Chapter 13 Lord Hargreaves #2
“Algaraans—not to be insulting, eh, Hargreaves?—are a passionate sort,” Kilworth continued.
“Mors—from the chimney sweeps all the way up to the factory owners—are a practical people. Loyalty to our King, and to the nobility who serve the King so righteously, is in our blood. Rebellion won’t happen here. ”
A headache swirled behind Hargreaves’s eyelids. He never suffered fools.
“Our King is infirm,” Martin argued. “Everyone knows that His Majesty has taken to his bed, and the young prince is still on leading strings.” He ignored Kilworth’s sneering protests.
“His Highness is no longer the strong leader that is needed to guide this country through these times of uncertainty. In fact, he makes the aristos look weak. I’ve heard a few other tradesmen remark that it no longer makes sense to have a country ruled by those with noble blood when it’s the factory owners who possess the most significant amount of wealth. ”
“Do you also share these treasonous thoughts?” Kilworth asked Martin with disgust, anger making his freckles brighter. He never hid his distrust of Martin, revolted by his lowborn dreams and the way the tradesman vacillated between penny-pinching and displays of crass, vulgar wealth.
Martin negotiated like a boxer in stock meetings, ruthless in his acquisitions and cruel with his workers.
Despite that, he still possessed an inherited awe of the gentry, and an obsession with the differences in breeding.
“Of course I do not,” Martin seethed. “My daughter will soon marry the son of a Baron, then she will bear him heirs. I am safeguarding the birthright of my future grandchildren.”
Hargreaves allowed himself only a small smile. It was he who had arranged the nuptials, by threatening the Baron that if he did not agree to the alliance, then Hargreaves would expect the payment of all the money the Baron owed him in one fell swoop.
Through this marriage, the power Hargreaves gained over Martin was considerable.
“The Malik’s greatest mistake was that he underestimated the working class.
He could not control them even with the skilled Morish soldiers our King sent to aid him.
” Hargreaves brought his wine back to his lips, but it now tasted bitter.
“Our way of life—the life of the ruling class—is quickly vanishing. We must not let this happen. Anarchy will be the result.”
Apprehensive silence met this statement.
Martin broke it. “Who will follow the Malik once they execute him?”
“Commander Yosif will attempt to form a government, but he is inexperienced, and vultures are plentiful,” Hargreaves said.
“The entire country will soon be destabilized, and a civil war will likely ensue.” The pause that followed was loaded.
“That is why we must crush any and all rebellious sentiment among the Mors before it festers and infects this beloved country.”
“If it comes down to bloodshed, to us versus the commoners…could we win?” Kilworth brushed a handkerchief across the beads of sweat collecting on his forehead.
“Has the Malik kept his head?” Martin murmured.
Kilworth flushed but doggedly continued. “Will our own Morish army fight for us or for the crudes?”
“Most soldiers come from working-class backgrounds,” Martin responded. “Lest we forget, the army turned on the Malik near the end. That is how they lost the war.”
That was the crux of Hargreaves’s problem—one that had caused him many sleepless nights. Without loyal soldiers, the ruling class would crumble, and Hargreaves would find his own head placed on a spike outside the palace.
A breathless whisper from Kilworth. “Then what must be done to stop this rebellion?”
“As they say, George: Silence before the wolves approach is better than the silence afterward.” Hargreaves had always understood that to control a man, he must first learn his motivations and act accordingly.
Power was an almost physical object to the men sitting beside him, hoarded like gold, stored within their marrow, passed down from father to son.
Hargreaves was different. He didn’t crave power, nor fame, nor excess.
He wanted stability. Perhaps it was misguided patriotism for a country that shamed his mixed heritage, but he’d seen what war had wrought upon Algaraa.
He also knew that these reasons wouldn’t sway the rest of the members of the Wake, so he tugged at their fears of the powerful becoming powerless.
And yet, Hargreaves, for all his insight, had still been blind at the most essential moment—blind to Percy’s faults, blind to his own wife’s misery, blind to the secrets of the Limitless Vessel.
A knock on the door.
The butler entered, a shiver in his voice as he announced: “Lord Calligan, House of Fray.”
Sudden tension filled the room. Both men swiveled around to look at Hargreaves. His face didn’t twitch beneath the weight of Martin’s accusing look nor Kilworth’s palpable disgust.
Lord Calligan Fray was ushered in, and there was a clatter of chairs pushed backward as everyone in attendance rose.
Lord Calligan brought with him a presence of dread; their kind always did.
His face carried no color beneath the flickering of the candlelight, his waxy skin taut across his cheekbones like animal hide unnaturally stretched.
His fingers were disproportionately long enough to choke a man using only one hand.
Distantly, Hargreaves heard Kilworth smother a gasp when he beheld His Lordship’s eyes, the dark entirely overtaking the white sclera.
He had fed recently.
Hargreaves heard Kilworth mutter a prayer to the Saints beneath his breath: Lead us away from the influence of demons.
Demons.
Hargreaves ignored Kilworth and inclined his head in welcome. “Lord Calligan. What a pleasure to see you aboveground. I trust your journey has gone well?”
The man who had entered the room—if he could even be called that—dismissed the rest of the party disinterestedly and took a seat at the last remaining chair.
Hargreaves’s face remained mild, but he felt a shadow of foreboding at seeing Percy’s seat occupied.
Lord Calligan sat next to Martin, who attempted to inch discreetly away from the newcomer.
If Calligan was offended, he didn’t show it.
Instead his lips twitched as if he could taste something in the air, then his pallid face split into a wide smile.
“Sit, my friends,” Lord Calligan suggested.
He spoke in a clear, well-bred accent. Still, there was something odd about his voice, something elementally wrong—something that should never have been heard within the light of the day.
“Lord Hargreaves has told me that you are having trouble with your peasants?” He laughed—a gurgle from deep within his throat, as if the very idea was amusing.
Hargreaves would never have invited this decaying visitor—this demon—if he hadn’t been confident in his ability to control him.
Lord Calligan’s one ambition was to inherit his father’s dukedom as soon as possible and use its wealth to pay his mounting debts, but the old Duke refused either to die or to lend his son any more money.
This left Calligan alone to fight off the debt collectors.
Hargreaves would know. Lord Calligan owed him an enormous sum of money as well.
And yet, Hargreaves refused to accept the gold that Calligan continuously offered in an attempt to free himself. Gold was plentiful in Bastmore, the underworld, and worth very little to the demons, unlike the humans.
Indeed, it was far more profitable to entrap Lord Calligan in his debt as long as he could, only accepting the paper money that demons used as currency, knowing that it would be a lengthy time before Calligan could collect such a sum.
Hargreaves hid the gleam of triumph from his eyes. How many human men could say that they had a demon lord indebted to them?
“I’m sure you are aware that rebellion is already stirring, and we must dampen that fire before it begins to burn,” Hargreaves explained to Calligan.
“Aye, I’ve heard. And you require my service?” Lord Calligan murmured, eager. Hargreaves knew that Calligan was searching for any other means to pay off his debt early.
Hargreaves’s nod was grave. “Your service would be most necessary.”
Calligan waved at Martin to pour him a glass of wine.
Begrudgingly, the tradesman did as he was told.
“I assume that you’d like to borrow a few of my mercenaries to suppress your people?
” Calligan brought the goblet to his pale lips.
“I’ve foot soldiers to spare, enough for an entire army—that’s not the problem—but what troubles me is how we’d bring them aboveground.
A question which has previously confounded us, eh, my lord?
” Lord Calligan raised a thin brow. “I hate to beat a dead horse, but it remains impossible for one of my kind to travel without a vessel.”
“A vessel?” Kilworth interrupted with a flicker of annoyance at being left ignorant of such crucial information.
He’d only been made aware of the presence of demons a few months ago, despite more than two years of devoted loyalty to the Wake.
Since then, Hargreaves and Kilworth had argued over their differing opinions on the matter.
Kilworth viewed the demons as lesser beings, to be hunted and eradicated before they began to hunt humans, while Hargreaves saw a much higher purpose for them.
“A vessel is a talisman,” Hargreaves replied to Kilworth.
“A trinket that allows Lord Calligan and his…kin to leave their world and enter our own freely.” Hargreaves possessed two himself, stolen by the men the Wake employed to handle such brutal matters.
“There are only a few known to exist, and almost all belong to the demon nobility.”