Chapter 150: We Fight For Humanity

"Oh yes, the mighty Emperor Scharlott," the old man said, as if we had asked him the time. "He is the Emperor of the mountain. Many travelers such as yourselves live under his watch. He is the savior of all of us."

We paused for a few moments.

Nobody moved. The wind slid across the bridge behind us and tugged at the old man’s cloak, and he did not even shiver. His blind eyes stayed fixed on a point somewhere above our heads, and his smile never changed.

I glanced at the others. Eva’s hand had not left her sword. Petra’s grip on my sleeve was tighter now. Khan was staring at the old man. Observing him.

’Savior.’

In the Realm of Evil, that word was usually followed by a price.

Khan was the one who broke the silence.

"Old man, how many people live here? Are there any conditions?"

The old man shook his head slowly, almost fondly. "Oh, traveller. More than 250 people live under the mercy of the mighty Emperor Scharlott."

Two hundred and fifty. So the palace had enough space to fit two hundred and fifty people. That explained its size.

"The condition is nothing," he went on. "It’s just equal exchange."

’Uhh. What?’ I thought.

Equal exchange. It was a phrase from the markets, from the guilds, from the mouths of men who were about to take something from you. I had heard it a hundred times, and it had never once meant equal.

Khan, though, did not only think it. He said it, flat and hard. "What is the exchange?"

"Oh, it is nothing."

The old man said it too quickly, and too sweetly. A drop of cold sweat slid down my spine. My left ear tingled again, a little stronger than before.

I looked at Khan.

I knew that look. I had seen it on the face of a man standing over a dead teammate, a long time ago, on a different mission, in a place I try not to think about.

His jaw had gone tight. His knuckles had gone white around the handle of his axes. He was getting angry, and Khan angry was not a thing you wanted to be standing near.

He moved before any of us could stop him.

He crossed the distance in two strides, grabbed the old man by the collar, and slammed him against the iron door. The sound rang off the black stone and echoed out over the bridge. The old man’s crutch clattered to the ground, and his bent leg scraped uselessly against the gate.

"Son of a bitch," Khan said, low and shaking, "you better start talking or I’m gonna turn you into fucking paste."

I had heard that word a lot lately. Paste. I thought of the crab’s head, red-brown and wet on the dirt, and I knew Khan meant it exactly.

Eva stepped forward, and then stopped. Petra didn’t. She stayed beside me, and her fingers dug into my arm.

The old man did not struggle.

That was the strange part. A man his age, pinned against a wall by an Inferior Awakened with an axe, that was a gift in his hand, should have been terrified. He wasn’t. His blind face stayed turned toward Khan’s, calm as water, and when he finally spoke, his voice was as patient as it had been from the start.

"The Mighty Emperor would just eat one of the people living there once in a while."

For a moment I thought I had misheard.

’Wha-?’ I thought.

The wind dropped. The red windows above us seemed to grow brighter, though that may have been my imagination.

Eat one of the people. Once in a while.

I turned the words over and over, looking for another meaning, any other meaning, and I couldn’t find one.

He had said it like a man describing a harvest. Like a tax. Like it was a kindness.

What kind of mercy was that? How was that a good thing?

I looked at the old man’s smiling, toothless face and understood, with a slow cold clarity, that he honestly believed it was.

He wasn’t lying and neither was he mocking us. He had said every word the way a man says in his own prayer. Somewhere between whatever he had been and what he was now, the mountain had taught him to be grateful.

Khan’s grip trembled on the collar.

Then, very slowly, he let go.

The old man slid down the door and settled against it with a small dry sound, like a bundle of sticks. He reached for his crutch, found it, and laid it back across his lap. He did not straighten his cloak. He did not look hurt. He tipped his face toward us again with that same endless, patient smile.

"Come in whenever you are ready," he said. "The Emperor does not mind waiting."

We pulled from the palace.

None of us said a word. We walked backward at first, then turned, and crossed the black bridge in silence, with the wind at our sides and the long drop beside us, and we did not stop until the gate was far enough behind us that the old man was only a grey smudge against the iron.

Then Khan sat down on a flat rock, put his axes across his knees, and stared at the ground.

Eva sat down next to him. Petra stayed standing, her arms wrapped around herself. I stood in the middle of them, with my sword at my side and my heart going harder than it had during the crabs.

"So?" I said.

It came out quieter than I wanted. I was not asking for an answer so much as asking for someone to say something, anything, to fill the silence.

I will be honest. I did not really care what the Mighty Emperor did.

I was not a hero. I was not a kind heart. I had killed a Captain of the Glacier Order without leaving a trace, and I had never lost a night’s sleep over it. I did whatever I thought was right, and I did not need anyone’s blessing for it. That was how I had lived since I was six years old.

But right now, I did not know what was right. I stood there with the Realm’s wind in my face and a palace full of watching windows behind me, and for the first time in a long time, I was confused.

Khan thought for a few moments.

Then he lifted his head. The anger had burned out of his eyes, and what was left was colder and steadier. The look of a man who had made a decision long before he opened his mouth.

"We’ll do what we have to do as G-Agents," he said. "We fight for humanity."