Chapter 12: - Competition

  Exia didn’t notice his tiredness as he made his way through the hallways. It was an odd truth to consider—the fact that a year ago he’d have been bleary eyed, groggy, and filled with despair upon waking up at the earliest hours of the day to attend Volkov’s class. And now it seemed a mundane occurrence.

  A testament to his blood. Proof that, for all the bastard’s torture, Volkov simply would not and could not break him. He may punish him, strike him down, but Exia was like tempered steel and would not yield. He would only grow hotter, hotter, hotter, and then when the time came, scorch his enemies with his fury.

  So today, when Exia entered the study room, he did so with his head held high and a certainty in his guts that he could face anything the usurper threw at him.

  Exia was wrong.

  He was greeted with a sight he was well used to by now. There was his seat, the board—and Volkov standing next to it. But there was something added now, someone added, whom Exia had not accounted for. Whom he could never have accounted for.

  “Your Grace,” Volkov began stupidly. “You are familiar with Navtej Volkov—my son. He will be taking lessons alongside you from now on.”

  Exia blinked, then blinked harder, but the boy was still there when he opened his eyes each time.

  You have got to be fucking shitting me…

  Navtej Volkov did not seem necessarily pleased by the fact either, looking nervously scared of Exia, as if he might do something insane like hold a blade to his neck while threatening to feed him his own organs.

  Exia took solace in that at least, though it was no great amount. He did not like this boy, and he did not want to spend time around him.

  He set his eyes on Volkov, grit his teeth and did not call him ten thousand slurs. “Understood, General,” Exia replied the way he knew he was supposed to.

  The General seemed neither pleased or displeased. “Sit,” he ordered, and Exia did. Volkov cleared his throat. “Today, we are going to be talking about tactics. We will first need to establish a base understanding of theory between the both of you. We shall do that with a question. Why do we dig trenches in a straight line?”

  That one gave Exia pause. He didn’t know much about military tactics, why would he, he wasn’t one of the useful idiots who were thrown at gunfire. He was [Mage], and rather than manoeuvre around battle fields, he would reshape them. Still, the question needed an answer, and Exia got his mind to thinking.

  The reason came quick. “Because it’s the shortest distance between two points. A straight line saves time and labor. It’s faster to dig, easier to map, and keeps the line uniform for communications and resupply. And it lets everyone in the line see forward clearly—so no one misses orders or enemy movement.”

  Volkov nodded. “You’re right, it is faster. Cleaner. And easier,” his eyes fell on his son. “Navtej?” he asked, expectantly and patiently.

  The boy was wracked with nerves, as Exia was beginning to think was his default state—however, this time it did seem a bit intense for simply not knowing the answer to a question. Exia couldn’t imagine what Volkov was expecting from the boy; perhaps he’d gotten far too used to dealing with minds as sharp as his and forgotten what the average child was actually capable of.

  Volkov didn’t say anything however, he just waited, silent. When his son spoke up, it was with a soft meek voice. “I don’t know…” he told his father, and Exia almost felt bad for the kid.

  “And why don’t you know,” Volkov pressed.

  Because your son is a simpleton, Volkov, Exia almost said.

  “Because…” The boy frowned. “Because I wouldn’t build a trench in a straight line…” he told his father.

  “And why is that?” Volkov asked, eyes neutral as always.

  Navtej shifted his gaze between Exia and Volkov, voice still trembling but firmer now, like a wire pulled taut. “Because if you do, and the enemy breaches it… they can storm down the whole thing. One squad, one unexpected assault. Everyone dead with no corners to delay it or hold them. Like... like slicing down a hallway. He looked to his father now, unsure, but no longer hiding. “And if a shell lands inside, it kills more men. The blast travels further if there’s no bends. It doesn’t stop—it just keeps going.”

  Volkov said nothing. He only gave the faintest nod.

  Navtej continued, a hint more confident now. “So the trenches would have to zig-zag,” Navtej added. “So storming men can’t travel easy. So blasts stay in one place. So... so we don’t all die in a line.”

  “Correct.” Volkov nodded, seeming just as stoic as ever.

  Exia looked to the boy, still small, still unassuming, but certainly not as dull as he’d once thought. It made his blood boil. “That doesn’t count!” Exia barked. “That’s a trick question!”

  Volkov raised an eyebrow in a way that made Exia feel like he’d just peed himself in front of the man. “And why wasn’t Navtej tricked?”

  “Because…” Exia’s words hung in his throat. He bit down on his teeth hard, tightened his fists and glared at the bronze bastard. The boy inched away like a coward, and Exia made a promise to himself. Never again…You’re never getting the better of me again.

  ###

  Sasha had still not found the King. Given that locating the King of Bessmertnyy was likely crucial to her job description of guarding him, she couldn’t imagine that was a good thing. She’d finally been everywhere in the Governor's manor and still couldn’t find him.

  She made her way down the hallway and heard a voice ahead approaching her. It was one she recognised. “A girl Mage I tell you, I couldn’t believe my eyes!” the governor exclaimed. “I mean—” he chuckled, “what if it's the red time of the month and she sets everything ablaze in a blood fuelled frenzy.”

  A thin, sharp laughter emerged from another man—the kind that people who were eager to please their bosses let out. “I wouldn’t want to deal with that paperwork.”

  The Governor snorted. “And I tell you—I could barely understand a word she said, you know, because she ‘toilkes loike dhis,’” He added, doing a crude caricature of her southern Bessmertnyy accent,“and, she’s not even from here?!”

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  “You don’t say?!” The sycophant exclaimed.

  “I do sir, I do—has the red hair of the Dragonian Isles—and you know you much an upstart their women can be.”

  Sasha looked to the left and right, and found no doors to either side of her that she might have been able to leave through. Fuck…

  “And—” The Governor walked into view and held his tongue. From the look on his face, she could tell he knew she had heard him, and it was from that very look that she knew he didn’t quite care. He seemed guilty, but in the way a naughty schoolboy might be after being caught looking up the stairs to see up girls’ underwear.

  The sycophant—now revealed to be a wiry tall man—shared the very same look once he figured out what was happening.

  “Captain Sasha Osin,” the Governor stopped and greeted—stressing her title as if she were a little girl playing pretend, and he a grown man having the decency to keep her illusion going.

  Sasha didn’t grumble, she didn’t frown, she didn’t glare, she didn’t do any of the little things that would later come back to bite her were she looking for a promotion in the future or in need of these men’s help for anything at all. “Governor,” she greeted back.

  “Where’s the King?” he asked, looking behind her as if expecting him to pop into existence right then and there.

  Oh, he’s disappeared, gone, reducing the number of people who could possibly hope to protect you from decapitation to one, Sasha didn’t say that. But she would have killed to see the look on his face if she had. “He’s around, taking a tour of your manor, I believe.”

  The man nodded, relief coating his eyes at that. “Good, good. I must say, the only reason why I hired a Shifter—even a Magnitude Seventy-ninth one—was because I’d heard the General had domesticated the wild thing. Even still, I feel much, much safer with the King around to beat them back to the wilderness if they prove too savage to be reasoned with.”

  The Governor smiled, and Sasha did not smile back.

  He seemed to take offence to that—like she’d just spat in his coffee while maintaining heavy eye contact. “That will be all Sasha!” he snarled and kept on walking. “And bring me news on the damned Zakadochnyy already, woman!” he called out when he was past her.

  Sasha sighed, hoped she wouldn’t pay for that later, but knew she would.

  She continued walking, because there was still the King to find. He wasn’t here, she had in fact checked all of here, so She was confident in her certainty that he wasn’t. That only meant he was outside. So Sasha would have to go outside too. Fuck.

  On her way out, she walked past her room—the one the Grovenor had set aside for her and Exia to stay in while they worked the case—and heard the shower running.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  She opened the door, and found the King’s fine silks strewn across the bed and floor. Sasha turned to the bathroom door, where she knew the King was inside, but couldn’t bring herself to open it to check—heavens knew what she might see if she opened it. Knowing my luck, I’d probably walk in on half a dozen women giving him fellatio. Sasha chose the safer option instead—she knocked. “King Exia, are you in there?” No response. She knocked again. “King Exia, are you—”

  —”one second, one second!”

  Relief flooded Sasha, and then rage—gnevdamned righteous fury at being forced to run around looking for this idiot for hours. She had half a mind to lay into him—no she had more than half. “Where the piss were you? I had been looking for you for forever, in bedrooms, toilets, wardrobes, fucking drawers—drawers, and you can’t even fit in a drawer, you long legged bast—”

  The door swung open, and King Exia stood before her—body wet with water, hair dripping, and with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist as a modicum of decency. “Hello Captain,” he smiled.

  “Wh—where were you?” Sasha asked more than demanded, feeling the heat leave her voice as if blasted away by a cold wind. His skin was pale, smooth and lean muscles curved into his form as if he were the sculpture of some ancient hero carved with truly, truly blessed hands. There were scars along his body too, most old—thin faded lines—and a few new, bright, faintly orange and recently healed.

  Sasha’s attention was soon drawn away from those, however, and settled on a single droplet of water. She followed it as it slid down his chin, landed on his chest, curved around the swell of his pectoral and rode those sculpted waves of muscle along his stomach on its slow descent down…

  Down.

  Down.

  Until—”You’re staring, Captain,” the King noted— bastard wearing a smug grin while he did.

  “I wasn’t staring,” Sasha clarified. And then promptly stopped staring. “Where were you?” she asked again, this time more forceful. Her heart was racing. Why was it racing? Perhaps because I’m furious at the cunt that had me running around all day.

  “I already said where—clearly, you weren’t listening.” he smirked, made his way to the wardrobe, stopped, and looked over his shoulder at her. “You might want to turn around now.”

  Sasha did, and heard the soft thud of the King’s towel hitting the floor.

  “I had reason to believe the Black Snow had valuable intelligence in regards to our investigation. So I asked them a few questions and they helpfully volunteered the information I needed,” the King explained.

  Black Snow. Where had she heard that name bef—they were a bunch of ex-military sickos who ran around setting people on fire. The realization hit Sasha like a truck moving at full speed and rigged to explode on impact with a group of school children. He would have needed his gloves to get through them.

  Sasha checked her pocket—found the King’s gloves. She checked her other—found hers as well. That meant there was another pair of gloves at play here. Sasha whipped her head around, and was relieved—yes, relieved—to see that the King had his trousers on. “Whose gloves did you use?!” she barked.

  “Huh, oh these,” the King hummed, reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of bloodied gloves—they were worn at the seams, as if stretched loose by larger hands that it was made for. Sasha strode forwards and he dropped the pair in her hands before she could snatch them out of his. “You really should get rid of these, they’re evidence of governorcide.”

  “You don’t fucking say,” she hissed. Sasha wore a glove. Coat. Her hand erupted into flames and the glove was turned into ashes.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Navtej Volkov slid into the room with the grace of a dove and the warmth of the sun. “Hello all,” he smiled, and set his eyes on Exia. “I heard the Captain yelling, so I assumed you were back.”

  “I am, and with news too,” the King excitedly told him. “Really good news, the kind that would make you go, ‘oh, Exia, you're so smart, big, strong, and handsome, I was a fool to ever think myself your intellectual equal.’”

  Navtej laughed. “Oh come on Exi, I would never think myself your intellectual equal. That would be a gross underestimation,” he grinned, a sharp edge to his lips now.

  The King chuckled. “You bastard. How about it then, a quick quiz, just like old times? Let’s head to the library, have the Captain come up with the questions.”

  “I must admit, I have missed humiliating you.”

  “Captain”—the King gestured with his hands, eyes still on the other man—“hand me your gun, will you? I need to hollow out my brain to make this somewhat challenging.”

  “Or—or”—Sasha began quickly, eager to get things back on track—“we can focus on the task at hand right now.”

  Navtej Volkov bit down on his jaw and then relented with a nod. “The Captain is right.”

  “Ha, coward!” King Exia heckled.

  Navtej—the only other adult in the room— did not give in to the bait,though Sasha did see it was a near thing.The King gave a briefing on his recent findings thereafter.

  Sasha took it all in. “Did you need to add the part where you turned a man’s skull into mist?” she asked, feeling her guts still churning.

  “No, no I did not,” the King said. “And yet I did anyway, and for that, you are welcome.”

  Sasha just glared at him, and the bastard beamed back at her. She flicked a gaze to Navtej and he seemed to be biting his finger, eyes hard in thought. “This is big. Truly big. We cannot tell the Governor; his people have far too many leaks. We’ll have to investigate this ourselves.”

  Sasha couldn’t disagree with that; Belavkin did not look like a man who kept a tight ship.

  Navtej pulled his sleeve up and looked at his watch. “Volkhaem Archives…” he said, voice trailing—a sign that he was thinking out loud. “Far from the center, today’s a busy day because of baryshden, so a lot of foot traffic. That'd take us two hours thirty minutes.”

  “It’ll just be about night time then,” Sasha noted.

  “More than enough time.” Navtej replied quickly. “But still best we move quickly. “I’ll need to give the Governor a decoy briefing to both explain our absence and not tip off anyone in his circle that we suspect a thing. You two go on ahead, I’ll meet you there.”

  Sasha nodded, turned to the King, and found him wiggling his fingers expectantly. She tossed him his gloves, he slid them on, walked towards the balcony and walked off of it.

  “Good luck, Captain,” Navtej said, held her eyes for a moment, and then he was out of the room.

  Sasha slid her gloves on, walked up the balcony, felt the presence of Gnev in the back of her mind, and leapt off the building.