Chapter 1434: Behind close doors(1)

"Truly, Alpheo, you are far too soft in your mettle for the man most people paint you to be’’

Merelao lounged across a carved velvet settee in the guest solar, looking entirely at home in a chamber that did not belong to him.

He had just emerged from the bathhouse, naked as the day he was born save for a crimson silk robe loosely cinched at his waist that covered everything but hid little.

When Alpheo had first pushed open the heavy oak door and beheld his ally glistening like a freshly oiled pagan idol, the King had offered to return at a more modest hour.

To which the Mad Bull had merely laughed, declaring he would require the rest of the afternoon just to dry his golden curls, before throwing the doors wide and summoning his guest inside as though he were the sovereign and Alpheo the supplicant.

And now here he was, slopping dark brown vintage from a heavy silver chalice, the crimson silk fortunately disguising the fact that the Prince was an atrociously messy drinker, as he went about admonishing the conqueror of the South for a weakness only a lunatic could invent.

"By the Weaver, had I your legions locked in the palm of my hand, I would shale fair even with the Black-Feathered Devil himself," Merelao purred, swirling his cup as if he were toying with those very cohorts in his eager, blood-stained fingers. "They are the finest instrument of butchery this continent has beheld since the Red Reign, yet you dispense them as sparingly as a quack physician doling out poppy-milk for a mild headache. It is an outright obscenity, the way you hoard your iron as if you fear it rusting."

Alpheo’s brow darkened. He let out a dry, irritated scoff. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me, oh King," Merelao intoned, his amber eyes dancing with far too much amusement. He took a long, noisy gulp of wine.

"At every crossroads, you take the tidy path. The polite compromise. Even when the field is yours, you leave half-baked peaces in your wake like unwashed dishes."

"I have not the faintest idea what you are barking about,"

He had climbed the tower steps to discuss trade deals between the two crowns, border garrisons, and the simmering rot in Kakunia, not to be lectured on warfare by an overdressed sybarite.

"What I am saying is that you lack the stomach to finish the carcass," Merelao said, offering a disarming, razor-sharp grin. He tilted his head, regarding Alpheo with lazy condescension. "I studied your campaigns. Brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed, and yet at the very climax, you split the difference when you ought to burn the field to cinders."

He chuckled at the murder brewing in Alpheo’s eyes.

"Still blind to it? Look at the northern rebels ten winters back. You crushed their levy during that night assault, routed their horse, and sent their lords scurrying back to their keeps with their tails between their thighs.

They were broken, isolated, and weeping in the dark. A true conqueror would have starved them out of their stone holes, burned their halls, and hanged every oathbreaker from his own battlements for all people to see. By night they were broken and by morning they would be an example. And yet you talked to them’’ He laughed ’’Yet you offered them terms, took their silver, and marched home."

Alpheo leaned back, crossing his arms over his leather doublet. "A siege would have swallowed eight months. Eight months of rotting in trenches, burying men of camp-fever, and bleeding the treasury dry. Time I put to far better use breaking Herculia and conquering it whole."

"Ah, Herculia! Now that was a lovely stroke," Merelao conceded with an airy wave of his goblet. "Annihilating an ancient royal line in a single evening, then cajoling its vassals to bend the knee before the blood on the flagstones had even dried... magnificent theater.So many actors in place and yet all played it out well enough. But look at what you left behind! A barn packed to the rafters with dry timber, waiting for a single stray spark to set the province ablaze."

Merelao pointed a wet, ringed finger squarely at Alpheo’s chest.

"You let the two brothers live. Oh, you took their titles and crippled their pride, but so long as their lungs draw breath, every disgruntled Herculian will look to those boys and dream of restoration. You were so dazzled by the keeps and pastures falling into your lap that you ignored the embers smoldering under the floorboards."

The Kakunian stood up, his robe trailing behind him, his tone dropping in conviction.

"You lack the appetite for the final, bloody inch, Alpheo. You lack the resolve to plant your heel upon your enemy’s throat, force his face into the mud, and keep him pinned there until he stops twitching. The bloody road is long and foul, aye, but when you reach the end of it, nobody rises from the ditch behind you."

"I seem to recall you executing a remarkably similar dance in your own campaigns," Alpheo countered smoothly, watching Merelao turn his bare back to saunter over to a carved cedar commode.

"Hardly comparable," Merelao said, plucking a pale green apple from a silver bowl. The fruit yielded beneath his teeth with a sharp, echoing crunch. "I needed spears at my flank. A ship requires more than a captain to weather a squall; it needs hands to man the oars. I broke the vanguard my uncle threw into the valley, and then I forged the survivors into my own , through sheer rhetoric, fire, and passion. Not even the Black deceiver could have made a more passionate rethoric of my own."

Alpheo had heard the man speak, he was even more persuasive that he himself was.

Oblivious to the king’s thoughts, Merelao strolled back to the velvet settee, sinking into the cushions with graceful ease, chewing thoughtfully upon the flesh of the fruit.

"I had no choice. Contrary to popular tavern tales, I am capable of cold calculation when the mood strikes. I am not blind to how the world turns. And unlike you, my dear Fox, I am not leaving behind a den of disgraced patricians nursing their bruised pride, waiting to snap at your heels the second you turn your back."

Merelao leaned forward, his amber eyes glittering with venomous certainty.

"For mark my words, that is precisely what they will do. They will wait for your first stumble, your first bad winter or sour harvest, and then they will strike. You will pretend their bites are mere fleabites, but you will bleed all the same, and the other rats sniffing in the dark will smell the gore and swarm."

He tossed the apple core into the cold brazier, wiping his fingers across his silk lap with a loud, theatrical clap of his hands.

"Yet by the grace of the Five, you have me! I have turned our fortunes over in my head during these long weeks of feasting, weighing your predicaments against my own, and it seems to me our shadows fall across remarkably similar ground."

"I suppose you have a proposal, then?" Alpheo asked, arching a dark brow, genuinely surprised that the Kakunian had laid his cards on the table first.

"A simple, elegant remedy for two men surrounded by enemies," Merelao purred, resting his chin in his palm. "Even when I cleave my uncle’s skull and take the seat of Kakunia, Habadia will remain a festering wound at my throat. Their lords will scheme, their ravens will fly, and they will test my borders for years to come. And you, ’’ he chuckled ’’you sit upon cinder waiting to catch in Herculia, praying those crippled princelings don’t ignite that spark you so much fear."

The prince smiled, tapping the arm of the settee with a ringed knuckle.

"The map, however, is a generous mistress. My borders kiss both Herculia and Oizen. If your southern dogs decide to bare their teeth while you are looking north, my lances can ride into their valleys before they finish drawing their swords. And should the Habadians test my patience, your line-cohorts can march across the marches and crush their flank."

Merelao reached for his chalice once more, his gaze locking onto Alpheo’s with unblinking, predatory clarity.

"A pact of blood and iron When my realm burns, you bring the water. When your vassals rebel, I bring the axe to cut down the trunk you have left behind."

It was a good proposal.

Alpheo needed allies far more desperately than his pride cared to admit. Yet he was not a green lad fresh to the camps; he had not forgotten that he had already pledged his own legions to Merelao’s war without demanding a copper in return.

So why had he made the same offer?

There was no reason under heaven for the Kakunian to offer his own lances so readily,not out of brotherhood, and certainly not out of the goodness of his heart.

Shared borders and common enemies made for fine parlor talk, but a sudden bout of charity from the Mad Bull smelled entirely too foul.Especially with the timing, he could have made that offer when he was in a stronger position during the war, not now, that everything seemed so shaky with his odds for victory.

It was a basic of dimplomacy.

Alpheo had every reason to keep Kakunia whole as a buffer against Habadia, just as Merelao relied on Yarzat to check the shadow of the Two Towers.

Even so, there was rot somewhere beneath the sweet-smelling nard and grape wine.

And as Merelao’s rosy lips parted once more the true stench of the bargain spilled into the room.

"Pardunum," the Kakunian purred, the name rolling off his tongue like a velvet scabbard weaving over the iron blade. "For that alliance I , of course, want Pardunum."