Chapter 50 Sariel
SARIEL
S ariel stood before the grand window of the Tower Majestic, the sun’s rays flowing across him.
The red and gold of his vest sparkled. Such finery.
It felt unbecoming. So much easier the armaments of war.
So much easier to conquer a foe than sway their hearts.
Behind him waited a dozen advisers. They had been called into his home on one of the highest floors of the tower but given no explanation as to why.
“I have read your reports,” Sariel said at last. His voice was hard enough to break steel. “And I dislike what I am being told.”
Still they remained silent. Sariel turned to face them.
They were a mixture of the young and old, each one handpicked to help oversee a province of his kingdom.
They exchanged daily letters with regents, bringing to Eder that which was deemed important.
And what they brought was a cavalcade of failures.
The cleansing laws were being resisted in every province.
Gambling rings in Sovoth. Brothels in Erzden.
Sariel flooded their streets with guards, and he increased the severity of punishments, from whippings for the smallest theft to brutal public executions for murderers and rapists.
None of it helped. All of it seemed to make matters worse.
“Marisa,” he said, and gestured to the stack of papers on the table separating him from the finely dressed crowd of advisers. “You said the regent in Windshew hung fifty men as punishment for the recent riots. Was this your idea?”
A demure woman with graying hair stepped forward.
“It was,” she said.
“And did it work?”
Marisa’s frown looked like she was trying to swallow her own lips.
“No,” she admitted. “It made the riots all the worse the next night.”
Sariel could imagine the scene and feel the anger of the people.
Damned fools, all of them, clinging to their vices.
If only he could cleave the sin from humanity like he did the limbs from his opponents.
How much easier a task it would be. But then again, he and Eder had not built their kingdom because they thought it would be easy, but because they sought to create something incredible.
“Two attempts have already been made on Gavin’s head in Sovoth,” Sariel continued, his ire growing. “And despite our total bans, I read here that the amount of wine and beer flowing into western Kaus is higher than it was a year ago.”
“It’s not my fault,” one the younger advisers said. He paled a bit at Sariel’s glare but continued. “My regent patrols the borders, but we are confident much of the wine is flowing in from Angloss. We suffer from their leniency.”
“Indeed,” Marisa agreed. “I’ve read credible reports that the rioters in Windshew are instigators from Angloss.
They are spreading a unique brand of Leliel dogma, and it is the sweetest poison upon our people’s tongues.
Instead of abstaining from their sins, Leliel would not call them sins at all, and too many are using this as an excuse to attack the cleansing laws directly. ”
More murmurs of agreement. Sariel wanted to scream. Of course they would blame Eder. Anything to excuse their own failures.
“I will speak with Lord Endal about these matters, but they do not excuse your own culpability,” he said. All the stars help him, it’d been only ten years since he’d formed his kingdom, and already he wished he could return to battle.
The problem was, that might even happen.
“With all due respect, my king, it is not an excuse,” a third adviser said.
He was the oldest of the lot, his beard a bright shade of white and hanging down to his waist. “When a river overflows, it is not the fault of the levy builders that a flood approaches. I understand Lord Endal’s aid in the founding of the true Anaon Kingdom was instrumental, but the special privileges he has been given are a rot we are incapable of fighting. ”
“At least give us permission to hunt marauders across Angloss borders,” argued another adviser. “If Endal will not tame his own province, at least allow us to do what must be done to protect ours.”
Sariel clenched his jaw. Eder’s special privilege had been a sore spot for the various provincial regents since the day the Erzden Promise was signed.
If Sariel was honest with himself, it frustrated him as well.
Eder consistently and cleverly enacted only the barest minimum of the cleansing laws, and his protestations at the cruelties necessary for its enforcement had grown over time.
It’d been a year since Sariel had last seen him, his brother storming off after yet another argument in the dead of night over ways to cow the unruly human populace.
“I will speak with Endal and ensure this matter is settled,” he said, and few there bothered to hide their disgust. And why would they? This was a promise Sariel had made countless times before. “But that does not free the lot of you from your own failures at—”
The heavy doors to the meeting room opened, and in stepped a visibly pale Marshal Hugh.
“Forgive my intrusion,” he said, and pointedly glared at the advisers. “I must speak with our king. Alone.”
Sariel’s insides clenched. For his marshal to demand both privacy and urgency did not foretell good news.
“Leave me,” he said, dismissing the advisers. “When I next see you, I want each of you to have a plan to turn about the ills of your province.”
The fifteen advisers quickly bowed and left, leaving Sariel and Hugh alone in the grand room.
Sariel turned to the enormous window of the Tower Majestic, staggering in its size so that this was but the upper half of it.
The meeting room was the top floor of an impressive mansion of wood and stone and was built so that a large portion of the wall was open, allowing sight of the ocean.
The sunlight felt grating on Sariel’s skin, and he winced as he approached a small drink table nearby.
“What brings you with such urgency?” Sariel asked as he poured himself a drink of water mixed with smashed grapes and sliced strawberries to add a bit of sweetness. “Did Franz go and provoke another battle across the border?”
“No, Your Highness,” Hugh said. “It’s about Agnes.”
Sariel froze, the glass held to his lips, but he did not drink. The tightness in his stomach worsened.
“And?” he asked, refusing to face the man. He did not want to see the look in his marshal’s eyes. He did not want to assume things that were not there. Instead he stared at the sea, stretching unending to the east.
“My king, she… the queen was found in Olado, not far from the border into Angloss. She and her entire escort, they… they were… Forgive me, Sytha. They were murdered.”
The glass shook in Sariel’s hand. Water spilled across his lips and chin.
“Murdered,” he whispered, and then shattered the glass at his feet. The pitiful break was nothing compared to the breaking in his mind. “How? Who was responsible?”
“Regent Franz says bandits were responsible,” Hugh said. “He raided one of their camps and found the… the bodies.”
Sariel slowly turned, a cold fire sparking to life within the hollowness of his chest.
“Bandits,” he said. “Angloss bandits?”
The marshal slowly nodded. “It seems so.”
Sariel slowly approached the table holding the many reports from his advisers. He glared at the rolled pieces of paper as if each one were a venomous snake.
“Olado?” he asked. “Why was Agnes in Olado? She told me she was going to Araketh.”
“I do not know,” Hugh said softly.
Sariel fell silent. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. His marshal and friend shuffled his weight from foot to foot. It was the only sound in the room. A minute passed. Two. Thoughts warred in Sariel’s mind, so strong, so brutal and violent, he feared they would rupture his body in half.
“My king?”
“Leave me,” Sariel snapped, the paralysis finally ended.
The man quickly obeyed. The moment the door closed, Sariel lifted his fists and smashed the table in half.
The wood splintered, and reports fluttered into the air.
He grabbed them, crinkling them in his fingers before ripping them to shreds and casting them aside.
One after another, tearing, snarling, breaking portions of the table further and flinging them out the window to fall to the sea.
“Why, Agnes?” he asked as he slumped in the middle of the wreckage. He glared at his hands, speckled with blood from splinters and cuts from the papers’ edges. “Were the warm markets of Araketh not enough? Why go west?” Tears swelled in his eyes. “Why leave me at all?”
Sariel wept, even as he told himself he could find her again.
Her soul would be reborn. He could wait.
Age meant nothing. Once the people were properly subdued, perhaps he could even reveal his immortal nature.
A perpetual king of a truly sinless nation.
And then… then he would find her, anoint her, make her his queen once more, this time gifted a proper land.
He scraped bloody fingerprints across the stone.
Angloss bandits…
Sariel cleaned his face, retrieved a blank scroll from a shelf on the opposite side of the room, and then grabbed the quill and inkwell stored next to it.
So often he wrote lengthy proclamations with them, but this time, it would be a single letter, quick and concise.
With the table broken, he used the floor.
When finished, he would seal it with wax and trust only Marshal Hugh to carry it across Kaus to the seat of his brother’s power in Vendom.
Eder , he began. My wife is dead. We must meet, and I will tell you where…