Chapter 1435: Behind close doors(2)

A stray lock of spun gold tumbled across his forehead. He flicked it aside with a lazy, ringed finger, his amber eyes pinned to the King’s face like two iron daggers.

"A solitary castle" the Kakunian purred, as he was asking for a pittance.

He is mocking me, Alpheo realised.

He bloodly well knew all the way down to the copper what he was asking. "An unbreakable alliance in exchange for a single heap of wet stones. A trifling price to pay for a loyal brother, particularly when you are in such desperate need of a spine at your flank can hold the weight you will labor under."

Alpheo inhaled deeply through his nose, keeping his jaw clamped tight to master the fury thrashing in his chest.

The sheer, breathtaking insolence of the creature. A prince that still was not, sitting naked in royal silk, waiting upon foreign legions to reclaim his stolen patrimony, and having the unmitigated gall to demand a ransom for the privilege of being rescued.

No one ever accused the Mad Bull of lacking stones, Alpheo thought, his fingers tapping against his knees, nervously.

For indeed he was nervous.

He had hammered out bloody treaties from the highlands, to the ones overrun by rivers, but never like this. He held every card, the silver, the grain, the veteran cohorts, yet somehow the golden-haired bastard sat there lounging on velvet as though he held the butcher’s cleaver.

Which he kind of did. He might have needed Yarzat, but Yarzat needed him more. As stupid as that sounded.

"You demand a reward while my men prepare to bleed upon your soil?I am to send my Legions across the marches to smash your uncle’s line and break the Habadians. I pay the grain-tithes, I foot the baggage trains, I pay the blood-money to the widows, and atop that mountain of silver, you expect me to carve off a fortress and drop it in your lap? A castle that does not even belong to the Crown, but to the Lion of Herculia himself? I owe you a debt for the lances you lent us, aye, but my iron on your field pays that ledger clean.I would believe at least...."

"Well, I could always demand Lord Arnold’s personal fealty instead, though I suspect you’d find that rather harder to swallow," Merelao replied smoothly, taking a delicate sip of wine. "You sit on the throne of Herculia now. I am certain you have enough manors and pastures to buy the crippled lord’s silence."

Alpheo clicked his tongue against his teeth with a sharp, venomous snap.

"I won’t pretend it’s a minor boon," Merelao continued, tilting his head with charming candor. "You surrender a fortress, aye. But in return, you buy a friend who will stand at your back long after our immediate usefulness has turned to dust. You do wish to count me a friend, don’t you?"

"Naturally," Alpheo spat, his mind racing.

’’And you do recall the betrayal you launched at my expense?’’

’’I do’’ The king replied, less surely this time. He knew what buttons to press clearly.

"Then shouldn’t our brotherhood stand on equal footing?"

Equal footing. The words tasted bad under the king’s tongue.

What the Kakunian demanded was no simple hill-keep. Had Pardunum been mere mortar and stone, Alpheo would have flung him the keys and thrown in a chest of silver to seal the bargain. But Pardunum was the throat of the highlands.

Wedged between the natural walls of the great valley, the fortress was the iron lock on the only viable military corridor between Yarzat and Kakunia. It was the sole gate through which supply wagons, heavy baggage, and line-cohorts could pass.

With Pardunum in Yarzat’s grip, a single garrison of five hundred spears could choke off a massive Kakunian host before it ever smelled the lowlands. An invader might try to scramble through the treacherous goat paths of the high ridges, but only with light raiders they would be repelled, as they would starve the moment they outran their mules.

Pardunum was an impenetrable shield against the north, and an open sally-port whenever Yarzat wished to strike. It was the sweetest prize he had wrested from the old Herculian princes, a natural rampart forged by the Five Gods themselves. Handing the keys to Merelao was akin to offering a wolf a key to the sheepfold while hoping the beast preferred a diet of grass.

Alpheo leaned back in his chair, letting a sigh pass by.

"Did you know," the King said quietly, "that I once offered an alliance to your uncle?"

Merelao’s golden brow arched with genuine surprise. "Is that so? I never knew of it’’

"He is not one to boast of his blunders," Alpheo shrugged. "It was right after the Bleeding Plains. The grass was choked with hundreds of dead, their cavalry routed, their prince fleeing back to his hills like a wet puppy. I sent a raven to your uncle, proposing a joint hammer-and-anvil. Kakunia through the high pass, Yarzat through the plain gate. Your folk had thrown an army at Pardunum every generation for a hundred years, leaving their bones to bleach at the gate. I offered him the gate on a silver platter."

He took a slow breath, letting the silence hang.

"He spat on the parchment. And three years later, my wife wore the circlet of Herculia, and the pass was mine."

Merelao threw his head back and laughed, a rich, theatrical sound. "A pity! Had the old fool possessed the gall, my armies and lords might have spent this evening fighting yours instead of sharing your wine."

"Perhaps," Alpheo said evenly. "Or perhaps Nibadur was already whispering in his ear. But why weep over roads not taken? Your uncle made his bed of thorns; he tosses in it every night while an upjumped mercenary sits beneath a gold crown. Let him choke on his regret."

"A fine parable. But my uncle made his choice; you have yet to seal yours." Merelao leaned forward, the silken robe falling open to reveal the pale, hard muscle of his chest, his smile narrowing to the edge of a stiletto. "True brotherhood is a stone bridge. It must bear weight from both banks. It is hardly equitable that you hold the iron key to my belly, while I am left to knock politely at your garden gate. What lasting peace ever grew between two lords when one holds a dagger permanently pressed to the other’s ribs?"

Alpheo’s dark eyes locked onto his guest, hunting through the Kakunian’s handsome mask for the poison lurking beneath.

"Do you demand Pardunum because you already see our friendship turning sour?" the King asked, his voice soft, almost conversational. "Or are you simply clearing the road so that one day you might march an army into my valley with your own hands?"

That blunt thrust struck home.

The mocking smirk vanished from Merelao’s lips, replaced by an eerie, sudden stillness. He turned his open palms over in his lap, staring down at his fingers as though beholding them for the very first time.

Alpheo watched the Kakunian’s hands catch the amber candlelight. They were thick with ridged, ugly calluses, not the honest blisters of a commoner who had swung a scythe or pushed a plow, but the hardened scars born of relentless, brutal drills with broadsword and pommel. It was a bitter jest: Alpheo was the gutter-born bastard, yet his hands had grown smooth from quill, ink, and courtly ledger, while the highborn prince possessed the iron mitts of a lifelong butcher.

"You have such graceful hands, Alpheo," Merelao said softly, his voice dropping to a calm, velvet register that set the King’s neck prickling with unease. "Mine are so coarse, so clumsy... I sometimes wonder if they are fundamentally incapable of creation. All my life, they have known only how to hack, to tear. Perhaps because no one ever granted me the peace to build."

He looked up, his amber eyes glittering with a strange, aching hunger that lacked any trace of his earlier vanity.

"The lords and princelings brand you a cold monster, yet you have forged a realm from broken bone and red clay. I have seen it. I like it." He gestured vaguely toward the window, tracing an arc over the sleeping capital below. "I want that. I want the chance to build something that outlives the slaughter. Even alongside you. Alongside your grand, unyielding Yarzat."

His jaw tightened, the aristocratic grace returning like an iron visor snapping shut.

"Yet as we stand, our brotherhood is doomed to rot. Our pact was forged in the shadow of common enemies, nothing more. Tell me, what becomes of us when the ravens pick their corpses clean and the light returns to bless what we have done? What prevents you from looking across the pass and seeing another province ripe for the harvest?"

He leaned forward, unblinking.

"I do not trust you. It is as simple as that. I offered you my faith once before, and you bartered it for your own advancement. What guarantees you won’t sharpen the knife the moment my back is turned? If we are to forge a peace that endures, we must sit at the same table as equals, not as a conqueror and a beggar praying for scraps. I want the tools to build. I want to be more than a sword for hire in my own home."

Silence settled over the chamber, heavy and suffocating as the cooling brazier. Merelao rested his scarred hands on the armrests, unmoving, waiting for the King to deliver his verdict.

Across the low table, Alpheo held the prince’s gaze, the dark cinders of his own mind already aligning the board.

He had his answer.