“It is unseemly to brawl here,” Tien said, unexpectedly pragmatic. “Let them go. I will deal with them later.”
“Why are you here instead of with Princess Sien?” Mari asked Hasna in a low voice. “Why are you following his orders?”
Hasna’s eyes flashed with resentment. “You would not understand honor. I am bound by my oath to follow the orders of Tiae.”
“I understand that I left Tiae under the rule of a strong, intelligent leader and return to find it led by a pretty jackass with a pack of liars telling him what to do. You’ve traded a princess for a puppet.”
“Do not mock my loyalty,” Hasna ground out between clenched teeth. “I love Tiae more than you can imagine.”
“Then I hope with all my heart that none of my followers ever love me as you love Tiae,” Mari said. “Get out of my way.”
Hasna’s face tightened with anger, but she roughly gestured to her soldiers to stand back and allow Mari and Alain to pass.
“It was dangerous to provoke her so,” Alain murmured as Mari stalked back into the anteroom.
“I know! And I did it anyway! Because sometimes I just can’t help telling people what I think!” Mari stormed out of the building, but came to a stop as she saw a large group of her soldiers headed toward her at a fast pace. “Ah! As rescues go, it’s a little late, but maybe they’ll help keep me from saying anything else I shouldn’t.”
“It would take many more soldiers than that to prevent you from speaking your mind,” Alain said.
He must have learned to understand her very well. A brief, involuntary laugh slipped through her anger as General Flyn strode up at the head of the soldiers.
“Lady, I have brought an honor guard to escort you to your headquarters in Tiaesun.”
“Thank you, General,” Mari said. As they began walking back across the plaza, the soldiers formed ranks ahead, behind, and to each side, enclosing her and Alain in a box bristling with weapons. “Where is Princess Sien?”
“Officially, I have no idea,” Flyn said. “Unofficially, she has sought protection in a place where the soldiers of a close friend can be counted upon where the soldiers of Tiae could not. Speaking of safety, I assume that you’re all right?”
“Close enough,” Mari said.
“You were wounded by an Imperial crossbow,” Alain said.
“Yes, I was.” Not wanting to make too big a deal of it, Mari lightly tapped her upper left arm. “Just a glancing blow. Sort of a farewell gift. I’ll be all right.”
Flyn nodded. “And the items you sought?”
“Safely aboard the Pride, on their way back to Tiae. So are Mechanic Dav, Mage Asha, and Captain Banda. It was…sort of close, but we made it.” Mari looked around at the soldiers surrounding her, their faces grim and rifles at ready. “And now I’m back in another fire. How many troops do we still have in the city?”
“This is half of what remains. I left the others at your headquarters to ensure the safety of…everyone there. The rest of your soldiers who were helping to garrison Tiaesun have moved to camps outside the city.”
“We saw. How is the army of Tiae able to garrison all of Tiaesun already?” Alain asked. “They did not have the numbers needed when Mari and I left.”
“And they don’t have the numbers now,” Flyn said. “By order of that prince, Tiae’s army has effectively ceded a third of the city, including the entire port, to the Syndari mercenaries the prince brought with him. Ask me how happy the people of Tiaesun are about that.”
“What about fixing up the city?” Mari asked. “What happened there?”
“According to my sources,” Flyn said, “an exclusive cleaning contract has been granted to one of the prince’s advisers. The workers who were doing the job were all let go and told they could reapply at a later date for the same jobs under the management of that adviser’s foreign company.”
“Unbelievable. Who is that idiot calling himself Prince Tien?”
“Apparently,” Flyn said heavily, “he is Prince Tien.”
There were so many sentries posted around Mari’s Tiaesun headquarters that it looked more like a fort inside hostile territory than an encampment in a friendly city. The local citizens, whom Mari had seen mingling with her soldiers after the city’s liberation, were now standoffish, their attitudes those of people who had always expected the worst and were now about to see it come to pass again.
That deflated her anger. Instead, she felt hurt that these people who had suffered so much were once more turning into pawns in someone else’s game.
The headquarters had once been a large inn catering to travelers. It had enough room for the soldiers and an attached stable for the horses. Mari followed General Flyn across the courtyard and into the main building, then to what had once been a small meeting room.
Inside, Princess Sien sat in a battered chair. Her dejected expression changed to a smile as she saw Mari and Alain. Mari rushed to her friend, hugging her with one arm and feeling the other’s tension. “What the blazes happened?”
Sien shook her head. “He– What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s just my arm. A crossbow bolt. No big,” Mari said dismissively. “It didn’t go in. It just took a piece out of me.”
“Alain,” Sien said, turning an angry look on him, “you said you would protect her.”
Alain nodded. “I did. But the ship was under attack, and sinking.”
“Did you get—,” Sien began, then waved an angry hand to cut herself off. “That’s not important. Not compared to you two being safe. What did you ask? The prince. He looks like my older brother Tien. He has some proofs of his status, including the mundane crown of Tiae, meant to be worn on a daily basis. How that survived, I don’t know. When he sailed into port along with those proofs, and his advisers and his Syndari mercenaries, the army of Tiae accepted him as the true ruler.”
“We saw. How did Tien survive?” Alain remained standing as Mari and Sien sat down close to each other.
“As near as I can determine, while I was being traded among various opportunists and criminals until I escaped and found supporters, he was spirited away to an isolated villa in the mountains north of Daarendi,” Sien said bitterly.
“He spent all those years hiding in a villa, while you stayed here in Tiae?” Mari was unable to hide her incredulity. “While you were threatened and fought and struggled to help your people, he stayed hidden in comfort? And your army turned Tiae over to him when he showed up?”
“He is older,” Sien said.
“So what?”
Flyn answered to spare Sien. “The laws of Tiae are fairly simple in that regard. The eldest living man or woman in the direct royal line is king or queen.”
“He’s an idiot!” Mari said, frustrated.
“The law doesn’t care.”
“Then the law is idiotic! Sien, you can’t just accept this. I saw enough of Tien to know that he’s just being used by those advisers—"
“No,” Sien broke in. “He is playing at that. I have been watching, mostly from afar once Tien realized that my existence was a threat to his rule. Tien plays at being merely a grand shell of a prince, but under that he has been ruthless and decisive when necessary. The advisers, some of them, are fools who think to use Tien to enrich themselves. They will discover too late that Tien has used them to enrich himself.”
“How can such people be fooled when you are not?” Alain asked.
“Because they consider themselves to be very, very clever,” Sien said. “Too clever to be taken advantage of or misled. If you want to take a victim, Sir Mage, choose one who thinks he is too smart to be taken. And Tien has no mercy for those who underestimate him. Did you see him smile? What did you see in that?”
“Nothing,” Alain said. “There was no feeling behind it.”
“Really?” Mari asked, shocked.
“Nothing,” Alain repeated. “His eyes…they reminded me of the eyes of Mage elders who have divorced themselves from believ
ing that any shadow matters.”
“Yes,” Sien agreed, her voice growing sad. “My brother. And he looked at me and evaluated my worth to him and my potential cost to his plans, and that was all he saw. He did not realize that I had been trained in very harsh schools to see what was in the heart of those I dealt with, and so I could see what little was in his.”
“I’m…so sorry,” Mari said, imagining how she would have felt if her mother had acted like that upon their reunion. “You said only some of the advisers are like that?” she asked, wanting to change the subject. “I recognized a politician from Edinton who had struck me as a weasel, but not a greedy weasel.”
“Not all of the advisers are motivated by hopes of profiting from what they squeeze out of Tiae,” Flyn said, “or hoping to gain power here. Others, including whoever really employs that man from Edinton, have taken note that with your help Tiae has struggled back to its knees, and they want to make sure that the country never gets back on its feet again. There are powerful people elsewhere in Dematr who see Tiae only as a potential rival and threat.”
“What?” Mari asked. “They want Tiae to stay broken?”
“Before the kingdom broke,” Alain said, “Tiae and the Confederation were often in conflict, though rarely fully at war.”
“Why?”
Flyn shrugged. “Fighting over land, water, resources…the usual things.”
Mari pointed north to where the Confederation lay. “I just flew over a lot of the Confederation, and there is a lot of empty space still in its territory. The areas east of Debran are sparsely populated. And Tiae has lots of room to expand to the south and east. What land and water and resources were they fighting over?”
“Things along the border between them,” Flyn said. “Are you looking for any rationality in that, Lady? You won’t find it. Two countries that could have gathered strength to contest with the Great Guilds instead spent it fighting over river fords and islets and watering holes that had little real value. Meanwhile, trade disputes with the Western Alliance and Syndar occasionally led to Tiae’s use of privateers, which enriched the owners of the privateers but caused hardship everywhere else.”
“Being far too young, I had no role in that,” Sien said. “From the perspective of too many years of fighting battles that had to be fought, I cannot understand picking fights over such minor things. But apparently there are those in the Confederation, in Syndar, and in the Western Alliance, who think that a reborn Tiae would return to that combative role against them.”
“I’m sure the Empire and the Great Guilds are trying to pull strings as well,” Flyn added.
“The Great Guilds surely pulled such strings in the past to keep Tiae in conflict with its neighbors, and they seek to do so again. One of the advisers we saw is paid by the Mechanics Guild,” Alain said.
“But if the commons from other countries succeed in messing up Tiae’s chance at recovery,” Mari said, “it would just set them up to be toppled when the Storm sweeps over their lands. I have sent messages and warned the leaders of those places. Why is it so hard to get people to listen?”
“You were told of the storm by Mages,” Alain pointed out.
“Yes, but the signs are there for anyone to see! The riots and the civil disturbances and everything else. The common people are ready to blow up, and their own leaders will be the first targets of their fury!”
“Many see that,” Flyn said. “We wouldn’t be getting the volunteers and aid we have been if powerful people in the Confederation and the Alliance weren’t looking the other way and lending covert support. But others, for reasons political or personal, are pursuing different objectives that they see as important to them.”
“If the Storm does triumph, it will be because of people like that! Princess Sien, what can we do?” Mari asked.
She looked unhappy. “The last thing I want is to trigger a renewed civil war between my supporters and those of Tien. That will shatter any chance of the kingdom’s rebirth and serve the desires of our enemies. But it may not be a choice I can make. Tien’s actions are alienating more and more people and soldiers. They will turn to me, and I will have to decide whether to reject their loyalty and let Tien and his advisers destroy Tiae slowly, or whether to fight and quicken the final death of Tiae myself.”
“How did Tiae end up a monarchy, anyway?” Mari asked. “Maybe if we look at that we’ll find a solution. Tiae was the last of the countries to be established, right?”
Alain, as usual, provided the historical background. “Tiae came to be as the result of people moving south from the cities around the Sea of Bakre. Some sought new land, while others wanted new beginnings. The Confederation was going through a difficult time, with different cities feuding over issues of control and authority. The Western Alliance had expanded as far as it could to the west and north. Those wanting to leave the Free Cities had nowhere closer to go. The histories I have read say the Mechanics Guild could not halt those changes to Dematr and appeared to be experiencing some kind of dysfunction of its own, though that is not explained.”
“One of the purges must have taken place about then,” Mari said. “When the Senior Mechanics killed or imprisoned a lot of Mechanics to stop any revolt against their authority.”
“Mage Hiro once saw documents of the Mage Guild,” Alain continued, “which said that the elders allowed the founding of Tiae as a counterweight to the Confederation, which the elders did not want to expand to the south and continue to grow in size and strength.”
“How does all of that produce a monarchy in Tiae?” Mari asked again.
“The histories do not say. They only report that the monarchy was established.”
“I do not myself know the reasons,” Sien said. “I was told many times that the founder of the royal family was a man of great strength and skill, someone others were willing to grant power to. But there is this also. My advisers have told me that before the kingdom broke, every attempt to expand the powers of the parliament was met with objections that it would grant too much influence to those who made a living from politics. Keeping power in the royal family would prevent that. I wonder if some of those who came from places like the Confederation were tired of the failures of their political leaders and sought a simpler and stronger system.”
“Princess, your people would not be the first to have little regard for politicians,” Flyn said. “But if that attitude led Tiae’s citizens to grant most political power to the royal ruler, it left the fate of the country subject to the roll of the die. If chance granted a good king or queen, the land would prosper, but if chance gave them a poor choice for the role, the land would suffer.”
“Simple solutions,” Mari said. “Simple answers to complicated problems. Isn’t that what happened? Choosing leaders, good leaders, is hard. So don’t. Set up a system where the leader happens automatically.”
“All agree the first king was worthy,” Sien repeated, looking unhappy again.
“I have no doubt. That probably made it easy to decide on monarchy as a solution. But that leaves the problem of succession.”
Flyn nodded. “People want to believe that the child is the heir to all things from the parents, even though it often happens that the child is very different. For better or for worse.”
Sien bit her lip, her gaze on the table. “There’s little happiness in what I remember of my parents. They often seemed sad. They did their best to rule Tiae, they did their best to fulfill the duties laid upon my father by his birth, but I do not think it was a role they would have chosen. And all accounts agree that they were not well suited for it.”
“Your people still want a strong leader,” Flyn pointed out. “Perhaps now more than ever. They want someone to defend Tiae, and more importantly to defend them. You have proven yourself well suited to that role, Princess.”
“I agree,” Mari said. “Which, unfortunately, is going to lead to exactly the problem that Princess Sien fears. Soldiers and people will leave Tien for her
, and if Tien is as cold and calculating as you say, Princess, he won’t let that continue.”
A knock sounded on the door. General Flyn went to check, listened to a whispered message, and turned back to Mari. “You have a visitor. Colonel Hasna. She’s unarmed, and says she has a message from Prince Tien for you.”
Mari frowned. “Hasna and I didn’t exactly part on good terms a short time ago. Tien must have seen and heard that. Why did he choose her as a messenger?”
“To drive home to her that she is under his authority,” Sien said. “And to offer you the sacrifice of her dignity by forcing her to serve as your messenger with the reply. It puts Hasna in her place, and lets you lord it over her.”
“She’s just another pawn? If I wasn’t still mad at her, I’d feel sorry for Hasna. Should she see you here?” Mari asked Sien.
“I wish her to see me,” Sien replied, her voice hardening.
Mari nodded to Flyn. “I’ll accept the message.”
Hasna was escorted into the room, fixing her eyes on Mari to avoid looking at Sien. “I was ordered to give this to you…Lady Master Mechanic. And…await your reply.” She offered an envelope.
Mari took it, impressed by the quality of the paper. It must have been brought from some expensive stationery store in Syndar. Inside was a single page, the writing on it in a fine, firm hand. Tien had obviously worked hard on his penmanship, but then that was part of the whole image thing. “He says it’s unfortunate that our first meeting did not go better. Nice wording. It sounds like an apology but it’s not, and it leaves open the question of whose fault that was. He says I am obviously…oh, blah, blah, flattery. And not to be taken lightly. All right. I’ll admit I wasn’t at my most diplomatic. He wants…” She reread the words. “He wants to meet, just him and me. To discuss matters of mutual benefit. You don’t have to shake your head, Alain. I’m not doing it.”
“You should,” Sien said, surprising Mari. “But with proper safeguards. Tiae is on the road to destruction. Perhaps you can change that.”
Mari, tired and physically battered, didn’t feel like sticking her neck out. But Sien had a point. Mari looked at Hasna. “You can tell Prince Tien that I will meet privately with him, but only if accompanied by Mage Alain.”