Chapter 295

Raymond finished writing the letter, though he did so without his usual flourish. It was slow, even sluggish, with the occasional quick jerking motion as his anxiety ramped up again before he could force it back down. 'Fighting vampires is easier… I'm going to have to explain this to my colleagues.'

That was going to be a chore without end. 'Berenice is reasonable enough, but Dominic is rash, hot tempered, and doesn't see much beyond the present. Ginedine will get past this as I frame it as a matter of law. But Maximillion? Not to mention the Pontifex?'

The whole matter was a combination of dread and frustration. 'If they'd just listen to me then everything would be so much easier…' Raymond cursed their stubborn heads, each one headed a different scripture, and so each brought with them the experiences and perspectives of that scripture's purpose.

'But none of them are the Black.' Raymond thought with great pride. The best of the best, the strongest of the strong, more cunning than the Holocaust Scripture, more stealthy than the Windflower scripture, more loyal than the late Sunlight Scripture… 'Nobody can beat the Black. You'd think being in charge of them would have lent my words some weight when I came back from observing the destruction of the Baharuth Empire's army. But nooooo!' He rolled his eyes at their responses.

"He would have to have the power of the Six."

"He would have to be a God himself."

"You must be mistaken."

Only the fact that Thousand Mile Astrologer was watching and made an identical report, changed their minds. 'The Allfather is, if anything, even more impressive. But he hasn't claimed to be a god. Then again, did the Six ever claim it either?' Raymond ran through every line of the Book of the Six. He memorized it years before, and… no, they hadn't.

He rubbed his forehead, 'What are you doing, Raymond? Just running over pointless things in your mind. Trying to distract yourself from the real problem.'

The demihuman, the traitor to humanity, being treated as a peer by the other human monarchs was bad. 'That would have been unthinkable even three years ago. Has everyone forgotten that?' He wondered, and it brought him to the thing which was worse… for his conscience. 'Goblins riding into our border, entering the Elf Kingdom in search of a missing human monarch? Demihumans searching for a missing human monarch?'

The ground might as well have been shaking beneath his feet. And as he finished the last letter and heated the wax to affix his seal to them all one by one, his fingers had a tremor to them that was not there before.

'Zesshi… gods above I wish you were here… are you alright? Are you lost? In more ways than one?' The tap, tap, tap noise of wax dripping down on the cream colored paper kept time with his thoughts, and he brought his seal down onto the first letter, marking it as permanently as a tombstone.

The enchanted sealing wax cost a fortune to prepare, but now that his mark was there, it wasn't going anywhere.

'That poor girl… if the human she went with reveals what we've kept from her, and he probably has… What must she think of us? Of me? Twenty years I've been hiding the truth from her for humanity's sake… now she finds out my country isn't that different from a whole Kingdom of Elf Kings…' He shivered.

'It was that or wipe them out…' The old thought comforted him more than once, whenever his conscience nagged at him about the all too human terror, fear, and pain on the faces of the elves, he told himself again and again, 'This is the kinder fate, at least they get to live.'

But never once did a moment pass that he didn't flinch when he saw a half elf other than Zesshi.

"There's no other way." He told himself again and put his head in his hands and elbows on the table. "There's no other way!" He shouted to the empty room. "There's not!" He shouted again.

His mind betrayed him.

It carried him back to the hateful stare of the crop eared elf woman he saw on the street, arm held firmly by a human man, together, but hardly a loving couple. She remembered him, and though he denied it often, he remembered those he captured on his missions as the war went on. 'I never touched them…' He told himself, but the hateful glare of the elf woman back at him as he rode past in his carriage, and the growing belly she sported, did not trouble his conscience less.

He brought his fist down on the table, shattering it in two and knocking it down to the floor hard enough that the two halves broke again on impact and his letters scattered and floated about the room until the weight of the wax carried them to slide along the floor.

"Damn it!" He grumbled as he looked at the mess he made.

He went about the room bending over and picking up letter by letter authorizing entry and passage through the Slane Theocracy unobstructed, and informing all military authorities that even nonhumans were to go unmolested for the duration of their task.

When it was done, he went to the small rope his upper class room was equipped with and gave it a tug, somewhere on the far end a bell was ringing which would summon a servant that would send word that his authorizations were ready, in turn another servant would be sent from the King and Queen that would pick them up, and then that servant in turn would bring the letters back.

Roundabout as it was, the niceties had to be observed.

'I could just take it myself, but going uncalled for would be bad form.' Raymond thought with a small hint of annoyance before he went to his bed and lay down, he set the letters on the nightstand beside him and picked up the Book of the Six. Its passages often helped quiet his troubled mind in his darkest hours. The feel of the pages, the weight of them all, it wasn't a thick book, but the pure white leather cover always felt good to hold. Raymond quietly recited the words within to himself until a servant appeared at his door.

Young, as most of them were, he took directions well and was gone after no more than a few words.

He went back to reading until a surprisingly short period of time later there was a knock on his door.

"Enter." Raymond said, and his face twisted in a mix of shock and dismay, it was the dragonid Queen of Frost who entered his quarters.

"You've got letters for us, good. I half expected you to worm out of it somehow." Neia said with respectful nod, her tail undulating behind her as she drew closer to where he lay.

Raymond sat up instantly and slid his legs off the side of the bed, setting his book down on the pillow as he rose up.

"You? Not a servant?" He asked.

"Is that what passes for a question in your head?" Neia chuckled, shamelessly exposing her sharp and predatory teeth.

Raymond shook his head hard enough to cast off the dismay, "What I mean is, why are you here?"

"To pick up these." Neia said and reached for the stack.

"Why are you here and not a servant? There's protocols…" Raymond retorted and pursed his lips into a disapproving line.

As she began to read over the letter on top, she answered him, "I was a soldier before, a scout, a ranger, if you want to think of it that way. I worked on my own, when you work by yourself, your protocol becomes, 'Does something need to get done? Yes? Then do it.' and that's all. You expect different out of a beast?" She snapped at him in a thick, sarcastic voice with a condescending smirk.

"Just take them and go. They're all there." Raymond answered with a wave of his hand toward the door, refusing to take the bait she offered him.

"Without checking them? No way. I don't trust that you wouldn't set up my people, or Enri's people, to be killed." Neia said and kept her eyes roaming over the paper before moving the top letter to the bottom and reading the next in the stack.

"The traitor to humanity worries about treason? I shouldn't be surprised." Raymond retorted and stood up, he went to a small countertop and walked behind it, from down below he drew up a large opaque green bottle with a narrow lip and a big round body over a flat base.

"Traitor to humanity?" Neia said without looking at him as she read over the letter. "It was humanity that betrayed me first, human. I was loyal. I was faithful. I protected my country when it threw me away to die, my only crime was keeping what I thought were supposed to be virtues. Virtues like mercy to the weak, kindness to the poor, sacrifice for a greater cause. I believed all that, and I lived it, right up until the moment that bitch's sword was shoved into my guts."

Raymond popped the cork on the bottle and took out a metal flagon, he poured the red wine himself and took her words in silence. "You say that, but you also invaded your former country, abandoned your humanity, and killed… how many humans?"

"By my estimate, seventy thousand humans died in the war." Neia answered, "And thirty thousand demi-humans. But it could have been much more." She admitted, "And I didn't abandon my humanity by choice. This," she waved a hand up and down her dragonid body, "was a consequence of dragon blood being used to save my life after Remedios tried to kill me. A side effect, I guess. I do like it though, the wings are nice." She popped the wings out to their fullest span to show them off, and even reached out a finger to stroke their fine firm leather.

Raymond took a long draught of his flagon and retorted, "So you killed more than you protected." He answered, though he filed away the rest of what she said for later consideration. 'So our conclusions about how she came to be this way were all wrong then…'

"Only after they started it." Neia shot back, "I sent peace envoys, I wanted to start up a peaceful trading relationship, instead my envoys were murdered and their heads put on spikes on the wall. What should I have done? What would you have done in my place? Don't answer with a lie, Cardinal. We both know the truth."

Rather than lie, he said nothing.

"Even a beast can love her own." Neia added.

"What about your human slaves?" Raymond answered back with a flash of anger, "You kept and enslaved tens of thousands more after the war ended."

Neia snorted and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Who told you such a lie?"

"We have our sources, we know that large numbers of prisoners were taken, and a lot fewer went home afterward. Did you just kill them instead?" Raymond snarled at her with sudden fury.

Neia's glare bored into his skull, as if she were looking through him, "I. Have. No. Slaves." She bit off each word like she was gnawing on hardtack and the silence stretched between the pair.

"So, like any beast you just killed them all." Raymond glared back as best he could, the unmitigated evil in her eyes loomed like an angry dragon, 'If I just killed her… wait, so if she did that, why offer to help now…?'

He was just starting to wonder that, when she denied that as well. "No. After the war ended, I had a lot of farmable land and not enough people to till it, so I offered every prisoner of war their own plot of land if they would stay, and I put them under the former Duke Astraka of the Southern Holy Kingdom. I suppose you could call him my 'minister of human affairs' if you needed a title for it."

"I don't believe you." Raymond answered and poured another drink, "One rules the other, one kills the other, there's no way humans and nonhumans can live side by side like that… no way. There's not."

"You're repeating the same old lies I heard my whole life." Neia barked back, "But where the hell do you think you are?!" She yelled at him, "You had to have seen it here, outside your damn window if you care to look!" She pointed her free hand to the window, the talon at the tip of her finger raking the air until her arm trembled with rage when it came to a stop. "Demalbion is no different. I don't hate humans… I was born one. I didn't ask for this, I didn't ask for any of what happened! But things got complicated, and we found a way to make them work afterward! Same here, I guess. Your faith is nothing but lies and hatred! Hatred and lies! It doesn't have to be that way! It doesn't!" She almost screeched it, her wings shook with fury and her tail lashed behind her as her arm slowly lowered to her side.

Raymond looked toward the window where she pointed, approached, and drew the curtain over it without thinking, darkening the room a little. "You're lying." He said again, "This place is a fluke held together by the desperation that made it into a country. In a few years the demihumans will be rampaging and killing humans again, that's how it's always been."

"Send someone to my country then. If you won't believe me, if you won't believe the very eyes of Queen Calca, send an envoy to tour my homeland and see for yourself that I don't lie." Neia said to him, and after a deep breath, she calmed. "I pity you."

"I'm sorry?" Raymond said, unsure if he understood her properly, he returned to the bar and poured himself another drink.

"I said, I pity you. You're not that different from me. A defender of humanity through and through, you've been in danger countless times and come through it all. You killed and fought battles and lived to tell about it, and now here you are, a man in middle age… you've done so many terrible, awful things, haven't you? But you live with it because you're convinced you had no other choice. That there was no other way but the way you chose." Neia said and shook her head, "But all that's going to change, Cardinal. Someday soon, sooner than you think, reality will hit, and all the guilt you're hiding from behind the shield of 'necessity' will crush you beneath it when you find out it was all a lie."

She turned and headed for the door, tail lashing behind her and snapped it shut.

Raymond looked at the curtain enclosed window, and reached for the bottle to top off his flagon again.