Riven Earth, page 23
“We need men now,” Maisades said.
Tyor pursed his plump limps. “So we do.”
Maisades squinted towards the sun. It was damn hot. His skin was reddened and sore, his pits chaffed and swampy, his stump itching like mad.
“Keep planting seeds,” he said. “I will head to Sun’s Fall.”
“Sun’s Fall, eh? Do care for your skin, my dear. You’re already shrivelled up worse than a date.”
“And you?”
“South, I think.” Tyor’s lips twisted in a slimy smile. “These peasants are more upset than they realise. We’ve been quite lucky in our timing.”
He wasn’t wrong. With the harvest failing and the economy crumbling, the west was ripe and ready for revolt. That was the thing. Poets may harp on about kings, learned men may froth about human rights and justice, and the masses may grow sentimental for good causes. But at the end of the day, nothing mattered more than food on the table.
“Good,” Maisades said. “Go south and rally the villages. I will start on the followers.”
Tyor whistled, thin brows raised. “Sure you’re not wasting time on those crazies?”
“Crazies are what we need right now.”
“Kaido is their prophet’s son. They’ll never turn against him.”
“Maybe,” Maisades said. “But it’s worth trying. There are enough of them to overrun the entire army.”
“And if they died in the process, we’d count it our greatest achievement.” Tyor flourished his hand dismissively. “Yes, well, you go off and do that. I’ll soften the folk of these sunny lands.”
A steady thrum of hoofbeats pounded the ground, and Maisades froze, listening, willing them to pass by the stable. They only grew louder and louder.
“Shit!” Maisades’ grabbed the dagger from his waist. He’d hardly pushed himself upright before three lomers charged into the stables, snorting and huffing.
The men on their backs jumped down. Two enforcers in cloaks of green and gold, one city guard.
“We’ve been looking for you bastards,” snarled the lead enforcer. He unbelted a massive mace and made for Maisades with vengeance in his eyes.
“Maisades Fareses,” said the other. “We have orders to kill you on sight. There will be no trial, as dictated by joint agreement of the three High Judges and the Crown. Do you have any last words?”
Maisades backed up, heart hammering, lungs burning. His mouth had gone dry. He slipped in the mud, clutched the fence, glanced at Tyor. The fat man shrugged unhelpfully.
“My assets!” Maisades stuttered, the dagger trembling behind him. That was a deadly weapon. And an angry brute holding it. Coming at him fast. “What will happen to my assets?”
“Already sold.”
“I have no say in the matter? What is my crime? What have I done?”
“You fucking murdered my friends!”
The mace flew at him. Maisades ducked. Metal smashed through the fencepost in a shower of splinters. He brought his dagger around, but he’d only one hand, and it was weak. The enforcer knocked his arm away and elbowed him in the mouth.
“Agh!” He tasted blood, blinked, and the mace was coming for his face. He scrambled away, slipped, and the weapon whistled through the air he’d been in. He was on the ground then, flailing in the mud. He managed to find his legs and tackle the man about his waist. His dagger was gone. He punched the bastard in the thigh. His knuckles struck mail armour, and pain shot up his arm.
The man stumbled for a moment but stayed on his feet. Maisades grabbed his cloak, tugging with all his weight and causing him to choke. The mace fell in a splatter of mud. The man landed on Maisades’ back, knocking the air out of him.
A fist went into his side. A knee into his belly. Pain. No air. The world spinning. The enforcer climbed on top and yanked his hair. Maisades clawed at his meaty arm as it latched around and squeezed his neck.
“Oh my…” Tyor’s distant voice.
“Help…” Maisades croaked.
“Die, you fucking shit!” The man squeezed harder, a sharp knee pressing into Maisades’ back; cracking, snapping, his spine screaming. The arm tightened around his neck. Maisades wheezed. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Everything was going black.
“Help…” he choked out. His hand scratched uselessly at the arm, stump flopping about, feet kicking. Only mud now. All he could see. All he could think. Mud. What a disgraceful way to die.
Blood splattered across his back. The enforcer’s grip loosened. Maisades gasped in a sweet breath. The sharp pressure lifted off him.
“Ugh…” the enforcer moaned.
Maisades kicked behind him and scrambled away, wheezing, panting, soaked in sweat, mud, and blood. He turned and saw the other man on his knees, cross-eyed as he stared down at the bloody end of a spear sticking through his chest. His hands fumbled at the blade.
“Fuck…” A whistling, bubbling sound, blood leaking from his lips. Then his eyes rolled up, and he fell forward. The spear thunked when it stuck in the ground. There was a squelch as the man’s body slid down the blade and flopped in the mud.
The lone city guard stood panting behind him. His chainmail was splattered with blood, sweat dripping down his pale face and beading at the end of his pointy blonde beard. The other enforcer lay face down nearby, a dagger up to the hilt in his neck.
Tyor whistled. An absurd, infuriating sound. Maisades turned on him, gasping, rubbing at the burn on his neck. “Fuck you, you fat shit!”
“Master Tyor,” the guard said with a bow. “You still have friends in the city guard.”
“Oh my! Indeed, I am happy to hear it. Uhm…”
“Denth, sir.”
“Guardsman Denth, truly, thank you.” Tyor stepped forward to take the man’s armoured hand in his.
“Could’ve helped sooner,” Maisades muttered, coughing.
The guard glanced at him, then back to Tyor. “Sir, we’ve been given orders to help the enforcers hunt you two down. Not all the city guards are on our side.”
“How many do we have?” Tyor asked.
“I’d say a third of the guard.”
Tyor nodded. “Tell them you saw me. And that we will be back soon. When the time comes, any man that supports us can expect great riches. Far greater than what the Crown pays.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“As for you…” Tyor reached into the deep pocket of his purple robe and pulled out a neatly rolled parchment. “Visit this address and show him this note. You will be rewarded for your loyalty.”
The guard’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, sir!” He clutched the paper close.
Maisades finally found the strength to stand, though his legs still wobbled like no tomorrow. He spat out a tooth and put a hand on his bloody mouth. “The bodies...”
“I will deal with them, sir,” the guardsman said. “You should leave before they see my patrol is missing.”
“And what’s your story?” Tyor said.
“Bandits, sir. Barely made it out alive.”
“Good. Do put on a show.”
Maisades had already limped over to his lomer. He tugged on its vines, and the beast snorted stubbornly. He yanked on them, and they finally unravelled enough to help him up. He heeled the animal out of the stables. Tyor turned to him as he passed.
“Two weeks,” Maisades said. “You know where I’ll be.” He spurred the lomer into a gallop, away from that place as fast as possible.
Chapter thirteen
Oh, they have loved each other for long. But does he not know that a man’s first love is rarely his last?
She is a flimsy, ditsy, vain little thing. Well mannered and of good character. But a queen? No. He needs someone to rein in his impulses. Someone with a head for governance – he hardly has one himself, after all. Galtus’ daughter is a far better match.
Alas. It is not your place to play games of his heart. He has chosen.
Reflections by King Isaiah
The heavy tome shut with a thump and a cloud of dust. Raia pushed it away and studied her notes. Useless dribble about farming practices. Crop rotation, fertiliser use, pest management – all things her father had normalised. His messy writing was sprawled over the ancient book. The audacity of it made her smile. The illegibility made her curse.
There was nothing helpful in any of the histories. Nothing to deal with the drought and prolonged summer.
The ancients had not used earthstones. There was no mention on how to bring them back to life. They had grown sun-resistant breeds that Raia did not have. Often, their sketches were of vast indoor farms illuminated by sunstones the size of which she could not fathom. Those sketches at least explained her father’s fascination with the gems. And all of the effort he’d made to scour the desert of them.
Raia stared for a moment at the gentle glow from the stone in her sword’s pommel. She understood the principle. The latch would ignite a spark in the hilt. Heated, the stone would burst to life. And metal would channel its energy into fire. But there was more to it. The stone kept her sword sharpened and strengthened beyond any steel. And if the charge in it ran out, her blade became brittle.
Sunstones stored the sun’s energy. And they made more than just fire from it. Her father used them to power his machinery. “The sky’s the limit,” he’d told her once from under one of his contraptions. “If we could just find enough of the damn things.”
And if they found ones as large as those seen in the sketches, perhaps they could have tempered the sun’s light to grow wheat no matter the climate.
She sat back and looked out her window to the orange sky. A hot summer. A drought all through the west. Her stomach churned, and she could not help but fear the worst.
What if the sun was moving closer?
It was a ridiculous notion. And yet, some theorised it had happened before. That the sun had crossed the sky – perhaps once, perhaps every day. If it happened again, what could she possibly do?
There was no point worrying about it. The sun’s position was charted, recorded across the kingdom. She made a quick note to have it re-measured. For peace of mind.
Her other theory was more palatable. Barely.
In the time of the dryads, the priests preached that Astea’s magic protected all life from Mithras’ wrath. Raia had dismissed the idea as religious nonsense, the same as her father. But the timing of it was uncanny. The collapse of the hovel homes, the failure of the earthstones, the fruitless harvest. It all started when Caedric’s revolt ended, and the last of the old ways were quashed.
What came after that, she could not change. But maybe the priests had been right. Their words didn’t justify worship. But they may have hinted at the science of the world, the way things worked.
And she could not ignore the one sweeping, undeniable change that marked the kingdom a vastly different place from a decade ago.
The forests were almost gone.
It was worst in the west, where vast acreage had been handed out to till, most of it leased by too few people. The patches of forest that separated these fields were sparse and disconnected, stunted as they waited their turn to be cut down.
If there was truth in the old ways, if Astea’s magic protected life, Raia knew that magic lived in trees. The same trees they had felled for shelter and food.
She turned to the hefty booklet at the edge of her desk. Unprecedented, the laws she’d asked her team to write. Protections for the forest. A permitting process for any deforestation. Restrictions on land and water use, requirements for forested sections on every farm.
It was a law that would shake the tenuous foundations of their kingdom to the core. No longer would deforestation teams cut down at the whims of those who paid for their work. They would be restricted to zones permitted by the Crown, forced to replant a tree for each one felled.
The political ramifications were immense. It would be seen as a power grab. A move toward centralized control, opposite to all the economic ideas her father had fostered. The rich would rebel. The price of lumber would spike. Thousands would lose their jobs. And new builds would halt. The Crown would find it impossible to supply all families with a home, breaking the promise under which King Isaiah had united the kingdom.
She could do it. Right then and there. She could sign the codex into law with a swirl of her pen.
The council would bicker and complain. But Kaido had given her his consent. She could sign it in his place. An executive decision. But should she? Should she, on a hunch, upturn the society her father had built? With no evidence for her theory? No evidence that this famine would last more than a year?
It was all she could think to do.
What would her father say? He’d dismiss her with a casual wave of his hand. His ideas were always of freedom and free enterprise. Ideas that had made a prosperous kingdom out of scattered villages. Ideas that may have led them into the pit they were in now.
She glanced at the thick stack of reports to her right. Civil unrest was already brewing in the west. Folk were unhappy about the failed harvest and rising prices. This law would be the deathknell, the catalyst for another revolt. The army could quell it, she’d no doubt. But did her king have the stomach for it? Probably not.
She’d have to take the law to him. It was the right thing to do. But he seemed so fragile now. So unlike the Kaido she used to know.
Raia sighed and stood, stretching her stiff legs and back. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and glanced at Mari’s messy desk. It seemed so quiet in the absence of her humming and pencil-tapping. But Raia had forced the girl to take a day off.
She probably should have taken one herself. But a quick glance at the stacks of reports cluttering her desk dissuaded her of that notion. She’d let all the kingdom’s problems pile up in her quest to tackle the famine.
She strode to her cabinet, fished out her favourite tea set, and poured a cup of royal tea. Then she leaned against the wall and looked out the window, thumb running over the gilded butterflies on her cup.
It was a quiet evening in the city, couples walking hand in hand along the promenade.
Movement caught her eye, and she glanced down to the Queen’s Garden. Jaswyn was there, half hidden behind red and gold leaves. She wore green overalls, and her hair was tied back beneath a wide brimmed hat. She reached up and around high branches, pruning a tree with little shears.
Raia’s eyes wandered over that tree and its entwined, spiralling, rainbow-like flowers. She sipped her tea and smiled, remembering the happier days when it was planted.
Five Years Ago
“Can you talk to your father about it?” Kaido hurried across the room, stooped, and dredged through a pile of clothes. Unworthy garments went flying behind him.
A dirty shirt landed on the bed, inches from where Raia sat cross legged. She flicked it to the ground. “Your father is the king. Talk to him.”
Kaido scoffed. “As if I could.” He found the vest he was looking for, scrunched it in a fist, and stuffed it into the open pack at the foot of the bed. He gave her an exasperated, pleading look. “Come on, Rai! Your father is reasonable. And he’s got a soft spot for you. You know I can’t bring it up with mine.”
He turned and looked around the room. “What am I forgetting?”
“Spare sunstones?” Raia offered.
“Oh! Good call.” He strode to a closet and dug through a drawer until he found two of the gems. He cupped his hands around them and frowned. “Need charge.”
“I’ll trade you.” Raia dug out her own two spares from a pocket and tossed them to him. He grinned as he caught them, fist quenching their light. His dull ones came at her, missed altogether, smacked into the wall, and scattered away. Raia watched them disappear under the bed with a silent sigh.
Kaido hadn’t noticed. He’d already moved on to a bundle of clothes stacked on a chair by the door. An ashfang cloak hung on the chair’s back. And as he rummaged through the pile, the cloak slipped off and plopped to the ground with a gentle thud, spread flat like a sloppy rug. Raia stared at it for far too long. The mess of it, and the misuse bothered her well beyond words. Kaido tossed his sunstones into a pouch and was across the room again, looking for something else.
“I think my father agrees with the king,” Raia ventured.
“Only because you haven’t talked to him yet!” His voice was muffled, his face hidden in a closet.
Rows of braided black curls stuck out the back of his head, shoulder length and tied in a tail. Raia absently wondered how he would style his hair for the wedding. She liked the braids. But her father thought the style biassed him too much to the west. With his name and skin colour, he was alienated enough from the east as it was.
But that was her father. Ever concerned with optics and the unity of the kingdom. Kaido on the other hand…
“I did talk to him,” she said.
“You did?” Kaido swung his big hazel eyes to her. So full of hope that she felt bad. “What did he say?”
“Well…” Best be out with it. She put on a deeper voice in imitation of her father. “Wellness doctors? Ridiculous. Tell that boy prince of yours to get his head out of the clouds.” She paused. “His words, not mine.”
Kaido shook his head and marched up to her. “Did you show him the survey Gavin conducted? What about our trials? Did you tell him about Jearn and the other successes?”
“I tried…” she began.
“Rai, this is important!”
“I know.”
“Damnit!” Kaido punched the bed. “Damn these old bastards! The entire kingdom is battle-shocked, and all they can think about is new builds. How many can’t sleep because they still hear the fighting? How many kill themselves every year because of it?”
“I know.”
He turned and sat, seething, fingers fiddling. “It’s all my father’s doing. Why can’t he just say it’s okay to be sad every now and then? Why does he have to act so fucking tough all the time?”
He rambled on, and Raia waited until his anger had boiled over. It never took long with Kaido.
