Page 81 of Mother of Death and Dawn

At the center of the circle lay six human corpses. A wrinkled old woman and an equally old man beside her. A woman with dark hair and a man with greying temples. A young woman. A child. All were somewhat green, their bodies bloated and misshapen. They wore white, stained red.

“The Asmiroffs were kind people and respected Threllian nobility,” Lady Zorokov said. “They did not deserve such horrible deaths. They were tortured for hours by their own beloved slaves, while they listened to the rebels take control of their city from outside their walls, helpless.” She knelt beside the bodies, stroking the young woman’s blonde hair. Her voice was brittle when she spoke again. “My sister was found in a room alone, ripped to pieces. I imagine what it must have been like for her, to wonder if her children were being subjected to the same torture that she was.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” Caduan said. “And I sympathize with your grief.”

“Thank you.” Lady Zorokov remained kneeling at her sister’s corpse.

I looked out over the horizon. The decimation extended in all directions. Meajqa did the same. I wondered if we were thinking the same thing.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

Lord Zorokov’s face hardened. “We burned the city,” he said. “Fire and Aran lightning dust.”

“You burned it instead of retaking it?”

I could see how Meajqa would be a talented diplomat. He carefully layered the judgement in his voice, coating it with enough honey to mask the bitterness, however pungent.

“Retaking it would have been… costly,” Lord Zorokov replied. “Better for it to burn than to remain in the hands of the extremists.”

Meajqa and Luia exchanged a glance of shocked disgust. But I was not surprised. This was what humans did. They destroyed what they could not have. So many times, they used me to do it.

I rubbed my palm, where the flower had sat mere hours ago.

“Why have you brought us here?” Caduan said.

Lady Zorokov rose, her grief replaced with a rueful smile. “We have been accommodating with your requests. As we should! We are honored, after all. For your people to come out of centuries of hiding and immediately ally with Threll… well, power attracts power. Our peoples have many differences, but I see many similarities, too.”

Luia looked a bit sickened by this comparison.

“However, I’m afraid we have a problem. We have given you tens of thousands of soldiers, sent them to Ara’s reaches—”

“You had equal interest in staving off Ara’s advancement in Threll,” Meajqa pointed out. “We discussed this at length.”

“That is partly true, but we also would not have earned Ara’s ire if we hadn’t allied with the Fey. Now tens of thousands of our most skilled soldiers are fighting a war on your behalf, while our most respected Lords are being murdered in their own homes by sewer rats.”

Lord Zorokov leveled a hard stare at Caduan. “We have fought your war for you, all while you send barely a handful of Fey soldiers and some of your… creations to the south. This cannot continue. We need to divert focus from Ara and deal with the rebels once and for all.”

He said it like his word was law. He flicked a cold glance to me, and I almost snarled at him.

“Besides, this too would be mutually beneficial,” Lady Zorokov added. “Seeing as the rebels have stolen the mysterious item that holds such high importance to you… even if, sadly, you haven’t trusted us with its significance.”

Such sweet, poisoned words.

“What do you propose?” Meajqa asked, tightly.

“The rebels are weak,” Lord Zorokov said. “They’re slaves, after all. Poorly educated, and physically inferior. But one of their greatest weaknesses is also their greatest strength—their decentralization. There are many of them, and they move quickly, finding new strongholds like vermin moving to a new nest. There is no single head for us to sever. If we strike in one place, they will retreat and regroup before we can flush them out, and soon there will be another attack in another district of Threll. But we can wipe them out all at once with one powerful attack. We strike all four of their key strongholds at the exact same time. They’ll have no time to run, regroup, or warn.” His gaze swept over the four of us. “But to do this, we need power.”

“Pull your forces from the south, then,” Iajqa said.

“We need more than that. We needmagic. Give us ten thousand Fey soldiers. At least half of them skilled in magic use. That number is a mere fraction of the Threllian soldiers who have assisted you against Ara.”

“I can offer shades,” Caduan replied, without hesitation.

“The shades are not enough. They lack intelligence. We need warriors. Magic Wielders. There are few Wielders in Threll, and too many of those that are here are among the rebels. This is non-negotiable.”

Iajqa’s jaw went tight. “Watch your tone,” she said, in a low voice.

“We mean no disrespect.” Again, Lady Zorokov smiled. “We only intend to set out a clear request.”

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