“And you took people from your kingdom and turned them into ... into monsters,” I said, slowly. The super-soldiers would become nightmares, if there wasn’t a guiding mind. “Why did you take them?”
The prince shrugged. “They are my subjects,” he said. “It is their duty to serve their monarch.”
I resisted the urge to point out that he wasn’t the king yet. I needed to keep hacking his wards. They were tougher than they looked. I kept a wary eye on him as he stepped off the throne and paced the room, ranting endlessly. He wasn’t quite mad, but ... I shook my head. He was well on the way. Perhaps, under other circumstances, I would have sided with him. Reuniting the kingdoms into a single empire was a good idea. But the empire he’d build would be one drenched in blood, right from the start. He had to be stopped.
“You enslaved Mistress Layla,” I said. “Why?”
“She was just a woman,” the prince said. I knew sorceresses who’d turn him into a pig and dine on his hams for saying that. He’d deserve it, too. “Who cares?”
“I care.” The sudden anger in my voice surprised me. Mistress Layla had wanted to get away from petty little politics. Instead, she’d found herself kidnapped, enslaved and eventually murdered. I dreaded to think what had happened to some of the other victims. I’d seen too much in Chuter’s mind. “Why enslave her?”
The prince shrugged, dismissively. “I needed an alchemist. She’d already assisted in ordering supplies from outside the kingdom. I thought she’d be open to working more ... closely ... with me. She didn’t want to serve willingly, so ...”
So you enslaved her, I thought, coldly. Mistress Layla had been asked to openly break the rules. She’d said no. The prince had probably been looking in the wrong place. I knew quite a few alchemists with interesting ideas, who wouldn’t have hesitated to brew the prince’s potions in exchange for a place to work far from prying eyes and interfering old fogies. You slapped a collar on her and made her a slave and then murdered her.
The prince turned to face me. “I can make you great,” he said, coolly. “Do you want land? I can give you an entire estate, when I take the kingdoms for myself. Power? Women? I can give you anything you want, if you side with me.”
I wasn’t tempted.
The prince’s scheme was utter madness. He might take the three kingdoms, but ... he couldn’t go any further ... could he? He’d shattered the Compact. He’d draw the Allied Lands into war against him, bringing down the wrath of both magical and mundane society. It might be a good thing, but ... the kingdoms would be bathed in blood before he was brought down. And if by some fluke he won ...
“Tell me something,” I said, as I probed his magic. “What can you offer me, what can you give me, that I couldn’t just take, if I wanted it?”
The prince blinked. I’d surprised him. He’d probably assumed I’d happily bend the knee to him ... and, if not, he could use his wards to crush me. I snorted in cold amusement. The idea was absurd. I was already halfway to cracking his wards. He was just too used to monsters like Chuter, who had tastes forbidden even to one of his station. The prince had been sure of Chuter’s allegiance. He couldn’t make the same offer to me.
“I can offer you legitimacy,” the prince said. “You could be a duke. Or a lord. Or ... or whatever you want to be.”
That might have worked, if he’d made the offer two decades ago, I acknowledged sourly. My father had acknowledged his children - he could hardly do otherwise - but his extended family hadn’t been so keen. They’d looked at us and shuddered, then done everything they could to avoid admitting our existence. But now ...
“I’m already what I want to be,” I said. I drew on my power, readying myself for the fight I knew was about to start. I didn’t want to offer him a chance to surrender, not after everything he’d done, but I had no choice. The White Council expected everything to be done by the book. I had no leeway, not if I wanted him to live long enough to stand trial. “Stand down now and come with me, or ...”
The prince gestured. The swords leapt from the walls and flew at me. I raised a protective ward around myself, half-expecting the blades to be charmed to cut through magic. They glanced off, metal shattering as they hit the stone floor. I snorted. This time, I made no attempt to hide my eyeroll. There were all sorts of stories about magicians who filled their homes with booby traps and charmed weapons, but most of them ended badly. It was all too easy to forget one’s own trap and wind up trapped in it, beyond all hope of rescue. I swept my magic around the chamber, scooping up the fragments and hurling them back at him. He ducked, shielding himself with a wave of raw magic. I jumped up, levitating into the air as he hurled curse after curse at me. I didn’t mind him expending his power. It would give me time to continue hacking his wards.
I split my attention, hurling fireballs back towards him on automatic. The prince kept
