Novel Full Chapter 1254: Politics(2)
Chapter 1254: Politics(2)
Blackish-grey clouds tore across the sky, heavy with the promise of a violent storm, the kind that frequently battered their islands and served as a stern warning to anyone with a ship not to tempt the tides. A streak of lightning danced through the darkness, and exactly six heartbeats later, the thunder arrived, rattling the teeth in Haldon’s jaw like the distant, rhythmic drums of a coming battle.
Haldon could smell the treachery before he even spotted the boots of the conspirators. And how could he not? The entire affair reeked of Barbut.
A fierce, hot anger flared in his chest at the mere thought of the man. Whenever the soup tasted foul in the Confederation, you could bet your little finger that Barbut’s hand had been stirring the pot.
Haldon’s and Aulasto’s boots rang in a rapid, frantic rhythm against the wet stone of the road. From the main marketplace to the high entrance of the Call was normally a solid twenty minutes of walking; somehow, Kroll’s youngest brother cleared the distance in eight.
The blackish stones that framed the grand, natural amphitheater where the politics of the Confederation took place rose defiantly against the dark, churning water that surged violently against the island’s foundations.
It was a perilous place; there had been several bloody incidents during past storms when the tide rose so high it completely swallowed the only narrow pathway allowing access to the stone stage.
As he lunged forward, Haldon walked past the dark maw of the Hero’s Cave, where the names of the legendary figures of the Confederation’s history were chiseled deep into the living rock. Three hundred years worth of dead reevers were immortalized in that cold dark. The Red Fish’s name was carved prominently in there, the legendary captain who, before Blake, had attempted to bring the land-dwellers crawling beneath their oars. That grand attempt had ended in a catastrophic defeat, and with it, came the loss of Harmway next.
When the ancient Romelians heard of the Red Fish’s crushing defeat at the end of the Habadian host that came to the help of the Ezvanian, and of course with it the burning of half the fleet, they were eager to exact revenge for decades of coastal raids.
They sailed with everything they had to oppose the oil-drinker,the fought well and hard, but the numbers of the Eagle proved too hard to beat with courage. The slaughter at Rock’s Bottom happened and the twenty years of humiliation came next.
That was just thirty-five years ago. A single generation. And now, a second great attempt at empire was being made, this time not of the fertile land of the Southron princes, but in the golden sands of Azania.
.
As he skipped recklessly over the last slick stone hanging below the great gate of the Call, Haldon made his presence known the only way he knew how: with a roar.
"What is the meaning of this?"
His voice exploded through the semi-spherical rock formations carved into the roof, the natural acoustics of the cavern sending the shout bouncing back at him in a mocking echo.
This. This. This.
Fifty iron sconces were mounted securely against the grand marble pillars, the same ones the Red Fish himself had gifted to the Call after a particularly bloody raid on a Romelian coastal city. Only eight of them currently held flickering torches, leaving the rest of the vast cavern drowned in long, dancing shadows.
"Lord Haldon," a smooth, grating voice called out from the darkness.
The speaker stood dead center on the stone floor. The grand speech, or better yet, the legal accusation, he had been delivering to the assembly was cut brutally short by Haldon’s sudden arrival.
The man was not tall. He was not handsome. He was not remotely athletic. He possessed a flat, hollow chest, narrow shoulders, and a head that was entirely bald save for a few stray, white whiskers that hung off the back of his skull down toward his neck. A long, equally white beard trailed from his chin, the massive whiskers at the side of his jaws sweeping back to join the hair at the base of his head, making his entire face look like a poorly constructed accessory.
"I am no lord. And you know that right well, Barbut," Haldon spat, venom coating every syllable that left his lips.
He could feel the trap closing around them. Barbut had tried something, something fast and dirty in the dark. Haldon leaned back slightly toward Aulasto, his eyes never leaving the center of the floor as he whispered fiercely, "Go. Find where the others are. Drag them here by their ears if you must."
The Romelian slave offered a tight, understanding nod and vanished into the shadows at once.
"A simple courtesy, nothing more, friend," Barbut said smoothly, though he deliberately turned his face away from Haldon, addressing the crowded rows of stone seats instead. "We were merely—"
"I am no friend of yours, either," Haldon snarled, cutting him off.
"A distinct pity," Barbut sighed, shaking his bald head with a look of mock sorrow. "I could truly make use of a good, stable friend like you. As misguided as your family is, you are an honest man, Haldon.That I can respect. Now, if you could kindly take your designated seat so that we may yet commence our—"
"It is not yet time!" Haldon barked.
He scanned the rows of stone benches carved directly into the mountain, his stomach turning over with a cold, sickening dread. Most of the men sitting in the dim torchlight belonged to the Shoreline Faction. The heavy traditionalists of the Iron Anchor Party were completely absent, likely still asleep in their beds or trapped on the road. There were a handful of confused neutrals scattered about, but it was glaringly obvious that Barbut had packed the benches with the Shores.
Haldon thrust a calloused finger toward the opening in the cavern roof, pointing squarely at the stormy heavens. "You may not be able to see it behind all those black clouds and your own big, fucking nose, Barbut, but it is not yet dawn! The sun hasn’t even broken the horizon!It is not time!"
A wave of nervous, scattered laughter rippled through the higher rows of the assembly, where the neutrals sat. Barbut let the mocking chuckles flow over him as if it were oil on water, entirely unbothered.
"I demand an immediate explanation for why this session has begun before the runners could even reach the fellow Speakers who are not yet present in this hall," Haldon demanded, his chest heaving.
"There is precious little to explain, ser," Barbut replied, his voice dripping with condescension.
Haldon bristled visibly at the pronoun. He was no knight, there wasn’t a single knight to be found on the rocky shores of the islands, and Barbut knew that regional insult right well.
"This is merely an extraordinary, emergency session," Barbut explained, tilting his head with a look of profound innocence, as if he couldn’t possibly comprehend what his sin was supposed to be. "We formally made our urgent case to the Watcher of the Tides, and he saw fit to grant his legal consent. We sent out runners with messages to every household the moment the seals were cracked." He paused, his small eyes glittering in the torchlight. "Did you not receive yours, perhaps?"
Haldon shifted his gaze toward the high, stone-carved dais where the Watcher of the Tides sat draped in heavy, moldering sealskins that was given to each noble man that occupied that office. He looked at the old man trembling in his seat, his rheumy eyes staring blankly into the shadows of the cavern.
Once, in the days of Haldon’s youth, that man had been a towering terror of the seas, a great warrior who had slung his axe into the hulls of a hundred ships and served the Confederation faithfully and honorably. Now, however, he was too old, far too old, hollowed out by time and hopelessly senile. Haldon’s chest tightened, and he could not bring himself to hurl a single bitter word at the ancient mariner. This farce was not his fault. He couldn’t even probably understand where he was.
It was Barbut’s doing, and the fault of the craven dogs he kept on his leash.
Traitors and bitches, the lot of them.
"The law is squarely on our side, Haldon," Barbut purred, spreading his short arms as if welcoming a guest to a feast. "The ancient charters state clearly that an extraordinary session can be launched in a time of great public upheaval, provided the Watcher gives his formal, legal consent."
"Upheaval?" Haldon repeated, the word tasting like bilge water. He slowly turned his head, looking up at the rising rows of stone benches. He saw faces he recognized, men he had shared heavy dinners with, men he had toasted with overflowing cups of wine and dark ale in the seaside taverns. A deep, physical disgust tore his stomach apart.
These were the dogs currently leading their people into the dark. He looked at each one of them in turn, using his eyes like a branding iron, carving his memory with their treacherous faces.
"Where is the crisis, I ask you?" Haldon’s voice thundered, echoing off the semi-spherical rock formations above. "Romelia is currently tearing itself to pieces with brother slaughtering brother. Azania has been thoroughly humbled, its ancient power broken by Lord Blake and our brave sailors. Even the principalities of the South are hopelessly locked in a war that eats everything it touches! So I ask this assembly: where is this great, looming danger that compelled so eager a session? A danger so catastrophically urgent that you would proceed with half our number missing, showing such pathetic disregard for our sacred traditions?"
He flung his hands wide, presenting his bare chest to the Packed Shoreline benches. "Where is it? Name it! Who is this great danger that led you to take such cowardly path?"
"The same enemy we have always warned against. Blake!" Barbut shouted, the word cutting through the cavern like the crack of a whip.
The man smiled from one end of his wrinkled cheek to the other, his small eyes glittering with a triumphant malice. He took a predatory step forward, gesturing wildly to the packed rows of his supporters and the neutrals.
"It is Lord Blake, just as it has always been!" Barbut bellowed, turning back toward Haldon with the thinnest, sharpest smile on his lips, looking exactly like a gambler who had just laid down the winning tile. "For it seems the scorching sun and the madness of the desert sands have rotted his mind. So much so that your dear brother’s friend has forgotten his blood. He thinks himself a sovereign. I dare say he wishes to crown himself king!"
Barbut let the word hang in the freezing air.
"King, I say."