Blood Shaper

Book 5: Chapter 42

“What?” Alahna recoiled from Eleniah’s glare. “I had no idea there would be an attack last night!”

“Bullshit!” Eleniah shouted. “You literally mocked that idiot Karmondur about how you knew all about his plans!” Her scowl deepened as she continued to stare down her cousin. “You dragged us here and put Kay in danger for one of your stupid schemes. What was the plan? Use the excuse of the replacements appearing to get Kay to come so you could force Karmondur to launch his play early? No, that’s too simple for you, isn’t it?”

Alahna watched Eleniah as she ranted, the expression on her facing slowly changing from shock to understanding. She closed her eyes when Eleniah trailed off and took a long, deep breath. “We really should have had that conversation sooner than this.”

“That’s what you have to-“

Kay grabbed Eleniah’s shoulder, cutting her off mid yell. She resisted for a moment, but let him draw he back down to the couch she’d angrily sprung up from.

Alahna appeared vulnerable as she watched Eleniah silently fume, but that went away as she firmed up her posture and looked at Kay. “Do we have time for this? Don’t get me wrong,” She added hastily, “I’m not trying to get out of talking about this, but if there’s a critical emergency right now…”

“I don’t know of anything that needs an immediate response.” Kay replied. He paused for a moment, then shrugged. “I have news about the enemy that I think you need to know, and something could happen at any moment, but I don’t know about anything right now.”

“Good.” Alahna straightened herself out as she turned back to Eleniah. “Eleniah. I had absolutely no idea that Karmondur was going to pull anything last night, let alone go for a full blown coup. He was one of the people that we were planning to look into regarding the people who weren’t replaced by whatever those black monsters are that were still acting strangely, but we hadn’t discovered any connections before the dance started. I thought that Karmondur was at least smart enough to not try anything when a guest as high ranking as Kay is was present, because then I’d have an excuse to crack down on him hard, but even in my least charitable estimations of him I wasn’t expecting a terribly planned attempt on my life.”

“Then what was all that about after the first attack?” Eleniah demanded. “What was the line? ‘I’ve known about what you’ve been planning for years’, or something like that.”

“Grandstanding.” Was Alahna’s immediate reply. “Dramatics and showmanship. Having someone try to kill me makes me look weak. Karmondur was saying through his actions that he thought he could take me, that my power and reputation didn’t scare him enough to ward off the attack. Dramatically responding to him like he was absolutely nothing and I knew what he was doing all along turns the metaphorical story around in my favor. Now instead of a queen who can’t keep one of her dukes in line or at least intimidate him enough that he doesn’t try to kill me, I’m a strong queen who knew exactly what was coming and thought it was so beneath me I didn’t even care about stopping him before he got close enough to strike.”

“It wasn’t totally a lie,” She explained, “I have known for years that Karmondur wants me dead, but I’ve known that since I spanked him and took his lands away to create the Isles as they are today. I had no knowledge that he was subverting people in the palace and planned to move to kill me this soon though. I was expecting him to actually develop a real chance of winning. If he’d managed to kill me last night and had no follow ups, my generals would have torn him to pieces as soon as they found out. He didn’t even try to recruit any of them to his cause. I guess I overestimated him.”

Eleniah stared at her cousin, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

With a small huff Alahna dropped back against the couch. “Eleniah, you would think after… No, you weren’t here, were you? You were already gone at that point. Damn.” She reached up to rub at her forehead. “A few years after you left my family, the husbands and all my kids, sat me down and gave me an intervention. They told me about how much of a bitch I’d become and how I was ruining my relationships with people by always scheming and twisting things.” She snorted a laugh at Eleniah’s look. “Yes, exactly like I did with you.” She flopped even farther back against the cushions. “When you told me what I was doing and how you felt, I reacted defensively and didn’t listen, which made it even worse. I did the same at first when it was my husbands and kids, but with them I couldn’t just order them out of my sight. I mean, I could have,” She chuckled ruefully, “It just would have gone badly for me.” Alahna sat back up to make eye contact with Eleniah. “I know that I was the one who hurt our relationship with my own crap, and I know that I’ve lost a lot of credence with you because of that, but until I can really show you that I’ve gotten better, can you accept it on credit for now? I’ll swear it on my kids that I’ve changed for the better, and you can ask them about it, they’ll back me up.”

Eleniah stared back, scrutinizing Alahna’s face for any trace of a lie or a hidden motive.

“I think it would help if you talked to us about an even we were both involved in that helped grow her distrust of your plotting.” Kay interjected himself into the family moment for Eleniah’s sake. “What about Tumbling Rapids? That seemed to go exactly the way Eleniah said it would with your kind of duplicitous scheme using her as a cats paw.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Alahna groaned. “That mess. That was the consequences of my actions coming to bite me in the ass with a vengeance, with a little dash of not paying close enough attention to ambitious spies.”

“Please, go on.”

“The original plan only involved slowing down or stopping Nelam’s plans to annex Tumbling Rapids. The… Actually, I should give you some background so you know how it all developed into what it did. The Seramist Isles are an island nation, obviously enough, and we don’t have a lot of space to grow food or a ton of resources to exploit. We rely on trade a lot and I am always pushing to develop new trade routes or make new trading partners so my people have more opportunities and don’t have to worry about shortages. Tumbling Rapids is far from here, but the rivers they have drive large amounts of trade and even as long as the trip to get there is, the right cargo can make a lot of money there. They aren’t out biggest trade partner by a long shot, but they’re worth keeping an eye on. When Nelam sent a “delegation” to the city, which is their traditional first move toward taking territory, some of the city’s councilors started calling in every favor they had to slow the Nelamians down. A few of those favors got me to send at least some help.”

“And you don’t want Nelam taking control of a city you want to keep trading with.”

“Exactly. We don’t trade with Nelam, period. Not only are they disgusting slavers, but they support a lot of pirates that attack our shipping, whether directly or indirectly. Nelam taking control of Tumbling Rapids would cut a noticeable chunk of our revenue away, so I tasked some of our people in harrying the Nelamian delegation. Then I got news that you were moving in that direction Eleniah, so I sent you a letter asking you if you would help out.”

“It came across as more of an order.”

Alahna grimaced. “Sorry? I didn’t mean it to be. I honestly just saw it as a good opportunity to put someone strong that I trusted in front of a situation I didn’t like. And if it maybe pushed things towards us eventually patching things up and you coming home that would have been great too.” She trailed off, looking sheepish. She shot a sullen glare at Kay. “Not that that’s going to happen anymore.”

“Visits can and will be arranged. How did what sounds like you wanting Eleniah to just be present and act as a trump card turn into her doing spy stuff and me getting captured?”

“They’d better. And the captured thing had nothing to do with me.” She made a face, “At least those idiots were smart enough to help you get out of there when that happened.”

“Which idiots?” Eleniah asked, “Your spy who dumped a bunch of stolen money on him?”

“Her among others, but we’ll get to that. The plan was for Eleniah to be a little more active than just waiting for a big fight and jumping in then, and you were originally doing exactly what I planned, listening around and seeing if you could find out their plans or any leverage they were working to gain so we could snatch it out from under them and maybe a little sabotaging the reputation of that Adventurer’s Guild knockoff of theirs by taking their jobs. Picking up a student wasn’t planned for, but it wasn’t unexpected either. Then the idiots who work for me started getting cocky and adding things I didn’t order.”

“These would be the ambitious spies you mentioned?”

“Yeah. Tumbling Rapids is far away and not too important, not important enough to put our best spies in at least. It became something of a punishment detail for some of the less well behaved agents that are still worth keeping around. The crop we had on hand when this was going down weren’t the worst, but they needed to cool their heels and learn that spy work isn’t glamorous and it isn’t about climbing the ladder.” She glanced sheepishly at Eleniah, “The one in charge was also here during my bad period of using you as a pawn and thought that was the way to go about things.”

“You’re saying the agent in charge in Tumbling Rapids made changes to your plans without your authorization?” Eleniah asked coolly.

“I set the precedent when I was being a bitch and I didn’t think to go around telling people not to treat you like that when I finally owned up to my poor choices,” She replied firmly. “And that’s on me, no ifs, ands, or buts. However, the agent in charge did have orders and he wildly bent those orders in some places, added things in others, and fragrantly disobeyed them on a few occasions. On his order the mole in the Nelamian delegation started pushing the more malleable of their two leaders into stupider and stupider ploys to gain ground, which I think is a terrible plan but apparently it worked. That led to Kay getting captured and all the fallout of that. The mole apparently decided on her own initiative to use the confusion to swipe the Nelamian delegation’s treasury and use Kay as a mule to get it out.”

“How did she plan to get it back from me?”

“I don’t know, accosting you to get it back? Theft? That whole cell got busted down and retrained for being idiots when reports on what happened finally got back to us. We got what we wanted out of it, but it was such a hack job saved by Eleniah being competent and the Nelamians being incompetent that I wanted to wash my hands of it completely.”

“Good, because we’re not giving the money back.”

“In my mind it’s yours by right of conquest. If you’re feeling generous you can call it a ‘for your troubles’ payment.” Alahna shifted to face Eleniah full on. “Are we… alright?”

Eleniah reached out and took her cousins hand. “I’m sorry for snapping and shouting at you. It felt like things were going right to where they were when I left, and now Kay was being dragged into it too…”

“I get it, and I’m sorry that I ever acted like that so you wouldn’t trust me. There are things I haven’t told either of you because they’re secrets or confidential information, but I haven’t lied or misled you about hwy you’re here, what I’m asking you to do, or what’s been happening.”

“Thank you.” Eleniah squeezed once before letting go. “Before we leave we’re definitely having that in depth conversation we talked about, but like I said earlier, I love you and you’ll have to turn into a monster for me to stop.”

“Love you too. Speaking of turning into monsters, what did you learn about our gooey enemy?” She asked Kay.

Eleniah grimaced. “Bad choice of words on my part.

“There’s a chance I’m wrong, since this is an enemy from a universe beyond this one,” Kay told them slowly, “But the evidence so far is supporting my theory. I believe we’re facing some kind of eldritch nanomachine swarm. We might be facing a full blown otherworldly gray goo scenario.”