Crowned in Black: Chapter 17

I was just about sick of kings, countesses, armies and all the other shit I’d had to deal with over the last few days, but it was up to me, Suri and Istvan to get the structure of our soon-to-be army roughed out and priced up. Suri was just as experienced with military matters as I was: her memories of the life she’d had before her data had been ‘cleaned’ were indistinct, but her instincts and wisdom were on point. Three hours, several pitchers of good dark beer and a lot of snacks later, we had a document that I ordered copied and sent to my satraps. And then I hoped that Turok and the Churvi shaman would come through.

“Y’know, I think this is a bloody good move on our part, but I’m a bit sick of paperwork.” Suri groaned as she sprawled into the sofa. Now that Istvan was gone, she unequipped her armor down to the firm-fitting pink crop and soft leggings she wore underneath. “Didn’t you say some jokers from Japan made Archemi to be a game? Not much of a game if you’re writing up proposals.”

“Hey, for some people, that’s just what beats their meat.” I finally took the Voivode’s circlet off my head and folded it into my inventory, then went over to the table to grab some pistachios and a glass of sweet red wine. “I bet Konan the Librarian is into it. He was a lawyer.”

“Christ, don’t fuckin’ talk to me about that guy,” Suri laughed. “He’s sent me a couple sappy letters, you know.”

I paused with my glass to my lips. “I… did not know that.”

“Oh yeah. Poetry and shit. It’s actually not bad.” Suri rolled her head back to look at me, her golden eyes dancing with mischief. “’My summer rose, my lioness of the tawny thighs’.”

“Do I need to go and smack this guy?” I asked her. I wasn’t really jealous, but… well… okay. I was jealous. And protective. Mostly because ‘Konan’ was another Starborn.

Suri cackled. “It’s harmless. Guy’s just got a crush. I’ve already told him that I know where my bread’s buttered, and he was polite about it. Didn’t send me anything after I told him I’m taken.”

“Well, that’s alright, then.” I ruffled my shoulders and moved over to sit down beside her. “I’m starting to know how Karalti feels when she sees other women looking at me.”

“You and she are really alike in a lot of ways.” Suri stretched out her arm for me, and sighed happily as she wrapped one long, brown finger around one of my braids. “Fierce, brave, loyal… jealous as hell. I thought I was gonna have to go change my undies when you kicked Vargan out of the room.”

I snorted, and leaned into Suri’s side. “She’s trouble. You watch: she’s going to try and write to Janos to spill everything happening here.”

“Yeah. We might need to do something to persuade her otherwise.” Suri tipped her head against mine, eyes half-closing. “What about your ghost friend? Mehkhet would put the fear of the gods into her.”

“Yeah, but then I just cement my reputation as the Demon Version Two,” I said. “I actually want her to contact Janos.”

Suri cocked an eyebrow.

“Think about it,” I said. “When he learns Ignas is here, he’s going to panic. I know from previous run-ins with him that he doesn’t think much of small unit tactics. He’s going to come up with some bullshit about us and the king and order the remaining fleets here to try and crush us.”

“Well, if we don’t have an army by then, he will crush us,” Suri drawled.

“Maybe. Istvan told me something interesting this morning.” I plopped down onto the sofa. “Apparently, the whole Fourth Fleet deserted after Janos cracked down on the officers who backed me when his court session went to shit. Janos didn’t have enough manpower on hand to stop them. They might be on their way here… and if they aren’t, I’m planning to try and contact them and see if they’ll join us.”

“Wait. Janos lost an entire fleet?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’ve heard of armies vanishing before. If they went offline, magically speaking, they could be anyway. Vlachia is a hell of a big country.”

“There’s a pretty good chance they’re coming here,” Suri replied. “Still, bit of a gamble.”

“Yeah. So plan is to spend all my build points and some money on the first barracks, and pay for it to be done quickly. The nice thing is about building in Archemi is that it doesn’t take long to get some kinds of structures thrown up. We can probably start training the first corps within a couple of weeks.”

Suri went to go stand by the fireplace. “Do you reckon Janos will give us that long?”

“He has a mountain of Renown he has to get through before anyone in Taltos will even consider it,” I replied. “Especially once they learn Ignas is safe because of us. Assuming… he survives. I still haven’t gotten the confirmation of him being ‘saved’ yet. The Hidden Hand quest is still pending.”

“Yeah. Guess we’ll see.” Suri frowned, holding her hands out toward the flame. “So, who’re you thinking is your pick for General?

“You or Istvan.” I watched the light and shadows as they played off Suri’s powerful frame, casting her curves and muscles into sharp relief.

“Me? Nah. I’ve got unfinished business in Dakhdir. No offense, but I don’t want to marry to Myszno THAT hard.” She looked back over at me with a wan smile. “Istvan would be perfect for the job, if he accepts. And he might not. Who’s your second pick?”

“Not Vilmos. He’s a good soldier, but he’s not creative when it comes to tactics. I need someone more progressive, so… I’m really not sure. I need to review the KMS and see who we have.”

Suri nodded slowly, then turned to look toward the courtyard window. It was closed against the chilly night air, the curtains drawn. “You know, you really held that room together before. Vargan’s probably never had anyone tell her ‘no’ like that in her whole bloody life. Couple months ago, I dunno if you’d have stood up to her like that… we’ve all come so far since we first met, haven’t we?”

“Sure have.” I wiggled my hand behind her back until I could loop an arm around her waist. “Speaking of people who are going to go far, I can tell Kitti’s excited to train with you.”

Suri snorted. Not at Kitti’s eagerness to become her squire. It was a self-deprecating laugh. “Me too, but fuck… eggs and kids everywhere. And now we have a princess. What the hell are we gonna do with a princess, Hector?”

“Train her to be a berserker?” I grinned. “In all seriousness, though, once she’s had a chance to rest, giving Sohvi something to do and keeping her busy and with good company isn’t a bad idea. She’s fifteen, Kitti’s almost the same age… I think pairing them up is a good idea.”

“You know… you might be right about that.” Suri nodded thoughtfully. “To be honest, Kitti needs girls her own age, too. She’s got that brittle false maturity thing going on.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that,” I said. “Anyway… how’s Cutthroat?”

“Want to go see for yourself?” She jerked her head toward the window. “I have to go feed the bloody bitch. She won’t take food unless I handfeed her.”

“Suuuure.” I felt about as uncertain as I sounded as I climbed to my feet. But hey… it was something to do other than paperwork or brooding about Ignas. “You sure she’s going to let me into Gar’s ship?”

“She’s the captain now,” Suri replied. “And she’ll be right. She’ll hiss and shit, but believe me, she isn’t gettin’ off those eggs. Erruku could fall on Archemi, and that great big cunt of a hookwing would keep her ass planted in that nest as the world exploded. So yeah, I’m carrying half a dead iguanodon in my inventory, thanks to Karalti. It fuckin’ stinks, but it’s all she wants to eat. I tried her on other carcasses and she turned her nose up at them.”

“Ahh, the joy of hormones.” I thought of Karalti. We still had three weeks or so before her next heat.

Cutthroat, bless her coal black dinosaurian heart, had taken over the airship of the newest member of my Fellowship of the Derp, a guy named Gar. The Strelitzia was unique among airships in Archemi, a custom job built by Gar from scratch. It kind of looked like the lovechild of a beaten up white murder van and the Highwind from Final Fantasy 7. The ship was officially grounded for repairs after Gar crashed it into Meewhome, but was mostly actually grounded because Cutthroat had torn up the captain’s quarters to nest in them. Gar was in Litvy with Rin, drowning his sorrows on Vlachian wine and helping her build the Warsinger schematics display terminal we needed to be able to fix or rebuild the superweapons of Archemi. The only crew member in the ship was Gar’s Ju’chi Mercurion pilot, Ambrose. He was sitting at his control panel, his feet up on the dash, playing with a butterfly knife.

“Come to see the bird?” Like all Ju’chi, Ambrose was unique: in his case, he looked as if someone had tried to make a biblical angel into a person. He was short and muscular, manufactured in shades of gold instead of the usual silvery-blue tone that almost Mercurions had. His gold hair was stiff and spiked, and he had an array of artificed yellow eyes. His voice was deep, flat voice, almost drum-like.

“Yeah, sure have. Though it’s nice to see your handsome face too, Ambrose.” Suri actually smiled at him.

“First woman in the world to say that.” Ambrose flicked the knife to fold it, and set it down as he put his feet down. His mouth quirked in a wry smile.

“We can set up a room for you if you’d like,” I motioned back toward the castle with my head. “You don’t have to stay here if you’d rather be doing other shit.”

“Appreciate it, but no need. I don’t eat, drink, sleep or get sore, and this old girl is the closest thing I have to a home. Always got a lot to think about.” The Mercurion got to his feet. “Mind if I join you?”

“No worries.” I looked to Suri. She shrugged.

The three of us picked our way through the crew quarters to the captain’s bunk. The door had been fixed, but was held open with a chock to vent the smell of broody hookwing. Said broody hookwing was unusually fluffy, her feathers lifted and spread out around her. She had assumed hookloaf form on top of the remains of Gar’s bed, where she’d spun a nest of his bedding and clothing. I spotted at least one pair of purple boxer shorts. As we stepped in, Cutthroat’s head lifted, and her dead yellow eyes flicked toward us. A low rumbling sound rattled in her throat.

“You boys stay back,” Suri sighed, as she picked her way over. But as she got closer, she raised her voice in volume and pitch. “Hi baby bird! How’s my big ol’ soon to be mum? Are we gonna be nice, or are we feeling all cunty again today?”

“This hookwing is a character,” Ambrose noted, as he leaned against the edge of the door. “Large. Aggressive. Intractable. What made you want to breed her?”

“We didn’t want to breed her. She kind of bred herself.” I took post on the other side, grimacing. Suri reached her hands out, and Cutthroat’s rumble turned to a throaty coo as she extended her head out and rested her jaws into her rider’s fingers, cheek feathers lifting so that Suri could scritch the scaly skin beneath. “She was running around with some other hookwings during a training exercise. One of them took a fancy to her. She ran him off, so we didn’t think anything of it, but apparently they snuck in a round while we weren’t looking.”

“Strange,” Ambrose remarked, folding his arms across his broad chest. “I understand the urge to create children, but the organic method of doing is so… transactional. I could not imagine being able to replicate from an exchange that takes no longer than a handshake.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Are you from Zaunt?”

“I am,” he affirmed, gracefully dipping his chin.

“What’s your story? And why’d you sign up with Gar? He yells at you a lot.”

“My story? The same as most Ju’chi.” He shrugged, gazing at Suri and Cutthroat. “Crafted cheaply by one of the High Tlax’ica in a mockery of their rival’s form. Told my purpose was to kill someone from the House I was created to insult. Decided I didn’t want to be a weapon, didn’t do the job… stowed away inside of a trade ship and went to Jeun. Worked there for a while, went south… met Gar in Taltos.”

“That’s fucking awful,” I said. “The first part. Why the hell do Mercurions do that?”

Ambrose shrugged. “Why do organics want to kill each other?”

“No, I mean the whole ‘Deliberately make an entire person and imbue them with a personality and a will of their own, then tell them they’re an outcast and abuse them’ thing.”

“It is a great insult for a Mercurion of a high house to be killed by a Ju’chi,” Ambrose replied matter-of-factly. “We are made so that the killing blow is not the final strike against the target’s clan, but only the first. The shame of being killed by a reject is great, and if successful, the pain endures for many generations.”

I sighed. “I think you might be missing my point. My point is that making and ‘using’ Ju’chi is a shitty way to treat people.”

“Mmm.” Ambrose grunted. “Gar believes the same thing. It is one of the reasons I work for him.”

I arched an eyebrow. “What are the other reasons?”

“He pays well. He once punched a highborn singer of Tlax’ica Hunta who mocked me, and knocked her mask off her face. He broke his knuckles, but assured me it was worth it.” Ambrose got a wistful expression on his face at that memory. “Gar has endured a lot of pain: his own, and the pain of others whom he cares about. He is a good man. Who yells a lot.”

That had been my impression of the guy. He was in his late fifties, I guessed, and didn’t really seem to be playing a character in Archemi. He’d kept his real-life name and probably the same appearance. “Do you know much about him? He seems kind of private.”

“Get him drunk, and he is not that private,” Ambrose said wryly. “I know some things. He is Starborn. He was a mechanist who serviced aircraft in his previous life, but his true passion was nature. If he is not in the air, he wishes to be outdoors, and he knows a great deal about the plants and animals of his old world. He was from a place called Texas but lived in the mountains of another land called Colorado, until he was forced to become a soldier. They made him pilot airships from a special console, weapons that he calls drones. He was very good at it - but it was traumatizing for him. When he was released, he learned his daughter, Regina, had a rare disease that was destroying her body and causing it to turn to stone. The army called him back to pilot drones again, even though he was too old for them to normally do so, and he served reluctantly but well for another five years. His service earned him and his daughter a place in Archemi. Gar survived the transition. Regina did not. This ship is named for her: Strelitiza regina is a flower that Gar loved very much. The Bird of Paradise flower.”

I frowned, remembering the way that Gar had once - almost too eagerly - asked Rin if her name IRL had been Regina. “Damn… what a life. I feel a bit bad about the Cutthroat thing now.”

“He has accepted it.” Ambrose shrugged again. “He knows the beast cannot help herself. She is compelled by instinct, not malice.”

I glanced aside at Cutthroat and Suri. Suri was feeding Cutthroat slivers of Iguanadon meat, an expression of resignation on her face. Cutthroat, meanwhile, had never looked so smug in her life. She accepted each tidbit with self-satisfied dignity. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

The Mercurion grunted. “When she moved, once, Suri counted nine eggs. An auspicious number.”

“Auspicious? Oh. Right. The Nine.” I laughed. “Yeah, no, I don’t think there’s anything auspicious about this. We’re going to try and make sure the babies grow up to be, uh, less temperamental than their mother.”

“Try, being the operative word,” Suri said gloomily, watching another dinosaur steak slither down the hatch. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the bloody great bitch, but she’s a handful and a half, and that’s with ME. She likes ME. She’s downright dangerous to anyone else.”

“Time will tell.” Ambrose lifted his chin, his gleaming gemstone eyes catching the light as he gazed out the window behind Suri’s shoulder. Just then, my HUD pinged and began to flash with a quest update.

[Your Quest has updated: The Hidden Hand! You gain 4000 EXP!]

[Congratulations: you are Level 37! You have 30 unspent Ability Points!]

[Review your quest log for new objectives.]

That glut of EXP meant that Ignas was alive. I drew a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let the sudden wash of relief chase through me. Then I went to my Quests menu, and had Navigail read me the updates:

Quest Update: The Hidden Hand

Queen Eevi, monarch of Revala, has been executed by the Ilian forces who invaded her nation: but His Majesty Ignas Corvinus II and Her Highness, Crown Princess Sohvi Aslan IV, have been recovered and are safe – for now. There are knives in the darkness poised to strike at Vlachia and Revala both, nations viewed as obstacles by [FETCHERROR: NULL].

The Vlachian regent, Janos Lanz of Czongrad, conspires against you in the courts of Vlachia. You have enemies and allies both within Vlachia. Eliminate the former and recruit the latter, save the Volod’s life and protect him and the princess, and you may yet head off a catastrophic civil war that would play all too well into the hands of our nemesis.

Difficulty: Extreme

Recommended Level: Varies. Current recommendation - Level 50

Special: This is an evolving quest. Updates will appear in your log. This is a PvP quest: the quest parameters may change according to player activities.

Reward: EXP (progressive), Renown, Resources and Personnel (Free Army of Myszno)

I frowned as I listened. The system was already buying into the Free Army idea? And… ‘our’ Nemesis?

“Mmm.” Ambrose grunted, drawing my attention back from my HUD. “I think someone is looking for you.”

“Eh?” I followed his line of sight, and saw two figures walking quickly towards the residential tower, bearing torches. Zooming in, I recognized one of the senior healers, Journeyman Skaliz, and Captain Vilmos. “Oh, shit. You’re right. Hang on, Suri.”

“Wait, I’m coming too.” Suri pulled another twenty pounds or so of meat from her inventory, and stacked it up on the edge of the nest. Cutthroat crooned and fluffed happily, pulling her head back on her neck like a smug goose.

“I will keep watch,” Ambrose said, nodding to Suri as she rose and joined us. “I have never seen an animal produce eggs before. The process interests me.”

“Sure. Just don’t get your head bitten off.” Suri clapped him on the shoulder, and followed me as I peeled away from the door at a quick walk.

Skaliz was holding the torch as Vilmos found the key to the lord’s door, the staircase that led from the base of the tower to the ducal chambers while bypassing the other rooms. I put my fingers between my lips and whistled a piercing note across the courtyard. Both men turned back to see me and Suri, and abandoned their task to rush over to us.

“Is it Ignas?” I took a step forward as they closed in. “How is he?”

“Alive, your grace. But the news isn’t all good,” Vilmos said. He looked ashen, the heavy lines of his face deep, mouth turned down at the corners. “The Masterhealer wants to speak with you. His Majesty is Stranging.”