Chapter Seventeen The Lands of the Kindred #5
“Saboteurs?” the Prince asked, interested in spite of himself.
“Yes. Most of it goes unnoticed. Little things, such as delaying this or that project, or convincing certain members of the Empire not to look too closely into the affairs of the Kindred.”
“Convincing?”
Tomaz looked over his shoulder and smiled wickedly.
“Euphemisms are sometimes for the best way.”
“Right.”
They lapsed into silence again, Tomaz stirring the stew and the Prince sitting on the couch, staring into the fire.
He really did feel like a child: his feet dangled a good six inches off the floor, even when he was slouching, and the high back went up over his head.
As the silence lengthened, the Prince once more felt tension creeping into his shoulders and chest. His hands started to ball up into fists, and he had to make a conscious effort to lay them flat on his lap.
“So you and Leah are Rogues. Have you been a part of one of those?”
“Sabotage missions? I’ve been part of a few. It’s useful to have a big man on your side to deal with… crowd control.”
He winked at the Prince as he used this euphemism, and the Prince smiled, knowing Tomaz thought himself exceedingly clever for coming up with it.
“You said most of the sabotage goes unnoticed, but what about the things that do go noticed?”
“Ah, yes. You’ll most likely have heard of some things, though they were no doubt concealed in propaganda. Your brother Geofred is quite the master of turning disaster into opportunity.”
The Prince felt a swell of anger at this, but it quickly faded.
First, because Tomaz was right. One of Geofred’s main responsibilities—and indeed talents—was keeping the citizens of the Empire informed about events throughout Lucia.
And second, because he realized he didn’t care anymore what he thought of the Children, or what he said about them.
In the Empire, it was death to voice a negative thought about one of the Children in public.
But here, in the woods, with just a stew and a giant for company, such things seemed remarkably unimportant.
“All right, so try me. What have you done?”
“Personally, I’m responsible for the ongoing problems in expanding the granaries in Tyne.”
“What?” the Prince asked, shocked. Tomaz nodded, still watching the stew.
“Of course, it’s passed off as the Exiled Kindred burning crops and killing farmers, and I know that’s the story you’ve been brought up with.
But for the past ten years I’ve done something very simple that’s suspended the granary construction, and I haven’t need to kill a single farmer in order to do it. ”
“What?” The Prince asked, warily. He was unsure if he wanted to know.
“I break the dams. Easy enough. Bloodless—unless a guard tries to gut me, like what happened a few years back. I nearly didn’t make it out; some hotshot captain had set an ambush.
Too bad he wasn’t expecting an ex-Blade Master.
In any case, break two or three dams and the crops below them fail, flooded with water or else parched.
It’s a common enough thing to happen by accident.
We just make sure to target the ones that Rikard is planning to use for one of his special projects. ”
The Prince, who had known for years that a certain number of dams broke every year in the Tynian Fields that produced wheat and other grains for the rest of the Empire, was shocked.
The official story had always been that the dams were poorly constructed, or else that they had been torn down by the Empire in order to make way for better ones.
“That’s incredible. But… how could you do that? The grain shortages that were caused in some years… you’re responsible for that.”
Tomaz was shaking his head.
“There are no grain shortages,” he rumbled.
“In Tyne there are nearly ten acres of silos full of grain stored every year by the merchants and farmers for sale and distribution across the Empire. The extra grain, the grain we won’t allow them to grow, is the grain needed to feed an increased military under the command of Rikard. ”
“But there’s been no military increase in nearly half a century,” the Prince protested. “Not since Rikard attacked—”
“You’re sadly misinformed, princeling. Rikard builds his military every year, in secret. I doubt the other Children know, but I’m certain the Empress does. And the dams I break are the ones that control the water to the grain he’s trying to grow in secret to feed those armies.”
“But that grain goes to common citizens.”
“No,” Tomaz said, somewhat forcefully. “That grain goes to feeding the soldiers that oppress common citizens and try every year to invade this land.”
The Prince let it drop, but the subject still felt unresolved. How could the man be sure? How could he know he wasn’t hurting innocents?
“That’s quiet an undertaking,” the Prince said, not knowing what else to say.
“Indeed. Do you remember the Haven Dam that broke up in Tyne, the one that was being built for twenty something years?”
“Yes!” the Prince said, astounded. How had they managed to do that? The whole dam had collapsed the day before its completion, which was intended to be a day of celebration.
“Yeah, that wasn’t us. Just bad luck. But I had you going, didn’t I?”
The giant turned around and winked, and the Prince shook his head. Tomaz frowned slightly.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” the Prince said, though there certainly was. “No, don’t worry, it’s nothing.”
The Prince had somehow managed to forget that this man was an Exile. He’d been going along, treating Tomaz as if he were nothing more than a hunted fugitive, living with other fugitives, trying to escape from a place where they were no longer wanted.
It wasn’t that simple, though. This man wasn’t just a passive victim, he was an active outlaw.
He had just admitted to high treason and sabotage, and beyond that it wasn’t some isolated event, it wasn’t something he’d done to free or protect himself from harm, it was something he’d done as an attack on the Empire.
And what was more, he wasn’t the only one.
There must be many Rogue pairs, though how many the Prince couldn’t say.
How many other things had the Kindred done to the Empire?
And how many of them, really, had the same good intentions as Tomaz?
All of this passed through his mind in the few seconds it took Tomaz to turn back around, and as the big man went back to stirring the stew, a light went on in the back of the Prince’s head, and the Talisman around his neck seared red hot, and then went cold.
He turned his head to the left and knew that he was looking north, toward Roarke.
Because what he felt was the distant glow of the Prince of Oxen, at the head of an army. Marching right toward him.