at Furea’s words. He was correct that holding Diabo as a hostage would be an error but still did not grasp the value in a de-escalation of the conflict towards a more normalized posture between our peoples built on mutual trade.

“We require the cooperation of the Saderans to return our people home from bondage.” I pointed out. “I am working towards that end first and foremost.” I needed bodies, preferably loyal bodies, but the Lepus in general would do. They were a somewhat captive population given that they could not effectively leave the steppe considering the fact that other races viewed us more as an invasive species of monsters than people. Coupled with the fact that no other real power bases existed in the steppe thanks to Zorzal I had de facto total control. 

With that I got to my feet. I was clad in a thin gamberson, and comfortably tight leggings, both pieces were dark olive and tied together in blackened leather cords much to the consternation of my husbands who, like most of my people, adored bright and garish colours.

Establishing proper respect for camouflage would be an uphill battle. At least the cadets had a reasonable grasp of the art.

I slipped into the heavy Wyvernscale armour, shifting my hips around to evenly distribute the weight as my husbands fussed around me, tying lace and adding adornments as I held my arms out at my sides. To allow them to tie off my under arms before I settled down. There was some small difficulty with my new bulk, the chair offered only a mild complaint, groaning and creaking before accepting its fate. 

I hated being used as a propaganda piece, even when this entire thing was my idea. Perhaps I had some level of irrationality related to how I had been used in this way during my second life. I could understand the value of what I was doing but it still made me deeply uncomfortable.

I closed my eyes and adopted a neutral expression as Furea took a set of brushes and began to work a greenish blue paint onto my face in a pattern every male learned to impart by heart from childhood. All the while Art took care to keep my hair out of the way, his hands held my head firmly, adjusting my facing for Furea without need of direction.

With the world shut out beyond the cool impression of the wet brushes I could feel the hunger in the armour around me. Wyvernscale, like gemstones, soaked up and conducted mana. In the armour it was like I was being surrounded by hundreds of small batteries, collectively there was a greater capacity here than in my unusually large quartz crystal. 

It was why Wyvernscale was so valuable to mages. Pound for pound there were few gemstones that could match the product of the draconic beasts and the Wyvern Knights would rather grind the scales to dust when one of their mounts passed rather than feed a valuable animal product to a free and fair market.

“Finished.” Furea said softly and I wet my lips at last, opening my eyes carefully before blinking. “My Queen.” He finished before he wrapped his arms around me, careful not to smudge the drying paint on my face.

I felt my husbands descend from all sides before the door swung open without warning. Rory Mercury strolled into the room with a sway of her hips and a smug smile on her face. Without a word she turned about and sat down on my lap and lent back into me as Furea gave her a look, but did not object. Merely turning to collect his paints. 

I blinked in confusion only to see both Art and Colla offer Rory polite nods while Enna moved to help Furea put away the paint set. 

“Where have you been?” I probed with an edge to my voice, the Apostle had vanished just before the Wyvern Attack without warning. Regardless of my husband's uncharacteristic acceptance of her presence, her absence from the battle had been frustrating. 

“Hunting a Vampire.” Rory said in a preening tone as I gave her an incredulous look that just made her giggle.

“You were hunting a Vampire. While the Wyverns were attacking the city?” I found that hard to believe. I had never seen any evidence of Vampires existing in this life beyond ramblings from sun addled wandering bards across Sadera and I put as much stock in that as the anime I had occasionally consumed so long ago now.

“I killed her, no need to panic.” Rory tapped her knees and shifted in my lap. 

“May we see her?” Furea asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course not, she’s a pile of ash now!” Rory replied.

“So you disappeared for days hunting a vampire, killed said vampire, and now there is no evidence of that happening?” I could not help some measure of amusement entering my voice.

“Yes.” Rory huffed in frustration and glared at a triumphant looking Furea. “There was a Vampire and I slew it in a great battle that just so happened to be taking place while the city was under attack.” 

“...It's very convenient." I said at last as Rory puffed up her cheeks at my husband's quiet snickering.

“It’s not like I am allowed to help with that sort of thing anyway.” The Apostle admitted. 

“I can assume you have conferred with your employer?” I probed, a slight sense of disquiet filling my gut.

“You see...” Rory giggled and looked around as if readying herself to conspire with me before leaning forwards and whispering. “Emroy was very impressed with you.” She shimmied off my lap, and turned to face me, taking my hand and kissing the back of it tenderly before looking up at me with a faint blush. “I was rather impressed myself.”

“I see.” I felt my ears burning and felt them fold down as my foot began to tap on the floor. 

“However there are some minor... disagreements about, huh I can’t actually explain it to you.” She made a long humming sound. “There are some rules I have to follow, regardless of what I think, alright? I may not act as an agent on your behalf against Sadera, that is the big rule. The Gods and the Apostles shall not intercede on behalf of either party... directly.” She said slowly, her good mood seemingly spoiled by that fact. 

“But that is not the only command you have to follow.” I reasoned.

“I’m sorry, Tanya.” She said, her tone turning serious, genuine for a moment as she offered me a warm smile that made me press my feet firmly against the floor. “I can however act in your interest considering... general non-saderan matters. So if any of my peers were to take exception with anything you are doing I may act at my own discretion.”

“If I offended another Apostle you would defend me?” I asked.

“Yes.” Rory replied instantly. “And you have.” She smiled and strode over to a table filled with snacks as I stared at her swaying... back. A flurry of feelings imposed by my body in this life nearly blinded me to the intensely worrying revelation Rory had just given. It was baffling, what could I have possibly done wrong?

Who had I offended, and why?

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rua-utneDn_WLQGQ7goOuF9kaYdwr8orud8s-ZbCPAU/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0

Tanya is slowly gaining her Dark Warlord drip! Clad in the skin of her enemies! Have to find a pale mount for her next. My glasses broke writing this chapter. No I won't explain how that happened.