“I’ve been using all of my powers, casting every divination spell I know in an effort to locate the Stone and I’ve failed each and every time. Now I understand why.
“That leaves me with a dilemma. In time, I may be able to devise a means of retrieving the Stone, provided I knew precisely where it was when your fairy moved it out of this world and into the aether. Unfortunately, Nero is becoming impatient.”
“Why don’t you kill him?” Alexander asked, still lying on his cot. “You said yourself, Phane can’t see inside Mithel Dour and you could always blame it on me.”
“That thought has crossed my mind, but Nero is a wraithkin. If I missed, things would go badly.”
“So don’t miss,” Alexander said.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Watching your enemies kill each other? No, I have another idea,” he said, motioning to the guard at the door.
A dozen men filed in, dark and angry colors all, but Alexander didn’t need to see their colors to know the truth of these men. Each had the eyes of a hardened killer-eyes dead to empathy or remorse, windows into blackened souls.
“These men are assassins,” the Babachenko said. “Each is quite capable in his own right, but together they are deadly beyond measure. Give me what I want and I will send them away. Refuse, and I will send them after those you love most, starting with your sister.”
Alexander started laughing, just a chuckle at first but it turned into a deep belly laugh.
“You think this is funny?” one of the assassins asked. “You won’t be laughing after I get done with your sister. I hear she’s something to see.”
Alexander sat up and looked at each of the twelve men intently, burning their images into his mind before he stood and faced them from behind the bars of his cage.
“You are all murderers. I can see that in your eyes. A few of you have magic … not much, but enough to make the difference some of the time. Mostly what I see in you is cowardice-abject fear that people will see you for what you really are, just as I see you, and the perfect knowledge that if they did, if they truly understood the evil within each of you, they would hunt you down and kill you without mercy, just like each of you has done to so many others.
“So here’s your choice, walk away now or be marked for death.”
A few of the men fidgeted; all of them showed a tinge of fear mixed with indignant anger in their colors.
“You’re hardly in a position to make threats,” one said.
“He’s just blustering,” another said.
“Don’t be a fool, Alexander,” the Babachenko said. “None of this needs to happen. Just give me the Stone and you will be free of this war.”
“Did you really think this was going to work?” Alexander asked. “Do you have any idea what Phane has already sent against me and my family? These men are nothing compared to the creatures summoned from darkness that have hunted me for the past year. In fact, Nero could kill all of these assassins by himself. Your threats are empty.”
The Babachenko shook his head sadly.
“You have your contracts,” he said to his assassins. “Abigail Ruatha was last known to be on Fellenden in the central city. Bring me her head and you will have your silver.”
The men started to file out, but hesitated when Alexander started chuckling, several of them looking back nervously as they left the chamber.
The Babachenko looked at Alexander intently, a frown slowly creeping across his face that morphed into an expression of new understanding. His colors began to shine with hope and unexpected optimism.
“You would let our own sister die,” he said, pausing to look intently at Alexander before continuing. “I see now that I was mistaken about you. I thought you were a subject pretending to be a ruler, but now I understand the truth; you truly are a noble. Had I known that, I would have made you a far different offer.”
“What are you talking about?” Alexander asked.
“Oh, come now, Alexander, you understand as well as I do; there are two kinds of people in the world: subjects and nobles. Subjects are encumbered by so many imaginary concepts like empathy, remorse, and honesty. Nobles, on the other hand, are free of such limitations.”
Alexander stared at him as if he’d just transformed into some unspeakable creature from the darkness.
“It’s all right, Alexander, you don’t have to maintain your façade with me. You and I are cut from the same cloth; we’re both nobles. I see that now. And I have to say, you’ve constructed such a masterful story of yourself as the everyman, champion of all those delusional values that subjects hold so dear, even I was taken in. But that was my failing and you have my sincere apologies for all of this unpleasantness. Had I known the truth of you, I would have invited you to my table with open arms.”
Alexander wasn’t quite sure what was happening, except that the Babachenko’s colors revealed as much genuine sincerity as he was probably capable of feeling.
“We could have been allies … in fact, we still can be.”
“What are you saying?” Alexander asked.
“I backed the wrong horse,” the Babachenko said with a helpless shrug. “Phane would rule with fear and force. As you well know, every noble must be willing to strike fear into the hearts of his subjects from time to time. But you … you are the rarest of nobles. You’ve crafted so masterful a lie that your subjects actually love you and believe in you.
“That kind of power can’t be matched by magic or steel.”
Alexander schooled his expression and held his tongue.
“I don’t blame you for being skeptical, I certainly would be, especially after how I’ve treated you, but I’m hoping we can get past all that.”
“Why would I trust you?”
The Babachenko nodded self-deprecatingly. “An hour ago, I would have made a plea to your essential humanity, I would have tried to convince you to put your people first, I would have offered to place the Lancers at your disposal and implored you to consider the myriad advantages of forging an alliance with me.
“Now that we understand each other better, I will tell you to trust me only to pursue my own best interests, just as I will trust you to do the same. As long as our interests coincide, we’re natural allies. What’s more, Phane will never see it coming. Together we can play him against Zuhl until both are spent and then the Seven Isles will be ours.”
“And what would you expect to get out of this?”
“We both know that you have far more to offer than Phane does.”
“Wizard’s Dust,” Alexander whispered.
“Yes,” the Babachenko said almost reverently. “As you’ve already guessed, Acuna wizards inherit their magic from the most elderly of our order. The first Babachenko constructed a crystal chamber deep under the palace capable of stripping one wizard of his link to the firmament and conferring it upon another. The process is arduous and dangerous, requiring substantial training and mental conditioning prior to the transference, but it has allowed the Acuna to retain power over the centuries, in spite of the fact that not a single cache of Wizard’s Dust has been found on Andalia for over a millennium.
“While the crystal chamber has allowed our order to survive, our numbers have only diminished. In fact, my alliance with Phane has been quite costly in that regard. You see, most of the wizards he sent against you were from my order, so every time you killed one of them, you permanently reduced our number.”
“And after Phane and Zuhl are defeated?” Alexander asked, filing the Babachenko’s words away for further thought.
“In exchange for my allegiance, you would name me governor of Andalia, Karth, and Tyr, quite a reasonable price for undisputed mastery over all the Seven Isles.”
“Your offer would seem far more sincere if it wasn’t coming through the bars of a cage,” Alexander said.
“Indeed, but men in our positions can’t be too careful. After all, you did try to kill me yesterday.”