Chapter 771: End Game

The Colgrave mansion was built in a different style from the rest of Eldingholt’s architecture. Most of the capital city was built all from the same base stone material, crafted in largely uniform design that reminded Jadis of Art Deco with its often times intricate geometric patterns that mixed curved lines with hard angles. There was variation, of course. Buildings with unique patterns, alternate materials used, and decorative decisions that caused some structures to stand out from their neighbors were all common enough sights that Jadis was never surprised when she saw them. However, it was also evident that all of Eldingholt had been built by the same hand, or at least the same guiding principle, as the ancient Hero who had constructed the towering magic arches that protected the city from any and all invaders. The uniformity was intentional, and thanks to the master craftsmen who had worked on the city over the centuries, it was a beautiful interwoven pattern of artistic design, rather than a dull lack of vision or cost-saving restriction of materials.

From what Jadis could tell, the structure that stood before her belonged in a different category entirely from the rest of Eldingholt. The large, rough cut stone walls lacked the geometric designs that she was used to seeing. There were even crenelations along the top of the three-story building, though a blue ceramic roof overhung them. The place looked more like a medieval castle than a mansion, though whether that was because it had once been a defensive fortification in a time long ago or it had simply followed a design model of its era, Jadis had no clue.

Wide stone steps flanked by ornamental shrubbery led up to a set of double doors that were made from a dark red wood, embellished with iron and bronze patterns. The doors were a work of art, with four different panels carved to depict historical battles, and Jadis would have been happy to stand there studying them for the next ten minutes, just to appreciate their intricate beauty. However, before she and Severina had even reached the first step of the stairs, the door on the right opened to reveal an older orc with the most impressive set of mutton chops she had ever seen.

“Duke Colgrave is expecting you,” the man bowed at the waist deferentially. “Please, come in, Lady Jadis, Lady Severina.”

“Thank you,” Severina took command of the situation and led the way forward.

Jay followed behind, smiling and nodding at the orc who promptly shut the door behind them as they entered the Colgrave mansion.

The interior was just as stately and impressive as the exterior indicated it would be. Polished stone floors covered in plush, expensive rugs, richly crafted and gilded furniture, and titanic portraits depicting long dead ancestors surrounded Jay. The place reminded her of Vraekae’s city manor, except somehow Colgrave’s furnishings appeared older without looking worn. It was hard to pinpoint, but as Jay followed behind Sev and the unnamed servant, she felt as though she was walking through a museum rather than a place someone lived. Considering the Colgrave’s had an actual manor home in their territory where the duke and his family usually resided, it was possible that the halls that Jay was walking through truly were closer to an art gallery than a living space.

Staying on the first floor of the building, the servant led them down a large hall lined with freshly polished displays of armor. At the far end of the hall was another set of double doors, these ones less intricate than those of the front entrance, which the orc opened without knocking first. Ushering them inside, Jay was mildly surprised to see that they had been led to a library, one that was on the substantial side, to boot. Towering bookshelves that required rolling ladders to reach the tops lined every wall, with only space left for the curtained windows. Glass display cases had been placed in the open floor space and ancient texts were contained within, some looking so old and worn that Jadis would not have been shocked to learn that they had been written thousands of years ago.

While Jay was interested in taking a closer look at the literary items that had been put on display, the orc continued past them, forcing her and Sev to follow. At the far end of the library was another set of double doors, only these were partially open. Instead of pushing through, the servant paused and gently rapped on the door with the back of his knuckles.

“Yes?” an old, dry voice called out.

“Ladies Jadis Ahlstrom and Severina of House Lumen to see you, your grace.”

“Enter,” the same voice commanded after only a brief pause.

Opening the doors, the servant bowed and allowed Jay and Severina to enter, giving Jadis her very first look at the man who had been trying to take control over her on and off ever since she had first come to Eldingholt and, by extension of his son-in-law, even before then in Weigrun.

Honestly, she was little disappointed.

Sitting behind a richly ornamented desk was a thin old human man. While he remained seated, it was easy enough to tell that he wasn’t a particularly tall person. Nor was he short. He was definitely lean though, with the sort of thinness to his hands that verged on looking painful. His hair was all white with age and somewhat feathery, with tufts having escaped the efforts of a comb to lift slightly in undignified ways. His skin was like parchment, dry and crinkled, and age spots were a frequent occurrence. When he raised his gaze from the paper that he had been putting ink to, Jay could see that his face was long, his nose was hooked, and he had cultivated a small bush of a beard on his chin alone, the rest of his drawn appearance remaining cleanshaven.

“You may go,” Duke Colgrave didn’t even look at his servant, instead keeping his sharp green eyes on Jay and Severina.

The orc departed with a bow, closing the doors behind them.

“I would offer you a seat,” the duke said shortly after the doors clicked shut. “But I do not have any chairs that would fit you, Jadis Ahlstrom. Also, I do not like you, and will be happy to have you gone from my estate as soon as feasible.”

Jay nearly laughed at the old man’s blunt statement. She had expected Duke Colgrave to be somewhat like General Egilhard. Sure, they were not blood relations, but she had still envisioned the man as the soldiering sort, the kind of person who was trained for war and liked it. Someone who was more like Prince Hraustrekr in attitude and mannerism. Instead, Duke Colgrave looked like a local theatre production’s attempt at a miserly financier who was waiting on the visit of a few judgmental ghosts. All he needed was a nightcap and some slippers. Then, having had her expectations subverted, Jadis was subverted again, having fully anticipated a duke with his appearance to be a stickler for courtly manners and protocol. Plain speech and direct words weren’t supposed to be on the menu.

But if they were…

“Duke Colgrave,” Severina verbally, if not physically, scowled at the noble. “I expect better manners from a man of your upbringing.”

“Perhaps,” he eyed the Seraphim coldly. “There are certain expectations set regarding the behavior of the nobility.”

Picking up a letter that was set to the side of his desk, Colgrave waved it in Severina’s direction.

“However, seeing as I am no longer the Duke Colgrave, as you are well aware, I find that I am no longer bound by such constraints. Therefore, I am in the delightfully freeing position of being able to say to you, Lady Severina, go sod yourself with a dead pigeon, without there being any political repercussion to my rudeness beyond what offense you might take from a grouchy old man who no longer holds any power in his hands whatsoever.”

Jay’s hand came down with a crack of wood upon Colgrave’s desk, forcing his eyes to snap onto hers as she loomed over him.

“Maybe not political repercussions,” Jay murmured quietly, “but there are others sorts you should think about when you are deciding what words to say to or about my family.”

To his credit, the man did not look the least bit intimidated by Jay’s display of displeasure. Whether it was because he had a strong poker face or he was genuinely just too old to care, Colgrave seemed to have no fear of her at all. Instead, he wiped the nib of his ink pen against the inkpot and set the feathered quill down before folding his hands before him and giving her a withering glare.

“If your only reason for coming here today is to hang threats over me, then the door is behind you. I have a great deal of work to do yet to make the transfer of power official, and I prefer to do my work alone and uninterrupted.”

 Righting herself, Jay crossed her arms over her chest and regarded the old man with a less hostile expression.

“Honestly, I came here because I expected you to be trying to find some way out of the order Prince Hraustrekr gave you. I wanted to make sure you were actually turning the inheritance over to Elodie and stepping down into an advisory position. I even brought evidence of your lies and manipulations with me, in case you needed a reminder as to why Hraustrekr has decided to remove you from power.”

“Why would I need your evidence?” Colgrave frowned at her. “I already know what I’ve done, I don’t need you to tell me. My lord gave me his reasoning in his letter, and I understand the bargain he has made with you. There’s nothing that needs to be said between us at this point.”

“Fucking D’s balls there isn’t. You literally tried to ruin the lives of Bridget’s family to coerce me into marrying into your family, and when that didn’t work, you came up with this ridiculous smuggling bullshit just to discredit me! And Ammy too, I presume for the sin of being associated with me. I’m not even going to say shit about how you’ve been sending all kinds of spies after me and my family. So, the words that need to be said between us are, what the fuck man?”

Colgrave’s glowering expression softened into something closer to amusement as he settled his bent back against his chair. He didn’t look happy; far from it. But there was a glimmer of some private humor present in his cold eyes.

“You want an explanation, is that it?”

“Yes, I do,” Jay stated plainly. “I think I deserve one, considering all the needless crap you put me through.”

“Deserving has nothing to do with what one gets,” the old man stated dryly. Then, his gaze drifted over to Severina, and his expression grew weary. “However, some actions do lead to deserved outcomes.”

With his next exhalation of breath, the former Duke Colgrave seemed to age by another ten years. His already pallid skin became practically see through and the way his bones seemed to jut out at sharp angles made it obvious just how much muscle mass he had lost in his dotage. What Jay had taken as a choice made for comfort suddenly became one made from necessity, as the old man’s fine clothes were far baggier than was fashionable at court, practically hanging off of his bony frame.

“When I die, I will not be welcome in her Father’s halls,” Colgrave motioned at Severina with one hand before letting it drop with a thud onto the desk. “I have never been a charitable soul, nor have I offered much mercy to those who have claimed to need it. I have no valorous acts to look upon in my past, and my idea of order is far less kind than the sort that a Seraphim would adhere to.

“My principles have always been simple. To protect and advance the position of my noble household. If that means spying on others, then I spy on them. If that means making deals that are criminal in nature, then I will make those deals. If that means I must bow down and serve the will of my liege lord, even if their orders go against my own personal desires, then I will do that, too.

“There was never anything personal in my actions taken regarding you,” he lifted his hands, palms upwards, as he looked up at Jay. “I don’t know you and by all I have learned of you, I don’t care to. I did what I calculated would best serve me and my household, for the present and for the future. Nothing more.”

“Then you made some severe accounting errors,” Jay replied dryly. “Because those numbers added up to you losing your seat of power.”

“Did I?”

Opening her mouth to reply, Jay hesitated. The old man looked tired, worn out, and even a bit sickly. However, he didn’t look cross. Grouchy, yes, but that seemed to be a permanent fixture of his personality. What Jay wasn’t seeing was the anger of a man who had been defeated. If anything, he almost looked…

“You… you wanted me to go to Hraustrekr with the information I got from Elodie, didn’t you?” Jay asked in a moment of insight, drawing a sharp look from Severina. “You planned on it.”

“I did,” Colgrave nodded slightly, his breath wheezing in his chest.

“You set up your own downfall?”

“Yes,” he nodded again, his eyes fixed firmly on her.

“That, that does not make any sense,” Severina exclaimed as she looked back and forth between Jay and Colgrave. “You have purposefully and irreparably damaged your own reputation with the prince!”

“My own, perhaps,” Colgrave shrugged with one thin shoulder. “But not Elodie’s reputation, correct, Jadis? Instead, I have proven to you that she is an ally, one who will take your side above even her own family, trustworthy in a way that will bind her to you for years, perhaps even the rest of her life, so long as she does not take some foolish idea into her head from her bitch of a mother or brainless father. Considering the company she has started keeping, I doubt that will happen now. My own reputation is a small price to pay for that binding, especially since you have already promised Prince Hraustrekr that you will not reveal my misdeeds to the emperor or the public at large so long as I follow your desire and step down from my position and give it to Elodie.”

Lacing his fingers together as he laid his hands over his stomach, Colgrave’s lips twitched up into something that approached a smile.

“I’d say I’ve come out of this deal rather well.”

Jay let out a huff of laughter, one hand running through her white hair as she regarded the self-satisfied man. Tilting her head to one side, she narrowed her eyes at Colgrave.

“You maneuvered your own granddaughter into taking action against you, just so I would have a better opinion of her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Jay asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.

“I’m dying,” Colgrave sighed. “I won’t last too much longer, and I don’t plan on bringing anything with me when I do. For the little time I have left, I can live with my granddaughter hating me and thinking that she got the better of me. It’s for her own good, anyway.”

“What about your son?”

“Bertilo? He’s no more suited to ruling a dukedom than Vanessa. So long as he is placated with lavish comforts and accommodating young men, he won’t complain.”

“How long have you been planning this for?” Jay asked curiously. “Not from the start.”

“Of course not,” he shook his head. “Only after the gambit with Clan Warsong failed. I saw then that a different approach would be needed to tie you to my family.”

“And you don’t think telling me all of this now isn’t going to undo everything you think you’ve accomplished?”

“Will it?” Colgrave asked with one eyebrow raised. “Elodie had no idea that I set her up. She still doesn’t. I won’t tell her, either. You can, if you want to, but I’d wait until after I’m dead to do so. Less friction that way. Whatever the case, you are exceptionally perceptive when it comes to knowing when others are lying to you. It’s one of your many traits that my spies have assured me of. Will you abandon the common ground that you have found with my granddaughter, the soon to be wife of Ludger, a man who you see as a close friend thanks to your relationship with Wilhelm, because of my deception? Will you also throw away the deal that you have struck with Prince Hraustrekr now, when you have finally found a cause to agree on, just to spite me? Does knowing that I managed to bring you closer to my family through lies and deceit mean you will spit on your own victory, and by doing so, ensure that one of my idiotic progenies inherits my seat rather than Elodie, just for the satisfaction of seeing me fail in my goal?”

Head still tilted to one side, Jay slowly and deliberately considered Hraustrekr’s words.

“I guess I’d have to be pretty stupid to let me distaste for you and your machinations ruin a good thing,” Jay finally spoke into the silence between them.

“You would have to be,” Colgrave agreed. “But you aren’t that stupid, are you?”

The words tasted sour in her mouth, but Jay spoke them anyway.

“No, I’m not.”

Turning away from the desk, Jay put a hand out to usher a blank-faced Severina out of the office with her. However, before she reached the door, she turned back, her curiosity pressing her to ask one final question before she left the deposed duke to stew in his own victory.

“You said you wouldn’t be welcome in Valtar’s Halls when you die. Considering who you are and what you’ve done with your life, which God do you think will take you?”

Sighing in a way that only the truly aged can achieve, Colgrave placed a leathery hand on the cover of a book that rested on the desk before him.

“I have some small hope for Metethys,” he murmured. “For a life spent in logical choices, and for a childhood given to libraries.”

Then his face turned sour and the old grouch scowled at her.

“Otherwise, I will have to take my chances with whichever God will have me. The Abyss should be quiet, at least.”