The Undying Emperor [Grand Conquest Fantasy]

Lucius stayed in the capital only long enough to be named the Supreme Commander of the Land. It was the third proclamation of the self-titled National Assembly, following the ratification of their own power to define their power. Their founding charter came to be known as the micro-constitution as it said little more than that no governmental authority existed higher than them, and that they were to be a council of five hundred chosen by democratic elections. How those elections were to be held was not defined, nor how often they were to occur, what to do when a council member passed away, was in dereliction of duty, convicted of a crime, and so on, were not in their charter, as was soon to be a disastrous shortcoming. Their second proclamation was, perhaps, more useful, as it created the office of the internal registry for purpose of addressing the kingdom's finances, both credits and debits, and presenting their action items to the assembly and whose membership was to be of the elected officials thus giving the office the authority of the national assembly itself.

This made it trivially easy for me to pick a member, kill him, and have Golden usurp his position.

My pupil and I parted ways, barely giving me the time to give his young son a birth-present. I tried to put the old relic directly on the babe's head, but Aisha wouldn't let it near young Alexander until she had personally inspected it. There was nothing untoward in the gift, except perhaps in how I had acquired it years ago with Leomund's help. The headpiece was crafted from the bones of an angel and had provided me with ample distraction during my exile as I toiled away at improving the aesthetics without compromising the supreme protection it provided.Any parent should have been thrilled to know that their firstborn child, so long as he wore that crown, would be nigh-impervious to harm. The magic was second only to Lucius' own stigmata. Not only would it prevent blades from piercing his skin, but it helped immunize him against the various diseases of the land. It was a gift fit for a prince.

It can only be called ironic tragedy how it was ultimately used, but that would be many years hence as concerns the present narrative. I think Lucius suspected I intended to tutor Alexander the same way I had tutored him, but to make such a design at so early an age would have been a folly. There can be said hardly anything about a future man's predispositions when he is but a suckling babe.

Regardless, he left me to my machinations in the capital without explaining why Leomund had abandoned the cause, though he knew perfectly well why. He intended to winter in Rackvidd, where the climate would facilitate the training of troops. The duties of his new position demanded he act as representative for the National Assembly in Jarnmark, as many of the councilmen believed the western domain, separated as it was by the sea from the rest of the kingdom, might become a focus of resistance and create a foothold for Gabriel to return through. When it became public knowledge that Lucius was but a commoner from Jarnmark, public sentiment became impossible to dissuade.

He did not sail to Jarnmark as a commoner, however. He sailed as a Solhart. Given the belief that all legitimate members of the Solhart family had been killed in the previous year, the title and lands were bestowed to him by the National Assembly as an equivalent of his salary for serving as the Supreme Commander. Not one of them imagined the situation this put him in, given that Aria was alive and well in his manor, now officially deprived of her entire birthright. This was but one of many messy tangles he had willingly wrapped about himself, driven by his own convictions I could never shake him free of. Or rather, I could have, but would have destroyed what made him so special.

He told me later that he stood at the prow of the ship as it sailed into the main port of Jarnmark and expected to shed a tear. It was his home by birth and had changed little in the years he was away. Nothing stirred in his chest as the city emerged from the smoke and fog. The black plumes of foundries sent his mind to work on the great ordeal of industry that was necessary, not to flights of nostalgia. He set eyes upon the forest he had played in with the Ashe girls as a child, and the mountains beyond, and nothing moved him until he stood in the plaza where criminals were hanged. No gallows stood at his arrival, but his mind placed it there as much from recent memory as from old memory.

Rather than a monument to death, he oversaw the raising of a torn sail taken from one of the sunk Aillish vessels. Pinned to the plaza's flag pole and to the ground, beneath the blue crest of Vassermark. The sail had been crudely modified with red letters across it, reading simply, "We have been attacked. We will answer." He left that icon on display after commanding the local guard make sure it stay up. This little gesture of authority was his first command in Jarnmark, effective because it did little to raise the hairs on the western men.

Despite Jarnmark being the home of Jacque Mordare, the writer who incensed the revolution, the preachings of equality had found little home among the westerners. They lived separate from the kingdom, burdened with two great wars. They were the ones to hold the line against Skaldheim, a solemn duty of protection, and they faced the incursions through the mountains of monstrous beasts. It made them a hardy and traditional folk, but Lucius was only there to ask them to uphold ancient honor, not to overthrow the Ashe family.

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He could have arrived to the city with an order to dismantle the Ashe family entirely, but he and Austin Feugard had been in agreement that such an action would destabilize the region far too much. Their men were needed for war. The primary document he carried was an order to levy troops to march on Aillesterra. This he presented to Ruby Ashe, the only present matriarch of the family.

They say a child changes much in just a few short weeks, let alone ten years, but the youngest sister of the Ashe ladies could hardly be recognized since the time that Lucius had known her. Her hair had lost its luster and begun to gray thoroughly. Her body was slender to the point of ill-health and she required a corrective lens to read the document sat between them. When she was done, she folded her hands together on the desk and frowned at Lucius. "You'll find the men wanting, I'm afraid. There are, perhaps, enough to fill out the ranks of five thousand as this… National Assembly demands, but they won't be youths. That, or they will be much too young to be of use."

"How many can you furnish?" he asked. "I'll need the full five thousand, but I won't take men to their deaths."

Ruby frowned and called for tea to be brought in. It wasn't a great delay, but it was more time for her to study the young man across from her. "Are you really that little boy who once lived here? You look nothing like him."

"My travels did not permit me to keep the looks my parents gave me."

"It seems you've kept nothing of what they gave you. What little can be said was given to you," she said, pouring the both of them drinks.

He accepted and sipped the drink. "Yes, I was the one-armed little boy who went off into the woods with nothing but an oversized knife and an oversized sense of worth. My little excursion wasn't long. I was back in time to see your knight hanged, then I took a ship to the mainland. It was the other side of the world where an angel changed my face. Then, in Giordana, I took a dead man's identity and the rest is as you've heard it. Your niece sniffed me out from rumor alone, for what it's worth."

"Was your time with us really so terrible? That you would lead an army to kill the king?"

"Would you believe me if I said I merely wanted to survive? I've done what I could to shift the tides of history, to save who I could save, but–"

"But you needed power, is that it? You have power now, don't you? The Supreme Commander! What a garish title they gave you. I hope you didn't pick it," she said, diffidently drinking her tea.

He laughed. "You should hear the other titles they call me. I always assumed they would just call me the Undying."

Her smile was weak as she set her cup back down. "Won't you at least tell me what happened to my niece?"

He met her gaze without flinching. The Ashe family was far from destroyed by the revolution and even by the Bureaucrat's Coup the year prior. Had he not known Ruby, he might have been taken in by the performance, but she was the expendable member of the family. While the other sisters and their children had escaped the city ahead of his arrival, she had been left behind to find out that very question. Whether Fredericka needed to be rescued.

There was no answer he could give, knowing that she was sequestered aboard the ship he had sailed in on. He had a different play to make. "Five thousand men," he said as he fished a scroll out from his bag. "However many can fight are to be sent to Rackvidd where they will be trained. The rest are to be put to work constructing foundries to these specifications. One is for steel, the other is for a different metal. The specific process to refine the ore needs to be adjusted, but I'll be sending someone more than qualified to make it happen."

Confusion overtook the woman as she unfurled the scroll he had given her. "Thousands of men? For steel alone?"

"You may need to empty out the smithies you already have, but they'll be out of business regardless. Better they be put to work on the future. This mechanism wasn't feasible before, but the royal engineers have made great progress with their ley machines. You'll find that much of the harvested ley will be arriving at your port, rather than continuing on to the capital, it is to facilitate these foundries. I will be using employees of the Wavefront Corporation to handle the necessary logistics. I expect ships to be sailing within the week, Lady Ashe."

Her eyes began to dart across the parchment, jumping from number to number. "But, Jarnmark has never once produced this much steel! Do you expect to turn this land into a slave colony?"

He shook his head and rose from the desk. "I expect you to innovate. I'm sure you alreadyhave miners with ideas of how to use the ley machines, be it to pump water or lift ore. We are giving you power in stone form. Use it."

"But the construction alone! The foundries will hardly be built by the time the war is done!"

"So you do have faith in me," he said, putting his hands to his hips. "And what if the war isn't done in a season? What if Skaldheim descends, or if Drachenreach marches across the central kingdoms? And what even if we have peace? Is iron and steel for nothing but weapons? These foundries are why your people will be able to stay with their families rather than die in a foreign land."

She had to wet her throat again. "I must consult with my stewards," she said. "How long will you remain here? A room was prepared."

"I won't be."

"But, this is your home!"

He glared down at her, then left.