Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The moment the heavy oak doors clicked shut behind them, isolating them in the private gallery, the screaming match began precisely as Mesha had anticipated.

”Have you perhaps lost your mind, nephew?” Keval snapped immediately, his voice dropping into a harsh, furious whisper that practically vibrated with rage. He threw an aggressively annoyed glare at his nephew. His Emperor.

”That was remarkably ill-said, uncle, and something a lesser sovereign might take severe offense to,” Mesha replied smoothly, turning to face him. Breathing in and out, not to fall to the void of rage. His father was cursed with that sin.

He was not his father.

And still,privately, he was starting to wonder if the old Spymaster wasn’t the one currently going senile. ”And besides,mad? I have never been saner in my life.”

”What else could you possibly be? Acknowledging a king? In the South of all places!” Keval’s arms slashed through the air. ”Do you have even the faintest realization of what you have just done? Have you entirely failed to look at the broader view just to...to...please that man?”

Does he truly think me a fool? Mesha thought scornfully, the heat rising in his own chest. Does he think me utterly incapable of calculating the weight of what I just traded? In that fleeting moment, it wasn’t himself he found lacking; it was his uncle who seemed remarkably foolish.

Still it was poetic if nothing else, it was exactly his uncle that had first brought Yarzat into matters. Still one of the best thing he had ever done was making that trade deal happen.

”That miserable region has never known a king since the day the old world broke, and you just handed him the legitimacy to forge one!” Keval pressed on, his face flushing a dangerous shade of crimson, the red crimson of the Achean house , at that. ”Do you understand the geopolitical repercussions of this? The Principality of Oizen was just violently sliced in half. In ten years, the other half will inevitably follow. Yarzat will soon hold the ultimate backing of three subject principalities under his direct possession, and he will have a vastly easier time integrating every single acre of mud he just conquered simply by using that grand new title of his. You didn’t just congratulate a friend, Mesha; you just legitimised every single future conquest he chooses to embark upon!”

The old man let out a ragged sigh, bringing his hands up to wash over his face, as if trying to physically scrub away the ugly, panicked grimace twisting his features.As if that could make their situation any better.

”There could have been a scrap of hope,” Keval muttered into his palms. ”A hope that once the Fox finally died, his heirs would be plagued by instant, ruinous rebellion from the conquered lord. Now, with a crown on his head, that is far less likely. Especially with the royal house of Herculia so utterly subdued...”

For a fraction of a second, the sheer theatricality of the old man’s despair made Mesha wonder if his uncle was having a genuine heart attack. But when Keval aggressively threw his hands away from his face, revealing the sharp, calculated snark beneath his eyes, it became perfectly clear his heart was beating just fine.

”You have just cleanly cut off the entire South from our sphere of influence,” Keval growled. ”Are you even aware of that, nephew?”

”Guardian of the South,” Mesha shot back, his voice cutting like a razor. ”Is that not one of my grand imperial titles, uncle?”

An agonizing heartbeat passed before the young Emperor let out a long, weary sigh, his shoulders slumping slightly beneath the weight of his velvet robes. ”A thoroughly useless title, I grant you. A pretty sequence of words to paint on a scroll. The South was lost to Romelia the exact moment we fractured ourselves into a decade of bloody civil war, and Alpheo became prince.”

”That is absolutely not true! One day, when the empire is whole—”

”One day, we will look back at this gallery and think, ’Ah! What a magnificent world we once held, and what a tragic world we managed to lose!’” Mesha interrupted, his tone turning dangerously cold. ”I would vastly prefer to face the stark reality of this day right now, rather than drown in a pool of sentimental delusion in the future. So go on, uncle. Give out your dramatic sighs, shed your tears, and file your mournful little diplomatic notes.The historians will have century to mourn what we lost, better start now , no?

Just make absolutely certain you have ended your mourning by tomorrow morning. We have a grand imperial feast to host for our glorious butcher of dogs... rabid dogs, at that.”

”It seems to me that you are fundamentally failing to take this threat seriously,” Keval said, his eyes narrowing to slits.

”On the contrary. I am the only one in this castle taking it with any seriousness,” Mesha said, stepping forward until he was looking directly down into his uncle’s weathered face. ”You are the one frantically counting the apples before the merchant’s cart has even arrived at the city gates. The South was lost to us a long time ago, uncle. I am simply making it official today.’’

He chuckled ” I mean just look at the scales! We are entirely dependent on Yarzat’s trade just to keep our treasury from collapsing. His legions are veterans, and the mind of their commander is sharper and more ruthless than any iron sword. What about us? What about the legendary pride of the Eastern Continent? What do we actually have to brandish against him?”

Against his better judgment, a sharp, cynical laugh barked from Mesha’s throat. How could he not laugh? It was a tragic state of affairs when the younger generation possessed the harsh wisdom to see the rot, while the elder statesmen still dreamed of ancient, faded glory.

Is this what our decadence bloomed into?

”We are a squabbling, bleeding mess of a nation,” Mesha whispered fiercely. ”The prestige of this crown is resting at rock bottom. We have just been forced to allow a common bandit lord to lay claim to a legitimate imperial lordship , and we have completely failed to force the treacherous lords who deserted our royal calls to arms to even surrender their children as hostages. The end of our own civil war is nowhere in sight, uncle. For even if we march south and successfully defeat the new bastard currently sitting on the throne of Red Rose, we would still have my eldest brother playing in the northern snows with a rebel army at his back.Worse he is smart enough to mind his own business while we and the Bastard-born play it out.

I will not start a war with a King when I cannot even govern my own kitchen.”

He gave his uncle a look as sour as curdled milk. ”This will take decades. And what will Yarzat be in those decades, I ask you? But let us set that aside! Can we even sustain ourselves for half that time without them? What happens the next time the Bastard of Roses and that ghost lord of his decide to march their hosts onto Romelian soil? Will our leal lords answer our call then? Will we have a single copper in the treasury to raise a proper army?” Mesha scoffed, throwing his hands up. ”Dust. That is exactly what we will have. Dust and the hollow sighs for a better time that is already lost to us.”

That, at least, seemed to shut his uncle up. The Spymaster opened his mouth, found no clever counter, and closed it again.

”We need Yarzat’s trade, we need Yarzat’s steel, and above all we need their damn coins.” Mesha continued, his voice dropping into a flat, pragmatic rhythm. ”Especially now that they have gotten their hands on the southern iron mines. Your family’s prized steel works aren’t quite the commodity they used to be, uncle.” A faint, mocking smile played on the young Emperor’s lips. ”Perhaps you will just have to satisfy yourself making fancy tournament armor for the newly minted King of Yarzat.”

The smile died on his face as quickly as it had arrived. There was, truth be told, very little to genuinely smile about.

”Cry or smile as you like, nothing will alter our reality. We need Yarzat now more than ever. Instead of foolishly clashing against the sea, we should be riding his wave.” Mesha let out a long, heavy sigh, the exhaustion creeping back into his bones. ”Now, there must be some fresh paper and ink left in this fucking city.

I have a long letter to pen to our dear friend in white. The Pontifex has a king yet to crown, and I don’t doubt for a second he would very much like to have a bigger throne of gold beneath his fat arse to celebrate it.

Let us just hope the new King in the South will like our other gift more. It should be making its way south as we speak.”