“Why don’t you test me and find out?” Cyrus answered him in a calm voice.
“What now?” Terian asked. “We kill him, right?”
“Not here,” Cyrus said. He glanced back and saw Cattrine frozen, staring across the distance at the Grand Duke. “Hey,” he said, snapping her attention back to him. “Whatever our differences, you will not be going back with him, understand?”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You are …” She swallowed heavily, “… a man of the finest quality. A woman would be lucky to possess you, even for so short a while as I did.”
“Your mush is making me nauseous,” Terian said as J’anda seated himself next to them. “And I’m already homicidal thanks to Hoygraf’s sudden appearance, so let’s not push it, all right?”
“Your sword is usually far better aimed than this, my friend,” J’anda said to Cyrus without a hint of admonition.
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus snapped, “I can’t recall ever stabbing someone in the stomach with the intention to make the wound painful yet mortal. I’ll try harder next time to maximize his suffering while minimizing his chances of survival.” Cyrus’s expression hardened. “Or maybe I’ll just get back to what I do best, which is killing on the spot and leaving no chance of survival.”
“That’s the spirit, play to your strengths,” J’anda said without enthusiasm. “We still may have to deal with this bastard.”
“Not here,” Curatio said as he seated himself with them. “If you truly mean to revenge yourself upon this man, it at least needs to wait until we’re clear of Enrant Monge. Assuming our general doesn’t disagree,” he said with a nod to Cyrus, “I don’t think we should be causing any more hell for our hosts to deal with. We did come here to help them, after all.”
“To the blazes with our hosts,” Terian said, his eyes afire, “in case you haven’t noticed, King Longwell is using us as the spear to keep his enemies at bay while he tries to decide how best to pluck their Kingdoms. He’ll have us sacking their castles ’ere long, sending us all around this land making us keep his damned peace.”
“You ready to leave?” Cyrus asked Terian, challenge infusing every word. “I’d say Alaric’s about due for a messenger, and you could go right along with them-”
“I’m no coward,” Terian said, sullen. “I’ll stay until the end of the fight. But I don’t like being used, especially not to build someone’s empire. We came here to save Longwell’s father’s Kingdom, and we did that. Now he’s just using us to prop up his army.”
“No doubt,” Samwen Longwell slid onto the bench in front of Cyrus, alongside Curatio, and leaned back. “He will keep us here as long as possible and use whatever pretense he can to extend our stay. The timing of this trip and Actaluere’s declaration was so fortuitous I don’t wonder if there weren’t missives exchanged before the declaration arrived.”
“Usually not a fantastic sign when a man’s own son accuses him of sinister motives,” J’anda said with a shake of the head. “What do we do, then?”
“We wait,” Cyrus said as Actaluere’s King was announced. “We sit here and we watch the whole summit, and we decide where we go from there.”
At that moment, the King of Actaluere was announced with great pomp and circumstance, and a title that took almost two minutes for the herald to fully read. When he came out, Cyrus watched along with the others. Milos Tiernan was a younger man than Aron Longwell, or Briyce Unger, for that matter. His hair was long and black, but straight, and his high cheekbones and cold eyes surveyed everything carefully as he entered from the tunnel, a slow, steady gait to his walk, no crown upon his head. He had no crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, no obvious wrinkles. His eyes moved slickly, smoothly, and they were smaller than most, Cyrus judged, as though they were always watching everything around him.
When Tiernan reached the amphitheater, he seated himself in the front row, his gaze focused on a mountain of a man in the front row of the Sylorean delegation. Cyrus had noted the Sylorean when he entered; the man appeared to be nearly as tall as Cyrus himself or possibly taller, and he shifted uncomfortably in his robe, as though he chafed under it as some sort of weight upon him. Long, jet-black hair belied a face that bore a couple of choice scars-one under the man’s right eye that stitched several inches down to his jaw. Another ran the length of his forehead, as though it were just another furrow in his brow.
“And finally,” the last herald announced, launching into a two minute recital of titles before concluding with, “King of Galbadien, Aron Longwell!”
“As a point of literal correctness,” J’anda said with a sigh, “he should have saved the, ‘and finally’ for after the recitation of titles.” The enchanter looked pointedly at Cyrus. “And I thought you were overly impressed with your accolades. You are a rank amateur compared to these shameless self-gratifying professionals.”
“What are you talking about?” Terian said with a malicious grin. “He’s very much in the realm of professional when it comes to self-gratification.” The dark elf cast his wicked smile at Cattrine. “Especially of late.”
Cyrus did not volley back at Terian, instead shifting to watch King Longwell make his way slowly down to the front bench in their segment of the amphitheater. For the first time, Cyrus noted that a few of the grey-robed stewards were lurking behind each set of benches, as though they were waiting for something, standing still, arms crossed behind their backs.
One of the heralds spoke, not echoed by the other two. “Now I introduce to you Brother Grenwald Ivess, the patron of our order, the Brotherhood of the Broken Blade.” A portly, balding man with the last vestiges of grey hair ringing the sides and back of his head made his way down to the empty set of benches on the fourth side of the circle, the unoccupied set to Cyrus’s right.
“The Brotherhood of the Broken Blade has cared for Enrant Monge for thousands of years,” Cattrine said quietly, drawing the attention of all the Sanctuary delegation save for Samwen Longwell, who was leaning over, face resting in his hands, watching the proceedings below unfold as Grenwald Ivess took his seat. “They keep and maintain it as a place of regard for our ancestors who were united in ruling Luukessia. Their mission is to keep it ready for the day when Luukessia will unite again under the banner of old and we will become as great as our fathers before us, equal and worthy to carry on their proud tradition of unity.” She pointed to a fourth tunnel, the one that Grenwald Ivess had come into the garden through. “Out that tunnel is the fourth gate of Enrant Monge, the south gate-also called the Unity Gate. If the day comes that the Kings forge the final peace, those who have attended here will walk out of that gate; it has not been used since Enrant Monge was the seat of all the land.”
“What happened here?” J’anda asked. “What caused the Kingdoms to fragment?”
“I do not know,” Cattrine said. “We have no real records from those days. Our writings have all been lost to the ravages of age, and no one lives who has more than a tale passed down through the millennia, weakened and twisted by the passage of time.” She shrugged. “I doubt you could get an accurate accounting from anyone who wasn’t there themselves to see it-ten thousand years ago.”
Cyrus’s head swiveled slowly along with Longwell’s, Terian’s and J’anda’s, and all four sets of their eyes came to rest on Curatio, who looked back at them impassively, almost disinterested. “Curatio?” J’anda asked.
“Yes, J’anda?” Curatio wore an almost patronizing smile plastered on his face.
“Do tell.”
“Tell what?” Curatio said, maintaining his overly friendly smile as below them Grenwald Ivess stood and launched into a florid greeting that Cyrus didn’t catch a word of. “Oh, I’m sorry,” the healer said, voice slightly above a whisper. “Are you under the impression that I know something about what happened here ten thousand years ago?”
“Ten thousand years ago?” Cyrus asked. “Kind of a funny number. Been coming up a lot lately.”
“A few times in the space of months could be considered hardly more than a coincidence,” Curatio said.
“But it’s not, is it?” J’anda asked. “The War of the Gods, ten thousand years ago? It spilled over here, didn’t it?”
“Not really,” Curatio said. “There were certainly expeditions, but when the war began, I firmly believe it
