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whump-me · 9 months

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Conquest, Chapter 29: Place of Honor

Chapter 29 of Conquest, a novel-length fantasy whump story about a timid royal clerk captured by the disgraced prince who needs their help to rule their newly conquered country. This series is best read in order. Masterpost here.

Contains: fantasy setting, nonbinary whumpee, male whumper, broken whumpee, royal whumper, reluctant whumper, whumper POV, emotional whump, fantasy politics

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Kezul

Kezul stood at the top of the palace steps and surveyed the assembled crowd. He had debated whether to decorate for the occasion in the style of Danelor or Kyollen Naskor. In the end, he had chosen stark simplicity instead of either. The palace steps had been scrubbed until they glowed. Rather than deal with his Wolves’ reactions at being asked to perform a task they thought was beneath them, he had done it himself, and ignored his father’s silent contempt. All his Wolves’ furs were clean enough to shine in the autumn sunlight. Their weapons gleamed at their sides. They needed no other decoration than that.

Kezul had the place of honor at the center of the tableau—the place that would normally have been reserved for his father. Instead, his father and his Fangs were arrayed beside him. Mir stood to one side, a little past his fangs. They had been polished up as thoroughly as the steps and the weapons, in a palace clerk’s outfit that fit perfectly for once.

They weren’t kneeling. They weren’t shackled. That would have sent the wrong message. And anyway, Mir wouldn’t fight.

The crowd had murmured when Mir had walked out. But Kezul couldn’t know what they thought of seeing a palace clerk standing here with the conquerors, seemingly of their own free will. No one in this crowd would dare show their feelings on their face.

Kezul hadn’t really expected much of a crowd, despite what his few remaining allies among the noble houses had promised. But the crowd had come anyway. A sea of stone-faced Danelor citizens stretched before him.

His allies had done it, but he ultimately had Mir to thank. He had taken Mir’s advice, blamed the burning of the Poets’ Academy on his father. That ruse wouldn’t last long, but it had lasted long enough. Long enough to get the heads of the noble houses here; long enough for them to assemble a crowd for what he had promised would be a speech that would officially put the past days of turmoil behind them.

The heads of the noble houses had hinted that they knew what the speech would involve—that they expected more of a spectacle than a speech. They weren’t wrong there. They were only wrong in the specifics. They thought he would execute his own father in front of them for the crime of burning the academy.

A laughable thought. First, that anyone could kill Vorhullin the Unmaker in cold blood, when every assassination attempt against him had failed. And to do it in public, as if he were a common criminal, for the sort of act he had committed dozens of times before? Kezul didn’t know how they could possibly be so credulous as to believe that—and when he had done nothing to lead them to believe it.

And yet they believed it.

He had read it in the things they said, the subtle implications he might have missed before Mir had taught him the art of subtlety. And he had done nothing to disabuse them of the idea.

They would find out the truth soon enough.

He still had four noble houses on his side. Edel-Nys. Piri-Saa. Tirq-Ani. Clera-Ryn. They were assembled on the steps next to him, opposite Mir. The heads of the other noble houses were here, as well. But not in view. They were currently locked away in a room of the palace close to the entrance, guarded by a dozen Wolves. The palace had no dungeon, so he had needed to improvise. The stable wouldn’t have been enough this time.

They would be brought out at the proper time. His Wolves had collected them quietly. It wasn’t the way the Wolves preferred to do things. It wasn’t his father’s preferred method, either. But the Wolves had managed it—they must have, because no one was fighting in the streets yet. And his father must have meant it when he had said he trusted Kezul handle the implementation himself, because he had not offered a word of objection.

Or maybe this was one final test.

Either way, it didn’t matter. Kezul knew how to give his father what he wanted. And he knew it was his only option.

It had been Kezul’s idea, doing it like this. His father, he suspected, would have sent warriors out to kill them where they lived. But if this was supposed to be about a public show of brutality, then Kezul would give them a proper show.

The impulse for rebellion would be inevitable after this, of course. There were already signs of discontent in the crowds—dark murmurs as some of the assembled people looked at him, or around them at the remains of the burned capital. Even the occasional flash of a weapon. But that, too, was part of Kezul’s plan. He would give those impulses a central place to come out; he would let the rebellion start here and now, where his army and his father’s army were already assembled. Then he would make a show of quelling it easily and brutally. The rebellions that formed elsewhere would be smaller, and they would come on the heels of the rumors of how easily and bloodily he had quashed the first.

The plan had come to him with almost disturbing ease. He didn’t know what it meant, that he could plan a show of violence so easily. Did it mean he was his father’s son after all? And if so, which part of his father’s blood had he inherited—the genius, or the madness? Perhaps a little of both. Perhaps it was impossible to separate the two.

Or maybe it wasn’t his father at all. Maybe this was Mir’s legacy. Mir had taught him diplomacy. Now he would use that knowledge for his own ends.

His own ends?

His father’s ends.

His ends, he thought emphatically, as he looked out over the assembled crowd. He was here to get what he wanted, by any means necessary.

What he wanted?

What did you want?

Not fawning false respect. Not hatred masked by fear.

Not a destroyed country to rule over.

His father’s respect? No, not even that.

The truth, he decided as he stood restlessly on the steps, watching the last of the crowd assemble, was that all the things he thought he had wanted had melted away even as he had grasped them. His own desires were an illusion. Only his father’s desires were real.

He was doing this for his father, then. He was, at last, fulfilling his purpose.

Gyoras had tried to talk to him—only once. He had asked about Mir. Kezul had said that was over and done with—he had come to his senses. Gyoras hadn’t looked satisfied by that. Nor had he looked satisfied when Kezul had explained his plan.

Gyoras should have been happy—the plan lined up with the advice the man had given earlier, only it was more sophisticated, more theatrical, more likely to have an impact. But of course, that had been before that day in the courtyard, when Gyoras had confessed that he had been wrong, that he and Kezul’s entire team of Fangs had changed their minds. That they stood behind his plans with Mir.

Kezul missed the respect he had seen in Gyoras’s eyes. He missed it the way he missed sitting at his father’s feet as a small child as his father laughed and drank. It would always be a fond memory, something that would send a painful burst of warmth through his chest whenever he thought of it. But it would always be bittersweet, because it was a relic of a former time, something he could never get back. It was no one’s fault. Some things weren’t built to last.

No one’s fault?

He thought about his father striding uninvited up the palace steps. He thought about the feeling of Mir’s back muscles tensing under his hands as he shoved them into the pit of rotting bodies.

No one’s fault? Was it really?

Gyoras was standing next to him now, on the steps, the rest of his Fangs arrayed behind him. His father stood to his other side, where the Kezul and his brothers would normally have stood if this were taking place in the cavernous central room of the fortress back home. His father had insisted Kezul take the place of honor.

Kezul had taken it for a trick at first, and hadn’t known whether to refuse it, or to take it and watch his back. He had tried the first, initially. But his father had insisted. And the more his father spoke, the more Kezul had the uncomfortable sense that there was no trick here. He knew the look his father got on his face, and the sound that came into his voice, when he was playing a game he knew he would win. Neither was in evidence here.

Perhaps… perhaps his father truly thought he had earned this.

Perhaps he had.

Along both outer edges of the steps, two columns of Wolves stood, forming four lines that traveled from the palace entrance down to the crowd below. More Wolves mingled with the crowd, hands on their weapons in case trouble broke out. And trouble was certain to break out. The trick was being prepared for it.

The trick was knowing how to use that trouble for his own ends.

His father looked at him, a question in his eyes. The thought of his father asking him a question, even a silent one, made him feel dizzy enough to go tumbling down the steps. Thankfully, he didn’t. He gave his father a single nod.

His father nodded in response. He blew the szuli horn in a single long, low note. It was the task that would have been given to his oldest son, if this were a ceremony back home. It would have signaled that the exalted Unmaker was about to speak.

Kezul raised his hands above his head, palms extended toward the crowd, the way his father would have done back home. He felt too small, too awkward and clumsy, to take his father’s place. The feeling only grew worse when every Wolf in the audience dropped to their knees and lowered their eyes to the ground.

On cue, Kezul stepped forward. He stared out at the gathered crowd. He knew it was time for him to speak, but the words caught in his throat. It had been bad enough when he had addressed his Wolves in the banquet hall that first time. He had felt their eyes on him, judging him, knowing who he was and what his history had been before sitting on the throne. Knowing they saw him as unworthy.

This was different. He saw none of that barely concealed mockery in the Wolves’ eyes. He didn’t even see it in the crowd. He saw plenty of hatred, plenty of fear… but whatever else they thought of him, they at least did not consider him unworthy of his position.

He had finally earned his place.

Even his father was treating him as if he belonged. His father, it seemed, believed it more than Kezul himself did.

That day in the banquet hall, he had resented that no one would give him the respect he craved. Now he had it—or if not true respect, at least the best facsimile he would ever get. Now, he was the only one who felt he didn’t belong. He wanted nothing more than to be sitting in the throne room, alone with Mir, formulating another strategy.

But that was gone. This was what he had. If turned away now, he would have nothing.

Kezul cleared his throat. “Thank you all for coming.” He cringed at himself—he sounded like he was inviting guests into his home for dinner.

But the context of his speech didn’t matter. They would forget it in a few moments anyway, once he did what he was actually here to do. He forced himself to keep going, and told himself not to wish for Mir’s words in his ear, prompting him. Mir would have known what to say.

“All of you who came here today are here because you decided to give me a chance,” he continued. Except for the ones who were clearly here because they hoped to find a chance to kill him and his Wolves. The ones who were doing a poor job of hiding their weapons. But he forced himself to move on.

He had practiced the speech for endless hours, all in Mir’s language, asking Mir for all the words he didn’t know. Mir had given him what he asked for with a blank voice and blanker eyes. Now he found that the practice had paid off—the words were there waiting for him.

“I know there are a locked of conflicting opinions in Danelor about me, and my exalted father, and Kyollen Naskor itself.” A ridiculous understatement. Why had he agreed to give a speech at all? “I know many of you don’t want anything to do with Kyollen Naskor, whether the face you see on the palace steps is my father’s or my own. Especially after the… incident at the Poets’ Academy.” He paused, looking at his father—not for his father’s benefit, but for the crowd’s. “No, call it what it is. A tragedy. A crime.”

The crowd shifted at that, and stirred, coming to life with soft murmurs. The last time he had inspired a crowd to restlessness, his own Wolves had been mocking him. Now, he knew, the crowd was waiting for him to condemn his father. They were waiting for what they thought would be the spectacle of this day.

What they wanted was impossible. The only reason they didn’t know it was because they did not know Kyollen Naskor.

But let them wait for it. It would keep them listening. It would keep them from storming the steps to tear out his own throat—until it was too late.

“But many of you have also offered cooperation,” he said, and ignore the angry murmurs that went up at that. The crowd was not of a single mind on the subject, but he hadn’t expected them to be. “Because you want this country to be what it was,” he continued, acting as though he was unaware of the dissent. “No matter whose hands it is in.”

He opened his mouth to continue—but nothing came out. His throat closed. He didn’t know if he could speak another word. Not today, perhaps not for the rest of his life. He could barely draw in a breath.

It wasn’t panic. It wasn’t even simple fear, which would have been a reasonable reaction to what he was about to do. It was simply… inability. As if he had split into two versions of himself: the one who knew what he had to do, and the one with the power to do it.

Because here was where the true spectacle would begin.

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