Interlude III

Soft wind hisses between ivory tombstones laid in row.

“So many casualties.”

Hard eyes, harder words, “Camil arrived too late, the people had already engaged.”

“Numbers alone did not prevail?”

Anguish floods against set jaw, “An assassin killed many leaders, preventing the majority of the revolutionaries from arriving.”

“Flames consume this killer. Is the assassin now dead?”

“No. He was only following orders.”

“As were the soldiers.”

“As am I. I sent the assassin to uphold righteousness.”

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“Will he obey?”

A smile, sad in the shadows, “For his life, he will.”

Creak of leather: the bow of an iron topped head, “They will attack with all haste. Talah is furious beyond reckoning.”

“Anger is personal. Wars are not. She will lose if she plans to lead with anger.”

Tapping rings echo through the darkness.

“What is her plan?”

“They fear to act before they find our infiltrator. King Derk employs a most skilled spy, the best I have ever seen.”

Laughter, light, though it does not lift the gloom, “You saw him then.”

“The spies I haven’t seen are the ones I fear. I remember Tsamen’s scouts, they were true terrors.”

“You still think of those times?”

“More often than not.”

A hand offered, invisible in the dark, “Back to the present. Who do we kill?”

“No one. Derk is no longer a lynchpin in the alliance. Camil would become a martyr who drove Talah to fight all the more ferociously.”

“And Talah?”

“You’ve seen her emblem.”

“Ah… You fear to strike at her head.”

“Fighting has only ever caused pain, never ended it.”

“Hypocrite.”

Eyelids open, but the view does not change, “Yes.”

“So?”

“Golems.”

“That sounds like fighting to me, Lord Glove.”

“Let us hope not. Let us plead fate is kind.”

“It never has been.”

Footsteps to the door. Light stretches and fades; too weak to illuminate the king.