117 - I Have to Hit Hard

Nadian spread the separate pages out on his table and glared at them.  The information he’d tried so hard for, bled for, struggled for, was here.  Spread out on page after page.  This had arrived from the border, for every peasant scum to read.  No secrets at ALL, no information to be witheld for favours, just... just printed for anyone to see, free.  Diryish this technology for everyone will destroy us all.

The Heir.  Wasn’t a boy after all.  It was the champion whose death had been faked by that boy-sucking Milar years ago.

It took everything I had to actually support that sheep-buggering bastard, son of a diseased pustule.  He was the one that discovered father’s plot. To save myself I had to betray you, father.  Why didn’t you trust me enough in your plot to take Diryish down and put our family on the throne?  Together we could have done it, but Bil and I... were left ‘innocent’.  Damn you to the burning light old man.  I was forced to betray you, with that Ilaxandal, to save my own neck.

Not dead.  Apparently, according to the stories out of the Milari Unity Talain had been approved by a couple of doddering old zon in those mountains of theirs.  Trained by them.  Mandery and clinery both.  Still expressed as a warrior but of course he’d be astonishingly good at both because he’s a direct-line grandson of the old man.

But he'd been injured.  Years ago but some injuries just never healed up well.  Talain had been over-run by the retreating troops and clawed to shit, fractures, compression injuries.  That had been in the report that Diryish had demanded, completely not realizing that d’Molfe did get the report.  But the general was convinced that Diryish wanted it to hang him out to dry, and if the Milar loved the scum Amir already he’d want to protect him.  Bleeding dry, scorching sand in my wife’s vagina! This was a disaster.

He'd have at least a dozen days till the whole politically delicate caravan arrived at the city.  Surely he’d find a way to hack the datastream and get a lovely illness or two into Talain’s bloodstream.  Bleed him out into the sand before they arrived.  Dark, if he managed to make the man sick it would delay them further.  Surely his defenses weren’t perfect – and Milar?  They’d not know what to defend against. Rather than narrow his target down to a single man, he'd better... more happily... destroy them all.

His finger tapped again against the description of the entourage, from the ‘kuluri at the border post.  These fancy birds.  Ilaxandal Vania, damn his bloody heart, looking fit and hale, his squires, Talain, also described in glowing terms, only with one squire.  This many older people in krashnall silks, probably the Milar idea of Hive Lords, people Vania couldn’t leave out of his sight or those currying favour with him.  Probably someone to hold Talain down for him every night.  A small enough entourage.  They’re trusting their own prowess as warriors to protect them?  No guards at all?  That is madness and Talain should know it.  What on the planet are they DOING coming in here so vulnerable?

He rose and swept the pages into the box’s hopper where the fibre would be re-used.  It was a useful thing to have one of these LIN boxes in his private control.  He’d grown this one himself.  It was an ‘unlisted’ box and had no number.  Only he could access this room and this information.

It was time to open up the books of transcribed codes and spells that he’d been too genteel, too gentlemanly and pure of soul to attempt.  I have to hit, and hit hard, before they get anywhere close.

**

The caravan was five days into the badlands of Lainz, when the flensing wind came roaring up out of the toxic salt plains.