The capital of Julian Malachi’s empire was a sprawling, bustling metropolis. Officially, it was metonymously named Mundus, but everyone just called it Capitol City. It was bordered to the south by a wide, sluggish river[1] and to the east by ocean[2]. Suburbs stretched away in all directions (except east).
Julian’s palace was the largest building in the city, a massive, terraced edifice of dark granite, some 20 stories tall. But even from the observation decks on the top floor, the gaze didn’t penetrate far enough through the region’s perpetual fog to see any stretches of rural land.
Julian’s library had a pleasant, quiet atmosphere (aside from wights ominously guarding all the entrances), and was – as one might expect from the name – lined with bookshelves. Most of his collection consisted of stories from and histories of old Caluthi (most in their original Caluthian), as well as tomes of tactics and strategy, philosophy and natural philosophy, and a few even more obscure or arcane subjects.
Helen was slumped, rather limply, in a fine mahogany chair, by a fine mahogany table, framed by the library’s wide windows, which overlooked the city from about the fifteenth floor. She was covered in bruises and cuts. Her coat, boots, and weapons had been taken away by the wights, but she was not physically restrained. Not that she was particularly inclined to move much; she had been beaten quite badly.
A human medic, in the regular uniform of the Mundi military, was treating her wounds. Bandages and medical accoutrements were scattered on the table.
Julian Malachi entered the library. When Helen caught sight of him, it took her a few moments for her groggy brain, somewhat detached from consciousness, to engage. It took a few more moments to get her tongue, which felt thick and sluggish, to form the word, hateful and accusatory, “You!”
Julian was unfazed. “Quite.” To the medic, “How is she?”
The medic shrugged, not turning from his patient. “Badly beaten, but she’ll live. Probably. I had to sedate her.”
Julian surveyed the damage. “Good. Well, acceptable.” He’d ordered specifically that the wights try not to hurt her too badly. But here she was, beaten bloody. He’d have to have words with the Artifact about this insubordination.
Even beneath the bruises, Julian could see that Helen had aged far beyond the callow youth he’d last encountered in person fifteen years previously. Her face was lined with anger and sorrow and regret. “It’s been a long time, Helen Arkas. You’ve been busy.”
Helen merely glowered at him.
“It really is nice to see you again. I only wish the circumstances were better.” Julian was sincere. Helen had been invaluable in finding the Artifact, so, out of gratitude, he’d chosen to mostly ignore her little quest to take it away from him again. Until that day, he had judged success unlikely.
Helen tried, ineffectually, to spit at Julian past the medic, but her mouth was too dry and cottony. She settled for growling, “Stuff it. I know what you are, monster.”
Julian slumped his shoulders slightly for a moment, deflated. Somehow, he hadn’t really realized that it had become quite so personal for Helen.
But he had a job to do, so he shrugged, turned, and walked to one of the more valuable sections of his library. A section of bookshelf, locked behind small glass doors. Producing a key, he unlocked and opened one of the doors, and reverently pulled out a leather-bound tome, almost three hundred years old. The book’s cover, and the text within, was in jagged old Caluthian script. Julian carefully carried the book back to Helen. Cheerfully, “You should recognize this, I think.”
Helen leaned forward slightly, squinting halfheartedly at the book, then shook her head, collapsing back into the chair. She had never seen its like in her life. (The medic piped up, “Try not to move.”)
Julian explained, “Well, the title is usually translated something along the lines of ‘The Personal Memoir of Taitale, Court Engineer to the Last King of Caluthi’.”
Recognition dawned on Helen’s face.
Julian continued, “I believe you’ve based some years of your life on one passage from the last chapter, yes?” Setting the book on a bandage-free section of the table, and carefully turned to a page near the back of the book. “How do they usually translate it? Sretipren has ‘the Artifact will obey a prince of the Caluthian royal family above all others’, Vafna has a bit more vim, has ‘blood’ instead of ‘family’, ‘inferiors’ instead of ‘others’. But you figure you’ve got the gist down, right?”
Helen, guardedly, squeezed out a “…Yeah.”
Julian shook his head sadly. “How long have you been looking for Adam Grigori based on this passage? Fifteen years, yes? Such a waste. You could have done such great things –”
Helen, swiftly tiring of this mockery, tried to stand to attack Julian, but collapsed back into the chair with pain and exhaustion before she even made it to a standing position. (The medic: “I told you not to move.”)
Julian didn’t move. “Please don’t hurt yourself.” After a second, he returned to the conversation. “Bear in mind, Taitale wrote those words weeks before he died in that most unfortunate duel. After he went into hiding in Kehushide. After the Caluthian Empire was defeated and the royal family executed. After the Artifact was sealed in that tomb within the earth.”
Helen interrupted, mumbling, “Where it should have stayed!”
Julian was dismissive, “Oh, perhaps. Anyhow, by the time Taitale wrote that, all princes of the Caluthian royal family were dead, as far as he knew.”
It may have been the sedatives fogging her mind, but Helen wasn’t at all clear what Julian was trying to get at. “So?”
“So he certainly wasn’t writing to give you advice on how to thwart my efforts at peace.” Helen only scoffed, so Julian decided to try a different conversational tactic: “My dear, you’ve only been reading translations. You miss all the subtleties of the original.”
“Why would I need subtleties? It’s right there in plain text.”
Julian sighed at Helen’s almost deliberate obtuseness, but brightened at the prospect of a teachable moment. He always liked to talk linguistics. “Old Caluthian has five grammatical genders…” Ticking off on his fingers: “…people, weapons, food, qualia, and everything else. The Artifact is usually described with the weapon gender. But in that passage, the word for ‘Artifact’ holds the people gender, while ‘Prince’ holds the weapon gender.”
Helen was still baffled. “…this supposed to mean something to me?”
Julian produced the capstone of his linguistic argument with a flourish, “It means Taitale was giving you a warning about what not to do. Adam can’t use the artifact: it will use him.” He watched Helen expectantly, waiting for comprehension to dawn on her.
It didn’t. Helen just watched him, then declared, “That’s a sack of shit and you know it.”
Julian was genuinely disappointed. But maybe the peaceful solution still wasn’t out of the question! Maybe Helen was just too doped up to be able to process his arguments properly. Maybe when her head was clearer, she might listen to reason. But he tried one last argument, resorting to an argument from the stick: “If you proceed with your reckless plan, you will doom us all. If you agree to let it go and go off into a peaceful retirement somewhere, I’m willing to forget any of this ever happened, and I will never bother you again.”
Helen was emphatically defiant, “I’ll never stop fighting you!”
Julian sighed. “At least you’re honest.” The medic was just about done with his work, so Julian turned to two of the wights guarding the room and instructed them, “Take her to the palace prison and keep her there while I decide what to do with her.”
As the wights dragged Helen to her feet and half-carried her from the room, Julian turned back to the Memoir of Taitale and began to study it anew.
The Resistance safehouse was literally underground: a long-disused water reservoir that once supplied a region whose population had now dwindled. Sounds echoed from hard concrete surfaces, and the place was pervaded by a faint mildew aroma.
Kate had been here a few times before, with her mother. It was difficult, but not impossible, to find, even for someone who knew where it was. After a few missteps, they’d run into some Resistance guys who recognized Kate and sent her and Adam in more like the right direction, so they had managed to find the place eventually.
Adam felt rumpled. He’d already been working at carpentry and gardening all day before Helen and Kate showed up. Follow that up with a hasty flight through the woods, a nap in a haystack, and a long trudge to the nearest urban center to find the safehouse, and he felt like he could use a shower.
But he also felt like he was in good company. The safehouse was crowded with bedraggled, dirty, weary Resistance fighters. Some napped or sat on cots, cleaning swords and other mêlée weapons (Adam had never seen so many swords in one place in his life). Some practiced with training swords against one another, or were engaged in miscellaneous other exercises to keep up their strength and spirits. A few were engaged in a game of cards. Most of them glanced with suspicion at the unfamiliar face of the newcomers, but were reassured by companions who recognized Kate.
One of the Resistance fighters, a small, severe woman with a buzz cut and skin the color of brass, broke off from training recruits. She, like all the others, wore no rank insignia, and her uniform consisted of civilian clothes and a leather jacket, but she was distinguished from the other denizens of the safehouse by her demeanor. She carried herself with the bearing of absolute authority, and the other Resistance fighters visibly deferred to her authority. She gestured at Adam, “Who’s this, then?”
Kate answered promptly, without hesitation, “Adam Grigori, last prince of the royal family of Caluthi.” Adam looked alarmed; he had signed up for a rescue mission, but here Kate was introducing him as the savior of the Resistance.
The safehouse’s leader looked Adam up and down skeptically. “Doesn’t look like much of a savior, does he?” Adam was about to protest, but the woman waved his objections away with a, “Yeah, yeah, don’t care.” Baffled and out of his element, Adam remained silent.
Kate resumed: “Adam, this is Betsy, she’s kind of in charge around here. Betsy, we need weapons and information, if you can spare them.”
Betsy considered Kate and Adam for a moment, then pronounced, “Info’s free. Prob’ly looking for the scoop about your mum, yeah? I got a report a couple hours ago, some of my guys saw her loaded into a truck by some undead buggers. She’s not with you, so I guess that much at least was true.”
This was not particularly encouraging, but at least now they had a place to start. Kate prompted, “Any idea where the truck was headed?”
“North. I imagine Capitol City. Straight to the palace, I wager.”
Kate began to consider possible rescue plans. “This will be problematic.”
Betsy nodded in agreement, then turned to Adam, “You ever handle a sword, boy?”
Adam said, “Not really.” In truth, he had never even touched a real sword. When he was a child, he had nailed two lengths of wood crosswise to make a play sword, just like every other child in the world, he figured.
Betsy shrugged, “Eh, but you’ve got woodcutter’s arms. I think we’ve got a big honkin’ battleaxe that might be right up your alley. Maybe.” To a passing Resistance guy, “Oy, you, grab that big axe in storage, a couple sabres, and maybe half a dozen grenades. Oh, and a pack of food, I guess.” As the Resistance guy trotted off to fetch the requested items, Betsy turned back to Kate, “Grenades’ll cheer you right up. They always do me.”
Kate smiled wanly. “Thanks. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.”
“Oh, sure you can, girly. But it’s for your mum, anyway, not you. Always liked her. Her nutter plan is the only hope we’ve got anymore. Not like we can win this rebellion through force of arms, not against those wights. And anyhow, you’re headed off to Capitol City with the last thingummy of the whatsit here.” She indicated Adam. “So the stuff isn’t a gift. It’s a bargain. The deal is, you’ve gotta win us this war.”
‘Last thingummy of the whatsit’ was very much in line with what Adam thought about the whole business. But he hadn’t signed up to win the war, he’d only agreed to help rescue Helen. He opened his mouth to protest, but Kate stopped him by shut his mouth with a clack, one of her fingers on the bottom of his chin. She answered for him, “We’ll try.”
Despite her words, Betsy still looked skeptical. “Yeah, trying’s probably the best you can do.”
Julian stood watching the screens on the wall contemplatively.
Most of the screens showed similar scenes as before, but several of them are now devoted to one large skirmish with the Resistance in the streets of a city in the far distant nation of Hle. The muffled rat-a-tat of his wights’ automatic rifles could be heard from the screens.
“Fifteen years they’ve plagued us. Why?”
Several of the screens became suddenly brighter for a second; one went entirely the fiery orange of an explosion, then suddenly black. A few seconds later, it switched to a different view of the same scene.
“I’d really rather not have to kill him. He’s not in the fight yet. He hasn’t done anything to us. He’s still innocent.”
Julian could feel the malevolence of the Artifact. It made no noise, but he could feel at the base of his mind that it wanted to terminate Adam Grigori as a potential threat to their reign.
Julian shook his head. He said, “Only a potential threat. We don’t have any reason to execute him unless he becomes an actual threat.”
The Artifact disagreed.
Julian turned back to the screens, and decided, “We definitely don’t kill Helen. Not her, and not the daughter. They may never back down, but they’re no credible threat. It’s only this Adam, and he’s still only potential.”
But the Artifact wanted them all killed. It was bloodthirsty. Sometimes Julian felt like it had more control over him than he had over it. But today, he would be in control. He would be certain about it.
“Always the easy way with you. ‘Kill everybody’ this, ‘execute them as traitors and dissenters’ that.”
He stared at the battle raging on the screens for a long while, as the wights and the Resistance did senseless battle in Hle.
“I suppose you may be a little right. Look at these… these fools. They throw their lives away for the Resistance every day, fighting against my world peace. If Adam Grigori makes the same choice, what’s he, compared to these hundreds of people who force us to kill them?”
The Artifact glowed happily.
But Julian shook his head. “Only if he makes the same choice. Only if he buys into Helen’s delusions. Only if he declares his allegiance to the Resistance. Then and only then are you right. Up until the moment that he declares himself part of the war against us, he remains an innocent bystander, and I won’t have any innocent blood on my hands.”
Julian turned back to the Artifact and issued a formal order: “If Adam Grigori attacks us, if he attacks any wights or any of our soldiers, kill him. Then incinerate his corpse. I don’t want him used for any purpose other than charcoal. But I want no harm to come to him unless he attacks us.”
The Artifact was satisfied with this order.
[1] Named the Slow River, for descriptive reasons too prosaically obvious to detail here.
[2] The North Ocean, because ibid.
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