Chapter 308: The Destruction of the Glimmerwing Clan
"My father," Talauia started haltingly. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, unable to meet the gazes of the people around her but in truth, as she sat there holding a cup of chilled sweet tea, her gaze was lost in the distant past.
"My father was the High Lord of the Endless Marsh. It’s not really endless," she added as though it were an old reflex when describing her home. "It’s just really, really big. It wasn’t just the Glimmerwing Clan there either. The Scaled Clan, the Ancient Clan, even the Night Weaver and Mist Wraith clans lived there."
"But the Glimmerwing Clan was always at the top," she said in a tone that blended pride and deep sorrow. "All the way back in my great-great-grandfather’s time, the family rules were to keep the peace by eliminating threats as soon as they became obvious."
"By eliminating threats," Ashlynn said as the pieces started to fall into place for her. "You mean killing people who might challenge your family for the position of High Lord?"
"Only outsiders, only outsiders who weren’t part of the clan were killed before they could grow truly strong," the winged witch said. "There was no guarantee that my siblings or I would inherit my father’s crown. Anyone in the Glimmerwing Clan could compete for crown. Rich or poor, man or woman, none of that mattered. Once the contest of succession starts, anyone can compete. Only the best, the most lethal, could wear the crown of the Endless Marsh."
"What about people outside of the clan?" Ashlynn asked gently. "Was the ’contest of succession’ open to them as well?"
"Of course, of course it was," Talauia said, swirling her sweet tea in her cup without drinking any of it. "But anyone who might win was dealt with before the competition."
Ashlynn nodded slowly as things became clearer. The Eldritch, in general, valued strength more than anything and challenges for lordship needed to be open to preserve the idea that the person currently ruling was genuinely the strongest. But, if their competition was never allowed to reach the stage, a lord could easily dominate ’less worthy’ competitors and retain their crown on the basis that no one could defeat them.
"It’s my fault," Talauia said. Tears began to flow again, dripping onto her hands and occasionally splashing into her tea before Ashlynn passed over a small handkerchief. "I was supposed to be next after Father," she explained.
"You don’t know, you don’t know how scary it was for people to be told a Glimmerwing assassin had been hired to kill them," the winged witch said. "The worst, worst, worst, worst of us, only failed to kill their targets one in ten times. Anyone who was that bad at assassination would be laughed at and told they should give up and reconsider life as a hunter of dangerous beasts instead of pretending they could hunt intelligent people."
"One in ten survived," Heila said, freezing in place with a wedge of bright red melon half way to her lips. "And you consider this to be bad? How successful was a good assassin?"
"The minimum standard was ninety-five in one hundred," Talauia said with a grim smile on her face. "My father only failed six times and he killed more than two hundred men. But I was better. I, I never failed. Not once."