Pre-Chapter A/N: Me last week: "I think at this point, we just have to accept that I will inevitably show up with two chapters a week. As for when those chapters show up, I think it's best I not make any particular promises" And the gods laughed as I said this, lmao. Hit a writing slump plus a particularly nasty case of food poisoning and got humbled massively. Back on it though, so let's go!
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The one to my left, Declan, attacked first. He had a pug face, a nose clearly broken one too many times to heal right, and a sneer on his face. He swung his blade at me. I ducked underneath it and stomped at his foot. He managed to snatch it back in time, and as I moved to take advantage of his imbalance, I heard the steps of the other one approaching.
I swung my stolen blade in his direction, and he blocked. I took a step back, keeping both men in my view. All three of them, I meant. Stevron had yet to move from his position, but he held his blade at the ready regardless.
Mors, the one to the right, must have felt my attention was divided enough for him to attack. Foolish. I waited until the last possible second and stepped into his guard. I brought my sword upwards in a slash, and thanks to the close range, instead of his sword, I caught his hand with my blade, separating it from his body.
It blasted blood everywhere, and his scream was silenced as I shoved my appropriated blade into his open mouth. The one that had been to my left, instead of attacking, dropped his blade and raised both hands up.
"I surrender, my lord," he said. I nodded and turned to Stevron, silently asking him to do the same. The man stubbornly remained set on attacking.
"You are a much better fighter than your father ever was, my lord. If he had been maybe half as good as you are, perhaps he would not have died so unremarkably," he said, clearly trying to get under my skin. I simply gestured for him to come forward and meet his death.
Because if he thought mocking me about Corlys, a man whose death I had gotten over a long time ago, was going to give him the chance to take the advantage here, then he had another thing coming.
I took my stance and waited for him to come forward.
"I've been killing men since before you were born, boy."
"And now I will kill you. Are you coming or not? Or are you going to turn and run outside? Igneel really hopes you choose that option. He wonders what you taste like, you know?" I taunted. I watched his face carefully as he considered his options. One man lay dead at Ben's feet now. It was only two others that remained, keeping him busy. He must have known that it was only a matter of time until Ben killed the other two, and he had to have known that if his chances against me weren't already slim enough as things stood, they would get even slimmer once Ben was free to get involved in things. So he had to attack now if he wanted to have any chance of winning.
And so he did. He rushed at me with a roar at his lips. He jumped at the last second, adding the extra strength of the jump to his lunge. I stepped backward, allowing his blade to kiss naught but air. He landed and stabbed out with the sword again. I deflected it to the side, and blocked the next attack straight up with my stolen sword. We strained against each other, and it took him only a second for him to know he was outmatched in that particular battle.
He stepped backward, moving from the contest of strength. He slashed out. I moved forward, deflecting the attack and then attacking with my other blade. He stepped backward. My left sword went for his feet, and he was forced to jump backward. I took advantage of the imbalance to land a straight slash across his chest. It was a shallow thing, not likely to do more than hurt, but it was still first blood in my favour.
I smirked in my opponent's direction, giving a come-hither gesture. And to his credit, he came. He advanced slower than before this time. Each step followed the other in a slow march forward. Every exchange before this one, I allowed him to lead, make the first attack, and I focused on counter-attacking by taking advantage of the imbalances he had to create to attack. It was an effective fighting style, but it was not the one I spent day after day practicing, in the sun, in the rain. That one was far more aggressive.
I closed the distance between us, my footsteps quick, light, and sure. He managed to dodge away from my first slash. He blocked the second with his sword. By the third, I had knocked his sword out of his grip, and by the fourth, my blade was buried in his chest. I pulled it out, allowing the body to fall against the floor, before turning to see the last man's head fall to the floor from Ben's blade.
"My Lord?" Ben asked, pointing his blade at the man that had surrendered.
"I accepted his surrender, Ben. It would be in bad taste to kill him after doing that," I said.
"These men… they broke guest right," he said.
"Indeed. And most of them are dead for the audacity. This man will answer every question I have completely and honestly, or he will join them in the seven hells shortly."
"I'll say everything, my lord. Anything you need to know, I swear it on me Ma, my lord."
"See?" I said, gesturing to Ben. "He's going to be a good little boy. Because he knows that if he annoys me, then he'll die so painfully that men will sing songs about it for a generation," I said, watching the way the pirate swallowed.
"Yes, my lord."
"Now, to start things off, who was Stevron selling my limestone to?" I asked.
"Tyrosh, my lord. He was sending them letters about cement, my lord. They said they wanted the stone to see if they could make it themselves, and he was telling them how to do it."
"Stevron knew little about how to make cement," I pointed out.
"He was trying to figure it out himself, my lord."
"I see. And what did Tyrosh need to offer to buy off one of my captains?" I asked.
"I don't know, my lord."
"You're not a very good informant, are you?"
He began shaking his head, almost panicking. "I can't read, my lord. But I know where he stored the letters from Tyrosh, my lord."
"Why didn't you start with that, Declan? Let's go see that then."
XXX-
Perhaps I should have made him suffer more before I killed him, I thought to myself as I looked at the stack of communications that had been exchanged between one of my most trusted Captains and a certain Ravandyr Morello of the Stepstones. Of course, they hadn't figured out cement. They hadn't even been close to managing it. But if they had.
Fuck, if they had. That would be one of my greatest advantages given over to the enemy, and all of it happening under my nose. I wouldn't have noticed if Parvello wasn't so meticulous. Because the fool hadn't just been shortchanging me. He'd been working the miners like slaves to produce even more and more of the limestone just so he had sizable amounts to steal. And all in my name. He had treated those people terribly and done it in my name.
That would have to be the first thing I did. I would have to convince the people that Stevron was a rogue element and
that I did not mean for them to be treated thus— to be forced to mine day in and day out, to be beaten when they did not meet arbitrary targets, to be starved. With each tale Declan told of what they had done— though he was careful to make his role in the events seem as small as possible— my blood boiled hotter and hotter.
This made one thing clear. I could not just appoint people because Father had trusted them and because Vaemond felt they were trustworthy and leave things alone because they seemed to be going well. Stronger monitoring systems. I was going to have to visit each island at least once a moon—maybe more often for the more important ones— if I wanted to make this work. Maybe later I could find some way to have other people doing the checking-in, but now it was clear that the only one I could trust in this Kingdom was me.
Well, me and Laena, but she had returned home a moon ago to spend time with Mother, and seemed unlikely to be returning. I'd really put my foot in my mouth the last time we'd spoken, hadn't I? I would make things better when next we saw, but as I could see now, I had bigger problems on my plate than how my teenage sister felt about things. Especially when she was being so illogical about things.
"My lord?" Declan called, and I froze as I noticed the letter I was clutching had begun to smoke. I doused the fire that had built independently of my control by dumping a pitcher of water on the letter.
"Let us go, Declan. I would speak to my people," I said.
XXXXX-
"Is everyone here?" I asked Declan. He nodded. I turned to the line of former slaves. The people whose freedom I had purchased only for them to be enslaved by my man. As far as they were concerned, I had bought them, freed them, and then enslaved them again. I must have seemed so cruel to them. The kind of cruel that people wrote books about and told their children to fear. That was the worst part of it.
"Good day," I said to them, speaking in High Valyrian before it clicked that they would struggle to understand that version of the language.
"Does any of you speak?" I called, and it took a while for one of them to step up. It was a man with olive skin that glinted in the sun from the sweat that gathered on his skin.
"I speak, master."
"I am no master of yours," I said, shocking the man.
"You are your own master. When I bought you, I freed you. And if these men have made it seem otherwise, then it was without my knowledge and against my will," I said. He nodded, even if I could tell that he was far from convinced. This must have seemed like some sort of cruel joke to him. A prank I was playing on them. Oh Balerion above.
Fuck it.
I needed to do something bold to sell this. And so I made a choice.
"Kneel, Declan," I told him in the common tongue, and the man, to his credit, did so without hesitation. The dragon that waited not far out of sight probably helped smooth over any qualms he would have had. Well, that and the fact that Ben and I had killed all his friends without sustaining a single wound probably wasn't giving him any additional fires of resistance, for sure.
"What is your name, my good man?"
"Vealos, master."
"I told you I am no master of yours. You may call me My Lord, if you must," I said. The look on his face said he didn't see much of a difference between the terms. I just sighed.
"Translate the words I speak to your people," I said, and he nodded.
"I am Laenor Velaryon of House Velaryon. I am the breaker of chains. I freed you moons ago, and these men who bastardised my will enslaved you again. I stand here before you to tell you that they are dead. I have killed them with my own hands. The only one who remains alive is this worm who kneels at my feet now. Him, I leave to you. Take your revenge as you wish. For you are free men, and you must defend that freedom against all who seek to enslave you," I said in High ValY-rian, and watched their faces as the one named Vaelos translated the words to them.
Just like him, they didn't believe me when I said they were free. None of them moved forward to attack Declan. They probably saw it as a test of the loyalty or something equally inane. If only I could just shove the thought in their head. You are free men. Well, free men still bound to work for me, but free men nonetheless. If one or two of them wanted to exercise that freedom by not working for me, I would permit it even. All of them though? Well, that would be inconvenient.
Thankfully, such an inconvenience had yet to arise to point out my hypocrisy to me and the wider world. I growled in irritation when they still refused to move. What more could I give them? Here was the man that had oppressed you. Take your freedom from him with your own hands. End him. They did neither. Was this what a broken people looked like? I refused to believe it. They had potential. I just had to draw it out. I reached down, feeling Igneel's power course through my veins before I grabbed a hold of Declan by the collar of his tunic and tossed him into the crowd.
They scrambled out of his way, not allowing him to land on them.
"I said he is yours. Do as you wish." The sailor managed to make it to his knees, looking at me with betrayal in his eyes. I guess even if he couldn't understand High Valyrian there were some things one just had to figure out on their own.
"I surrendered, my—" He never got to finish the sentence. The first to attack was a boy not much younger than I was. He picked up a stone from the ground and tossed it at the sailor, hitting him right in the face.
"You damn brat!" The man turned to his assailant, practically spitting fire, and that was when the bystanding crowd finally spurred into motion. Declan did not last long under the mob justice they inflicted on him.
Stones, teeth, even a dagger that had come out of nowhere began the work of turning the man into a bloody pulp. It was a matter of minutes until he was surely dead.
"You have grasped your own freedom with your own hands now. The blood you have spilled together binds you as more than just a people. You are a family now, a family of freedmen with a single charge. Mine the limestone that calls this island home just as surely as you do, and you will be justly rewarded for it. I will see to it personally," I said, receiving nods. I turned to Vaelos.
"Reduce the present output back to the original levels. I shall also require a comprehensive report from you when I return. Population, feeding needs, shelter needs, whatnot," I said before turning to leave, done with this.
XXXXX- SIX WEEKS LATER
"A visitor for you, my lord," one of the dozens of serving boys that now called Bloodstone home said, walking into my solar.
"What flag did they fly?" I asked, watching as the boy turned to the side, trying to remember.
"Don't worry about it, Sam. Just make sure you take note of it next time," I said, rising from my seat. I tossed him a silver sickle for his good work and watched him scamper off. A proper messenger would probably arrive soon. The serving boys were an experiment of mine. I would never want to be the kind of Lord who had no idea what was going on in their own castle, and so I recruited spies to spy on my own city for me. If they found anything useful, they told me, and if I found what they found to be as useful as they thought, then I would reward them. If I didn't, then I didn't reward them.
I'd initially started out paying for all information, useful or not, but the fourth time I received a report on the price of bread was the breaking point for that system. This present one encouraged them to be curious, inquisitive, and most importantly, competitive. They would race to get useful information to me. And so that would mean that if there was something to be known, then I would know it as quickly as possible. Importantly as well, I didn't impose any punishments for useless information, only for untrue information. The last boy to bring a lie my way had been flogged something fierce by Ser Ben as an example, and since then no one had taken the risk.
"My Lord, the Triarchy has sent a messenger," my actual messenger boy said when he arrived five minutes later. I nodded and moved to the throne room to receive them.
"You are in the presence of Laenor Velaryon, the Burner of Ships, the Seadragon, the Lord Protector of the Stepstones, Lord of Driftmark, and Master of the Tides," my announcer introduced me while I noticed the man that the Triarchy had sent had chosen to forego one.
"This one is Tyranos, Banker under the Rogare Bank." He bowed. He was a lithe man, dark-skinned and handsome. Well spoken as well. The only thing that marked him as a slave, for his clothes were as fine as any noble's, was the tattoo of chains around his neck.
"A pleasure. I trust your masters received my letter."
"Yes, my lord. The Council of Magisters has conducted their own investigations and found your allegations to be founded. For the crime of breaking the treaty between our peoples, the offending fellow has been dealt with," he said, and then snapped his fingers.
Two other slaves stepped forward, holding a massive chest between them. They dropped it on the ground and then swung it open. I nodded, satisfied. A head and two hands. The hands bore rings that marked the man as a magister, and while they could have switched the man, there was nothing I could do about that now, was there? Besides, he was not the important thing.
"And my stolen property?"
"Only half the samples of the limestone were able to be recovered. The Council sends their apologies, and a million gold pieces to make up for the shortfall," he said.
"Two million," I countered.
"As my Lord wills it," he said with a bow.
A/N: Another chapter bites the dust. Next six chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.