Bad news (2)

Justine and I turned towards Edwoyn in a unified motion. He lost all composure, mumbling even more than when he had tried to get our attention.

“What the woman told us at the restaurant about the alliance project… Unfortunately, it’s true. She might have lied about everything else, but I can guarantee that this information is accurate.”

Seeing him so naively concerned about our affairs made me smile. It was exactly the result I had hoped for from my outing in town.

“It’s nice of you to want to help, kid, but we still need to verify each piece of information through more reliable sources. Understand?”

“A prince isn’t reliable enough for you?” he protested.

“No, especially when he’s been manipulated his whole life.”

All the immature features of his face furrowed. Gaining Justine’s trust wasn’t as easy as it seemed. All they had shared in this house, her kindness and her pastries, was just a facade. Outside his palace, his word meant nothing. This realization left the prince speechless.

I took the opportunity to add my own comment “Knowing the how and why won’t get us very far. If you want to help us, tell us where the Revolutionaries and the forbidden weapons are if you know anything…”

I scribbled some names in my notebook, connecting them with arrows, which helped me see the entire board I was working on. The next step was to determine the identities of the other players and their objectives.

“No, no, no!” he snapped, shaking his head. “You’re the ones who don’t understand anything! This alliance is much more important than you think!”

What did he have to fear from a military alliance? He would never sit on a throne again… What kind of alliance was it? A merger of armies?

“You’re no longer a prince, so what does it matter to you? Oh, but of course…” I made the connection. “A marriage! That’s what scares you so much?”

Marriage was one of the most repugnant practices. Tradition dictated that parents announce the identity of the fiancée on their seventeenth birthday, a year before the ceremony. Sometimes, the marriage was arranged even before the concerned parties were born, and when they took too long to find a match, families resorted to unpleasant methods.

“It’s not the marriage that worries me, it’s everything that comes with it! With Eliott, it will be enforced and Asyria will gain unlimited access to their technology.”

The infamous technological ore that other countries had deprived us of.

My pencil stopped moving on the page of my notebook.

“You mean we could finally get technological ore at affordable prices?!” exclaimed the boss.

“That’s not quite it, but–“

“Stop your nonsense. Ocayo has set up a whole embargo around Asyria to deprive us of that resource, and now you’re saying they’ll give it to us for free? Even if we offered them all the magic in the world, they hate us too much to accept a trade!”

“This isn’t a trade; it’s a defeat. This marriage will grant them all rights over Asyria. Father wants them to believe that we’re conceding to pull off the dragon egg trick.”

“Are you referring to The Glittering War novel?” I asked, incredulous.

“Yes, except this time, I’m the dragon.”

In the story of The Glittering War, the Northern nation, on the brink of losing the war, tries a desperate tactic: they cover a dragon egg in jewels and present it to their enemy. The Southern nation is so flattered that they don’t suspect it’s more than a sculpture, and a few months later, their capital and king are slaughtered by a starving dragon. Thus, those thought to be defeated end up winning the war that was believed to be over.

“Wait, something’s not adding up: how is it possible for Ocayo to absorb Asyria if Edwoyn marries their princess? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? And besides, we couldn’t get their entire territory: the princess has three older siblings!”

I hadn’t noticed before, but what Justine pointed out did indeed make no sense.

“What are you talking about? It’s the women who govern in Ocayo, and it’s always been that way. Her brothers only have modest estates; they don’t interfere in politics.”

We exchanged bewildered glances before staring at the prince.

“No, they couldn’t have done that?”

“Ooh yeah, they dared.” I confirmed.

The prince frowned. “Dared to do what?”

“You see, in Asyria, we’ve always been drilled that women cannot lead a country.”

“I-I didn’t know Father kept that information from the citizens…”

“The government has been lying to us about Ocayo for years… How could we have missed this?!”

They must have spent a fortune maintaining such a lie. All the altered videos, the silenced immigrants… Are they hiding this truth from the entire court as well?

“It’s nothing new, Justine. They’ve always operated this way: censoring anything inconvenient to reserve the praise for themselves! They wouldn’t want a woman claiming the throne of Asyria…”

“Haven’t you ever seen the Queen of Ocayo on the national news channel?”

“Yes, but her husband was far more prominent, and it was very convincing. What’s her name again?”

“Garance d’Ocaye, and her daughter, Desma. I’ve only met them once at the Continental Trade Forum, and I must say the princess left quite a… lasting impression on me.”

“Let me guess: she doesn’t want to marry either?”

“She kept scratching and biting everyone who approached her during the interview, me included!”

The blonde giggled, imagining the scene.

“So, if the Gasencourts cede the kingdom to the princess,” I interrupted, “where’s the catch?”

“To keep it simple, I was supposed to get the princess pregnant. Wizards would have taken her hostage with seals, and we would have blackmailed her parents. Under pressure, they would have made me the legitimate king of both nations.”

The boss’s fist slammed into her chair in frustration “How dreadful! Did they really dare to do that? And if that poor princess had resisted, would you have gone so far as to commit rape?!”

Justine tended to lose her composure when it came to sexual assaults. She always took it personally for reasons that escaped me…

“It’s not me you should blame!” he panicked under our scrutinizing gazes. “Do you think I agree with this tricky plan? Do I want to see hatred on my wife’s face every morning? No, of course not, but it’s my duty as a prince!”

Contrary to what I had assumed, Nathan Gasencourt had a legitimate reason for fleeing his responsibilities. It also explained why he was convinced his mother was in danger. However, these little personal issues were far from affecting me. At best, they would make good bait for my manipulation.

“Ya see, Aurora, it wasn’t a bad thing to have accepted the Revolutionaries' mission.”

“Don’t make excuses, Justine. You would have accepted it anyway,” I grumbled.

“It’s true that your intervention disrupted their plans,” argued Edwoyn, “but the marriage is still on, and if it goes through, many people will lose their lives!”

Justine raised an eyebrow, “So you think it would lead to a war?”

“The first war that would use hybrid technology. Throughout his reign, Father had only one goal: to humiliate all the countries of the Continent as we have been since the fall of the Empire. And if they disappear, all the better.”

“You mean it’s the perfect opportunity to expand the network of forbidden weapons? Is that why a new generation has appeared on the market? And if they evolved with technological ore…?”

“I didn’t think of that in particular…” the prince hesitated.

“If they spread their crap all the way to Ocayo and use it for war, I’m afraid we won’t be able to stop them. Whether they electrify it or not, that will be the least of our worries.”

“You keep talking about these ‘forbidden weapons,’ but what are they, really? Why are they so dangerous?”

“Ah…” sighed my mentor. “It’s a long story… if you knew, you’d wish you’d never heard of them.”

Her left hand covered her face, drawn with fatigue. Nevertheless, she continued her explanation “These weapons were banned and destroyed in the past because they’re beyond control. Just one use can lead to a massacre worthy of a Devourer. Those who buy these weapons are rarely informed of their malfunctions. Anyway, they don’t care about the risks when they’re sold such great power. The traffickers promise them that it’ll solve all their problems to make as much profit as possible, and then, there’s no one left to clean up the mess when the weapons malfunction.”

The scrawny guy could barely sit still, so outraged was he by this story. I shot him a glare because his agitation was reaching me from the other end of the couch we were sharing.

“Who sells these weapons, madam?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out. It’s a very branched underground network. It takes nobles to fund it and scoundrels to keep the trade running. No matter how many there are, what matters is cutting off the head of the snake.”

“In other words, we need to eradicate the problem at the source. We’ll find their production sites and destroy them one by one.”

“But how will you do that in so little time?”

“We’ll manage, as always… Because if we fail, you can forget what peace was,” I added in a grim voice.

Edwoyn’s tense shoulders slumped. I recognized that behaviour. It was the moment when my victims realized their time was running out. That every life had an end, and no one was exempt.

“If the whole Continent falls, it will be Father’s fault? Maybe we could discuss it with the Ministers’ Council and cancel everything? Now that Father has no authority…”

“It would be pointless, Edwoyn,” I interrupted him with a raised hand. “He chose each of his ministers for their unwavering loyalty. They’re fully aware of the risks; otherwise, they would have stopped everything after your official death. Those scoundrels are the typical type of people who buy forbidden weapons: power, more power, until they lose their minds!”

I could feel something breaking inside Edwoyn. I hadn’t minced words to remind him of the truth. Clearly, he wasn’t ready to hear it, but we didn’t have time to wait for him to grow up.

“Do you really think Father has lost his mind? That the rumors are true?”

“You’re his son. It’s up to you to tell us.”

A nervous laugh seized him. Quickly, it gave way to a very explicit silence. His eyes wandered into memories that only he held, and then he finally admitted “I don’t know who he is anymore. It’s true that he had become harder lately, that he always wanted to control everything… But before, he really cared about the well-being of Asyria, about Mother… I saw him sink, and I couldn’t even reason with him: he never looked at me!”

Edwoyn burst into tears, and Justine handed him a pack of tissues.

“I tried everything, sniff! I resisted for weeks! He threatened to control me with magic, sniff! And that’s when I understood: I was only born for this damned marriage!”

“They have no right to impose this on a child… They’ll never change…”

The boss’s anger suppressed her words before she could speak them. There were no strong enough terms to describe the Injustice, nor sincere enough expressions to convey her compassion at that moment.

The name Robert Gasencourt appeared in my notebook. This man embodied both the best and the worst: to the people, he was a protective father, the son of a liberating hero. With his wife Désirée, they were the most romantic couple imaginable. They set the standard for perfection and happiness, beautiful lies thrown to the crowd like rose petals… As for the nobles, the king’s absolute power was a threat that should never be challenged. There were only two responses to that: to be with him or against him.

“Removing me might not have been the best solution, but I’m grateful to you for getting me out of that dead end.” Edwoyn finished.

“Please, it was Aurora who took the initiative. I’m just letting you sleep in a room that’s never been used.”

Their gazes turned to me for a few moments. I didn’t say a word, absorbed in my little schematic of the “Dragon Egg” plan. The bubbles “magical manipulation,” “matriarchal Ocayo,” and “hybrid weapons” dominated the page, surrounded by numerous small annotations.

The strategy devised by the government was scandalous, but in reality, it was disconcertingly mundane. Arranged marriages, blackmail, and the sale of children by consent contract secretly governed the daily life of this kingdom, and no one escaped it. The youth were destined to replicate their parents’ patterns without ever learning from their own suffering. If I had joined the Killer Wind, it was also to put an end to these stupid traditions.

“What’s Aurora doing?” Edwoyn awkwardly attempted to ask.

My posture, both closed off and relaxed, made him particularly uncomfortable. He kept glancing in my direction to the point where I felt compelled to respond in a bland tone “I’m taking note of everything that’s been said. It’s essential for organizing the missions.”

“When can we free Mother and Eliott?”

Justine gave me a disapproving look. If I were to translate it, it would be something like: ‘Whatever you promised him, I don’t want to be involved.’

“We can’t do anything until you master the basics of your training, so it depends on you.”

“The coronation is in four months; that’s too little time to train…”

“Sorry, but in this job, you have to adapt to the circumstances,” confided the boss, who was playing with her golden locks.

“If we wait too long, I won’t be able to save them!”

“If you die in battle, you won’t be able to save anyone. The minimum to survive against royal soldiers is four years of training, and I’m not even talking about the other problems you might encounter along the way!”

Unable to focus on my notes any longer, I slammed my notebook down and took a deep breath. “Listen, I’ll help you, but you’ll have to be patient because what you’re asking for is very complicated. We need to gather information, establish plans, acquire equipment, and go through many other steps you don’t even know about. To put it simply, we handle the missions, and you focus on your training. Understood?”

Edwoyn rubbed his eyes and nodded vigorously. He hadn’t regained his smile, but hope had been rekindled in him. I was only promising him what he wanted to hear. It was the second step of the formatting technique I had developed.

Then, promise him the moon and the stars. Make him hope that by obeying you, he’ll be happier. Manipulate his hope and let him imagine as he pleases. Avoid having him come into contact with the outside, as it could alter your approach.

I had never planned to take him to the Capitol or to intervene in his cousin’s coronation. However, the new parameters that had just been mentioned would directly hinder my plans to turn him into a Big Brother. He was not to reconnect with his relatives, let alone his mother, as they were my bait for controlling him. On the other hand, I couldn’t ignore the spread of a new generation of forbidden weapons. These two quests seemed to be increasingly converging in the same direction, which didn’t help at all.

Always and forever the fault of the nobles…

If ending the forbidden weapon trade meant thwarting the “Dragon Egg” project, it would probably eliminate the threats hanging over Edwoyn’s loved ones. And if I lost that bait, he would no longer be manipulable. I had four months to reshape him before uncertainty set in.

“Excuse me, kiddos, I’m needed outside.”

The boss got up from her chair and calmly went out through the sliding glass door. She chatted with the few workers who had come here to signal her. Were we really going to have to endure their noise all week?

Curiously observing the scene, Edwoyn realized that our little friendly meeting was ending here and now. To keep him occupied, I offered to introduce him to our magical equipment and his upcoming reading on incantations. These activities filled the rest of our already busy day.