Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 830

Chapter 830: Issues with central power(1)

The work of a monarch was never light , at least, not for one who took the state as his true charge rather than his personal purse.

A hedonist could wear the crown with ease. Such men found joy in the power itself, gorging their bellies and their beds while carving the flesh of the realm and putting it on their plates.

Notably, of course, they were among the worst rulers a nation could have.

For a proper sovereign,one worthy of the word, lived in a crucible. His days were spent balancing different powers, with different demands. He had to guard against one faction swelling while another withered and had to keep rival interests in check without stirring them to revolt. He had to spend years in pursuit of policies that sounded simple in speech but proved near-impossible in practice.

He had to divide factions, putting one against the other and of course prevent them from uniting in alliance against their monarch.

Alpheo was no exception. He too walked that tightrope. The only difference was that his ambitions multiplied his burdens: he pursued not one policy, nor two, but dozens, each tangled with the other like knots in a sailor’s rope.

Today was no different.

His gaze drifted to the window, where heavy gray clouds rolled across the sky. He despised gray days, they soured his mood.

He forced his face into stillness, yet peevishness was clear in his face.

The meeting is a waste of my time, he thought.

He believed it would have been more useful to spend his time watching the shifting shapes of the clouds than to indulge the little man now droning his voice raw at the foot of the dais.

Especially since Jasmine was already there, and of the two, she was the more adept at these things.

His eyes fell on the speaker only briefly. The man’s cause was already known; there weren’t, after all a lot of reasons for the nobles to come together if it weren’t for his latest decree.

The man did badly to hold Alpheo’s interest for five seconds , before his mind drifted back to the sky, tracing beasts and banners in the rolling gray.

A soft hum snapped him back.

He turned his head, meeting the princess’s eyes. They fell on him hard, revealing how she had grown weary of his cloud-gazing, and of course of his feigned indifference. But he knew her displeasure went deeper than his childish posturing in council.

She and her grandfather had tried, time and again, to turn him from his course , tried to sway him from the great design he had set in motion.

Of course, they had failed, as recent events were proving.

The first steps toward centralization had to be taken somewhere, right? Well this was the first, and the response came only as fast as the first crown’s attempt came.

The little man finally finished his bowing and scraping, before finally finding his voice, quickly followed by puffing out his chest as though he spoke not only for himself but for a hundred louder voices behind him.

Which as a matter of fact he did.

“Your Grace,” he began, words polished “I am bound by duty to present before this august chamber the growing concern of the realm. Many of the noble houses of Yarzat have taken issue with the latest decree issued by the Crown. They hold that such measures trespass upon freedoms and rights long held.”

He spread his arms as though to soften the bite of his words. “They beg you, for the sake of peace between nobles and liege, to reconsider. To amend your course before harsher storms rise. For if harmony falters, discord will surely take its place.”

His gaze flicked briefly toward the one to blame, Alpheo, though he was careful not to linger on the man whose reputation became far more daunting the more the years passed.

Then he drew himself up and spoke louder.

“To that end, Your Grace, the lords of Yarzat have placed their voices to ink. A petition, bearing the names and seals of many esteemed houses, beseeches you to recall or amend this decree. It is their hope that reason and tradition may guide Your Grace’s heart back to the path of moderation.”

At a gesture from the envoy, one of the guards stationed near the door stepped forward. In his hands was a roll of parchment so long it took both arms to hold it steady.

The soldier approached the dais, his boots thudding on the stone, and bent one knee before extending the scroll upward to the Princess.

She took hold of it, and opened it,

And of course Alpheo immediately noticed her eyes slightly widening as she started reading the signatures on it.

Nothing good, it appears, Alpheo judged as he waited for his wife to dismiss the man so that she could rail on him about how much it was a bad idea.

He didn’t need to wait long.

“Your concern, and that of those you represent, has been duly noted,” she said, her voice soft as silk giving the man no hint of what the Feller of Herculia would bear afterward “The petition will be read in its entirety, and considered with the care owed to the voices of these lords.”

The envoy bowed deeply, perhaps expecting further debate. But Jasmine’s tone left no ground for either and honestly, he was happy that all he had to do was deliver the message. She inclined her head only slightly in return, then let her hand fall gently atop the scroll.

“Now,” she continued, turning her eyes to the hall at large, “the matters of this meeting are concluded. The session is ended. Go, and attend to your duties.As for the petitioners your current standing will be retained for tomorrow”

For a moment the chamber was still, then, one by one, courtiers and petitioners who had come to make their case rose without a single sound of complaint.

Guards at the portal pulled the doors wide, and the gray light of the day streamed in. One by one, they left through, until the hall that moments before had thrummed with voices emptied like a tide retreating from shore.

Jasmine remained still upon the dais, for the duration of it. Only when the last echo of departing steps faded did she exhale, slow and quiet, her eyes sliding sideways toward Alpheo in a gaze that was colder than the sky outside.

Alpheo pretended not to feel the weight of her eyes on him. Instead, he rose from his chair with the languid ease of a man unconcerned, stretching his back as though the long session had left him stiff.

The guards remained motionless, helmed faces forward as they did not dare to make a sound, but the faint curl of his hum carried to their ears.

Without a word, Jasmine let the parchment slip from her fingers aiming it at his husband.

It landed in his hands like a snake coiling into his palm.

With the scroll already open, all Alpheo had to do was read it, which he did.

Line after line met his eyes, names marching down the black inked vellum like a roll call of malcontents. Some stung more than others.

Some especially earned Alpheo’s ire, as the mercy he had extended to some of the lords had apparently not been returned with kindness, given the presence of the signatures of Niketas, Eurenis, Lysandros. Even Mash, whose father had bled out on the sand after losing a trial by combat for Robert’s murder.

Alpheo’s jaw ticked as he read further. Damaris of Megioduroli, how many times had he swallowed the man’s arrogance and even rewarded him with lands and privileges, since he believed he was owed more, being among the first to offer his support to the crown? He was also notably among the most rewarded from the latest military campaign.

Was this the thanks he received?

Pyrros, too, whose city Alpheo himself had saved during the First Coalition War. Rescued him from ruin, and this was the thanks he received: a name inked neatly among dissenters.

The more he read, the more he became angry. Was there any act of kindness he gave that stood unpunished and unspat?

Still, he calmed himself.

It was not all bad. He exhaled slowly, reading between the lines as much as the words. From Herculia, the newest jewel in Yarzat’s crown, only a sprinkling of minor signatures appeared. Those who had prospered from the new markets wisely withheld their pens, no doubt mindful of whose hand had delivered them prosperity.

Which they assumed correctly, as Alpheo would have literally pulled the rug beside their feet and chosen others to take their cut of the Herculeian market.

Better still, the royal brothers’ names were absent.

Their abstention along with many others was no accident; they had clearly kept their previous vassals in check as well.

It was good to see that for some, gratitude was still a thing of this generation, especially after all he had done for the eldest.

All told, it was worse than he had hoped but far better than he had feared. Like most dangers that wore the mask of dignity, the petition was less a sword at his throat than a needle at his arse, annoying, painful, but not fatal.

At least, not yet, after all there was only so much one could bother a hound before it started biting.