17.4
It was always raining in Terminapolis now. Some days it was gentle misting, soft dew settling almost gently upon the city, moments that had grown to be taken as a relief, children would play and laborers rejoiced when the water from the ‘wyrm storm’ was gentle.
But the rain never stopped, just as the clouds never cleared entirely from over the palace.
And on many days, such as today the rain came down in its usual torrents, streets and houses had been shaped, bent, or broken under the downpour. People had fled from the heart of the city itself, only the richest merchants and the nobility willing to remain in the palace grounds and surroundings.
For the rest the endless deluge and flooding had hollowed out the city, pushing the poor into turbulent nesting of new buildings and overgrown villages that surrounded the capital of Magarska like a new wall.
In the palace the endless sound of the rainfall had music too it, echoing and enveloping. And downriver of the city the farms were flourishing where they had not drowned at its banks.
Evren did not know what to make of the letter he had received.
It was strange how much of the business of being ‘High King of Magarska’ involved reading, either by himself or by wise and learned men who knew foreign scripts. The repaired throneroom of the palace shined with all the opulent black and white stone he remembered.
But the hours upon days that he’d spent in the space lounging on the floor while entire flocks and herds worth of letters, scrolls, reports and records were brought before him had dulled the beauty of the place.
As High King of the ‘loyalists’ of Magarska a great many letters arrived for him. His insistence that the principalities that had wished to break away from the High Kingdom could do so without military reprisal had added to that. Many Lords and would-be kings claimed the title of Prince even as they broke from the authority that bestowed it.
Many of them seeing his acceptance and reading the letters his scribes wrote acknowledging their independence now seemed keen to write back to him. The southernmost ones in the Apotamidua vault were very lately insisting in forgiving alliances despite just a few years ago demanding they be allowed to stand alone.
Evren looked up at the ceiling whose pattern was starting to burn its way into his eyes. The palace was cool, a fine breeze blew through it most of the time, wind carried through the hallways and up into the heights of the badgir that flanked the arched dome of the throne room.
He mulled on what he had been told, what his advisors discussed, what letters for ‘the eyes and ears of the king alone’ all told him.
In the west and southwest respectively the Storm Wrack and Sun Blessed Vaults harbored minor territories that seemed inclined to try and gain favor with kingdoms less distant than Terminapolis. The missives from both smelled strongly of sea salt, it was the loss of these territories most of all that had starved Magarska of the fish needed to support its now diminished Greater Gryff.
Evren snorted and traced the black and white alternating stone all around him, the sight of it was starting to almost hum for how long he’d stared at the thing.
He thought there was little concern there, Fizzbunches assured him the scattered successor kings of Old Cantor and the Sea People’s territories would not stand for the Magarskan way of Vows and direct divine intervention in matters of nobility and war.
His greatest concern was how many of those ‘rebels’ still clung to the ways which were the lifeblood of the old monster of Magarska, not those that were finding ways to strip themselves of its chains without his intervention.
But until he had the rest of those that yet followed him weaned off that poisoned teat he would not move to correct them. Not unless Fizzbunches’ warnings came to pass that rallied and joined together or began getting backing from those that yet remained ‘loyal’ to his position.
So far greed and pride had kept that from happening, Fizzbunches however still cautioned that it would only take a little bit less of either for the ‘rebel’ states to find common cause against him. Which of course meant there was much cordiality and orders made to both feed and lure them at odds to such. Yes all of these actions and acts as a High King trying to strangle his realm’s foundations to death meant Evren received a great many missives.
But this letter was none of those matters, more so it left him conflicted.
It came from the north.
The Shining Doom had sent it, by caravan no less along with a dozen of those northern birds they used instead of messenger gryff. The scroll was large, sealed with crimson wax and the relief of a northern gryff’s head.
When unfurled for him the seal remained attached by a black and red tassel sewn into the vellum. The hand of the words was clean, solid, neat and even in the court tongue’s script rather than the harsher angles of cantoran symbols.
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There were even fine inks and embellishments.
“To the Esteemed Evren, High King of Magarska, Prince and defender of the Vanaand, the Countess of Viznove, Shining Wyrm, Jewel of House Rochford sends this missive in congratulations for your coronation and rise in status as well as in offering friendship and truce between our lands-”
Evren had to stop reading for a moment, take a deep breath, focus on something (besides the accursed tile and ceiling) then the way that somehow despite all the missives and messages and entreaties he received in his new station somehow the Wyrm Jewel found a way to be the most blatantly false of any of them!
He centered himself on his breath, on the flow of his wind bereft of sorcery, simply soothing rhythm.
Once his calm was restored Evren returned to reading. The letter just went on and on! So many wasted lines of ink and was massive besides! The roll was solidly at the very limit of how large a stretched skin of a lamb could be! Some creature was delicately cared for years to prevent a single mark on its skin just to make sure that it could be skinned and treated to hold these endless words!
Dense lines upon lines, five or six used where one would suffice, all in long flowing elaborate and even illuminated flourishes at the corners. It was a finely crafted and ostentatious thing that amounted to saying very little at all!
The monumental waste of it all!
Jewel apparently wished no ill will between them, she was open to discussions of ‘proper inheritance’ if the twin cities of Bledaten and Pyrenean back to Magarska but only if a ‘proper’ and ‘just’ heir to manage them but she would accept no ‘military adventurism’ to try and claim those that she had pledged to ‘protect’.
Nevermind that the Shining Doom had marched up to the cities with an army and no assurance of sufficient support from Murad’s forces to avoid a devastating siege.
It was all hypocrisy! Falsehood and make-nice words speaking of peace while laced with forbiddence of the very violence and violations that the ‘noble wyrm’ had enacted to push her realm’s borders south into the Dacian’ vault.
It left an ill feeling to the Shepherd Wyrm’s winds. Like foul rot welling up from fetid corpses, growing towards a gale that would strip flesh and feather from bones. His left ear twitched at the distinct absence of sound despite the disturbance of air, A cat arrived from around one of the pillars to blink slowly at him.
“She is capitalizing on circumstances and outcome, she did not plot these ends. It would be best for you and your goals to have her peace, with Viznove at truce with Magarska it will hold off the greed of Cantor Reborn’s other vassals.”
Fizzbunches was a long furred, silver and white cat today, still dressed with that peculiar floppy red hat that absolutely should not have so easily perched upon a feline head. Still with eyes shining bright as gold in candlelight.
The Wizard still smelled of old streets and smoke, old sweat and sooty hearths. It had always been there under the smell of clean fur and the blood of rats but that scent had grown stronger since Fizzbunches was silenced by the Shining Doom.
“I’m surprised you are so willing to forgive her the wound she gave you.”
The cat made a motion of a snarling hiss, but no yowl or spitting noise found its way free of the wyrm curse, no sound at all. Yet Evren could comprehend the meaning behind it anyway of course.
“Jewel of Rochford will pay the debt due, but it will not come by a knife in the dark, but by the winding twists of alleys, and such justice can wait, for she will be there long after our business with Magarska ends. For now she can have her peace.”
Evren sighed and nodded, ears angling back in dissatisfaction.
“Then we shall reply with an affirmation of the truce? What if she wishes to meet in person for some noble borne nonsense?”
Fizzbunches shook his head as if to flick something unwanted from his whisker and then began licking at a paw dismissively.
“I will of course be nowhere within the same city in which that betrayer finds herself. If such comes to pass, but I’d not be overly concerned even if she does seek a visit to make a feast and a festival out of nothing, all of her house has been securely betrothed, you needn't worry she might try to bind this agreement in marriage between your families.”
The cat began gently combing over the fur of his face and over an ear with a paw.
“But I sincerely doubt that the Countess of Viznove will have the time to spend seasons traveling all the way here, she has become embroiled in a new foolishness from her ‘liege’ Mathias Stein and that and his imminent death and succession will keep her and all of Cantor Reborn quite occupied indeed.”
Evren took a heavy breath, trying to expel the poisonous sting he felt in the wind and air within his lungs, before nodding to the appointed scribe. Forcing his ears forward into feigned alertness and calm. Looking directly at him to make it clear he was speaking to the scribe and not idly ‘speaking to himself’.
“Have an acceptance of the truce written up for my seal in response to the Countess of Viznove’s offer. Magarska will not be the one to break the peace with the northern barbarians.”
The man nodded and deftly rolled the overwrought expanse of parchment he had presented to the High King of Magarska. Securing it firmly together to be stored in the archive, likely alongside the twin of the soon to be made acceptance letter. After that Evren almost thankfully turned to the next ‘missive’ that had been made for his perusal.
How had that unstable monster of a man Murad restrained himself under all of this nonsense?
Evren took a deep breath and listened to the sound of the rain to soothe himself, focused on the play of the water in its many newly carved channels and gutters flowing out from the palace.