“And my Horde?” wondered Lastleaf with feigned naivety. “Should I disband it? Bid my monstrous minions return to their forest lairs? Crawl back to their caves? Retreat to the deep, dark places of the world and wait patiently for some glory-hungry adventurer to come and claim the bounty on their heads?”
Pike wasn’t the sharpest sword in the armoury, but he knew when he was being toyed with. “Sounds like a plan,” he grated.
The ghost of a smile haunted the druin’s lips, but quickly vanished. “What’s done is done, I’m afraid. The arrow has left the string. Castia will fall, and soon. I could no more resurrect the Dominion than rescue the Republic from the doom that awaits it.”
The Phantran delegate shook her head. She’d slung her cutlass back into the sash at her waist, but her fingers lingered on its jewelled pommel. “What does the Old Dominion have to do with any of this? Who are you, even? Where did you come from?”
The druin regarded Etna Doshi as if she were a mouse that had poked its head out of the salad he was partway through eating. “I am from the forest. You may call me Lastleaf, or Duke—whichever you’d prefer. And as for the Dominion …” His long ears twitched. “We are each what the past has made of us. You would do well to remember what has come and gone before. Time is a circle, history a turning wheel. Though I can hardly expect a human to understand. Your memory is as limited as your mind is narrow.”
Doshi was on the verge of an angry retort when Lastleaf spoke up again. “I mean no insult to you personally, of course. I am merely pointing out the fact that humans are short-lived, short-sighted, and prone to repeating the mistakes of both your ancestors and mine.”
The Admiral’s daughter looked decidedly unimpressed by the Duke’s apology. “Since when was Endland a duchy then?” she asked sharply.
Lastleaf grinned, just as sharply. “When Castia is mine—and it will be mine very soon—I may remake of it whatever I wish. Why not a duchy, with myself as its duke? Or would you rather I chose a more … ostentatious title? Shall I call myself king, or emperor, or archon?”
Moog was right, Clay found himself thinking. The whole duke thing is for our benefit, a way to make him seem less threatening to the kings and queens of Grandual. Which seemed unnecessary, he thought, considering the druin commanded a force that was larger and substantially more terrifying than what any of the courts could muster on their own.
While Lastleaf was speaking, Clay saw a white-gloved hand push aside the silk curtains shrouding the Sultana’s palanquin. He caught the barest glimpse of a gold mask in the gloom as the occupant spoke with one of the three ministers, who then turned and cleared his throat before addressing Lastleaf.
“My Esteemed Lady, the Sultana of Narmeer, Bride of Vizan the Summer Lord, Mistress of the Scorching Throne, Herald of the Devouring Wastes, Scourge of the Serpent Clans, Bane of the Giants of Dumidia, Eternal Enemy of the Palapti Centaurs, bids me ask you this: How is it you control the Heartwyld Horde?”
“I do not control them,” said Lastleaf. “I compel them.”
“There’s a difference?” asked Obolon Han.
“The Horde cannot be controlled,” the druin replied. He had an odd manner of speaking, Clay noted. He opened his mouth very little, as though ashamed of his serrated teeth, or else reluctant to put more effort than necessary into the act of conversing. “My own kind learned this lesson long ago, and far too late. But it can be coaxed, threatened, provoked—”
“Well how about you provoke them into leaving Castia the hell alone?” asked Doshi.
Lilith leaned in and whispered harshly into Matrick’s ear. The king blinked and started like a man roused from a peaceful nap. “Ah, yes, how about we adjourn to the—”
“I will not sit,” said Lastleaf. Behind him, the wyvern’s wings shuddered with a sound like wind-cracked sails.
“Fair enough,” said the king, earning himself one of Lilith’s many and varied scowls. The queen would be tired, of course, but to sit alone in this company would be seen as a sign of weakness from a woman who had very serious aspirations of ruling as Agria’s lone monarch before long.
The druin turned to face the First Shield, and when he did Clay got a good look at the scar left by Vellichor above his eye. The catlike pupil beneath it had ruptured, swelling to encompass the iris around it, which lent the druin an odd, unsettling gaze. “Imagine you lead a host of bloodthirsty warriors into the country of a bitter rival. You face their army on the field of battle and vanquish them.”
“Who says vanquish anymore?” Moog breathed.
People who vanquished things, Clay supposed.
“Your enemy retreats behind their walls, and though you cannot breach them it is only a matter of time before their refuge becomes a grave. But your army, too, grows hungry. They have been promised blood, or coin, or flesh. And more: They crave the immeasurable joy of seeing a mortal foe brought to ruin and all they have loved turned to ash.”
“Been there,” quipped the Cartean Han, to the amusement of no one but his own clansmen.
“The Horde is an army like no other, and I have promised them Castia. Were they but men, then perhaps I could call them off. But they are not men.” He said these words very carefully, and seemed to savour each as they left his mouth. “They are wild things, fey creatures. They are everything you fear and many things you would fear to know, and they will not be turned back. Not even by me.”
The First Shield’s face had gone stern as a stormcloud. Doshi shrugged and shared a helpless glance with her fellow Phantrans, while the Han growled something over his shoulder to the Ravenguard warrior behind him. Matrick’s head was bowed as Lilith grumbled into his ear. Clay looked over at Gabriel, who was staring through the soiled mess of his hair as if the druin were a puzzle he was determined to solve. The Duke had yet to recognize any more of Saga’s members, standing as they were behind the screen of Matrick’s guards.
I don’t imagine he’ll be happy to see Gabe again, he figured, and wondered—not for the first time—if attending this council had been a wise idea after all.
The palanquin’s curtain shifted again, and again the gold-masked Sultana uttered something to her attending minister, who nodded, smoothed out his robes, and turned. “My Esteemed Lady, Sultana of Narmeer, Bride of Vizan the Summer Lord, Mistress of the Scorching Throne, Herald—”
“Ask your question,” barked Lastleaf, his long ears quivering impatiently.
The druins, Clay knew, possessed something Vespian had referred to as “the prescience,” which gave them insight into the very near future. It meant they often knew your mind a moment before you spoke it, and made even the kindest druin seem impatient, since they sometimes replied to something you hadn’t quite finished saying.
And of course it made them real nasty fuckers in a fight.
The Narmeeri minister, caught between a rock and the very hardest of places, gave his mistress an inquiring glance. The mask dipped in acquiescence, and the man sighed, obviously relieved. “The Sultana would have me ask: Why summon us to council if not to negotiate? What is it you hope to achieve? Or have you come simply to gloat?”
Lastleaf raised his chin and wet his lips. His ears shivered, and his fingers opened and closed as though longing for the grasp of a sword. He appeared profoundly uncomfortable, and Clay wondered how long it had been since the druin had dealt with something other than a monster.
“I have a—” Lastleaf paused, as if rummaging his archaic vocabulary in search of a suitable word “—request of my own.”
“And that is?” asked Matrick wearily.
Lastleaf spread his hands. His smile might have been charming were it not full of daggers. “Do nothing,” he said.
No one spoke. The wind picked up; Clay could smell smoke on the evening breeze. Below, a few people had already begun trickling toward the river, where boatmen would be waiting by the dozen to ferry them across before dark.
Eager to be first back to Brycliffe with this story, Clay figured, his eyes drawn to the pale Duke and his great black wyvern. But is it over yet?