Saturday, July 30, 4 S.E.

  Artur Paendrag looked up from his writing desk at the sound of a knock on his door, shifting under the weight of his regalia as he did.

  “Enter,” he said curtly, while lowering his gaze to the logistics reports spread out in front of him.

  The opening and shutting of the door heralded a single pair of footsteps, and he looked up again to see his wife, Gwendolyn, watching him with an amused expression. She was wearing her own regalia in kind: a fur-lined cloak, with a fine dress beneath, buttoned toward her chin. He’d given the Incursion one thing: his wife hadn’t looked so vital, so alive, in twenty years.

  “What?” he asked gruffly, setting down his pen and peering at his Iron Duchess intently.

  She barely looked a day past her mid-thirties now, thanks to System age regression.

  “I’m simply admiring your dedication, Artur,” his wife and the mother of his disappointing son said mildly. “You seem very engrossed lately.”

  Artur grumbled at that and pushed back his chair, bracing his hands on the desk to stand and shuffling his cloak to make it more comfortable. The System demanded he wear it more often than not, in order to retain his control over the Dominion he’d established, but damned if it didn’t make him feel like a hypocrite whenever he did.

  He far preferred his tactical ensemble.

  “I take it by your amused expression that we have word from the scouts?”

  “We do,” Gwendolyn said, her pale blue eyes twinkling as she reached into the satchel at her hip and offered him a letter.

  Artur accepted it readily and flipped it open, withdrawing the contents to read it quickly.

  “...so it’s confirmed,” he said after he did, and set the note onto his desk. “But are we prepared?”

  “Just over fifteen thousand willing souls from the Alliance Army, and another five thousand from the various factions, eager to take their share of such a grand prize, assembling now as requested. A pittance compared to what the United States had pre-incursion, but a veritable tidal wave for our new reality.”

  “Only if they’re decently Tempered,” Artur clarified grimly, and clasped his hands behind him as he moved to the window on the left side of his expansive office. “What is the average rank?”

  “Adept to Contender,” Gwendolyn replied calmly, “that’s for us. For the irregulars, anywhere from Initiate to Contender, depending on where they come from. Mainly it’s the faction leaders and their councils or sycophants at that level—though few of them have any threatening equipment worth mentioning.”

  “What about enemy force disposition?” he asked as he processed the information, and looked down to where Alliance patriots were running drills across the expansive military encampment spread across the grounds outside his residence.

  “Reports are unreliable there, but we do have solid intelligence that Dawnhaven’s Army numbers less than seven thousand.”

  “That’s all?” he asked quizzically, glancing back at her with a furrowed brow. “That seems low.”

  “They make up for the numbers with professionalism,” Gwendolyn said as she settled herself on his desk, flipped out her cloak, and crossed her right leg over her left in a way that made his blood surge. The damned woman could ignite him just by breathing, even on her worst days. “They’re not fools, my love, even if they are disgusting aliens. They came here with purpose and a plan. We’ll be the ones suffering if we don’t respect that.”

  “I know, Gwen,” Artur said in a concessional tone, and switched to folding his arms over his chest, his right hand rising to scratch at his beard. “Any word from Reggie and Mary?”

  “Only the usual,” his wife said in a more reserved tone, which told him everything before she elaborated. “Reggie urged us to ‘reconsider our stance’, and Mary asked for a discourse. The usual drivel. I love them, Art, but I sorely wish we could give them both a good spanking.”

  “It’s the nature of these things,” Artur replied grimly, and sighed in resignation. “Our son and daughter-in-law will learn the truth when they’re painfully confronted with it, and not a moment before. They’ve always been too fascinated with these accursed Fantasies.”

  Gwendolyn hummed quietly at his words and idly tapped her fingers against the desk, seemingly content to sit in silence until he decided to continue. She was in a mood today, he could tell. Almost fifty years of marriage had done nothing to dull the fire in his wife, even before the System had come and alleviated all the pains that age had brought.

  “Any word on the kids?” he asked finally, broaching the more dangerous subject at last.

  Leonidas and Kairi were always a sore spot for Gwendolyn—she loved their grandchildren with all the ferocity of a lioness, and it had been a large part of why she and Maryanne had been so close in the first place. His wife had spent months in Miami with Reginald and his wife after Leonidas was born and made a point of visiting them regularly to help, especially after they’d had Kairi.

  Their grandchildren had been her world, her greatest joys.

  Kairi’s defection had hurt her more than anything else before or after.

  “Ace is somewhere in Dawnhaven still. Reports there are sketchy at best, but he’s apparently made a name for himself as some sort of Arena sensation, not that I’m surprised. The boy always took after you more than he did Reggie.”

  Artur felt pride ripple up his spine at the news, and he nodded while stroking his beard. That made sense. His grandson had always been made of steel.

  “What about Kairi?”

  “That’s less reliable,” Gwendolyn said, and her voice turned decidedly reserved. “She’s vanished, by all reports. Even the spies we planted in her Nomad Clan have no idea where she went—not even what her mission was. The girl’s strong, Art, but she’s still young. I’m worried.”

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  “Our granddaughter is the Reaper’s Shadow, Gwen,” Artur said as he turned back to his wife, and met her maternal gaze with his own. “You only seem to forget that when it’s not staring you in the face, short swords half-bared. She’s not the little girl you used to take to the zoo anymore. She’s a soldier—a killer, one of the best, by all reports.”

  “It doesn’t change the fact she’s our granddaughter,” Gwendolyn said stiffly, and tossed her hair as she looked away from him. “You old grouch.”

  “She’ll come to her senses eventually, Gwen,” Artur said as he moved back toward his wife and reached out to take her chin in his hand, turning her stubborn features back toward him. “She gets that stubborn streak from you, you know. It’s in the blood.”

  “Maryanne is just as stubborn as I am,” Gwen said frostily.

  “That’s probably why Reggie married her,” Artur muttered, and brushed his wife’s platinum hair behind her ear. Even her hair had grown healthier, thickening and flowing with new life. She looked like she had when Reggie was still a boy, and it made his heart thunder every time he took the time to admire her. Damned if she wasn’t the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  Damned if he wasn’t the luckiest old bastard in the world.

  “You Paendrag men,” Gwen muttered with a blush, and reached out to toy with his collar. “You always have to find the most bull-headed woman in the world before you’re satisfied.”

  Artur grunted at that in amusement.

  “You’re referring to my parents,” he said shrewdly.

  “Your mother was about as pliable as a two-by-four, yes,” Maryanne said wryly, and reached up to stroke her manicured fingernails through his beard. Unlike her, his hair had remained grey—but it had thickened and strengthened as well. She claimed she preferred him that way: rugged, mean, strong. He sometimes thought she was just blinded by love.

  Not that he was complaining.

  “Hell, she liked you well enough,” Artur said while admiring his wife’s features.

  “That’s because she knew I wouldn’t tolerate your bullshit, Artur Paendrag.”

  “Ha!” he growled and reached up to lift her hand, kissing the smooth skin with genuine adoration. “Here I thought you liked my bullshit.”

  “Only when it serves a purpose,” Gwendolyn demurred, and then snatched her hand away. “Now, before you get any ideas—” he grimaced when she caught his intentions before he could even voice them “—in that voracious head of yours, what are we going to do, Artur? Even if we take the City, Ace may not be safe by that alone.”

  “It entirely depends on whether the rumors about their Protectors are true,” Artur grumbled while accepting her implicit delay, and settling against the desk beside her. “Venerate rank, apparently. Tier six! Absolute madness, but not outside the scope of possibility.”

  “How do you intend on handling them?” she asked him directly, moving to rest her head on his shoulder.

  “Misdirection,” Artur said grimly. “We can’t face that head-on, if it’s even true, but we can’t ignore it either. Even if they are Venerates, there’s only two of them—and they’ll die just like anyone else if you fill them with enough holes.”

  “You speak like you have an idea,” Gwen said leadingly.

  “I do. I’ve been in contact with another faction through clandestine channels. An unexpected boon, really, but one we can exploit.”

  “I’m listening,” Gwen said, while her left hand trailed along his thigh toward his knee. Damned vixen. “There’s a Colony of Fantasies called Svartfenn, or some such, to the North-West of Dawnhaven. Real nasty bunch of knife-ears. Apparently, they’ve got generational grudges against the Haelfenn that rule Dawnhaven.”

  “Fantasies?” Gwen asked, her hand freezing in place. “You can’t seriously be thinking of allying with—”

  “I’m not, love,” Artur said placatingly, while using his best grunt of distaste to reassure her. “I’m thinking about the Battle of Hastings.”

  “Oh?” Gwendolyn asked in a more positive tone, while her hand resumed its caress. “Proceed.”

  “We’ll use the Svartfenn as Harald Haradra, and make Dawnhaven take the place of Godwinson,” Artur said with grim satisfaction, while his right hand lifted to lay his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “When the dust settles, I’ll swoop in like William the Conqueror and clean up both of them.”

  “And what makes you think the knife-ears will play their part?”

  “The [Aetherium],” he said to her with a grin, his voice edged with cold satisfaction. “I’ve promised it all to them, under the premise that sacking Dawnhaven is the metric for acquiring it.”

  “And what happens when they realize they’ve been lied to?” Gwendolyn pressed, her eyes lifting to look into his own.

  “They’ll be too weak and dead to matter, love. I already know where their accursed ‘Starhold’ is. I’ve leaked the information to the Defiers, Relcaimers, and Nomads. While we’re crushing Dawnhaven, the Svartfenn will be losing their fallback point.”

  Gwendolyn pursed her lips at that and seemed to ruminate on the idea before eyeing him speculatively.

  “You’re hedging bets, which is good, but this plan seems to rely a large amount on a ‘what if’, Artur Paendrag. What happens if they don’t show, or they ally with the Haelfenn? For argument’s sake.”

  “That’s why I used a trump card,” Artur said with undiguised self-congratulatory satisfaction. “The Svartfenn have religious beliefs around the Cataclysm. I may have let slip that they’re located in Dawnhaven. As a prisoner.”

  Gwendolyn’s pale eyebrows rose, and she furrowed them a second later.

  “That won’t hold up to even a cursory investigation, my love, what—”

  “Already handled, though it won’t hold up forever—only long enough to work. We’ve got Terrans in the city, Gwen. The whole thing’s already been set up. I’ve pinned the entire debacle on their succession crisis, trying to use the Cataclysm as a secret weapon. The damned knife-ears ate it up.”

  “Why?” Gwendolyn asked simply, pointedly.

  “Because they’re terrified of it, for whatever reason,” Artur said simply, and grinned to himself. “These idiot Fantasies are as superstitious as old native tribes. They think everything is magic and prophecy, and they’re jumpy about missing the mark. Besides, let’s say everything goes to shit and they don’t show up—who cares? We can just retreat. I’ve got contingencies for that, too.”

  “Retreating won’t look good to the Senate,” Gwendolyn warned quietly.

  “Which is why we need to take care of that, too,” Artur agreed in an equally quiet voice. “Hayes is already off the board, thanks to our little bait and switch. Now we just need to deal with his hardliners. The civilian element is pliable and cowardly; they won’t stand up to my martial Senators if they haven’t got their backbone to lead them.”

  “Mm…” Gwendolyn mused and moved her hand back up his thigh. “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

  Artur shivered at the progress of her fingers and looked down at her hand.

  “No plan survives first contact with the enemy, Gwen, but this one only has to survive them killing each other. Once the Svartfenn and Haelfenn wear themselves down, we’ll sweep in and slaughter the lot of them. It’ll mean the destruction of two of the biggest Fantasy threats in the States.”

  “And then?” she pressed, while her hand went further still.

  “Then,” Artur said with a grunt of appreciation, “we find our grandkids, bring them back to Three Rivers, and set our sights on the damned Continent.”

  Gwendolyn’s smile was radiant when he finished, and she reached up to slide her left hand through his hair.

  “Very well, Conqueror,” she murmured quietly. “We’ll hash out the details you’ve undoubtedly missed with that beautiful brain of yours, and then figure out our next moves. In the interim, though…”

  Her eyes flicked to his desk, and then back up to him.

  “...let’s test the strength of this new desk of yours.”

  Artur stared at her for a moment, and then promptly manipulated his Affinity to sweep the desk clear without a second word.

  “As my Duchess wishes,” he growled in affirmation.

  Gwendolyn’s laugh filled his ears when she pulled him down a moment later.

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