Rimelion: The Exploiter

Lisa wasn’t looking back.

That was the first thing I noticed, and the thing I kept noticing, because Lisa’s camera was over her shoulder and Lisa’s shoulder was facing forward, and forward meant the ridge, and the ridge meant away from the tower, and away from the tower meant away from Pancake.

The feed shook with every footfall. Ragged breathing. Someone, Ian, I thought, saying Luna’s name. Luna not answering.

The ridge rolled up and over. Gray grass became more gray grass. The camera dipped, righted, dipped again.

No one looked back.

Beside me, Lola’s fingers threaded through mine without asking. I hadn’t noticed her reaching. I squeezed. She squeezed back.

“She’s not going to turn around,” I said.

“No.”

“Because if she turns around.”

“Yes.”

The holo kept playing. Lisa’s ragged breath. The mantle of Luna’s coat flashed silver at the corner of the frame as she ran. Ian’s hand on her elbow, pulling her forward when she almost stopped, pulling her forward when she stopped again. Fty at the rear.

Pancake was alone in a field of brick, and we could not see him.

I knew what the kiln looked like because I’d read the skill description when Scamantha submitted the potion recipe for royal approval and Pancake’s file had been in the associated documentation. I knew about the compulsion and the thirty-meter radius and the ten-minute limit and the three levels.

I knew what it looked like. I just couldn’t see it.

Lisa kept running.

Lola’s thumb moved across my knuckles in slow, even strokes. She said nothing. That was one of Lola’s best things; she knew when silence was the complete sentence.

On the screen, the ridge crested again, and Lisa finally, finally, risked one glance backward. The camera swung.

The tower. The wall. A distant orange glow on the ground in front of it that wasn’t grass and wasn’t fire exactly, something in between, and figures moving against it that were too far away to make out as people.

Then Lisa faced forward again.

I exhaled, slowly, through my nose.

“He’ll respawn,” Lola whispered.

“I know.”

“Three days at the shrine.”

“I know.”

“He’ll lose three levels, which he already knew—”

“Lola,” I said. “I know.”

Her thumb stopped.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.”

I kept my eyes on the holo. A small, idiotic part of me wanted Lisa to turn the camera around again, because seeing it would be worse, and worse was what I wanted, because what I wanted was anger, and anger required a target, and anger was so much cleaner than sitting with a feeling that had the shape and weight of a man I had sent.

I got there anyway.

“Couldn’t they have just joined?” I said.

Lola didn’t answer.

“We sent Luna in good faith. Full guild status. Autonomy. Land rights. We offered them integration.” My jaw was setting. I could feel it. “She made the pitch. She did everything right. And they demanded—he demanded—that she strip her gear and her mantle and walk out naked into a dead field because his girlfriend got carried out of a cave like a sack of potatoes.”

“Charlie.”

“I’m going to wipe them out.”

“Charlie.”

“I am. The whole guild. Every one of them. I’m going to march there personally, and I’m going to—”

“You can’t just decide that.”

“I absolutely can.”

“You can’t just decide that,” Lola repeated in the same tone, and she shifted on the bed so she was facing me properly, and her free hand came up and cupped my jaw, and I made myself look at her. “You’re the queen. That is exactly why you can’t just decide it by yourself in a candle-lit bedroom a few minutes after a retreat.”

“My bedroom. My candles. My retreat.”

“Your kingdom.” She thumbed my cheekbone. “Your accountability. Your everything else.”

I closed my eyes.

She let me have the moment. She didn’t rush it. When I opened them again, she was still there, still close, hair loose around her face from where I’d already wrecked it, still cupping my jaw like she’d decided the jaw was her responsibility now.

“Okay,” I said. “Talk to me.”

She nodded once. Went crisp; the administrator sliding neatly back into place without displacing the girlfriend underneath. I loved it when she did that. I also hated it a little. Both feelings coexisted.

“The PR team has a proposal,” she said. “I didn’t bring it up because I wanted you to watch this first.”

“Of course you did. I watched you work on your holo while I was trying to stuff you with popcorn.”

She ignored my comment. “They want to post the negotiation footage. Raw. Uncut. Luna’s offer, Korven’s response, the demand for the gear. All of it.” Her thumb resumed moving. “Toxica has been posting memes from the Necromancers’ channel since she logged out. The narrative is already live, and it’s theirs. We release ours first thing in the morning before they’ve slept off the high.”

“Just the negotiation?”

“Just the negotiation. No… Pancake.” Her voice softened on the name. “We let the footage speak. Rimebreak came in peace. They were told to strip and walk. A member of our expedition stayed behind so the rest could return. We say that last part plainly.We don’t need spin. The footage does the work.”

“And then?”

“Memorial piece in the afternoon. Just the kingdom mourning. Poundcake’s bakery left open all day.”

“But he’ll respawn?” I asked, confused.

“Doesn’t matter for PR. We also need a brief statement from the Crown.”

“Me.”

“You. Three sentences. I’ll draft them.”

“You’ll draft them?”

“I’ll draft them. You’ll rewrite them. You always do.”

I huffed a laugh, small and damp. “And then?”

“And then,” Lola said, “you’ve built a case no one will argue with. Every neutral observer will see a kingdom that tried diplomacy, lost one of its own, and responded. Not retaliated. Responded.”

I stared at her.

“And then we hit them with the army,” she finished gently.

I blinked.

“That’s right,” I said slowly. “I’ve got an army.”

Lola’s mouth twitched. “Yes, Charlie. You have an army.”

“An entire army.”

“Dmitry rebuilt the officer corps weeks ago. Mila runs it. You’ve approved the budget three times, including yesterday.”

“I approve of a lot of things.”

“You do.”

“Have I,” I said, “actually, technically, looked at my army?”

Lola’s expression did something delicate and specific. The professional mask held for exactly one second longer than was plausible, and then the blush started.

“That’s your fault,” I said immediately.

“Charlie—”

“You said not yet.”

“I did say that.”

“You said it three separate times. In writing. On my calendar. ‘Army review: not yet.’ And I respected that, as a responsible monarch.”

“You’re so responsible.”

“I am famous for it.”

She covered her face with her free hand. “I said not yet because we weren’t established and I didn’t want the freed slaves reading into it.”

“And are we established now?”

She peeked through her fingers. “...Yes.”

“Loudly? Publicly?”

“Charlie.”

“I just want to make sure, because I announced you were my girlfriend to Mia this afternoon, which means, by tomorrow, approximately all of our guild will know.”

“You told Mia.”

“I told Mia. She called you devastating, and she was excited.” The blush had reached her collarbone. I watched it travel with deep, abiding satisfaction. “So,” I said. “The army.”

“The army.”

“I’ll meet them.”

“I’ll set it up. Mila will appreciate the formal review; he’s been patient.”

“Mila has been extremely patient. I like Mila. Mila has grim-mouth energy. It’s calming.”

She shook her head, and a loose curl slipped further out of what was left of the tie, and she didn’t seem to notice, which meant I got to notice for her. I reached up and tucked it behind her ear, except I’d never been especially good at tucking things behind ears, so it just sort of draped back out, and I tried again, and made it worse.

“You’ve destroyed my hair.”

“I have not.”

“You have. This is the third time today.”

“That’s impressive, actually. You should be proud.”

“Charlie.”

I leaned in and kissed her.

It was slow. Not the first-date kiss from an hour ago, where I’d been trying to get her to stop being an administrator for ten consecutive minutes. This was after.

She kissed me back.

When I pulled away, her eyes were closed. I waited for them to open.

“I have to go to Rimelion,” she murmured.

“I know.”

“And eat something. You haven’t eaten.”

“I have eaten. I ate approximately half a bag of popcorn.”

“That’s not eating.”

“I resent the tone of administrative concern in your voice.”

“Can you wait to do anything stupid until I get back?”

“Define stupid.”

“Anything you’d do in the next hour.”

“That’s a broad definition.”

“Charlie.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

She exhaled. Her forehead came to rest against mine. Her hair was a disaster. I had done that. I was going to do it again, the first chance I got.

“I’m going to fix my hair,” she said, not moving.

“In a minute.”

“In a minute.”

We stayed like that while Lisa’s feed played on. The camera that did not look back, because Lisa understood, and Fty understood, and even Ian, somehow, had understood enough to keep pulling Luna forward through grass neither of them wanted to be crossing.

“Pancake,” I said quietly, to the ceiling.

“He’ll be back to fight in three days.”

“I know.”

“He chose it.”

“I know.”

Lola’s hand found mine again on top of the comforter. She squeezed once, and then she got up and stood in front of my mirror for about forty seconds trying to do something with her hair before giving up and twisting it into a knot held together mostly by intent.

She looked at me in the reflection.

“Devastating,” she said, deadpan, and left.

I sat on the bed in a room that smelled like the south gate of Altandai, and I picked up the half-empty bottle of soda, and I watched the holo until Lisa finally, finally, slowed down.

—

The rose stones of Altandai had not gotten any better overnight.

I’d hoped, briefly, that a few hours of sleep and one very complicated morning would have recalibrated my aesthetic tolerances. That I’d step out into the street and think, actually, yes, this is a color. This works. Buildings should be this color.

They should not.

I adjusted my clothes and kept walking.

Lola walked beside me, clipboard against her chest. Her hair was in the tight twist she used for public appearances, the one that said I am on duty and will be taking notes about you specifically. I knew, because I had put it there when she got into Rimelion, that three pins were doing the work of six.

“Thirty thousand,” she said.

“Mm.”

“The barracks we’re about to see were built by the Grandmaster’s administration to house thirty thousand soldiers.”

“A lot of soldiers.”

“We have twenty.”

“Twenty soldiers.”

“Twenty thousand, Charlie.”

She flipped a page. The streets here were wider; the Grandmaster’s administration had razed whatever had been in the way when they’d built the compound, and the resulting avenues had that slightly too-generous feeling of a place designed to accommodate a parade. Civilians were sparse. Most of the foot traffic was in uniform.

“Lola.”

“Mm.”

“What’s the difference between a soldier and a guard?”

A small, suspended silence.

“...Charlie.”

“I’m asking the question.”

“You’re the queen.”

“I’m the queen who is asking the question.”

She closed her eyes. It was a tiny gesture. It was also the one she made when she was composing a sentence that had to be both accurate and patient, and it made my chest do a thing. “Soldiers are the army,” she said, opening her eyes. “Large formations. Organized hierarchy. Deployed as a collective force, usually against external threats.”

“Okay.”

“Guards are closer to police. Smaller units. Assigned to specific locations or individuals. Internal security, law enforcement, protection details.”

“So soldiers are the big chunk and guards are the little chunks.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

I shrugged. “Army big. Police small. Got it.”

She made a note on her clipboard. I was ninety percent sure the note was about me.

—

The compound appeared ahead, and it was exactly what the rest of Altandai had taught me to expect, and somehow still more.

The outer walls were the same pink stone, set with dark iron bands. The main gate rose in three concentric arches, each one thinner than the last, the innermost carved with script I couldn’t read.

Above the gate, a rose-gold dome ribbed like a pomegranate caught the light and threw it back at us in a way that felt slightly aggressive. Courtyards opened beyond the main arch, and inside them were more buildings, long and low barracks with flat roofs, standing in formations of their own.

Training fields. A parade ground. Stables. A secondary wall ran along the interior, separating officer quarters from enlisted quarters from something Lola’s clipboard helpfully flagged as discipline wing, which I concluded not to ask about.

“Big,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Really big.”

“Yes, Charlie.”

Mila was waiting at the inner gate.

He stood with three aides in a loose wedge behind him, all of them in the grey-and-blue of the new Altandai officer corps—Dmitry’s aesthetic choice, which I still thought looked vaguely corporate. Mila himself was in the same uniform, not freshly pressed exactly, but arranged with the efficiency of a man who had been in it since before dawn and had refused to let it rumple on his watch.

He saw us. He stepped forward the precise two paces appropriate to his rank. He inclined his head once to Lola. “Your Grace.”

“General.”

Then to me. Deeper. “Your Majesty.”

“Mila.”

His mouth moved. It wasn’t a smile. It was the muscle that preceded a smile, deciding against committing. “It has been some time; you were the Doan-Commander.”

“It has.”

“Your Majesty was a Baronetess.”

Lola cleared her throat with administrative delicacy. “General Mila, Charlie. He was promoted, and you appointed him.”

“Right. General.” I looked at him properly. “That’s a real jump.”

“It is.”

“Like, a lot of ranks.”

“Yes.”

“I approve.”

“I am relieved.” His tone was so perfectly flat that I almost laughed. Lola, beside me, exhaled through her nose.

Mila cleared his throat.

“Your Majesty,” he said, and his voice had shifted slightly. “I have not had a chance to say this in person. You trusted me with this command. I was an officer of an army that is now your enemy. I am aware of the generosity.”

“Mila.”

“Please let me finish.”

I let him.

“Many queens would not have made that choice. Some would have, and regretted it. I am aware that I serve at your pleasure, and I am aware of what that pleasure has cost you with your own advisors. I will not waste it.”

I considered it.

We needed a general. I suggested we used to fight with him, and he was a good man, and nobody protested. Well, no reason to tell him that. “No problem,” I said.

He blinked. “Your Majesty?”

“No problem, Mila. You’re competent. I’d be an idiot to turn down competent in my situation. The empire lost you, which is their mistake. I’m benefiting.”

He was silent for a moment. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We started walking.

The inner courtyard opened around us as we passed through the gate, and it was oversized, designed to make the individual human feel small in the presence of organized force.

Formation squares were painted on the flagstones in faded white. Armories lined the south wall. A bell tower rose over the administrative block, four bronze bells visible through the open arches of the upper tier.

Lola, falling into step on Mila’s other side, flipped her clipboard to a specific tab.

“When Lumi brought the General to us,” she said, addressing me without looking up, “it was not just him. A substantial portion of the empire’s south-eastern officer corps had deserted after your execution, not wanting to join your mother’s army, and many of them had families with them. Civilians. Spouses, children, and elderly parents. Lucy and Lumi recovered them before the empire blockaded us. Mila had already been organizing it, triaging the sick, posting watches, rationing supplies.”

“Of course he had.”

“When we offered him a position, his first condition was housing for the families.”

“Of course it was.”

“Second condition was integration with the Altandai recruits, the freed slaves wanting to fight for us, not replacement of them.”

I looked at Mila.

Mila was looking straight ahead, because Mila had learned a long time ago that being complimented by administrators was something one endured rather than engaged with.

“Impressive,” I said again.

“Your Majesty gave the resources,” Mila said. “The structures were already in place. I organized.”

“You organized.”

“Yes.”

“Mila, that’s not a small word.”

He almost—almost—turned his head. Instead, he addressed the middle distance.

“Your Grace. Your Majesty. Both of you made it possible. I am doing my best with what I have. What I have is considerable. What I am being asked to do is more considerable, and I want that noted before we go further.”

I stopped walking.

So did Lola. So did Mila. So did his three aides, with the synchronicity of people who had been trained to stop walking when their general did.

“Noted,” I said. “Now show me what we can do against our enemies.”