Chapter 1356: Repercussion(2)

It seems your time in the sands has severely dulled your sense of humor, brother.

Cain watched the transformation with dark, quiet amusement. No doubt his precious royal brother was unused to being spoken to in such a manner. Three years of unchecked conquest had surrounded Blake with far too many sycophants and far too many groveling yes-men, all competing to kiss the hem of his red cloak.

Cain lazily splashed a wave of cold water with his good foot, giving his brother’s growing fury precious little attention.

That casual dismissal, predictably, only served to stoke Blake’s anger higher.

"I did not bring you here, nor have I kept you fed in this palace, for your sarcastic japes or your miserable company!" Blake hissed. He punctuated the insult with a deep, furious intake of breath through his nose, sounding remarkably like an iron-horned bull preparing for a bloody charge.

As if I didn’t know, Cain thought, his jaw tightening. You were certainly in no grand hurry to claim me when I was rotting away with mother at Elio when I was just a mad cripple!

For a fleeting second, he wondered how the old woman was faring, and whether he would ever see her face again in this life. Deep down, he already knew the answer, and it was not the one he might have hoped for. This journey to the Sun Palace was a one-way sail; he had accepted that long ago.

But he was at peace with the reality, there wasn’t much left in this world he was truly living for anyway, save for the bitter taste of his own designs.

"I brought you here because you were supposed to be a man with brains," Blake continued, stepping closer as the moisture in the air made his sun-bronzed skin glisten, highlighting every dense, iron-hard muscle across his chest and arms. "So I am asking you here for a practical solution, not to be made a fool of in my own bathhouse."

Cain looked down at himself. He stared at his own gaunt, pale arm,a sickly, fragile limb no thicker than Blake’s wrist, and at his narrow, bony shoulders and stick-thin legs dangling over the water. A sharp, ugly envy flared within his chest, burning hotter and fiercer than the humid air of the room.

"Cain..."

"Let me fucking think!" Cain hissed back, snapping at the King with a raw, sudden venom that surprised even himself.

He was furious. He was incandescent with rage, angry that incompetent fools kept jamming wooden spokes into the delicate wheels of his machinery; angry that his own body was a broken, useless wreck; and furious that his younger brother had been handed every grand gift, every victory, and every drop of strength that Cain himself had been denied by the gods.

For once, the younger brother obeyed the eldest. Blake went silent, crossing his heavy arms, and Cain was finally allowed the quiet space to think.

"Harlon," Cain muttered at last, the name feeling strange, heavy, and awkward on his tongue. "The poor bastard just wants to be useful to his dear, heroic brother."

Just like me, eh? Cain thought with a sneer. Were he a cripple, I’d take him for my own bloody mirror.

"Thank the Sea that the fool hasn’t already spat out everything he knows to the entire camp," Cain continued aloud. "He is patient. He is entirely willing to sit tight in the mud and wait for further direction from us. That is a rare blessing, he is a forebearing, disciplined man. Those are e rare traits among our people, where we routinely reward brainless brutes who blow away their short lives chasing gold, songs, and whoring."

I have no favor with the gods, no grand songs will ever be sung of me, and whoring is a bloody chore with a hip and leg as fucked as mine, Cain thought dryly. Perhaps that’s why I’m the only bastard in this place with a working mind, less blood run to my cock and more to my head.

"Kroll is the one who corresponds with him directly," Cain reasoned, leaning his chin onto the cold metal knob of his cane. "So Kroll is the man we have to convince."

"How?" Blake asked, his tone softening, becoming considerably more placid now that a tangible thread of a solution was being laid out before him.

"You will use that royal tongue of yours to convince Kroll that it is far better to keep this mess hidden for now," Cain instructed. "Tell him we will deal with Harlon in private when the time is right, and without a war-axe to the man’s chest. Feed him some grand lie about how vital the golden boy is to the overall war effort, perhaps something about the iron shipments he secures for the front-line troops.About how you already knew, about how you are allowing him to continue, about how a rat you know well is better than one hid. Tell him that you have everything under control.Fuck, lie, manipulate,I don’t care just see it done."

Blake shook his head doubtfully. "Kroll is not a man built for subtle forethought when treachery is involved. The moment he sees the bastard, he will split his skull open whether I give him permission or not."

"Perhaps if it is you who ask it, face-to-face, as his friend, the brute will relent," Cain snapped. "I am offering you viable solutions, Blake. You are the one who actually has to go out and implement them."

Cain watched as a deep, troubled frown etched its way across Blake’s sun-kissed brow. He cared remarkably little for his brother’s discomfort; it was Blake’s clumsy management that had dragged them into this swamp in the first place, and it was entirely his responsibility to see them through the mud he caused the cart to fall in.

"Is there anything else?" Blake asked heavily.

"Yes. Thanks to this delightful little slip, we no longer have the luxury of patience," Cain said, his single good eye narrowing as he leaned forward. "We have to drastically speed up our timeline. We cannot afford to linger in this fragile limbo any longer. The tail of the snake has already been sighted in the open, it will not be long before the rest of the beast slides out into the blinding light."

"Do we strike now, then?" Blake asked, barely hiding the sudden, reckless excitement in his voice. ’’I can have the fleet raised up to the call, and make it a butcher!’’

Cain would have smashed his iron-tipped cane across the man’s forehead if he had the physical strength to manage it. "Do that now, and you will lose everything," he rasped, his good eye widening in utter disbelief at his brother’s foolishness. "Do you truly think the common captains will follow you into a coup on your say-so alone? You need an excuse, Blake! This entire bloody mission was designed specifically to forge that very excuse! That part remains unchanged, we simply have to scale back the timeline. In the meantime, you ought to figure out which of the high captain’ support you can actually secure for the coming war."

Cain raised a trembling, gaunt hand to wipe away a thick bead of sweat sliding down his forehead. He hated warm, humid places,just as he hated the bitter, freezing cold.

"And how do I go about that?" Blake demanded.

"Do you want me to wipe your arse after you shit, too?" Cain snarled, the venom boiling over. "What in the abyss do I know? It is you who spent three years fighting at their side, not me! Do you think the high lords like to come and visit the bitter cripple in his dark room? Do you think anyone gives up their precious time to ask what I think, or what I plan?"

He let out a long, ragged sigh, forcing his chest to slow its rapid rise and fall. He was getting far too rowdy, letting his temper run wild. Blake was the only wall standing between him and a shallow grave, and he needed to keep the proud idiot functional if he was ever going to get his own strike at the witch.He needed to separate the two, which meant he had to have him fall more to his own blood.

"I don’t care how you do it, Blake, but do it," Cain said, his tone dropping back into a measured, dangerous whisper. "If I can offer you one piece of sound counsel, it is to drop any foolish attempt at winning over old Saltbeard. The man is ancient. No vast parcel of land, no mountain of royal gold will make him a single day younger, he has no more of three or five winters in him. He is an old dog, and he will die defending the old ways.The best he can hope for , is a sound death."

"What am I meant to do with him, then?"

"Slit his throat in his sleep, unless you fancy meeting his war-axe on the field."

Predictably, Blake took the harsh truth as a insult to his courage. He threw his shoulders back, his jaw setting tight. "I do not fear an old man."

"You do not need to fear a man to be killed by him, you arrogant bastard," Cain spat back. "Enough desperate men with heavy axes will see to your death all the same, and Saltbeard commands twenty longships’ worth of them."

Cain breathed out loudly, the thick, stifling heat of the bathhouse settling deep into his lungs.

"Ironically enough," Cain continued, shifting his weight with a dull groan, "Wavebreaker is the one most likely to bite your hook. Promise him a rich, fertile strip of coastal land that he can rule as his own private fief. He’ll take the bait. Stormcaller... perhaps he will join, perhaps he won’t, attempt to convince him last, once the tide is already turning. And then, of course, there is Kroll."

Blake’s eyes softened slightly, a fierce, protective pride rising in his face. "Kroll will stand with us. ’All the way to the abyss and back,’ he always swore to me. He will see the righteousness of our path and walk it at my side."

"Kroll may well be your brother in everything but blood, Blake, but the brute is also honest in his own blunt way," Cain warned, leaning heavily on his cane. "He might join us, if he buys whatever hollow excuse we feed him, he loves you so you just need to make him look another way. Do not tell him the absolute truth of the plot, and perhaps he will stay loyal.I will see to making a proper excuse that give you the moral ground"

"I will not lie to Kroll," Blake spat, his face flushing red with sudden, righteous anger.

Cain turned his head to glare through his single eye, but his brother took a sharp step forward, his chest heaving, his voice dropping into a dangerous hiss. "I said... not to him.He will follow us, he is my brother."

"He might rat us all out to the call the moment his conscience pricks him! Do you understand the stakes here?" Cain said , prickled at the comment.

He was his brother.

But of course he preferred the uncrippled one.

"He will not."

Cain stared at his brother’s rigid posture for a long, agonizing moment before letting out a dry, defeated chuckle. "Fine. If you insist on playing the honorable martyr with him, at least have the tactical sense to tell him the day before we march. Not a moment sooner. If he is as fiercely trustworthy as you claim, then waiting until the hour of steel won’t be a problem, will it?"

Blake stood by the misty pool, his heavy brows furrowed into a deep, troubled scowl as the shadow of deception hung thick over him. He despised the lies, the poison in the ear, and the quiet backroom knife-work. He wanted to be the golden conqueror, the heroic King who won his crown in the blinding sun with a clean blade.

He was a fucking fool. A fool with dreams.

Watching him, Cain offered a small, bitter smile from the dark shadow of the marble pillar.

Let the King frown all he wished. Cain knew , that Blake would do exactly as he was instructed when the hour arrived. After all, Cain had spent three long, grueling years maneuvering his heroic younger brother into this very position, shaping him, guiding him, and dangling the prize just out of reach, so that Blake would gladly deceive every soul in the kingdom if it meant placing that golden crown upon his head.

He had had gone too far now.

His ambitions in the end would win against all, against Kroll and even against his own family. Blake might deceive himself , but Cain knew it best, there was no love between them.

He was just a useful piece.