Chapter 43: The Envoy & The Regent

ORO VILLAGE:

RAVEN THE RAVEN:

The stench of decay hung heavy in the air long before the entrance to Oro Village came into view. Rot, mixed with wood smoke and something fouler beneath it — the telltale stomach turning smell of bodies left too long in the sun. Half the village lay in ruins, roofs caved in, walls scorched black and crumbling where the uprising had torn through weeks ago. Charred timber jutted from collapsed homes like broken ribs. The other half still stood, occupied now by Ale tribesmen — or rather, by those among them who didn’t particularly care whether sleeping in a house once owned by filthy felines did something irreparable to their skin, or their standing.

Beyond the village proper, spread across the rolling hills and the thin treeline overlooking it, and along the river that wound past the ruins on its way downstream to Lasthold, the real activity unfolded in full swing. Rows of tents stretched in neat military lines across the churned-up grass. Soldiers drilled in formation, steel ringing against steel. Slaves moved among them, hauling supplies, running logistics for masters that would sooner see them dead, than free. It was not a pretty sight, to put it mildly — though Raven had seen worse in her time. The continent stretched wide, and cruelty had never once confined itself to the borders of the Zar Draconic Empire alone.

If she was honest, Raven hadn’t wanted this assignment at all. But her empress had asked her to watch over a weakling, and one of the first things worth doing, if she intended to do that properly, was take stock of exactly what threats stood stacked against him. From what she could already see, sweeping her gaze across the camp below, that stack ran disturbingly deep.

At a glance, she counted close to a thousand Snake-kin soldiers, cultivation levels scattered but the bulk of them clustered somewhere around Aura Awakening. No siege equipment anywhere in sight — which told her plainly enough what the Ale actually thought of the N’korans. This wasn’t a siege. It was meant to be a drowning. Overwhelm them with raw numbers and superior cultivation, and let the rest sort itself out. Raven never thought much of underestimating an enemy. The world ran deeper than most people cared to admit, and precious few among the living actually knew how to navigate those depths without drowning in them first.

A thousand things could go catastrophically wrong marching into a fight this poorly planned. And Raven refused to believe a scion of a sovereign bloodline could truly be this blind, this arrogant. Unless the whole display was deliberate — a performance, nothing more. It had to be. There was no version of reality where Prince Selvin N’Ale was simply this much of a joke, wrapped in an ego that outpaced his actual competence.

She huffed quietly, turned a sharp corner between two buildings, and nearly collided with a heavily cloaked figure moving the opposite direction.

"Excuse me." the figure murmured, sidestepping Raven with perfect ease, footsteps utterly silent across the snow-dusted ground. Raven narrowed her eyes and let a remark fly before the stranger managed three more steps away.

"That coat only draws more attention, Lady Bernice. Which tells me you want them to notice you wandering around here with some half-baked plan that’s probably going to work anyway, and get a lot of people killed in the process."

The figure went still, then turned slowly to face her. "Raven. Well, would you look at that — the tiny squirt’s all grown up now. Does your new owner know you’re here? Did she actually let you off your leash this time, little one?"

"Damn it, Master, I am not a pet!" Raven growled. A slight shift of the figure’s hood let a sliver of light catch the face beneath it. Bernice’s familiar, faintly amused expression stared back at her.

"Why are you here, Raven?" Bernice asked, something sharp and unimpressed threading through the question. It took Raven all of three seconds to realize that Bernice had already known she was coming — every bit of this elaborate disguise had been staged specifically to find her.

The last of the Raven tribeswomen fought down the sudden, overwhelming urge to put a fist directly into her old mentor’s face. Outmatched in nearly everything except beauty and raw brutality, and there was no universe in which Raven would ever concede that Bernice held the edge on beauty too.

"I asked you a question, Guardian." Raven narrowed her eyes further.

"Pulling rank on me now, Consul? That’s not a very kind thing to do to your old student." Bernice rolled her eyes, then moved so fast Raven nearly missed the motion entirely — pinning her neatly against the narrow gap between two buildings, both of them swallowed in shadow within seconds.

"I am many things, Raven. Patient is not currently one of them. I won’t ask again."

Raven held her gaze a moment longer, then exhaled and looked away. "I was sent by my charge to watch over yours. And to serve as the Zar Draconic Empire’s voice within the N’kora royal court." She kept her expression perfectly flat as she said it, taking a small, petty satisfaction in the flicker of surprise and wariness that crossed Bernice’s face in response.

"She sent you to help with the war?" Bernice asked. Raven shook her head.

"I’m here to keep him alive. Advise him where it’s useful. Maybe teach him a few things your own old bones never got around to learning properly. But I’m not permitted to interfere with anything Her Majesty has already set into motion. Sorry. Your kitten fights his own battles from here."

Bernice let the jab about her age slide entirely, turning instead to sweep her gaze across the street beyond the alley, eyes narrowing at the open, casual cruelty on display toward the felines still living under the Ale’s thumb. She turned back to Raven.

"If you so much as twitch in a direction I haven’t approved, your head will be sitting in your own lap faster than you can pluck a single feather from that plumage of yours. Do you understand me, Assassin?" Something genuinely dark crept into Bernice’s voice as she said it, and Raven had no illusions whatsoever — her old teacher meant every word.

"I understand you perfectly, Consul. Now, if you’d be kind enough to lead me to the brat I’ve been assigned to babysit for the next six months, I’d be very grateful." Bernice scoffed.

"You’re going to have to wait a while yet, witch. The king’s off running an errand."

Raven’s eyes narrowed sharply. "He’s not here? There’s an entire army camped on his doorstep, and he’s not even present to witness what’s being done to his own people? Where exactly did he go?" she pressed. Bernice threw one last glance down the street, catching the beginnings of hushed whispers already drifting toward them from curious onlookers noticing two cloaked figures locked in conversation. She moved fast, pulling Raven along with her deeper into the alley, and finally gave her answer.

"North. The king went north."