48. FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-EIGHT
FANKALO
Location: South Sea
Fankalo stepped quickly through the passage from the resource room to her quarters. It was too much to hope for: that she could steal away again, musky old book in hand, without being spotted. A call came from around the corner.
“Braaaaaat.”
And by the last person she had hoped would spot her. Chaos’s unruly bush.
A ten-day had passed since the incident on the beach in Yalusa.
A ten-day spent without Calver’s soundless form pressed against the door while she slept.
A ten-day during which Fankalo hadn’t shown face, but for the most essential duties.
Looking Mitek in the eye was harder than the rest of them.
He’d warned her for years, and she hadn’t listened.
And then she hadn’t listened, again, when he told her that exile was too light a sentence.
Fankalo sucked in through her teeth before pivoting.
She would have to face him soon enough: they had a meeting with Thyatira’s emissaries before the day’s end.
Mitek sat with Cam, Nalil, and Samad, a stackers board open on the table.
The tilted slash of his mouth wasn’t entirely genuine, but it wasn’t forced either. “Give us a game?”
Mitek hadn’t willingly entered a game of stackers with her in years.
She saw right through his tactics, and he usually sought easier prey for a game of wits.
As much as she would love to publicly humiliate him, she imagined he was only attempting to lure her from her closet.
That was good of him. A legend could not hide behind closed doors.
“But no Luck allowed, eah?” he said, twirling one of the board’s black rings between two fingers. “I want a game that’s fair and square.”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” Cam quipped. Mitek shot him a heavy-lidded, drawn-mouthed expression Fankalo was certain he’d learned from her.
“No Luck allowed,” she agreed, taking the seat across from them.
Mitek began to sort their rings into piles by color. “While we’re here, I think we should chat before Thyatira’s emissaries arrive, and reconsider incorporating Seraphinden’s Groundling movement into our resource allocation.”
Kretch. This wasn’t his way of cheering her up. This was a poorly planned intervention, designed for his favorite lackeys to witness her judgement call before the afternoon’s meeting.
She chose her words carefully. “While my heart resides with the common people of Nelfindar, I am wary of supporting the Groundling movement.”
Mitek lifted his chin. His voice was a command and a challenge all in one. “Why?”
In truth, she’d never been able to articulate the gut feeling her Luck had pinned her with: that Thyatira was bad news. But she had recently been able to pull cases from military texts to support her argument.
“Because I fear to do so is to support the Tera’thians.”
“And that I do not track. So you’re going to need to draw me a map, before I write off your reasoning as crazy or reckless.”
Surprising she could even hear him over the sound of his bullshit. What was this facade for? His friends? Fankalo flashed her teeth at him, and he frowned. “Fates, I hate when you look at me like that. Like a hyena that’s just spotted its next meal limping along the grasslands.”
Her smile broadened. “Let’s chat on the concept of ideological subversion, Mitek.” She placed her first ring on the board’s centermost peg—a terrible move, by all means.
Mitek twisted his mouth and placed his ring in his closest corner. “Let’s.”
She set her second ring beside the first. Mitek continued to play prudently, claiming space along the border.
“Cul’Mon studies the pre-cataclysmic runes of the Tera’thian Tohatus before him.
He looks to history to prepare flawless strategy, where Nelfindar’s oligarchs can’t seem to see past the polished tips of their fingernails.
” One by one she stacked her rings around the center, like she was giving him an easy win.
Mitek’s hand hovered over the board, before he finally placed a ring away from the rim and beside her growing hoard.
“Through the Groundling movement, he is enacting an age-old tactic of psychological warfare. It’s designed to change the perceived reality of every Nelfinden citizen, Groundling or not, to such an extent that, even with truthful information present, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves.
He’s done so so slowly, it’s taken two generations to take root. ”
Mitek began to divide his rings into both a border and a central defensive grouping that could move against her stash.
“There are three stages to this tactic.” She ticked up a finger. “Stage one: discountenance and disinformation.” She set her first ring behind Mitek’s central cluster.
Mitek crossed his arms. “I’m thinking I’m not fond of practical lessons.”
Better than not thinking at all.
Fankalo continued the pattern of playing the less-strategic center.
“Since the end of the Grey Period, they’ve slowly manipulated the Groundling populace to conform to Tera'thian ideals. First through miseducation—then from a lack of education. No one, Groundling, merchant, or oligarch, will believe the Tera’thians are controlling their every move. Until, of course, it is too late.”
“What miseducation?” Mitek asked, though the skepticism in his voice did not reach the slow-sinking hope in his eyes.
“The Tera’thians are responsible for Nelfindar’s conviction that Distortion technology is the future.
And the corporatism, heralded as ‘nationalism’, that has depleted Nelfinden dependence on outside aid.
It’s why they convinced the Kovathian sect to take over Azadonia, once our closest trade ally.
It’s why they set the Chori against us before that.
Because doing so has slowly allowed for the dogma that this internal labor division—hardly more than perfected slavery—is acceptable. ”
“Right. That miseducation.”
She placed a ring in the corner this time.
“Ah, Chaos,” Mitek moaned, looking at it. “I’m fucked, aren’t I?”
“Stage two: erosion.” Fankalo connected her rings from the corner of the board to the center in a line he could not cut off.
“Nelfindar is eroding now. This Groundling movement is at the root of it. The rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer, and more than half of the population have reached a point where they have more to gain through revolution than they have to lose. Do you agree?”
“I… agree.” Though he couldn’t have been sourer about it.
“Stage three: collapse. It is not a matter of if, but when Emperor Ani makes his next move. And I think it imperative that our ‘resource allocation’ be used to prepare to combat the Tera’thians before they reveal what they have prepared for us.
“This Groundling movement to end caste divide—the movement your Thyatira so valiantly leads—is instrumental in creating the erosion required for collapse.”
Mitek’s eyes remained firmly on the board. She stacked another ring over the central peg, removing his control of the game.
“Your heart is in the right place. That is the mistake many freedom fighters make before their chains thicken. Keep your eyes on the enemy, Mitek. Sometimes, it changes uniform.”
“And if you’re wrong? And we’re harming the Groundling cause, causing more people to suffer, by staying removed from it?”
She guffawed. “I highly doubt that.”
Mitek’s expression darkened. He stood abruptly, stuffing his hands into his armpits. “Careful, Bratty. All those brains in your head? They have a habit of feeding your ego. And speaking of ideological subversion: when you use her on your friends… she ent your friend, eah?”
Chaos help her, that was solid wisdom spoken from the world’s greatest idiot. She opened her mouth for a rebuttal—or an apology, she wasn’t sure yet—when a knock came at the resource room door.
It was Drogus, of course. Who else would knock before entering a common room? Her second Hand pushed his way into the space and tilted his head. “My queen. Someone has arrived for you.”
“Tell them I will receive them another time,” she said, moving another ring to crown one of Mitek’s pegs on the board.
Drogus paused at the door, before walking to her side and bending to whisper in her ear. “It is the emissaries from Roskaad Thyatira.”
Fankalo’s stomach turned. They were early.
Not that she would be any readier by the day’s end.
She’d been wavering on how to handle him for days.
Before the incident in Pazir, his emissaries had made them an offer: information surrounding Aetech’s upcoming developments in exchange for indictment into the Shadewalker’s ranks.
That was what Mitek wanted. It was the first step toward a formal alliance with Nelfindar’s Groundling movement.
A promising opportunity—but for Calver. She couldn’t imagine how he would have reacted to her working with Thyatira.
When she put her Luck to it, all futures clouded.
She had told the emissaries to give them a moon cycle to consider. At the time, she’d figured the Pazirian financial backing would make the idea less desirable. Accepting Thyatira’s option was an invaluable backup plan, that was all.
She’d been wrong. No alliance, no financial backing, would stop her from wanting more.
And now Calver wasn’t here.
The room watched her, so cautious, as though they were sitting in quicksand. She narrowed her eyes on Drogus. “Were I planning to accept this proposal… I should prepare written documentation with my seal, shouldn’t I?”
“I would recommend it.”
“Tell them I will receive them in my quarters in an hour.” It wasn’t her fault they were early.
“I would like for you and Mitek to join me in the negotiation.” Her words set the necks of both Hands spinning, like they were dogs and she’d held up a bone.
Did they both truly find this idea so attractive?
Drogus bowed his way out, face unable to mask the pleasure in his voice. “Yes, Queen.”