Chương 105: Chapter 103: Sometimes, We Don't (Just) Choose Violence.

It had taken effort, but Julian had finally done as he'd always wished. The Veyne main square had been dressed entirely in green with Greenward banners hung from the lampposts and his pennants fluttering from the edges of the platform he now stood on. Even the flowers in the planters that lined the square's edges had been replaced with ones that were emerald and blooming. All of this, in the heart of House Veyne. It had all been Esra Veyne's own idea. That was the truly amusing part.

The girl had proposed a public ceremony of cooperation between their two Houses. A joint event that was meant to celebrate partnership and shared purpose. The letter had arrived on Julian's desk a day ago, written in the girl's own clumsy hand. Julian had read it twice, and then he had laughed. He could see the truth behind the words easily enough. They were a child's attempt to frame his inevitable victory as something mutual. It was, Julian had to admit, not entirely a stupid instinct.

There were worse ways to declare oneself a vassal. It was also not entirely stupid that the girl saw her inevitable defeat before it came, and moved to save face. Perhaps instead it was some kind of clumsy attack, one that the girl did not think clumsy at all. How very amusing. He had accepted, of course. And then because this victory wasn't enough for his taste he had reshaped every detail until the girl's ceremony belonged to him in everything but name. The girl had handed him the stage.

Julian had simply redecorated it.

"You're grinding your teeth," Damian murmured beside me.

"That can't be good for you."

"I am aware, and no, it definitely isn't good for me." I unclenched my jaw. The morning air was cool and carried the scent of those damned flowers. This square was the single largest one in our entire district, such that anybody from the Veyne District who could be here, was. I had known Julian would do things his way. I had known and braced for it. That had, in the end, done very little to keep me from being annoyed. I took a calming breath. The point of today's ceremony was cooperation between our two Districts.

It was a formal offering of Greenward resources to support the Veyne District during its transition. It involved Julian Greenward offering us his expertise in roads, trade agreements, and infrastructure, all in exchange for us offering him protection for his ventures outside the city. They were scales that did not weigh evenly. I had hoped he would see that. I had hoped he would be the greedy and conniving bastard that he was. I wore Veyne black, as I always did.

My hair was pulled back and pinned, though not with the elaborate care Anias would have preferred. There had been no time for that. Violet was not here, though she had certainly wanted to come. The argument had been fierce, and I had won it only by pointing out that this had to be between House Veyne and House Greenward, and no others. She had broken a chair. No, she had broken two chairs. I was fairly sure she was currently breaking a third. That had gone a good way to proving my point.

Sere was here, somewhere, hidden by her Gift. I had asked her not to be too close to be, but close enough if I called out. Just in case. The platform we had erected was raised and wide. Seating had been arranged for the Dukes and other important nobles. All of them were here before even I. How amusing, considering it had been Veyne laborers who had erected it in the first place. I chose to consider this amusing, rather than infuriating. Duke Thalos sat in his usual posture of boredom.

Duke Wardell looked uncomfortable, which, I suspected, was his usual posture for anything this public. The crowd of common folk pressed against the barriers, held back by guards in black-blue armor. There were Scrylens, a dozen of them. Perhaps more. Perhaps even more than there had been on that day at the Great Hall. Dorothy was in the crowd with her own, and I could feel its familiar prickling against my skin. There was a slight difference between her Scrylens and all the others. It was in the rhythm of it.

Something to do with the model, perhaps? Something else? It did not matter. I caught sight of her through the crowd, and saw how exhausted she looked. Nights without sleep would do that to a person. I had asked much of her. Things I had no right to ask. She had listened, and she had done as I had asked. There were paperboys scattered around the crowd. All they needed was Dorothy's signal, and all she needed was mine. Julian stood at the center of the platform with his hands clasped behind his back.

He wore his customary green coat with his emeralds glinting. A man who wore a priceless suit, yet himself looked cheap for wearing it. Beside him stood a woman I had never seen before. Lady Seraine Greenward was a tall woman. She was taller than Julian, which I had not expected. Her hair was dark, like Cordelia's, but pulled into a knot at the base of her skull. Her face was beautiful. She wore a gown of deep green that made her look carved from stone.

She stood with her hands folded and her posture was flawless, and the posture was Cordelia's. It was the exact same posture. The exact same angle of the chin, the exact same set of the shoulders, and the exact same careful stillness in the hands. There was just one difference. Her expression was older, such that if she ever strayed, she would break long before she bends. I looked at Seraine Greenward and felt nothing. Even as I watched, Seraine's gaze swept the crowd and found me.

It held for a beat too long and her expression did not change, but her eyes were sharp and assessing. She looked at me the way a woman looks at a stain on an expensive tablecloth. Cordelia stood on the far side of the platform, beside Alexander. His hand rested on the small of her back. Her smile was perfect. The pearl brooch at her throat caught the morning light. She did not look at me. I took my position on the platform, opposite Julian. The chair they had left for me was slightly lower than the others.

I had made sure they all be the same size. How petty. Click. Click. I enhanced my hearing. The whispers from the crowd flowed in.

"…the poor girl, look at her up there…"

"... of course some girl can't be running a District…'

"… what can she do? She's just a child…." I turned my hearing back down. The whispers didn't help. Seraine placed a hand on Cordelia's shoulder. It was a light touch. Cordelia's chin lifted by a fraction of a degree. Her mother was correcting some tiny flaw our mortal eyes could not see. Cordelia bore it without complaint. Something inside me coiled tight. Vaelin was screaming up my arm. Not yet, my friend. Julian Greenward stepped forward and the crowd quieted. This was what he was built for.

The scheming and the ledgers were enjoyable enough, but they were a means to an end. It was this crowd and the way they hung on his every word that truly enthralled him. The girl had wanted a ceremony. Julian had given her one. She had wanted the appearance of partnership. Julian had given her that too, and filled every inch of it with Greenward green. She would stand on this stage and accept his terms, and the crowd would see a child gratefully receiving the help of a more capable House.

Her own stage, her own idea, turned into the instrument of her irrelevance. He let the silence hold for three heartbeats. That was the exact amount of time he had found worked best, from years of experience.

"Fellow citizens of Aelheim," he began, and his voice carried without mana. He had never needed that cheap trick.

"We gather today in a spirit of unity. In a spirit of cooperation between Houses that have, for too long, allowed the walls between our Districts to become walls between our people." The words were good. He had written them himself, while Seraine reviewed Cordelia's correspondence in the adjacent room. All of the nobles on the platforms, the ones under him he had demanded be here, looked exactly as Julian had asked them to look. Regal. Julian continued. He spoke of the recent tragedies.

Of the auction house attack and the incident at Indri Manor. He spoke of the expedition and the losses suffered, and he spoke of them with the precise measure of gravity that acknowledged sacrifice without giving real credit to anyone involved. He could not have that, after all.

"The Veyne District has endured much," Julian said, letting his voice warm.

"And its young heir has shown remarkable courage in the face of that adversity." He turned toward Esra and inclined his head.

"Lady Veyne's bravery during the expedition…was remarkable, and followed the spirit of her House. We would be honored to work with her." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. He paused and let the faint praise settle, and then drove the knife beneath it.

"But bravery alone does not pave roads. It does not fill granaries, or repair the infrastructure that years of… understandable neglect have allowed to decay." The girl sat in her too-low chair and did not react. Her face was composed. She looked small. Julian had made certain she would look small. Julian slowly laid out his proposals, one after the other. Two he laid out first. Trade agreements that would route essential goods through Greenward-affiliated guilds, ensuring stability and fair pricing.

Infrastructure assistance which amounted to Greenward-trained workers and engineers deployed to the Veyne District to repair roads, and replace failing Magical Implements at no charge at all. There were five more and each proposal sounded reasonable. Each was a proposal only an idiot would refuse. Julian watched the crowd as he spoke. The common folk were nodding and smiling and whispering. They wanted roads that weren't cracked and Magical Implements that actually worked.

They did not care whose banner hung over the workers who fixed them. Julian had always understood this about common folk. They were beasts, and beasts could never think beyond their most immediate of needs. Truly, Julian had always wondered what other people found so difficult about this. The girl's proposal had made it easy. She had opened the door herself, and all Julian had needed to do was walk through it. If this was the best House Veyne could manage then the game was already over.

His gaze drifted briefly to Alexander. The boy stood beside Cordelia with his usual bearing. Julian approved of the bearing. It was the boy's eyes that occasionally required management. At present, Alexander's gaze had drifted entirely to the Veyne girl. It lingered in that slow, appraising way Julian had seen directed at serving girls before. The boy's eyes traced a path that had nothing to do with politics. Julian Greenward suppressed a sigh. It was an annoying but minor flaw. Many Lords took paramours.

The practice was as old as nobility itself. Alexander would learn discretion in time. If he didn't… well, perhaps Julian would bestow the Veyne girl mercy and Alexander a prize in the same breath. In time. It did not occur to Julian Greenward to consider what this meant for his daughter, because his daughter's feelings had never been worth consideration. He turned back to the crowd and brought his speech to its crescendo.

"What we do today is not charity," Julian said.

"It is partnership. It is the recognition that no single House can bear the weight of a city alone." He smiled his warmest smile.

"I offer this hand to House Veyne with nothing but goodwill and the sincere hope that, together, we might build an Aelheim worthy of its people." Applause came, and it was loud. It was good of the girl to gather such a large crowd for him. Julian turned to the Veyne girl and extended his hand, palm up. A public gesture, an obvious invitation to accept. The girl rose from her too-low chair. She was small. That was always the first thing Julian noticed, even now.

Pale and small, with those strange red eyes and that stranger white hair. Julian could not believe he had been afraid of her, on that day. It was a relief when the girl proved herself a fool soon after. This ceremony was proof enough. She had proposed it, and he had swallowed it whole. This time, Julian would waste no time in burying her. Esra Veyne glanced around before she met his gaze. The crowd quieted again.

"Lord Greenward," she said and her voice was steady and polite.

"I want to start by saying 'thank you'... Your generosity and goodwill are both deeply appreciated. We are lucky to have such a generous neighbor. We can all agree to that." Julian's satisfaction deepened. The last embers of his unease faded into nothing. This girl could couch this indignity in whatever she liked. They both knew this was the end and- Esra Veyne paused and turned, just slightly, toward the crowd. Her right hand rose to the Veyne crest at her collar and touched it. It was a small gesture.

Julian might not have noticed it at all, had the girl not held the pose for a fraction too long. People moved at the edges of the square. Julian's gaze shifted to them. They were boys and girls, all of them children. He counted a dozen of them, maybe more, slipping between the legs of the crowd with bundles tucked under their arms. They moved quickly, handing out something -paper- to anyone who would take them. They were… paperboys. The kind that newspapers in the city used.

Julian had funded almost every newspaper in the entire city worth mentioning, and he was sure he had given none of them the order to be here today. Julian frowned. What was the meaning of this? Was this her grand play? A critical newspaper timed to undercut his speech? What did she think she had found? If this was a final strike then it was… disappointingly small. The people did not care about money going where it shouldn't, so long as enough of it reached them to fill their stomachs.

Even an amateur should know this. He looked back at the girl. He expected to see satisfaction on her face. Doubtless, she thought she'd actually done something. Julian would relish the moment where she realized she hadn't. Her expression had not changed. She was still watching the crowd. The murmur started at the edges of the large crowd. It was small at first -a few voices, no more. People were reading. Julian saw lips moving. Saw fingers pointed at pictures he was too far away to see.

It was some kind of hit piece, one that would be forgotten come tomorrow. They always did. Even now, it would never be anything more than a murmur. The murmuring grew, until it became impossible to ignore. Julian felt a hint of that uncertainty again. What had she found? He had covered all of his tracks well. He was sure he had. A fabrication of some kind then? That would be clever but- Someone close to him, near the edge of the crowd, spoke up, "Hero?"

It was a word Julian did not understand, for it had no place anywhere near here. People were looking up from the papers now. Not at Julian. At the girl. Julian's blood cooled by a single degree, no more. He looked back at the crowd. More papers were being passed. Just about everyone he could see had one. He saw a woman hold one up to the light, her mouth open. The people he saw had an expression he had never seen directed towards himself: Awe. Julian's mind raced. What was on those papers?

What had this girl- Esra Veyne's expression was the same. Her hands were still at her sides, and yet something behind about her face was different all the same. Fear came to him then. The same fear from the bookshop. The same fear from the parade. Finally, after what had felt like an hour, Esra Veyne moved. She extended her hand to the side. Light came. It flooded the square and drowned out every single green light Julian had so painstakingly brought here.

It drowned out even the sun itself, until the world around him looked like nothing real. The light was crimson, and it turned the morning air to the color of blood. It poured from the girl's outstretched hand and coalesced into a blade. For a moment, Julian had to shield his eyes with his arm. The light found him anyway. Julian's mind stopped. His years of planning collapsed into rubble, and what was left was a man standing in crimson light, staring at a girl holding a weapon that should not exist.

He knew what it was. How could anyone not? Every educated and uneducated person in the Kingdom knew what a Godblade was. You learned about them as a child, in stories about Heroes who had shaped the course of history. In stories about Gods, and battles that changed geography. They were not supposed to be real. Not in Aelheim, hardly in Arian. Not in the hands of a sickly and pale child. Esra Veyne drove the blade into the stone of the platform. The stone cracked.

The fractures spread outward from the point of impact in jagged lines. The sound was sharp and it silenced everything. The applause died. The entire square went still. The blade pulsed, slow and steady, like a heartbeat. Esra Veyne looked out at the crowd. She spoke quietly, and the silence was so complete that every word carried to the farthest edge of the square even without mana.

"Lord Julian has so graciously come to the Veyne District. He has come and he has offered us help in so many pretty words," she said. The crimson light played across her pale face.

"I carry the blade of Illiana Casper." She rested one hand on the hilt of the blade. The gesture was almost gentle.

"And I think we can help ourselves." The silence held for one more heartbeat. Then the square erupted. Julian heard the roar of the crowd as if from a great distance. He stood on the platform with his hand still extended, palm up, offering partnership to a girl who had never needed his partnership at all. Hero. The word bounced inside his skull and would not sit still. A Hero in Aelheim. A Hero leading House Veyne. Why? When? How? Everything he had so painstakingly done did not matter now. This girl had had known.

She had known when she sent the letter. She had known when he'd draped her square in green. She had let him do all of it. She had needed him to do it, in front of all of these people. She had handed him the rope, and Julian had done his best to hang himself with it. He thought of the bookshop and the empty face that would not leave him at night. He had been right to be afraid. He had been right to send the knife. He should have sent an army. He saw Duke Thalos staring in wide eyed disbelief.

Duke Wardell had stood up from his chair. There was a strangled, croaking sound, one Julian knew came from Alexander's throat. Julian's gaze moved, almost of its own accord, to his daughter. Cordelia stood beside Alexander and her posture was perfect. Her hands were folded. She was not looking at Julian. She was looking at the girl with the blade. Julian Greenward could make out the expression on his daughter's face, and for the very first time, he could not understand it.

Cordelia watched from the small distance between her and the other Lords. She had watched the entire ceremony from her position beside Alexander. During all of this, she had never once looked at Esra. That was the correct thing to do, and Cordelia always did the correct thing. When the light came, she was likely the only person on the platform who did not flinch, because she had known it was coming.

They had sat on the floor of the reading room and Esra had held her hand and told her, and Cordelia had believed her, because she had stopped being able to not believe her somewhere between my only interest is in Cordelia and a window unlatching. Alexander's hand had dropped from her back. She would not miss its presence. Cordelia's mother looked the same as she always did. Cordelia had long since suspected the woman simply could not make any other expression but the correct one. She saw her father's face.

She had seen her Lord Father in many moods. She had seen him charming and furious and coldly calculating and magnanimously cruel. She had never seen him look powerless. Cordelia understood power. She also knew that what she was watching right now was not power. Power was what her father wielded. Power was what Alexander represented. Power was a hand on her back. This was something else.

Esra stood on the cracked stone with her hand on the hilt of a God's blade, and the light that poured from it was the color of her eyes. Esra Veyne was small and pale. She was also the most beautiful thing Cordelia had ever seen. The thoughts settled into Cordelia's chest, and a part of her understood that they would never leave. The crowd was roaring now and the sound had turned to shouting. Some of the shouting came from fear, some of it might have come from awe.

Much of it, she was sure, came from the understanding that something in Aelheim had, after so long, finally shifted. In the midst of all of it, Esra's gaze found hers. Through the crowd and through the crimson light. Through the noise that was building and building. Those red eyes found hers. Cordelia thought of a floor in a reading room. Of a hand held in the quiet. Of a girl who had said someday and meant it. Of a girl who had made Cordelia's chest ache with something she had only ever read about.

And Cordelia thought: I would follow you anywhere. I think I already have. Cordelia smiled, and for perhaps the first time, it was not her perfect smile. The one she had practiced in the mirror for hours, days and weeks. The one fine tuned to the millimeter. It was small and nobody saw it except the girl it was meant for. Esra smiled back. The crimson light pulsed between them like a heartbeat, and the world was very loud, and Cordelia Greenward stood in the middle of her father's crumbling stage.

Now we begin, father. END OF VOLUME TWO