MB Chapter 18

Entzi's gaze moved. One of the men behind him hauled Eliom back into position—the same kneeling posture as before—and the Count looked up at him with an expression somewhere between defiance and ruin.

"I know the First Prince and House Rubiette wanted the matter handled quietly. The Empress was publicly supporting the Second Prince, so moving openly against him carried too much risk of blowback. And yet the matter grew. And the Empress came to know of the bastard's existence."

Thanks entirely to you. Entzi smiled.

"Do you know why I'm telling you all this so generously? Because I want you to know it."

"…U…gh…"

"That I already know everything. And that right now, I have very little time to spare."

There was one thing he hadn’t confirmed. He’d written the man off as nothing but stupid greed—and yet he’d possessed that particular knack to get a rat out safely. He hadn’t expected it.

"Where did Marchel go? The lady's maid you used and then discarded."

"She's dead—"

"I see you still have most of your teeth."

The Count's eyes rolled.

He didn't know how this half-blood bastard had managed to climb to a Marquisate, but his life-cord was plainly in this man's hand right now. Crisis was opportunity, though, wasn't it—the fellow's origins being base or noble didn't particularly concern Eliom one way or the other. What mattered was what could be leveraged.

He had been hiding when they'd taken him—Balverdi's people. They'd done nothing to conceal who they were after pulling him from cover, which had led him initially to wonder whether this was some other faction wearing Balverdi's face. He had no prior dealings with Balverdi, and couldn't account for the connection.

But when he’d seen Ekser Prebesk’s face—the head of the merchant caravan—that possibility had dissolved. Among the few who could put a face to an operation of that size, Eliom was one.

Balverdi.

Three of the largest trading houses by public measure—and the undisputed first when the counting moved underground. More than a third of all illicit capital moved through their hands. Even a fraction of that, if he could lay claim to it—

A glint came into the Count’s bloodshot eyes.

Whites showing. Greed leaking through.

"If I talk—if I tell you—what will you give me?"

"Let's see…"

“You’ll never find her without me—never know where she went! A prince, a marquess—surely you want your mother’s killer found. It was Marchel. That woman—she’s the one who whispered it all. I only listened. That’s all I did. Her jealousy, her obsession—destroying Eliza, that’s all she wanted, it was all her, she—”

Even listening had become too much.

A heavy boot connected with Eliom’s abdomen.

The man supporting him from behind kept Eliom from going over backward. He folded forward instead, retching.

"My mother's name. Why do you use it so freely."

"Kuh—hgh—krgh—"

"No one in my presence is anyone you may address carelessly. Speak with courtesy."

Eliom gritted his teeth, wheezing. The flat pain radiating from his gut was only compounded by something that felt, improbably, like grievance. What had he done, exactly—been dragged into a warehouse and kicked around for it? He couldn't begin to understand.

All he'd done was tell the Empress something anyone with eyes already knew. A piece of common knowledge, passed along. Hardly a crime.

He'd had ideas about acquiring Eliza for himself, yes—the late Emperor's woman would have been a considerable acquisition—but the plan had failed, and failed plans were the same as plans that never existed.

He'd spent years dodging Rubiette's eye in fear that his role in alerting the Empress might surface, and now—now he was kneeling in front of the very bastard he'd told the Empress about, getting kicked in the face. This creature who had apparently risen from nothing, from the slave markets, to a Marquisate—

The self-pity pressing up in him had gone past grief—it wanted to break open. All of this, for what?

"What do you want from me. You've made Marquess—isn't that enough? Whatever happened when you were small, you're Marquess now—where's your gratitude? You'd be nothing without what I put in motion. If I hadn’t sold you, Balverdi wouldn’t have bought you! You were nothing—some gutterborn little bastard becomes head of Balverdi and a marquess, and this is what I get? You should be keeping your head down somewhere, grateful!”

“Only a marquess?”

Entzi's mouth had pulled to one side—something between a smile and something considerably colder.

"You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. Marquess is not my destination."

"What…?"

Eliom went still.

"A bastard who's been looked down on since birth—I should have a fair share of things coming to me. I am going to become Grand Duke."

Eliom blinked. Then a laugh burst out of him.

"Grand Duke? You? Ha—that's something. House Alte and House Rubiette have their eyes wide open, and you think you—with blood like yours, you dare—"

"And Grand Duke is not my destination either."

"You're rambling now—is this treason? Are you planning—"

"Nothing of the sort." A shrug. Entzi lowered himself until he was level with the man's eyes.

"Do you know that a Grand Duke carries succession rights?"

"What—"

"Of course, the succession order would be behind the direct line. But if all of their necks happened to fall off by accident—in that event, it would be entirely legal. There might just be an accident of that kind, someday."

"Emperor—you're out of your mind. You're completely—"

"One last chance."

Entzi took the sword from the belt of the man standing beside him. Even in the thin light of the warehouse, the edge of the blade came through clearly to Eliom's eyes.

The pleasantness had left Entzi's face entirely. In its place was something that had no name for it, and a pressure that was entirely physical—the weight of a man who had stopped performing anything.

Eliom's spine went cold and damp.

The tip of the blade tipped Eliom's chin upward.

"Where did Marchel go?"

Eliom's cracked, dry lips shook.

"…Albré. She went to Albré."

"Where in Albré."

"She didn't take an airship—she took a ship. I know she went toward Porsendo Harbor. After that I don't know. I let it go after that…"

'Albré. She went a long way.'

The sword slid back into the scabbard Entzi had drawn it from.

Eliom watched it go and still his heart didn't stop hammering. His whole body had gone cold, and he squeezed his eyes shut. The man's face alone was enough to deepen the dread. He felt the presence in front of him shift, then turn.

He didn't dare open his eyes. He waited for the footsteps to recede.

At last came the sound of the iron door opening. A thin line of light pierced his eyelids.

Alive. He almost exhaled.

"Kill him."

Final words.

The door closed.

"I thought you'd handle it yourself," Ekser said.

"The smell of blood would be a problem. Goiyo has quite the sensitive nose, it turns out."

Ekser nodded, his expression difficult to read.

Then he recalled something he hadn't been able to ask in the warehouse. He knew Entzi disliked unnecessary questions—but a worry he couldn't suppress finally surfaced:

"My lord. Do you really intend to go that far?"

"I don't know."

"…My lord?"

Entzi exhaled, slow and long, looking at the yellow moon hanging in its ordinary place.

"I wasn't born ordinary to begin with. Neither my blood nor my ability. So something like ordinary happiness was never in the reckoning.

What I can try, and only what I can try, is to climb to the heights of something extraordinary—and then higher still. If being head of Balverdi isn't enough, then Marquess; if Marquess isn't enough, Grand Duke; if that still isn't enough, then eventually: Emperor."

He continued in an even voice.

"I have to try having it all. Then perhaps the emptiness I’ve carried since the day I was born might be filled a little."

"And if it isn't filled, even when you're Emperor?"

"Ekser. What do you think I'd be like as Emperor?"

Ekser's expression shifted into something complicated. No favorable answer came to him.

Entzi had run Balverdi capably enough. He was intelligent. He had ability. He had a particular gift for reading people, for placing them where they were most useful. Whatever he lacked, he learned; whatever he fell short of, he worked toward.

But all of that was because Entzi cared about Balverdi. He was not generous toward things outside what he'd claimed.

An empire was not the same as a house. He wouldn't take all of it in. And if he were Emperor—

"Tyrant. Or pulled down by someone else. One of the two."

"My lord—"

"I know my end won't be a happy one. Even if I become Emperor—I suspect that wouldn't change anything, not really. I already half know this.

Even so, I can't get off a train that's running toward a cliff. Because if I stop, nothing changes. Stopping frightens me more than the cliff. Not one person ever looked back at me when I was standing still."

Ekser’s mouth moved. He wanted to say something—some scrap of comfort—but he didn’t have that kind of facility with words.

"I wish it hadn't been Balverdi who saved you."

"It doesn’t work like that, Ekser."

"…My lord?"

"If Chloe hadn't bought me, I'd have been sold to some perverted wretch and his appetites. There's no version where someone else comes to save the day. The world doesn't work like that. It never did."

Which is precisely why he cannot stop clinging to the promise he made Chloe—why he hangs from it.

To clear the mood, Entzi reached for another subject.

"I almost forgot—the investigation into Therio Alte. Did you finish it?"

"Yes. But my lord—aren't you going in? It's late. You could sleep and—"

"I won't sleep anyway, even if I go back."

Entzi thought of a certain face.

Every shift she made. Even her breathing—all of it reached him without exception. He’d meant to wake briefly and drift off again. He hadn’t slept a wink until well into the small hours.

Having slept alone so long, he’d apparently made a habit of it.

He swallowed the embarrassing flutter in his chest, and took the file Ekser held out.

"The late Duke was Giselle Alte, I see. A woman. The title passed to her widower Kontraz after her death." He turned pages. "And after that—the most unremarkable life you could ask for."

Therio Alte's mother had died when he was four. Old enough to feel the absence later, not old enough to remember her clearly. Entzi had no patience for ranking kinds of unhappiness—and by his own measure, that life looked like a flower garden.

Though if he were the standard, there'd be precious few people in the world who qualified as unhappy.

Still, his contempt, rooted deep and years old, made Therio Alte's history look exactly like what it was: a flower garden.

"There's a younger sibling—eighteen years old. Decent enough ability. A little more seasoning and he could serve as heir."

"My lord. Are you thinking of changing Alte's head of house?"

"Only a thought for now. Don't ask me things one by one, it's tedious."

Entzi's eye moved down the page and stopped.

Brown hair, brown eyes, a face of quiet, lyrical features. Pale. Familiar, somehow.

"This face—"

"Giselle Alte. Therio Alte's mother. You can see—she resembles Madam."

"Resembles her? Goiyo is far prettier."

"…My lord?"

Ekser looked bewildered.

Ignoring whatever Ekser managed to say, Entzi turned it over.

So that's it. The reason Therio Alte had circled Goiyo so persistently, had tried to turn her this way and that, had clung to her—a longing for his mother, perhaps, wrapped in the shape of someone else.

He understood now, at least in part, what Therio Alte had wanted from Goiyo.

Not that it mattered. Whatever he wanted—from now on, he would get nothing from her.

"Any blood relation between that woman and my wife?"

"None within the sixth degree. Further out, possibly, but—"

"Never mind."

Everything regarding Therio Alte is on hold for now. Entzi's eyes went quiet and still.