Act Two, Scene One
Sandor shut the door, locked the door, and looked at the security camera on the wall. There were sixteen ways to disable it. He chose the simplest, which was to throw a chair at it.
Then he was staring down at his wife’s body. He’d been hers for forty-two years. They’d won wars, raised children, built an empire; for forty-two years they’d been married, and he had no idea what to do next.
“It was for you,” he finally said. “All for you. Everything I could do, I did for you. I never loved glory so much as your smile. No honors won, no respect, not all the worship of the world was worth a jot unreflected in the… the joy of your eyes.”
He sunk his head into his hands.
“I only made myself a king so you could be a queen. If only you’d rise to take your throne one last time - one last day. I was a sergeant in your army, my love; I was your knight sworn to your service long before I ruled anything outside the reach of my hands.
“What am I supposed to do, Thei? I’ve never ruled without you, never judged a feud or tried a lord without your quiet voice in my ear, correcting my every error. You were my shield and my sword, and you were my flag; whenever my will failed, you raised it; when the Smith passed and the world stood in shock, you knew the moment to make us kings, but now you’ve passed; my flag is fallen. Now all that’s left to me is to trail after at walking pace. I’ll see you soon enough.”
He shook his head. “I just need to make it through our last trial first.” He smiled through his tears. “You dodged a bullet, didn’t you, getting out b-”
He could not continue.
“She’s dead? You’re sure.” Countess Whisper looked at her husband, shook her head. “She was my hero as a little girl. Do you know, I never believed she’d actually die?”
“I believe she died. I can’t believe she wasn’t killed,” said Count Solaris, in his deep, deep voice. “Millions on Murdernet and dozens of the best assassins in the world, and she dodged them all to die to her own body failing? It’s inconceivable.”
“I know.” Whisper clung to her husband. “It shouldn’t have happened this way. It should’ve been me, or at least it should have been one final battle with the Six, but -”
“It shouldn’t have been chance.” His eyes narrowed. “Was it chance?”
She paused. “It had to have been.”
“The Royal Family were unbeatable,” he said firmly. “There is no man on earth who could have defeated them. We broke the world when it tried to stand against us.”
“You broke it,” she said fondly. “I was twelve.”
His arms clenched around her. “I remember.” For a moment he stared off into the distance, remembering the boy he’d been twenty years ago, thief of a single power who could die to a bullet and the last student the Tyrant ever took save one. “But how much longer will the king last without a queen?”
“Talking politics with her not yet in the ground,” Whisper said in faked astonishment, then sighed, shrugging off the sorrow. “When the king falls, you should be his heir.”
“I should be,” rumbled Sedaris Solaris-Rooks, Count Solaris, calmly. “I won’t be.”
“Well, not unless a few people die,” said Whisper, calm as her husband. “That’s really not that hard to manage.”
Solaris shook his head. “He is our benefactor. Murdering his children would be discourteous.”
“That goes without saying,” said Whisper, “but murdering several of our fellow counts is a perfectly reasonable practice in a feudal society.”
“No,” he said, and she was silent. Then, after a while, he said, “There are only two of us.”
“You’re worth two hundred. The only reason they lived this long was because he and his wife were real archvillains. His children? Darling, please.”
“Bloody Lizzy killed Acerbus, Starwalker, Firesteel, twenty of Ilderia’s men-at-arms and a dozen of Splicer’s monsters when her powers awakened,” he said. “It took her nine seconds. She had no previous experience with the power.”
“Oh, she’s a fighter,” said Whisper, “but that’s all she is. Has she ever planned a bank robbery, in and out before anyone arrives? Has she ever snuck out of the country past a dozen superheroes? Has she ever, in a word, been outgunned?”
Her husband was silent.
“Then I think that you may well find yourself on his throne, my love, and me on hers. Steelmind is a coward and Bloody Lizzy is a fool, and his wife’s bastard will pose us no threat.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Count Solaris shook his head. “No, love, not yet. We were young, once, and fools, once, and we learned. If they are worthy heirs, stealing their inheritance would be a disservice to him.”
“And if they are fools now and forever?”
“Then we will take what they cannot hold.”
Catherine stared at the wall, waiting for the tears. The party had ended badly, and Elgolian had driven her home, and she’d walked into her room, and sat down on her bed, which was hers, which she hadn’t seen for four years, and waited to cry. She wondered if this was the shock. There seemed to be two of her, at least two of her. She often felt that there were two of her, one that was her parents’ daughter and one that was supposed to be an adult, and then behind them Helen’s friend and a college student and all her other faces but this time all of those hers were clustered up in her brain, and all the rest of her was just staring down at her body.
She wondered if she’d describe it as the sun being missing, decided that it was a bad metaphor, and then realized it was quite a good one. The sun looked so small, up in the sky; if it vanished but the light remained, you’d hardly notice. You’d go home and wonder what would happen without the sun, and then the light would stop and the cold would set in and the earth would veer wildly off-course without anything to orbit around and you’d be staring at a wall, weeping your eyes out, clutching your sheets like a stuffed toy (not that you had one any more, of course, with your sister), shaking, waiting for it all to be done and her to be back.
Bloody Lizzy grinned at Jay Merrero.
“Well, that’s one of four. Here’s to the next!”
He raised his glass to meet the princess’s, concealing his disgust, and they both drank. You don’t need to feel proud of it.
Heavyhand’s son was with the princess in her sitting-room. In spite of her image the decorations were currently sharp and angular, the walls polished silvery metal with spiky decorations, the floor slightly rubbery, the tables and ornaments simple geometric shapes, augmented by occasional abstract sculptures of wires and rods that were regularly changed out as Lizzy grew bored of them.
“Do you want me sounding out Anton?” he asked casually. “He’s not aligned yet, and as bricks go, he’s not bad.”
She tossed her head. “No, Jay. Yes we could use more muscle, but not him. Anton would want to be important and he can’t keep his mouth shut. If I hired him I’d have to kill him; I’d do much better with a couple Continentals if we can get them for a decent price.”
“Right as always,” he said.
“Jay, Jay, Jay, where’s your sense of fun? If you want to flatter me, you’ve got to be original. Find something new about me to compliment! I’m a princess, I already know I’m always right about everything and brilliant as the lightning and my eyes sparkle like the dew.”
“Your brilliance and splendor are far beyond my ability to describe,” he said, bowing. “All I wished was -”
She reached out and grabbed him by the forehead, bringing his gaze into line with hers. If she tightened her grip, very slightly, his skull would pop.
“All you wished was for me to consider that I might want to deliberately recruit people to compensate for all the people I’m going to kill to send a message, so that I have replacements already lined up,” she said, “but Jay, Jay, Jay, I’ve considered that a dozen times already! I have plenty of people I don’t need! Like you!”
“There’s no one in the world you need,” he whispered, “but some of us can save you work.”
She flicked him back to his sea and he fell into it with a thump. “There, that’s how you flatter me.”
He shrugged and drank again as if nothing had happened. “I’ll take it under consideration.”
“I’m sure you will.” She sighed. “You can kill your brother any time you want to.” Her expression was warm and her tone wistful. “I have to wait for him to start it. Wouldn’t want to attract any attention.”
“Unfortunate,” said James.
“Which means I need to cause my family members to cause problems. My brother first. He’ll fight much worse if he’s mourning Junia. Swords, not poison?”
“When you’re queen, you can do whatever you want.”
“Are you saying I can’t now?”
“Livia controls the largest army in the kingdom, and she may have ways of finding out that she shouldn’t. Do you want her against you?”
Her face suddenly expressionless, she reached over and broke the little finger of his left hand. He screamed.
“You may ask questions, but when I have decided, it is decided.”
She shook her head suddenly, and was all smiles. “I want an assassin after his girl. You may depart.”
He nodded, focusing through the pain. That assassin will need to fail.
Steelmind arrived at the prison yard, a tinker pistol in his right hand. The bare grass and concrete was abandoned with only two exceptions; the ever-present robot bodyguards who flanked every living man, and the seven living men, one count and six prisoners.
His guards escorted the prisoners in front of him. One wore power-nullifying handcuffs and the rest normal, all were gagged, none of them armed, each firmly held by two of his Ret-IV bots.
“You are all guilty of criminal espionage on behalf of the Countess of the Fourth,” said Steelmind. “You have been convicted, and the decision has been made to pass the sentence of death.”
The man at the end, grey-haired and haggard of expression, glowered at him.
“Unfortunately for this country, and especially unfortunately for you, my mother died last night. I know that all life must eventually cease, and that it is foolish and hypocritical to mourn the end of one individual’s life while simultaneously ending the lives of others. A rational moral code would either dispense with mourning entirely, or mourn equally for each death.”
He tightened his grip on the pistol in his hand, loosened it again. Flicked the switch from stun to laser.
“Unfortunately for you, I feel an irrational grief, grief beyond measure, at my mother’s death. Emotion is weakness,” he said, his voice unchanging. “Therefore, in an attempt to weaken this emotion, I am going to kill six people unnecessarily in an attempt to convince the irrational part of my mind that death is a perfectly normal part of the greater cycle of life. I hope you understand that I am making that use of you that is most efficient for me, and that no personal condemnation of you or your work accompanies it.” One man on the end tried to run and the Levies held him fast and the haggard man screamed. Steelmind stood in front of him, aimed, fired a single shot at point blank range into his head. Fourth from the left, a skinny balding man fainted; as he did, Steelmind walked up to him, stood in front of him, aimed, fired a single shot at point blank range into his chest, and as the third man’s run was arrested by a tackle from a Levy, and Steelmind walked up to him, aimed, fired a single shot at point blank range into the back of his skull.
“Please,” whispered the fourth, and Steelmind walked up to him, aimed, fired a single shot at point blank range into the prisoner’s head, and turned to the fifth trembling prisoner.
“This seems to be efficacious,” he said.
Without any signal from him, the guards walked back to the prisons, the survivors still held between the robots, and Steelmind looked up to the skies and screamed.