Chapter 5 #3
“They’ve isolated it,” I murmur, digging something out of the sandwich. “And kept Crystal Hollow dependent on the mainland for goods they can’t produce in sufficient quantity themselves. What is this?”
“Bell pepper. And yes. Over the years the Order has taken pains to keep a strong hold in Chitsui, the province across the water.”
Even when they couldn’t get the result they’d wanted.
Just so that people didn’t have an option of rejecting them.
“So Crystal Hollow still wasn’t free,” I murmur.
Zan regards me. “Is that what you tried to do?”
I blink. “No one knew?”
He shakes his head, not taking his eyes off of me. “There were so many rumors. Enough for me to form a picture of what they had likely asked of you, but too many to be sure.”
I wonder how close his picture came.
I swallow my next bite—it’s a lot of flavors, but it’s growing on me—hard. Suddenly, I want someone to know.
“I am Wrath incarnate,” I say quietly. “I can walk through a battlefield and cause an opposing army to be so overcome with fury that they start murdering each other indiscriminately. It isn’t even hard; that kind of thing, it’s as easy as breathing.
“So when the Order learned—or fabricated—threats of rebellion, they wanted me to turn that against civilians. To walk through a town instead of a battlefield, and harness their wrath, and turn neighbors on each other. To use me as a threat to keep the empire in fear: Obey, or Wrath will make you kill everyone you love.”
Zan’s expression has gone hard. “That tracks with what I learned. But you didn’t do that.”
I close my eyes.
No, I hadn’t done that.
I had destroyed Crystal Hollow and isolated them for generations.
But I hadn’t made them murder each other.
The next bite goes down a little easier.
“I told the priests that I thought I could do it on a larger scale,” I say.
“That I could unleash Wrath on the populace everywhere, so they would only have to do this once to quash rebellion—no waiting for people to learn what had happened, to question whether it was real. Let everyone experience it at once, and the whole empire would know the threat was real. Rebellion would be crushed swiftly in a single, devastating blow. I told them I wanted to meditate at Celestial Sanctuary to focus my Wrath. The temple was a common place sages trained back then.”
“But that isn’t what you wanted to do.”
His gaze has gone intense again. He sounds very sure.
It’s a relief, that he believes well enough of me to take that as read.
Or maybe he feels like he knows me, too.
Even if it’s misplaced.
“Sanctuary Mountain is a volcano,” I say.
“I know.”
I suppose a dragon who can fly to the top of it would.
“I was going to use my Wrath to unleash it and destroy them all.”
Zan blinks.
I have surprised him after all.
Critical thinking I may have been capable of, but I was trained a certain way. I hadn’t had the experience to imagine a way to use my power that wasn’t destructive.
I still don’t.
“You didn’t, though,” Zan finally says.
There’s a beat of silence, like he’s considering.
And then he asks, like I didn’t just suggest unleashing untold destruction, “Ready to try some tomato?”
Gods, no.
I do it anyway.
He made an offer, even after what I just told him. I recognize the extension of grace for what it is.
The tomato is... hmm. Better with more egg.
Doesn’t seem like I actually like the tomato in that case.
I don’t like this subject either, so maybe that’s appropriate.
“My request was a strategic error,” I explain.
“The priests wanted me to be able to work on the scale I had promised them, but I’d also made them afraid, you see?
They had to assert their power over me. So after we arrived, they revealed the condition that I would be locked up, ostensibly to better facilitate my concentration.
But of course, actually, to make it clear that they had the power. ”
Zan lifts his fork to my mouth, this time with a mushroom on it.
I must be imagining the hint of glow in his eyes. He’s wearing a disguise, after all.
I recognize the mushroom but eat it anyway. Maybe that’s a different kind of offering.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
But I’m not imagining the hint of growl in his voice when he asks, “And you let them?”
I sigh. “Yes. If I’d killed them, there was a standing order to launch their full military might against me, and they had magical means of making that order trigger with any priests’ death.
If any priests died—even if they were the ones to kill themselves—the same.
With an army of priests working together, they would beat me eventually.
And if I had to use my power to overcome them—remember, they sent a full military cohort to escort me, which I should have understood the implications of sooner—I wouldn’t have enough power to activate the volcano.
So I let them board me in to buy time, while they starved me until I’d be willing to commit mass murder. ”
And you know what, I deserve to eat everything now.
Determinedly, I take another bite of my sandwich, maybe a little viciously.
Because maybe I deserved to eat everything before, too.
“But you didn’t activate the volcano,” Zan points out tightly.
It occurs to me, belatedly, that while this is all old news to me, it probably would be upsetting.
To someone who cares.
Someone who notices.
Even if he never lets himself be seen.
“Even though, I assume,” Zan says, “you were even more filled with wrath.”
I sigh, putting the sandwich down. “No. We had to pass through Crystal Hollow on the way to the trail, and it finally occurred to me that the eruption would still kill those people even if it also killed a lot of corrupt priests, and that would mean the Order won. There were more priests, after all.
“I wanted them to lose. So since I couldn’t leave, I decided to force their power out instead. They couldn’t send an army of priests after me if the priests couldn’t work any magic, after all.”
I pause. “I didn’t actually realize it would also kill them all. I probably should have, but a sage’s power is different from a priest’s—it wouldn’t have killed one of us.” With a sigh I pick up the remainder of my sandwich. “It seems that even after all that, I only partially succeeded.”
Zan takes the sandwich out of my hands, strips several items off of it, adds some of what’s on his plate, and holds it up to me. “Here. These are the parts you like that have flavors that will complement each other. Try again.”
I blink.
I lean forward and bite.
Wow. That is a lot better.
And even while I was admitting to premeditated murder and accidental actual murder, he was still paying attention to that, too.
To me.
I meet his eyes over the sandwich, find them intent; his focus fixed wholly and utterly on me.
It belatedly occurs to me that I have never eaten out of someone’s hand before, and it’s actually super intimate and I did not think this through.
“You deserved to have nice things before,” Zan tells me quietly. “But after recounting that, you especially do. Let’s go for a visit. I think it will give you some ideas.”
I eat this sandwich a lot faster. “Ideas for what?”
His gaze never leaves mine. “For what to do about still being the Sage of Wrath.”