Behind the Serpent Throne (CK2)

Turn 17--Part 2

Rassit romances were their own form of art, their own form of seduction. It involved not lying, not in its purest form, but the presentation of one's best self, sweet and caring at every turn, as one might display on the first weeks of one's marriage, before the bloom came off of the flower. Or so Kiralo had been told. It was about intimacy and grand gestures and small signs of respect, and in that sense it was a test and a challenge, one that Kiralo had always excelled at, once he'd made the rather struck decision of a hurt youth to avoid long-term entanglements, after how his first had ended.

He was perhaps not all that humble about his skill, and though of course no romance in the court could be Rassit (for of course he wouldn't be leaving all that often), no doubt if he were not who he was or where he was, but was in some other way minorly prominent… it would be rather possible to find someone.

All of which meant that Kiralo was very well-versed in that certain form of seduction.

Bizarrely, in a way, that's what talking to Kuojah felt like. Every single day, and sometimes twice a day, he'd been going to his father to talk to him, to spread careful bits of information on what he'd seen, to appraise him of his every plan and scheme, and its outcome. He'd walked at the razor's edge, for if he'd been too subservient, he knew his father would have not only caught on (which he no doubt had in his way) but would have reacted with scorn.

But the information he gave could jeopardize his plans, so he told only what was wise to tell, the core of an idea and not the specific people he'd meet with, and he'd asked his father's advice, and listened to it. Argued with it politely and with facts, and even sometimes took it. It was a dangerous game, and it only sometimes felt like family was supposed to be.

Sometimes was a word for: perhaps once, for a minute. And even that was painful after the fact, as if he were betraying his mother by hating him even a single shade less, or a single shade more tempered. But things were changing. He wouldn't cry at his father's funeral, but he'd at least be able to remember that his father was more than just a monster. That he'd had a mind, and had a will, and--

Kiralo didn't know what to think, knowing all of that now. He had to respect Kuojah, at least in some limited way, to be able to manage to talk intelligently about policy for so much time every day.

Of course, it also was the reason why he was standing in a dim hallway, a half-hour before dawn, with an aching headache from the night before, from the announcements that he had made, from the campaign that he had begun. And Jiahao, the strange boy, whose relation was going to come to his rooms at dawn, had sent a desperate note at midnight to that effect.

Kiralo had four guards with him, two behind him and one at each end of the hall, as well as a servant carrying a bag full of scrolls he was going to be examining, and even a few books. The young man looked like he was struggling to carry it, really. The guards in front of Kiralo nodded, slowly, and stepped aside.

As he entered his father's huge quarters (not that one could know from looking at a single room, with the Csiritan building style), one of Kuojah's guards whispered, "He is unwell."

Kiralo smiled. The guards were loyal, of course. But he'd befriended them with small gifts and drink, and they were willing to tell him small tidbits. Whether his father was well or ill, angry or in a good mood. Small things, the sorts of things that no servant thought were truly betrayal, when it was asked by a loving son of his father.

His father always took his early morning rice gruel (for his meals had become as spare as him) far back in the warren of rooms. It was bad security, to have such huge rooms. Kiralo passed through them without noticing the priceless vases, the tapestries and paintings, the rugs and intricate statues that all littered the first small room. It opened up after that, but if one was merely a thief, somehow with infinite gall, one could retire on half of the proceeds of the first room, the one before anything important. The one that Kuojah used when he wanted to show off, wanted to give no real impression. They weren't even his favorite pieces, just his most expensive.

Back and farther back, stepping slowly, his guards left behind save one, plus of course his servant. The guard he had was disarmed quickly and efficiently, and wouldn't be in the same room as Kuojah.

When the last screen opened, Kiralo stared at a specter, a thin old man, looking tired in the flickering lights of far too many candles, hunched over the rice gruel, pointing his spoon towards a matching bowl of gruel.

No doubt it was the finest rice available, but it was still invalid food. But he sat down on the ground, glad that his father wasn't kneeling in a formal position. One wondered at the knees of old men who served the Emperor, whether they wore out quicker for what they had to do all the time.

"Son, Cs-Kiralo, so you have done it. You have openly defied me, spit on all my beliefs, betrayed and acted against all familal duty, and done so so brazenly that I was up until one in the morning refusing to answer anything to my allies," Kuojah said, sternly. But Kiralo could see it, a moment of almost-humor to the whole thing.

"You really should rest, father. You're old, and your health is important. Your servants could have given a rote answer. Any of your clerks as well," Kiralo said, reaching towards the tea that was there and sipping it, trying to ignore the headache and work towards what he needed now.

"They could have. It would not have done as much. So what is your next move? I assume it will be to place all of this, the request, the holdings… everything. In the grasp of the Emperor, who so respects your loyal service."

"Father," Kiralo said, quietly. "He respects you too."

"I'm old, and dying," Kuojah said with a cough. "Not quickly, but every winter is worse. I hope to make it through next year, even if it breaks my health so much that I cannot last any longer. But I do not think I have much longer than that, even if I took it easy. And I would rather die with my hands on the reins, with events under control, then watch it all slip away just to live a few more months, or another year or two. It's like… one of your horses, I suppose. If I told you now, through some strange magic, that you could never ride a horse again, ever again, if you were to stay here, would you stay?"

"No," Kiralo said, softly.

"Because you're one of those barbaric Rassit. I don't think you want to die in your saddle, but I do. So, talk no more of my health."

"Very well, father," Kiralo said softly, feeling something like pity worm into his heart against his will.

"So, the Emperor."

"No," Kiralo said, aware of what he was going to say. "You are the Chancellor. There's no position for this, and there should be… but for the moment, if it is anyone's duty, it is yours. Yours to write the letters and make the accomodations, in accord with some of the other high bureaucrats of state. It's your task," Kiralo said.

"Why would you want me to do it?"

"The Emperor cannot be seen writing a letter to barbarians. They are beneath him, inferior and unworthy of words by his hand," Kiralo said, dryly. "They are worthy to see him, to treat with others and beg him to accept it, and they're worthy enough that the Emperor may approve such a letter to be sent, as a kind of small act. And besides that, there are many people who will try to influence the Emperor, and some of them may succeed--"

"The Emperor trusts you," Kuojah said.

"That's just the problem, isn't it father?" He hadn't done enough to truly earn the trust. True, he had been kind and intelligent and was going to get him the best possible puppy, but if that's what it took to be liked by the Emperor.

"Every single time he's made a foolish mistake forward on its own, it's been about you."

Of course. He'd heaped Kiralo high with honors like a novice smothering a bonfire, without even asking him sometimes. He'd trusted him so much that not only was there a threat to Kiralo, but a threat to the Emperor Dai'so, in a way. A threat that would be hard to deal with, really. "He likes me. Enough that it has caused dreadful rumors that I intend to ignore."

"This court gossips endlessly," Kuojah said. "You should pay it little mind, Cs-Kiralo. I will handle anything dangerous, such as the possibility of rumors getting out about Cs-Yanmae. How many of them are true, incidentally?"

"If you mean: has she taken up cleaning and cooking at times out of boredom and curiosity?" Kiralo asked, his voice clear of any of the meaning behind it. "Then yes."

"Ah, very well. So you believe I cannot be influenced, that I will be able to do your will?"

"No. Your own will. I'm more willing to make compromises on the language and the accomodations with you than I am with the entire Imperial Court. The Emperor, you're right, would see how much I've wanted this, how even the day I first came here I'd thought that one day I'd reach this point. He'd grant too much, or carefully be too generous, or. I don't know what I fear, exactly, but I fear it. I think he shall be a great Emperor one day." Kiralo shook his head slowly. "Perhaps I'm like you, father? Wanting to mold someone like that?"

"Anyone would, in a way," Kuojah said. "You know, there is… his father's death was never solved. And it never will be now, because it is not…"

Convenient, Kiralo knew he wanted to say. But to say that, even here, would be a step too far. All of this was close to the edge, not only of improper talk… but also of what Kuojah would allow. "Possible to solve," Kiralo said. "Because it was a riding accident."

"Indeed. So, we shall be working together on that, and you shall be leaving for your estate soon. A week and a half, no?"

"Yes," Kiralo said, softly. "And while I'm gone… I've begun the preparation as well to send supplies north. Most of all good steel, spirit scrolls, cannons… and a little bit of food and a few soldiers, ordered to assist in guarding the convoy on its journey."

"The cannons will be well-founded, and all will be done as best it can, but there are those asking about the costs," Kuojah said. "There's only so much I can help you in this respect. In fact, there's very little I can do, in one sense." He sighed. "There's going to be nepotism, and I've already heard that we will have to send for neighboring cities for some of it."

At inflated costs, Kiralo thought, gritting his teeth. "We can't take longer to make it cost less. We'll just have to bear it, like we've borne everything."

"We," Kuojah said, thoughtfully, and then quickly ate a few bites of his gruel, which reminded Kiralo to do so for his as well. "I suppose that we are we now. It is good that you are helping out with the Northern Expedition on your own. It would be even more difficult, with… that woman you have haunting the Mage Academy."

"She has the Emperor's permission."

"She'll dig where she shouldn't," Kuojah said, and then snorted. "And good enough."

"Good enough?"

"They are not pious, and there are secrets that you might find," Kuojah said. "That will be useful in trying to deal with them. You see, when I was a young man--"

Kiralo very carefully didn't make any of the remarks he could have made.

"Ah, I can see that face," Kuojah said, gritting his teeth, but shrugging. "Yes, long ago. But as I was gaining power, there was a movement, actually, towards greater power for the Mage Academy. Threats were exchanged, I had to try to sort out the whole process myself while dealing with everything else. If they'd had a charismatic, ruthless leader who knew court politics… I don't know what would have happened. Or even a good leader. Instead, they had an incompetent that I was able to deal with."

Kiralo blinked. "Deal with?"

"Yes. Deal with. I prefer not to kill my enemies, for it is cruel, but it is often necessary," Kuojah said.

Kuojah had… well. Had been far kinder than Kiralo was, in one sense. In the sense only that: he was satisfied by someone being humiliated and exiled, or perhaps imprisoned on some distant estate. He didn't need corpses, and only when a case was deserving did he move that far. But of course his policies created plenty of corpses without that.

But.

"I know you know this, but when your enemy has crossed their final line and must die, you don't show mercy. You plan their death, you sign the documents to be stamped, you subvert their every friend and surround them on all sides. You know this, Cs-Kiralo," Kuojah said, almost softly. "It is the way of the world."

"And you are part of it," Kiralo said, slowly and quietly, though he was aware now that.

That his father had done something like he had done, had destroyed someone in some way so memorable that nobody had even spoken of it even once. That was how you knew the most memorable of courtly actions: they were the ones that nobody talked about and which were never written down, and thus which became at most a whisper of a rumor in the history books.

Every similarity felt like a dagger in his side.

******

Kiralo even, horror of horrors, found himself amused at the way a rather powerful lord was actually willing to come to grovel. Well, not that powerful, but someone that frankly Kiralo needed more than he needed Kiralo.

Tsao-Zun fidgeted, a man in his late thirties, about where one expected him to be for his age. Perhaps within a decade he would probably be at the head of the official book-printer for the Imperial Court. The chiefmost one, at least, and with a chance of rising yet higher still. For all that, he looked down.

"I do not feel as if you need any more rice wine," Kiralo said. "I hope you enjoyed the rice wine you had."

"I… did, Cs-Kiralo. My cousin was out of line. I do not know if I can force Jiahao to leave, but I will of course do what I can. If he was in any way impertinent, he could be whipped, I'll--"

"I accepted that he was invited," Kiralo said, mildly, startled by how high-pitched the man's voice was once he'd started panicking. "I am merely asking why he was there. If you punish a new guest to the court, this…"

"Jiahao," Tsao-Zun.

Good. Make it seem like something of no consequence. In fact, it probably was, but Kiralo was a little suspicious and uncertain. "I will be slightly displeased. If you wish to do so, I suppose you may, I of course cannot stop and punish you, being as I am only a…"

"Humble servant?" Tsao-Zun supplied, coughing.

"Yes. But I will have you tell him that he cannot just find a way to invite himself to such events. He was not of importance, the message was not for him," Kiralo said. "I do want that to be understood. I did a favor to you, allowing you to extend an invitation. But he was… out of place."

That was a lie. He looked like he fit in perfectly.

Tsao-Zun frowned. "Well, he has some manners, I hope?"

"He does, one supposes."

"It's just that he was cooped up in that cottage on the Peak for a year, and so it's my familial duty to feel bad for him. He's a guileless child, sweet and innocent, though he does put on a mask."

Kiralo kept his own mask on his face, because otherwise he would have laughed in this man's face. How little did he know his cousin? More than Kiralo in theory, but…

"I noticed," Kiralo said. "Everyone in this court does. You are his cousin, is he staying with you?"

"For the moment, but not for long," Tsao-Zun said, his voice a little annoyed. "He already left this morning, said he had business to see to."

It was just about dawn, Kiralo thought. "Well, so long as this business does not cross me, then I'll forget his name, whatever it is. Simply watch him and tell me if he does anything worthy of my attention."

Positive or negative, Kiralo does not add.

Does not feel the need to.

******

Two days later, and while Kueli was busy looking over the candidates, Kiralo had been getting ready. In fact, he'd be gone soon, though he did ask Kueli to keep an eye out for Jiahao scheming something or other. His appearance didn't make sense, and so Kiralo wanted to see what else he'd do.

But he was, truly, of no great concern. So Kiralo turned his mind to his visit to his new lands.

When he rode out of the court, at the head of quite the force of men, he looked back at the walls. There on them was Jiahao, in court dress, talking with one of the guards on top of the muraled wall. When the boy looked up, he waved absently at Kiralo and then turned away.

Kiralo shook his head and turned back towards his plans for the next week and a half.

What are those plans? (Choose 1)

[] Homebound: Go straight to the manor, and spend most of your time there. Perhaps problems will present themselves that way, and it's the one that makes it easiest for the courtiers to follow you and talk.
[] Shrine to Shrine: A religious tour would certainly look good to any courtiers following--or at least, the open piety was important--and you are in fact pious and would be interested in going from minor shrine to minor shrine, to check up on how that is going. Shrines, temples, there's no monastery on the lands, but there is one nearby, too.
[] Village to Village: There wouldn't be time for much more than going into a village, giving out tokens, and then moving on, but it'd be a start to understanding the dynamics of this land granted to him.
[] Noble housecalls: Technically, it'd mean spending relatively little time on your own land, but you could easily spend a lot of time getting to know your neighbors and seeing whether they were going to be trouble or not.

******
A/N: There you go. Also, you won't believe some of your rolls, when they come out. Which isn't yet.

Turn 17--Part 3

The debt to the Gods cannot be repaid, any more than, according to the traditional scheme, one could repay one's parents for raising one, for dealing with the bodily impurities, the emotional immaturities, all of the facts of childhood that made it…

Well, downright repulsive to many philosophers.

Kiralo believed that there was a reason so many of them spoke so badly of children, and it was that they were bad fathers. But he agreed, fundamentally, with the statement.

The corollary to this was that one must spend one's life trying to repay the debt all the same, just as one honored one's parents as best was one was able.

As the dust trailed the Envoy, his bodyguards, and several secretaries and other hanger-ons, Kiralo considered the nature of these visits.

Would the pious consider it a sham? Would the impious consider it the act of a fool? Impiety wasn't fashionable in the Imperial Court, but that it existed at all was distressing.

Kiralo of Lineage Ainin could not control the views of others, not in that way. But with a spirit that knew a spirit that served the Gods, that was now laying out slowly a sense of dooms avoided and dooms accepted--a sense that somehow stopped at Ayila, as if to imagine her defeat was impossible--in his… keeping, he meant it.

It was why he stopped at the shrine of the drowned Maiden, who had served the local God of lakes, Hai'fe, an underling of greater and more powerful Gods. The shrine was small, and clearly needed far more care than he could ever give them. It might perhaps seem a metaphor, he thought, kneeling in front of a carefully preserved lock of hair. There were whispers of spirits still on it, including the one, never seen before, which had dragged the body from the lake and left it there, muttering old blessings in half-forgotten tongues that had taken, or so the shrine-master claimed, years to decode.

Kiralo noted the cracks in the cobblestones, the paint that was needed for the walls, the little touches that showed a shrine in its decline. But there were a few people, here and there, so it wasn't that there weren't followers. Was there a larger or better shrine of the same God nearby?

Kiralo didn't know, and as he bowed his head, he tried not to care, his knees rubbing against the worn cobbles.

Hai'fe, and those you employ and those that employ you, keep pure the lakes. The Maiden drowned to save others, and so too would I drown for the Realm. Keep pure our lakes, and may rain fall according to your designs, may flowers grow and life live, and all things flow as you would have them, you and those employed, those who employ you. I ask this of you, knowing that you shall do as you shall do: that I, Kiralo of Lineage Ainin, owe you more than can ever be rapid. Gods be graced, Ten Judges be respected, the Emperor under Heaven be obeyed.

He repeated it ten times in his head, and by the end he was centered, by the end he felt as if he were that lake, so placid as the girl in the mural behind the braid had been. She'd died willingly. She obeyed her parents, her brothers, and her husband, but had discovered a villain poisoning a lake, destroying it because he hated the lords. And she'd told others, and confronted him. To distract him, the thin looking middle-aged shrine-keeper had said. To distract him while his allies were routed, and a petty feud was put to an end.

She had been drowned, and she'd smiled as she died because she knew she won: and Kiralo wondered at that, wondered if the story was entirely true. The God was, and the woman was too, that was obvious. But had she been happy? Would a woman who could die filled with triumph like that be entirely obedient, entirely without, apparently, nuance?

Kiralo knew he'd sacrifice himself as she did, but he wondered, if he did, would people talk about what a loving son he was to his father?

...they would, he realized, with a start.

The mural was not lovely, but whoever had done it had loved the story, and in the pale figure of the Maiden, half-obscured, he'd still managed to create something like strength, something like power.

Kiralo rose, and said, "I need a scribe."

A man hurried forward, stumbling as he did. On another one of those bad cobblestones.

"Someone is to be sent here to replace the stones, and to paint the walls other than the mural. Give it more color, more life." He turned to the shrine-keeper and said, "If that is acceptable to you."

The man bowed rapidly, all but throwing himself to the ground. Kiralo didn't want to give money, it could be misused, though he didn't think this man would do so. The gratitude was lovely, but he didn't do it for this man.

The more time he spent in the Imperial Court, the more glad he was that the Gods didn't require human obedience to do their job. The rain would fall, it was said, not because humans demanded it, but because Gods regulated it.

The more he saw of Court, the more he was sure that if it were any other way, mankind would abuse it.

Now, though? As a man stared at him in awe and respect, he couldn't regret this.

******

Of course, the next four shrines made him almost take it back. Two were to very obscure Gods, and yet the shrine-tender (and inn-keeper) who ran them puffed himself up and kept on trying to insinuate that they had some great destiny and that he was the one to unlock it… in coin. The third was of Lubi-ahn, the Goddess of Hearths, and while the first two were desperately obscure, Lubi-ahn was well known. Couples who started a new household gave gifts to such shrines across the Empire, and prayed to her and those working in her department, for the well-being of their family fires, for the good of their families themselves.

That meant there was a lot of money in it, if one wanted to do just enough to maintain the facade of a good shrine, but then pocket all the rest.

Kiralo should have just smiled, as many nobles did, and accept that ultimately someone had to take care of it, and that corruption happened. But instead he stared at the man--the man, though Lubi-ahn allowed female shrine-keepers, who were often blessed widows who raised their children by the shrine's hearth--and frowned.

"I would like to meet the couple staying in the back-hearth-home." It was one of the charities of the Goddess, that certain poor families that had no home could stay there for a while, in the cottage behind the shrine. A peasant without a place was one without anything to protect them but the mercy of the Gods, after all.

"I, uh, nobody's there at the moment."

"Well, I'll meet a family when I get back in two weeks."

"Get… back?"

"Yes," Kiralo said. "My father is family, so I may as well. I'll speak with them, and ask about the area. And look at the cottage. Not that I don't trust your word, of course."

But, of course, the fact that he didn't hung in the air. The fact that the man hadn't made more than the shell of a hut not fit for a pig, no doubt. And that he hadn't spent the time and energy seeking out desperate families wishing to live there, or paying for their food, or anything other than the steps, the walls, the center-hearth, all the things one has to do to appear real.

"O-of course."

Kiralo left smiling, though it was the kind of smile that came from a good deed in a world that so often seemed to be filled with bad people.

He and his guards pushed past the crowds that were gathering, peasants in the fields, wanderers, anyone who could take some time off… anyone who wanted to see just what their new Lord was like.

That, that was another reason to take the trek. And the fact that he was visiting all the shrines, all the temples, everything that mattered in the entire area, it meant a lot. It meant that he was giving at least a small sum to pious people, that his men were buying rice--and probably paying too much for it--to give to beggars, to petitioners. It made the whole excursion rather long, dusty, and at times miserable, especially with the paperwork. But Kiralo wouldn't have even dreamed, let alone dared, to cut it short. The people were seeing him, the people were being helped at the end of a long winter that had been, at places, remarkably dry.

It was a beautiful land, of lovely plains, fertile fields, and enough lakes and forests to provide extra resources, on top of the larger streams that helped provide yet more water. There were no rivers running that near the land, he thought, which would probably hold it back from ever becoming too wealthy. But the streams were impressive enough to, one of them, have their own powerful spirits. So it couldn't be too disadvantaged, he thought.

Halfway through the shrine-tour, Kiralo finally got a letter from Ayila. Luckily, he was going into the woods to check out a small, disused shrine to see if there was anything of worth (there was, he thought, frowning and noting its location). So he had a lack of people around when he read the note.

She'd found… several things. First, that the library was incomplete, as in there were certain volumes missing from the shelves but not from the categorization system. It was as if they had been disappeared. Similarly, there were quite a few Mages that disappeared at times that added up to… well. To some sort of secret duty. Perhaps a hidden library of their most important works, for her arrival? Either way, it was curious, and warranted further investigation. Which Ayila was going to do.
'
More immediately pressing was heresy. Among the younger students, heresy and disbelief was rampant. Disbelief in the nature of the Gods, or the extent of their powers, or even the worship of any number of bizarre cults, some of which Ayila recognized from the Southlands, where they were of course not cults at all. Others were quite new, or were secret societies devoted more to the ambitions of their members than anything else.

A third of the entire current crop of Mage students could probably face censure or worse for what they've done, and that is… well. That is a lot of potential blackmail material, and it's a distinctly uncomfortable fact as well. Something to… look into, certainly.

A little bit more frustrating was, well.

The relief efforts.

First, a mitigatable problem: Authorization for soldiers to accompany it has been slow in coming. More specifically, requisitions for their supply have disappeared, and sending soldiers without food is tantamount to creating bandits. To deal with this…

[] Send a hundred Rassit together with what soldiers can be scraped together, though the journey will take some time, time in which the company would be weakened, even if they all came back, which they might not depending on the dangers.
[] Spend his own money to hire out soldiers, and pay for all of the trouble and fuss, even if it left him surprisingly invested in such a seemingly small detail.
[] Send a letter to the Emperor, have him come down hard on the problem. But using the Emperor would be a little like swatting a fly with a cannon.

Second, a complication: (Choose 1)

[] Word has come that some of the passes that would be taken to go north have been hit by fortunate and yet unfortunate late-winter rain. It'll be slower going.
[] There have been reports of strange spirits wandering across Xissand, and while it may be nothing, no threat at all to the Caravan… one never knows.
[] News comes of a raider-push from the Bueli, which means that the supplies will have to be delivered farther behind the lines of war than expected, which increases the chances of them being, well, embezzled.

******

A/N: Sorry if it's a bit short.