Chapter 1759: What Duke?
Chapter 1759: What Duke?
Quinlan held the King of Vraven’s gaze across the frost for what felt like an eternity.
The two men measured each other, both having a great deal to say.
Then Alexios’s gaze moved to Ayame, and for a moment the king looked older than the centuries behind him.
"We have a lot to discuss." His voice carried only to the three of them. "In private."
Quinlan didn’t respond.
His attention moved to Ayame, to the hand resting on her katana and the composure she’d rebuilt mere seconds ago.
If she wanted to demand answers from the man who signed her into chains right here, in front of nearly every faction on the continent, he was ready to let her even if it would cost him as far as politics went.
Ayame’s grip tightened on the hilt for a breath that stretched long enough for Alexios to notice.
Then she gave the king a short nod.
Non-allies were listening. Whatever Alexios had to say, giving it away for free would be foolish.
Quinlan’s smile returned as his gaze found the king’s.
Alexios accepted the nod with a slight inclination of his head toward Ayame.
Then his tone shifted as his eyes found Quinlan again. "I noticed a certain presence during the fighting."
His eyes were as flat as they could be.
"Care to explain why my duke was standing next to your criminal friends on a foreign battlefield?"
Quinlan blinked at the question, pausing for a moment, then sighed.
"Have you finally gone senile, old man?"
Far beneath where they stood, a different conversation took place.
"When will this crazy fucker let us out? This is beyond disgraceful!" Alastair fumed, hissing as quietly as he could.
"...Would you rather explain to the king what we’re doing here?" Sareth Greenvale asked, clutching her knees to her chest in the dark.
"..."
Duke Alastair Greenvale, vassal directly to the man standing in front of Quinlan right now, was squatting a hundred feet below with every notable officer and soldier he’d brought to this war.
Not long ago, Quinlan had enslaved the duke and effectively turned Greenvale into his puppet territory.
He’d forced the man to march his elite soldiers to this battlefield alongside Consortium criminals, fighting a war against Elvardia that had absolutely nothing to do with his duties, and if Alexios confirmed what he suspected, the consequences would be immediate.
Which was precisely why Quinlan had carved a pocket beneath the arena while simultaneously raising the colosseum around everyone else.
Greenvale was a chess piece he was forced to risk because of the situation the Elvardians put him in with their ambush, but he wasn’t about to let the king confirm his suspicions that easily.
"Oh, your duke. I get who you’re talking about, old friend." He glanced over his shoulder and pointed at Kaede’s unconscious form, where Seraphiel’s golden hands were still working. "She’s being healed."
A vein throbbed at Alexios’s temple. "You know what I meant."
"I might be a genius," Quinlan blinked innocently, "but I can’t read minds. Yet."
"Alastair Greenvale." The king’s patience was a thin, fraying thing. "You shameless bastard."
He didn’t say it out loud because of the ears that could overhear it, but the accusation was crystal clear.
’You enslaved my duke, forced him to march his soldiers here alongside criminals, and expected no one to notice?’
"You really are off your meds. Where’s Felicity?" Quinlan sighed again, pretending to look around. "Someone needs to put gramps back to bed. He’s hallucinating again."
"Quinlan Elysiar."
A shameless shrug welcomed the king’s growl.
"It must’ve been my foxy playing tricks on you."
"..." Alexios’s eyes cut to the dogkin ranks.
In the beastkin sections, the foxkin in question had her brother’s prosthetic arm in both hands and was turning it back and forth with the critical eye of someone who’d personally watched it being forged.
*Knock knock.*
She rapped her knuckles against the elbow joint, and the clean ring of metal carried. "Quinnie and the self-repressed girlie did a truly impressive job with these!" She beamed up at Darius, white ears perked.
"That they did!" The dogkin prince flexed the arm, rolled the shoulder through its full arc, and grinned wide enough to split his face. "That elf lass poured her heart into these. She deserves some proper love for that kind of work, has the brother bedded her yet?"
Kitsara’s ears folded with an exaggerated air of refinement. "I might have a loose mouth but even I won’t discuss my friend’s intimate life behind her back."
On the flat ground, Quinlan watched the exchange with open pride. "Isn’t she amazing?"
Alexios’s expression was so dry it could have started a fire. "So you’re telling me that girl produced thousands of Greenvale soldiers from her tails, maintained their formation while impersonating Alastair, fought alongside your women in her own skin, and killed Silver. All at once."
’Why is this bastard so attentive? He was fighting five elders!’
Quinlan cursed inwardly, but the grin didn’t waver.
"Not even that old fox could manage something like that." Alexios watched him with the patience of a man who had been catching lies for a thousand years.
"Have you considered that Yoruha never went all out? Speaking of..." Quinlan tilted his head. "Where did she end up, anyway?"
"Stop diverting the topic, you bastard."
Quinlan ignored the old man’s yapping and realized he genuinely didn’t know.
The last he’d seen of Yoruha, she’d torn through Kaede’s dimensional tear into whatever waited on the other side, and hadn’t reported back since.
"Where is my mother?"
Elisabeth’s demanding voice sounded from behind Alexios.
Ayame answered before Quinlan could be bothered to.
"Somewhere nearby." Her voice carried a smile that was all composure and no warmth. "Why don’t you go find her?"
Elisabeth’s gaze shifted to the petite samurai, and the surprise was evident in it. "You-"
"You’ve called my partner a hypocrite, spat on his address to the fallen, and haven’t stopped sneering at him since you got to know him." Ayame’s hand rested on her katana, and her blue eyes held the princess’s without blinking. "All that is to say, yes. I do dare address you without respect, Arch Priestess."
It was the first time in her life that Ayame had spoken to a devotee of the Goddess’s faith without a shred of deference, and the ease with which the words left her told Quinlan everything he needed to know about what she’d taken from today.
She knew now what kind of deity Elisabeth worshipped and what kind of justice that church dealt in, and whatever respect the samurai girl might once have shown had long since been buried.
Elisabeth’s mouth opened and closed without sound.
The Goddess was the highest power on the continent, worshipped as omnipotent and omnipresent by every nation.
Nobody spoke of her faithful the way this girl just had, because nobody who valued their life spat on the Goddess’s devotees and walked away from it.
Yet here she stood, faced with a lunatic who wore his heresy like a badge of honor and an entire household perfectly happy to join him in it, and for a moment Elisabeth genuinely didn’t know what to do with that.
Quinlan watched his samurai put a follower of the bratty Goddess in her place and made no effort whatsoever to hide how much he enjoyed it.
Unsteady footsteps reached them from the side.
Maelstrom crossed the last stretch of flat ground with his chest puffed out and his legs not quite cooperating beneath him, and the look on the syndicate general’s face was one that no living member of the Vesper Consortium had ever worn before.
For hundreds of thousands of years, the Consortium had existed in shadow.
Their leaders met in underground halls and abandoned warehouses, their names spoken in whispers and warrants.
Every generation of Consortium leadership had dreamed of the day one of their own would stand before a monarch as an equal, not as a prisoner being marched to execution. Maelstrom was about to live that dream on shaking legs.
"Vesper Phenom Devil." He addressed Quinlan by rank first, placing the younger man where the Consortium’s hierarchy said he belonged, far beneath his own station. Then he turned to Alexios, straightened his back, and delivered the words he’d been rehearsing in his head since he started walking over.
"King Alexios Valorian." The formality was immaculate. The grin splitting his face underneath it was not. "On behalf of the Vesper Consortium, I greet the crown of Vraven as an ally on this field."