NOVEL NEXT Book 3: Chapter 73
Enki wasn't wrong.
They did not come back.
Enki reported their positions, sinking further and further back, moving under Footfields until they had withdrawn deep into their territory. I imagined for a moment that we had bloodied them too much and they would parlay. They would give us back the relic and hand over Perdinger, and we might press some terms on them, but it would be an end to the fighting. Then I would be free to lead a train to Minneapolis and gain access to Racquel with the Midnight Door.
It would not be so. And for the plans I was forming it was probably better that it was not so. My heart yearned to go to her. More than ever now that I knew we both shared Enki, that the last secrets had been peeled away. I wanted to tell her about my plans, about the events I was pushing forward.
It would have to wait.
Magneblade and Tara had to return to Boston for healing. I made some excuses about an injury to my suit, pressed my executive authority a little, and went with them. I knew where every Griidlord on the opposing side was located, I knew Alya and Olaf would be more than enough to hold the fort and the bridge.
I went to the trees and dug up the bodies. It was a grisly task. For all the power and immortality I wielded, it was still just me, alone in the dark, in the woods, exhuming corpses.
I had found, by rooting through the interface of the HUD, that I could display a clock in the corner. This I used to step through Door at one minute to midnight, with two corpses on my shoulders.
In an instant, I had crossed the continent. How many had a power like this? I was standing on the road, the perfectly paved road, about two miles from the gates of the City of Angels. Surreal and unbelievable it was to just be there. The air was thicker and hotter, the scents of sage and eucalyptus carried on a warm, lazy breeze.
I was alone and could hope to remain so. I drifted down the road with my macabre loads. I needed to present them so that they would be found. I didn't want their bodies preyed on by coyotes or vultures before they were found.
There was a village, asleep now, another half mile closer to the city. I arranged the two bundles of canvas on the steps of the village hall. I left a note, anonymous.
I took one more look around the village, so different from my home. This had seemed an exotic and terribly distant place only days ago. Now it was just a step away.
I looked back at the wrapped shapes on the steps. My heart was heavy. Julia, who I had helped push to her final break. Julia the foreshadowing of a fate that might await me if I lived long enough to see it. Julia who had cast strange warnings, premonitions — "Worse than Thrax."
And Joel. Joel who had come to me what seemed a century ago, but had in truth not quite been a year, in the woods. I smiled to myself, remembering what it had been to be a boy without this power. Without the weight of this duty. He had come and helped nudge me on a path. I could not say yet if that path had been for the better or the worse for me. I could not even really say what that path was. Time would answer that. Time and machinations.
The lines of the door cut blindingly in the darkness. I stepped through.
I could do so much with a power like this. Much more than rendezvousing with Racquel at her home. So much more.
I did not step back to where I had started. I imagined what it must have looked like to someone on the other side. Did the lines of white slash their way through the air without a wielder? In the midnight darkness they must have been startling. Then the light bleeding quickly to fill the door and my form stepping through, imposing in my armor.
The shadows of the scaffolding of Castle Bloodsword loomed above me.
Dirk stood, blinking, at my appearance. I had told him I would come. I had not told him how.
It was strangely satisfying to have put this most savage of veterans on a back foot.
I said, "Are they here? They came?"
Collecting himself, Dirk said, "All three."
He turned his head toward stacks of carved stone blocks. Men stood watching there. Three of them. No guards, despite their importance. Guards would draw attention. These men armored themselves in anonymity. My SIGHT pierced the darkness and I saw they bore masks. Simple animal masks — a fox, a hawk, and a bull.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I stepped away from Dirk. I could see through the masks if I chose to. I had that component of SIGHT now. That wasn't the point. I called to them, "No masks. You came here and exposed yourselves to me. If I wasn't to be trusted then you'd all be dead where you stand. The masks violate the spirit of what I propose. I can't wear a mask. I am Tiberius Bloodsword, Sword of Boston, and I expose myself to you. We can go no further if you hold back."
Silence. Dirk made an empty sound behind me. He had put his reputation on the line for this meeting, and I thought I had embarrassed him.
The man in the bull mask shrugged and stepped forward. He was dressed in common travelling robes. The mask was pulled away, revealing a dark-bearded face with striking eyes, their color lost to the darkness but their intensity spearing through it.
I didn't know him.
The others removed theirs. A woman, perhaps late fifties, grey-haired but distinctly beautiful, appeared from behind the fox mask. A younger man, full-faced and pasty, from behind the hawk mask.
I hesitated. "Why even… the masks… I don't know any of you."
They seemed to exchange a confused glance with each other. I expected them to be people of power. In their home cities they probably were. These could be governors, judges, lords for all I knew. All I could say was that I did not know these faces.
The bearded man spoke. "We've never taken a risk like this before."
"I can't know if that's true. I can't even know for sure that you are the leadership. If I was in that position I might very well send people in my place. For the good of the movement, I'm sure."
The woman spoke. "We might have done something of the sort. But when Dirk relayed your message… this is too precious for us to pass up. It's worth the risk."
The fat man said, "And it seems to have borne fruit. We are not arrested, it seems. You don't appear ready to cut us down."
The bearded man said, "So speak, Griidlord. Tell us how exactly you would propose to fulfill the promises alluded to in your message."
"It's simple. We have overlapping wants. I can be useful to you, I can see how obvious that is. But you can be useful to me. I want us to help each other."
The woman was unsure. "We useful to you?"
The bearded man said, "It wasn't help you said you wanted, it was help you said you had for us!"
I moved closer to them. I kept my posture relaxed. I knew the implied threat that my very existence was to them. If there had been a hundred of them, they would have been no less at my mercy.
"I can help you. I can change the entire face of your efforts. Tell me, your struggle — you fight the good fight, but do you ever truly envision a day when you win this fight?"
They shifted. Before an answer could be offered I pushed on. "What does that look like to you? Can you picture what the world looks like when you've changed the order of the world? What becomes of the nobles in your lands? In all the lands? What happens to the establishment? Is there a place for the priesthood? And if you look behind you, what does the path look like? It must be littered with the dead."
The woman said, "Sacrifices will need to be made…"
I smiled at her, honestly, nodding. "Yes. Sacrifices. So many sacrifices. But we make sacrifices every day, don't we? I lost a friend of mine during the Falling. He was a sacrifice to the current order. I don't like the idea of people dying…"
I looked down at my own hands. It was involuntary. "So many have died at my hands…"
They could not comprehend the vastness of the lives I had taken already. I looked back up at them. "More will have to die, at my hands, at our hands. There's a path through this and it will cost lives, take sacrifice. But there will be a net gain. For eight hundred years the people have borne these sacrifices. If we can put an end to it, all of it, then for a thousand or ten thousand more the waste can stop."
Not one of them looked comfortable. The bearded man, the bravest of them, said, "You're still not saying how or what it is you want with us. We didn't come here for feely words."
I nodded, gathering myself, containing myself. "You said sacrifices will need to be made. You have goals, ideals, a dream. What if those were the sacrifice?"
The fat man took a step back. "You're not making sense, Griidlord."
I spread my arms wide. "Your vision of the future, this task you've taken on for yourselves, is an impossibility. It can't happen. Not the way you envision it. But if you can bend, then I think you can get most of it."
The bearded man pointed a finger at me. "What does bending look like?"
"You can't tear society down. Firstly, you literally can't — there will never be enough power in your hands to defeat the powers above you. It's a simple fact. It's a delusion to think otherwise. But more than that, how can you do it? If you could do it, blow the horns of revolution, overpower the armies and the Griidlords, what then? Do you hang every noble? Take their lands like common thieves?"
The woman was adamant. "The lands belong to the people…"
"Is it the people you struggle for? Because if it is, there is a way forward. If you can bend, just enough, you can live to see a better world. A world without a Falling. A world where cities don't war each other. A world where all those wasted resources are tractors to feed the people, hospitals to tend them…"
The bearded man said, "And the people must—"
I finished for him. "And the people must have a say in their own governance."
The fat man eyed me. "What you're saying is that property stays as it is?"
"Yes. It can't be done if you touch property. I'm well aware that we're having this conversation here, in the centre of my lands, on the site of my personal castle. Don't forget, the wealth I have at my hands makes fun of the values of these lands. I know how it looks for someone in my position to say that property rights must remain intact, but it's more than that. You will never, never, never get the support you need from the people with the power to give it if property rights are in question."
The bearded man said, "You can't be waiting for an answer. We know nothing of how you intend to go forward. It's titanic, earth-moving, what you're talking about. We need to talk. More importantly, we need you to talk."
"I'll tell you then. I'll lay it out and show you what we can do, what we can really do, in a lifetime. And when it's done you can go home, you can talk and argue. But don't take too long. If I'm the first fish, and The Blood is the second, then there's one more left to land before we can change the world."