“I see,” acknowledged Axel. “But it’s not really your hunting trophy anyway, is it? I mean one that you collected yourself... Unless it died of old age, that is, right at your feet.”
“Jeffers stretched up on his toes to see the back of the mob, “But James, we’re doing all this for you... We need this gold to build a united Alba. We need it to fund an army and to forge decisive leadership.” His voice was almost plaintive. “We want to hand your generation a real empire rather than just a loose collection of competing Families. We want to give you the foundations to achieve glory! What could possibly be wrong with that?”
“Rubbish!” cried Tristan, not about to let honey-coated nonsense dissolve the glue that bound his army. “Absolute codswallop!” he let his calm facade slip for the first time that day. “What you’re actually trying to do is to build a legacy that you don’t deserve! You want to swan around as an armchair General for the next twenty years while your precious army strives and dies for hollow victories that do nothing more than feed your ego! And do you know who strives and dies in this picture?” He waved one arm at the figures behind him. “We do! We here in this alley, along with other young men and women just like us!”
Tristan watched Jeffers from the corner of his eye, as he shook his fist towards deGroot, “Well we’re not having it! If you want us to fight and die, then we’re going to fight now, and we’re going to fight you! So come on down deGroot and take a swing!”
“It'll end in tears and they won't be mine.”
“Mick reached backwards without breaking eye contact and ran his hand across the door behind him, “See this?” he said. “This is my door. And no-one is touching my door today.” He shook his head slowly as if the issue wasn’t even up for debate.
Surle said nothing, just stared.
Mick swung his sword lazily, pointing towards the floor between himself and the infamous Marshal, “See this floor here? This floor is my porch,” he said. “And no-one is welcome on my porch today, especially you.”
Still nothing from Surle, just silence.
“So why don’t you just sod off like a good little lackey?”
“The sun was late, stuck in heavy mist. When it finally broke free there was no one to see, no one to applaud its sterling effort, because everyone in Freemantle was heading west. The burnt orange blaze of dawn made it look like they were fleeing a fire, but all knew that the real conflagration lay ahead.”
“A real Deadly Dolly,” sniggered Mick. And then, “Ouch!” when she whacked him.”
“The thing I can’t figure out,” Axel turned to gaze directly at the gorgeous Elf. “Is how we got drawn into this mess? A week ago we were just boys, bumbling about in our last year of study, and now we’re in the midst of events that will change the course of Alba’s future! How did that happen?” He tossed his hands in the air and shook his head. “These are our parents’ battles. This is our parents’ world. They’re supposed to hand over something valuable and precious, not suck us into a scarred and shattered wreck!”
Carolyn struggled to maintain her composure. She bit her bottom lip until it quivered in pain. “I don’t know how it happened,” she whispered, shaking her head, feeling guilty and tortured and evil and awful. “It’s not fair though.”
“Well, we’re in the game now,” said Axel, as he stared down at the deadly black blade. “And heaven help all those who stand in our way.”
“It wasn’t like that at all!” argued the Sleuth, looking around for support. “It was a heroic, selfless act of spectacular bravery! I should be worshipped like a god! Immortalised in song!” He struck a dramatic pose, “One man, alone and outnumbered, sacrificed himself for the greater good…”
“Immortalised in song, eh?” chuckled Mick. “How about ‘ridiculed in nursery rhymes’?”
“Tristan turned to face the Talon crowd and placed one hand on his own chest, “Our parents think that ‘compromise’ is a dirty word, a sign of weakness and neglect. They choose combat over concession every time. They fight for the sake of fighting because in their world,” and now he pointed out of the room into the distance, “every disagreement has to have a winner and a loser; life can never be a draw.”
“In an ideal world, he’d simply scrape the surface of his bottomless courage, carelessly slip off his horse, scratch his massive balls, and then stroll over to the Lair in his own good time. But this wasn’t an ideal world, Rawley’s courage reservoir was barely a puddle, and at that particular moment he had precious little below the belt worth scratching!”
“Rotten, dirty, back-slapping, wine-quaffing, haemorrhoid-hosting, goat-shagging, fart-sniffing, Crispin-loving, gold-snatching bastards!!!”
“Important things are inevitably cliche, but nobody wants to admit that.”
“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you,and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.”
“Let me see if I understand this," Jaenelle said.
[...]
"You and Falonar have decided to go your own ways," Jaenelle said with a patience that made Surreal wary.
She shrugged. "It was a mutual decision." The bastard.
"Uh-huh. So you packed your bags..."
"It was his eyrie," Surreal cut in. "I certainly didn't want to live there." And I didn't want to watch him courting Nurian in ways he never thought to court me.
"...and left Ebon Rih without telling Lucivar."
"Who would have strung Falonar up by the heels"... or by the balls, which might have been interesting to watch... "before having a little chat."
"No," Jaenelle said, "he would have waited for Chaosti to show up, and then he would have strung Falonar up by the heels." She paused. "Maybe by the heels."
Which just confirmed why Surreal had slipped away from Ebon Rih before Lucivar had time to notice. As the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih dealing with a Warlord Prince who was his second-in-command, Lucivar would have been nasty and explosive. Chaosti, the Warlord Prince of the Dea al Mon and a kinsman on her mother's side, would have approached Falonar with the protective viciousness that made Warlord Princes such a deadly facet of Blood society.
Dealing with the male relatives she'd acquired since coming to Kaeleer was so much fun.
"And you entered the Hall through one of the side doors to avoid seeing Daemon, who's working in his study and would have met you before you got out of the great hall."
Feeling more wary by the minute, Surreal did her best to look indifferent. "No reason for him to get involved in this." Sweet Darkness, please don't let him think this is any business of his. "Besides, I don't need either of them getting all snarly and protective over something that was a mutual decision."
"So instead of mentioning this to either of them, you went to the Keep and told Saetan."
Surreal winced. "Well, I figured I should tell someone before leaving Ebon Rih."
"Uh-huh. So you told the High Lord of Hell, the patriarch of this family, the man from whom Daemon and Lucivar inherited the temper you were trying to avoid." Jaenelle pushed the quilt aside and swung her legs over the side of the couch to sit up straight. "Did I miss something ?”
“But knowing me the way I do (now that sounds weird!),”
“Rock 'n' roll. Deal with it.”
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