3. THREE #2
Again, she seemed to misinterpret him—this time as innuendo. Another indignant shriek. Scrolls stuffed into her arms and obscuring most of her vision, she stomped away.
Niklaus returned to the Meyernes mansion with a mind to confront his mother. There were still a few hours before the Oligarchal vote, and she had connections with many of their seats. Away from the others, she might listen to him.
His mother had always been frugal with her laughter, with her touch, with her praise—but there was love there. She only scrutinized the things she loved. She was a resourceful woman, wasting nothing, not even attention, on the things that didn’t bear fruit. He’d always admired her for that.
Niklaus stopped short outside the double doors that led into her rooms. Voices sharp with strife flitted through the crack under the door. His mother rarely took visitors at home. He leaned his ear against the wood.
“I don’t understand.” The emotion behind his mother’s words rooted him in place. “How can they have been tracking the wrong boy for sixteen years?”
“The keeper took a bribe. Six thousand silver notes to replace him with another.” Niklaus’s heart plummeted into his stomach. That was the Prime speaking. The Oligarch’s Prime was in his mother’s room.
Niklaus peered through the keyhole. Odenous Taranil stood silhouetted beside the window. His mother sat in an armchair beside him, face in her hands. “But where did they take him?”
“They said it was a seafarer—possibly a raider. He’s long gone.”
“You don’t think he—”
“I can’t think anything else.”
Niklaus’s mother wrung her hands. Thick tears rolled down her cheeks. He’d never seen her cry. Not even when his father passed. He should have wished to comfort her, but something else burned within.
“The tip-off could have only come from the inner circle. My guess is it’s the same person who stole Methu’su’s logbook from the archives.”
His mother froze. “But that would mean… they have annotations on everyone?”
“Everyone.”
“What do we do?”
“We protect this country as best we can by keeping the rest of them under lock and key.”
“This is why you’re bringing the ordinance to vote?”
Taranil nodded. “Believe, Myria. This is no longer a matter of life or death. It’s a matter of fear and faith. The Fates are watching.” He crouched and whispered something in her ear, fingers interlacing with hers. He cupped her face with his opposite hand.
“Odenous, don’t,” she said.
“I—”
Whatever the Prime was, Niklaus would never know. He slammed the door open with such force that it banged into the wall. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
His mother’s face went milk-white. Taranil’s tawny eyes narrowed, and he stood rigid as a quill.
“Mother, if I could solicit a moment of your time.”
Silence struck the room like lightning, and it charged Niklaus’s next words. His mother stood, chin high, hands clasped, and passed through the door as Niklaus held it for her. He slammed it behind them. It echoed through the house.
“Speak.”
“I have nothing to say,” she replied.
“I do. You’re going to stand against this ruling, and here’s why—”
“Fine.”
Niklaus stopped short. Fine? It was a clear trap. There was nothing to be done but fall straight into it.
“Why?”
“Because this ruling will stand no matter what I do, but at least voting against it will give me the luxury of shutting your mouth for five minutes.”
“You can’t possibly think this is justice.”
“I don’t think it is justice, but that does not make it any less the best option. Aetech’s board is set in its ways, as with the oligarchy. Nothing will sway them. These are old lifestyles, stemming back to the Seraphindos’ reign. Old and powerful.”
Niklaus’s hands fisted. “Ah, yes. Politics die hard. The children starving in Shrokan die easy. I can completely understand your rationale.” She glared, and he swatted the air between them.
“We are in a pivotal position. After last quarter, we have the funds to become influential. If anyone can make a difference, it’s us. ”
“Wealth may bring power. But while they are corollary, there is a difference between money and wealth. Money represents wealth like hollow walls represent a home.” She looked around at the manor they stood in, and the motion wounded him.
He was still putting together why when she spoke again.
“Power with roots deep enough to sustain it exists without money. Everything else withers at first drought. That is the power we fight, and while we have money, we have no wealth to speak of.”
How could she speak with such ignorance, only to cap it with wisdom?
His mother shook her head. He could still see the salt lines on her face from the tears he was sure she would have never shed for him. “You have made your argument, and you have lost it. When will you show the humility I raised you with and stop?”
“When the sun ceases to rise,” he said through clenched teeth. “How long have you been seeing the shratten Prime? Who has gone missing?” He knew the interrogation foolish, but it spilled out just the same.
His mother paused, indefinite stories moving behind her eyes.
She readied an answer, but whatever it had been lost its shot at life.
She blinked, eyes dry, face long, words even.
“Niklaus, if you don’t stop speaking out, they’ll find a way to stop you.
There are some secrets that are better left buried. ”
She turned and re-entered her rooms. She shut the doors again, leaving Niklaus alone in the cavernous hallway with the rugs and the vases and the paintings. Dead things. He was alone in a tomb.
Niklaus rubbed his fingers together, clenched his jaw, and left the manor.
Buried, she’d said. He took that as an invitation to dig. If it meant he had to air the dirt on every patrician in the oligarchy in the process, he’d get his answer.
Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Present Day
Location: Jiradesh Desert
Beneath the sweltering heat of the Jiradeshi sun, Niklaus swore that he would—he would—prevent the fall of the oligarchy, so long as he stayed alive.
Not that swearing did much good. The cooking hearth belching flame beneath the canvas mess tent made it even warmer in the shade, and he was nearly sure that under fire, morals disintegrated the same as any other fiber.
Sweat beat out a slow, steady dirge as it dripped from his hair and the tip of his nose into the increasingly dirty wash water where he scrubbed meal trays. The bin was saltier than the Casowhatan by now.
Niklaus’s hands trembled, reaching for the moss tin in his breast pocket—but no, he was on restricted access.
If he had it now, there would be nothing for him when he truly needed it.
There was a joke in there somewhere: something to do with a rich man learning to ration.
He’d never wanted for anything… Except perhaps self-respect.
Hardly a comparable experience. There was no way to set aside a thing which had long since run dry.
A tremor shook his body. Bone-deep chills coursed through him, cresting with another spike of nausea.
He closed his eyes, waiting for the sensation to pass.
Preservation help him. Joining the Red Wing might have been a good decision if the welcome had been as warm as the desert, the desert as exciting as the prospect of his weekly shower, and his weekly shower as isolating as his reputation.
But causing enough discord to have his assets revoked in the first twenty-four hours had not been a part of the plan.
Niklaus spoke, hoping it would prevent anything else from spilling out of his mouth and into the dishwater.
“They were right to call this place a wasteland,” he rasped, his words directed towards the only person within earshot: the cook.
He was more boulder than man, his figure so imposing that he had to work with his hairy arms fully extended to scrape at the griddle without burning his gut.
“You would never guess that we’re moving.
It’s looked the same in every direction for almost a ten-day. ”
The cook grunted.
“Not that I mean to insult the desert—after all, it constitutes sixty-five percent of Nelfinden topography and I’m a patriot.
I’m sure we’re just seeing it under adverse circumstances, when it hasn’t rained in a while.
” The witticism was met by silence. “Don’t you think?
” Though Niklaus could not tell for certain whether the man thought at all.
He straightened, ignored the stars before his eyes, and moved to the cook’s station, where he pulled another stack of dishes into his basin.
It slipped from his sweating hands to the ground.
He steadied himself with a hand as he re-collected the dishes.
Fates, this day would have to come to an end at one point or another. The only way through was sweating.
Out it came—not vomit, more words. “What do you think about General Prime Thyatira?” The silence was stiff as the lack of breeze beneath the tent. “Incredible what he’s accomplished, isn’t it?”
The cook responded this time by spitting directly onto the griddle and continuing to fry some kind of half-spoiled meat in the recycled grease from that morning’s lard.
There was no indication as to whether the gesture stood to his regard for their leader or for Niklaus’s question.
Niklaus wiped at the sweat on his face again.
The cook did not appear to be perspiring, even with his proximity to the fire. All that insulation, yet not a bead.
“It’s hot today,” Niklaus commented idly.
“Do you ever shut it?” the chef snapped.
So he could talk.
He turned toward Niklaus, fist raised. Niklaus made an evasion attempt, which was really just him flopping onto his back in the sand under the tent.
The cook shook his head and turned back to his cuisine, blessedly deciding against turning Niklaus’ face into a pancake.
“Fates cursing me to get stuck with the likes of you,” he said.