The duelist 11, p.13
The Duelist 11, page 13
So, was this fight actually a way to help me? Had Crevan volunteered to fight so he could grant me entry to the Council?
He was fighting excellently as well, but he was very well-matched against me. Arguably too well-matched. Crevan must have been assessing my combat limits and pushing right up to the edge, to make the fight look as even as possible. The only question was whether he planned to steal the rug from under my feet, or to let me win. I was a skilled fighter by this point, but someone who’d grown up in Aventoll would have decades more experience than me.
Even so, I could tell Crevan was putting effort into this, so I was at least a proper adversary and not some dumb kid he was just humoring. I heard small grunts of effort from him as I pushed back against his blows, and I saw his amber eyes widen when one of my sword thrusts came a little too close for his comfort.
As we continued to fight, another lightbulb went on in my head when I caught sight of a cockatoo Councilman from Nata, with the same white and coral plumage as Vel-Rala.
She’d warned me not to fall victim to the prejudices of my world. Crevan was a fox, and I had assumed that meant he was sly and cunning. But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he really was an ally I could trust. This fight wasn’t about consolidating his position within the Council by shoving out the newcomer. Instead, it was about letting me in, so he had someone he could count on at his side.
“You fight well for someone who’s only been on Aventoll a few months,” Crevan muttered to me as the pair of us grappled for the advantage on a particularly forceful strike. “Do you think you can make it look good?”
“Depends,” I muttered back. “How much of this is stage dressing and not you actually struggling?”
“Honestly?” the fox Councilman answered. “Not as much as I would like.”
At that moment, Crevan shifted his blade slightly, and the pair of us pulled away to go for another blow. It was even more fast-paced than before, and I was sure that if both of us hadn’t actually been in on some scheme, if this had been a real fight, we would have been cut to ribbons by each other’s swords. It was too perfectly choreographed, but I suspected none of the Councilmen, in their arrogance and disinterest, would have noticed we were putting on a bit of a show. Just like with Teivel, none of them had been in real Duels for decades. Maybe ever.
I saw Crevan’s signal when he gave it. He raised his sword and held it just a moment too long before he swung like he was trying to slash me in half from the side. I dodged out of the way and saw he’d left himself open on purpose. The swing of his sword was too large, too dramatic, and it would take him too long to recover from its momentum and shift into a defensive position, so I shoved my own blade in the gap between his shoulder and neck, with the sharp edge pressed lightly against the fox-man’s throat.
Crevan raised his arms in surrender and dropped his sword to the ground with a clatter that echoed around the suddenly-silent Council Chamber. I wasn’t sure if it had always been this quiet, and I’d been distracted by our fight, or if the Councilmen had been murmuring to one another, but now fell silent when they saw I’d won.
I stood there for several long moments with my sword against Crevan’s jugular, just to make sure every Councilman got a good look, and then I pulled Decisiveness away from the fox Councilman’s neck and sheathed it back at my side.
“Councilman Brightwood,” Crevan said to me as he picked up his own blade. “Please, take your seat.”
I looked over at the group where all the Councilmen from Alem were sitting. There were nine of them, because Teivel had been the tenth, thanks to the Council’s slaughter of the Lycaen Ashers, but I decided I didn’t want to sit with them any more than they wanted to sit with me. Besides, I wasn’t from Alem, I was a Traveler, so I sat down in an empty section of the seats and watched as Sha-Kane took his own seat, next to the cockatoo Councilman.
The moment the pair of us sat down, Councilman Felin stood up again.
“We are adjourned for today, my friends,” he said, and immediately all of the other Councilmen rose from their seats and began to file toward the doors.
“Adjourned?” Sha-Kane asked.
“Yes,” Felin answered crisply. “Despite your recent entrances, it is late in the day, and there is no more work to be done.”
I knew for a fact it was early afternoon at the latest, to say nothing of the nearly-overflowing petitioners’ box on the far side of the center floor.
Amaya had explained all this to me during my etiquette lessons. Since non-Councilmen were forbidden from entering the Chamber, if someone had a grievance or suggestion for the Council, they had to give it to a ‘runner’ who would write it down and place it in the petitioners’ box. The petition would then be read by the Council, and they would debate on what to do about it.
I didn’t like how the petitioners were unable to make their case directly to the Council. For all they knew, the Council just laughed at the people’s complaints and threw the slip of paper away. And, judging from what I’d seen of the Council so far, I suspected that was precisely what they did. At least back on Earth, there were cameras inside Congress and the Senate, so non-government employees could see what they got up to. On Aventoll, they didn’t have that technology yet, and the government was almost entirely free from any accountability.
And that wasn’t even considering the Council could just refuse to fight the Scourge if they felt they weren’t being properly paid and adored.
I ground my teeth, because the petitioners’ box was far from empty, and they all knew it. I also knew if Sha-Kane or I were the last people left in the Chamber, the Ashers would try to make us be the ones who stayed behind so the Council could remain ‘in session.’ And they’d probably wait several days to reconvene, just to fuck with us.
Not fucking likely.
I wove in between the other Councilmen and was out of the Chamber long before the last of them had trickled out, as was Sha-Kane. The cockatoo Councilman ended up being the one at the back of the line, and he glared at us both as Felin announced he would be the one who remained.
“Thank you for your generosity, Councilman Sar,” the cat-man said, and he shot me a cold glare before he stalked off.
“You must really have a dedication to Aventoll to have willingly joined this organization,” I said to the osprey-man. “I think I preferred hunting down enemies across Aventoll and Dueling them on pirate ships.”
“It is an unfortunate truth that the most transformative parts of history tend to be the boring ones,” Sha-Kane sighed. “History is made with agreements behind closed doors as much as it is made on the battlefield.”
Annoyingly, I suspected the osprey-man was right, but I didn’t have to like it.
“This whole system needs a massive overhaul,” I told him in an undertone. “They’re just fucking with people because they can, because they have all the power.”
The idea of burning the Council to the ground-- metaphorically or literally-- and starting over was getting more and more appealing by the second. The Council was a position for life, and only a tiny fraction of the population, Ashers, could ever hope to be eligible to sit on it. Especially now that Shay had healed the Heart of Aventoll, we needed to separate the government from Ashers and Duelists.
Once we figured out how the Council was controlling the Scourge, the threat of demons would fall to zero. And, as long as we managed to purge the corruption from the Council and the Order, it would stay at zero, because the Hearts had only become sick since greed and lust for power had pulled people away from the noble pursuits of serving Aventoll and serving Mercedes.
I had a lot of ideas about the specifics, but I knew this was neither the time nor the place to discuss them. The Councilmen were all trying to look like they were haughtily ignoring Sha-Kane and me while also being very obvious about watching our every move, so the osprey-man and I walked smartly back to the alcove where we’d left Horus and the others.
As we walked past the alcove that had been making muffled noises earlier, I saw Councilman Crevan approach us, and when he waved to us both, we stopped.
“Councilman Sha-Kane, Councilman Brightwood,” he said. “I’d like to apologize for my colleagues’ rudeness. You know how they… value tradition.”
Crevan said ‘value tradition’ in such a way that he managed to perfectly communicate how he’d actually wanted to say ‘behave like total assholes.’
“I admire their commitment to Aventoll’s past,” I said to the fox-man. “Those who don’t mind their history are destined to repeat it, after all. But if you spend too much time looking back, you’ll never move forward.”
“Elegantly put,” Crevan remarked with a nod. He then pulled back the curtain of the alcove, so quickly I almost flinched, and I half-expected to see a pair of half-naked women in the throes of passion, but instead there were four young women all wearing elegant, flowing gowns and amused smiles on their faces.
“Love,” the one who was sitting nearest Crevan, a Varthan woman with tiger-like stripes on her cheeks and orange ears that poked out of a mane of curly orange hair, said.
“Ariav,” Crevan answered as he bent down to kiss her cheek. “This is Councilman Sha-Kane of Nata, and Councilman Brightwood of… ah. Well, I suppose you don’t have an Island.”
“I like to think of myself as a citizen of Aventoll nonetheless,” I said with a smile, and I bowed slightly to Ariav and the other three women, a Vulpian, an Elaphin, and a Natavian, respectively. I reckoned I could assume that, because Crevan had introduced Sha-Kane and I, it meant he had given us his permission to speak to them. “A pleasure to meet you, ladies.”
“Likewise,” the Vulpian woman said. She had the same black markings around her eyes as Crevan did, but her ears and hair were white, like an arctic fox. “If I may ask, Councilman, where are you from, if not an Island?”
“I’m a Traveler,” I told her honestly, because it seemed pointless to lie, not to mention it would have risked offending Crevan, and he was the closest I had to an ally within the Council. Aside from Sha-Kane, of course.
When I said ‘Traveler,’ Crevan’s wives all perked up in fascination, and the Elaphin and Natavian women began chattering excitedly to one another.
A pang shot through me as I looked at the Natavian woman, because she had the iridescent blue-and-green plumage of a kingfisher, and I was suddenly reminded of the Priestess who’d once lived in the Old Temple on the Isle of Hearts. She had been forced to watch all of her friends and sisters die, including her lover, because of the cruelty of the Ashers of Blood.
“Is there something wrong, Brightwood?” Crevan’s voice cut through my memories, and I turned to him sharply.
I realized a moment later that I must have been staring at the kingfisher-woman, his wife, and I hurried to explain myself.
“Apologies, Councilman Crevan,” I said. He didn’t look angry, but I still wanted to make sure he was on my good side, and I turned back to the kingfisher-woman. “And to you, ma’am. It’s simply… you look a lot like someone I once knew. She was a kind woman, but the world wasn’t kind to her.”
“Oh,” the kingfisher-woman said in a soft voice, and she looked a little forlorn. “I’m sorry to hear that, Councilman Brightwood.”
“Alex is perfectly fine,” I said, to her and to Crevan and his other wives. “If I caused any offense, I’m sorry.”
“Not at all,” the kingfisher-woman said with a smile. “And please, call me Halcyon.”
I glanced over at Crevan, who just smiled and patted me heartily on the back.
“You don’t need to worry about ruthless manners here, my friend,” he said in an encouraging voice. “I know how difficult it can be to navigate the social mores of Alem and the Council. I think if I did not have Niabi with me, I would be quite lost.”
He gestured to his Elaphin wife, who smiled at me pleasantly. She had small antlers protruding from her forehead, which she’d decorated by winding cherry-blossoms around them. What caught my eye in particular, though, was the flush over her cheeks that made the white deer-spots on her face stand out starkly, and how Halcyon’s hand rested very casually on Niabi’s upper thigh.
But that was none of my business, and if I’d noticed, I was sure Crevan had noticed, too, and he just didn’t care.
“Sorry to be keeping you, Councilman,” I said to him, but the fox-man waved a hand.
“If I’m to call you Alex, you’re to call me Sinopa,” he said. “Is that agreeable?”
“Very agreeable, Sinopa,” I answered with a smile. I was a little surprised to notice just how relieved I was to have a real ally in the Council. I knew I’d met Sinopa only earlier today, but I had a good feeling about him, and Vel-Rala’s words about prejudice were still ringing in my head, so I was confident the fox-man was trustworthy. “I will see you when we’re next called to session.”
“Absolutely,” Sinopa said with a nod, and Sha-Kane and I continued down the curving hallway to the alcove where Horus and the others were waiting.
“Alex!” Zoie said when I came into view, and she jumped up from her seat and hugged me in a way that probably wasn’t totally appropriate in a public place, at least by Alemic standards. Amaya had made clear that any public outbursts of emotion were looked down upon, and the way Zoie was acting made it seem like I’d been gone for days instead of about an hour.
“Zoie,” I said as I hugged her back, and I glanced at the others in confusion, but they all just shrugged. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” the cat-woman said as she pulled away from me, and a slight flush colored her cheeks. “I… sorry. I got a bit nervous when you left. Damned hormones, I think.”
“Aw, don’t worry about it, love,” I assured her, and I planted a kiss on the top of her head, between her velvety black ears.
“How did it go, anyway?” Zoie then asked as Shay and Amaya also stood up to hug me.
I could see Amaya in particular was eager to know the details.
“I think it went about as well as it could’ve,” I said. “But there definitely needs to be a whole lot of changes before this is an actually useful form of government. Right now, it just feels like a boys’ club finding ever more excuses to get rich and party.”
“Not to sound like a traitor to my Island, but I heartily agree,” Anwaar said with a tranquil smile.
“No one gave you guys any funny looks, though, right?” I asked. I looked at Horus, Nova, and Sera in particular, but they all shook their heads.
“No one came this far back,” the falcon-man told me. “We’re about as far away as you can be from the entrance to the Hall. This corridor curves in a circle around the Chamber, and we’re basically at the very back.”
“Good,” I said. “I don’t want to attract any more attention than strictly necessary.”
We waited a few minutes before we set off, just so it would be less likely that we’d run into other people. Then our group of nine set off, and when we stepped out of the Council Hall and back into the garden with the Mercedes-and-Bhraya fountain, I noticed there was someone waiting for us.
“Asher Brightwood!” a voice called. “Councilman Brightwood!”
“Yes?” I asked, and I saw a young Elaphin woman-- or maybe she was a girl, since she only looked to be a couple years older than Rylan-- waving to me.
“Asher Brightwood,” she said again, and she bowed to me deeply. “I am Bonnie, servant to the House of Tas. Or… um, I was. Until you, er… I am your servant, sir.”
“My servant?” I asked.
“Yes,” Bonnie said, and she rose from her bow. “I have been tasked to bring you to the Tas Estate-- your estate. Here on Alem. Unless you would prefer to return to your strange craft?”
I looked around at the others, who all gave noncommittal shrugs.
“Uh, sure,” I said as I turned back to Bonnie. “Please, uh… please take me to my estate. I’d like to see it for myself.”
Bonnie nodded smartly and set off at a brisk pace, considering she was much shorter than me, and she led us through the winding streets of Medea until the buildings began to thin out and the ground turned from cobbles to smoothly cut slabs of white stone.
“This is the Council district,” Amaya explained from where she was walking behind me with Shay. “The ten Councilmen of Alem all have estates here.”
“Why are there ten?” I asked the oryx-woman. “Two of the families have two Councilmen.”
“Generations ago, they did,” Amaya agreed. “But over the centuries, there’s been drift. They are now only very tangentially related, and for the sake of appearances, the two second-sons changed their last names to make it seem more impartial and less like two families were vying for even more power.”
“What are their names, then?” I asked.
“The Sepin family were originally the Hapor family, and the Argar family were originally the Vinta family,” the oryx-woman answered. “But like I said, there’s been so much time since then that they’re only slightly more closely related than any other two families on Alem.”
“Yeah, I guess if you go back far enough, everyone’s related to everyone,” I said thoughtfully. “And it’s not eight families anymore, anyway. Everyone kept saying Teivel was the last descendant of Tessen.”
“That’s correct,” the oryx-woman said. “Alem has been lording the fact it had ten Councilmen for quite some time, so I suspect some of the Council will be quite happy that Alem now only has nine, like everyone else.”
“Oh?” I said. “That might be useful.”
That was all I was able to say just then, though, because we had arrived at the Tas estate.
It was almost ludicrously large. It made the Manta and Ithaca and all of my assets back on Nata look childish by comparison. The sheer size of the manor was baffling, especially when I remembered Teivel had been wifeless and childless.
Like the Council Hall, there was an abundance of white marble, particularly where the statues dotted around the garden were concerned, and I heard Amaya make a sound of delight when she saw them and the flowers that had been planted at the base of each one.
