Book 4 Chapter 35.5: An Accord

++Asyran has little of value to the Empire for now, but, with less hostile inhabitants, it may yet prove a valuable source to be tapped. I recommend finding some way to pacify the locals so that it might be moved into with a less ruinous expense.++

- Report on the Asyrani continent following a scouting expedition, dated 1894 A.E

The attack was already turning against the attackers by the time Shuo Meg emerged to engage them, she was just the final nail in their coffin. I got the distinct impression she had hung back intentionally to gauge my own combat abilities and talent, and that she was being conservative with her magic now to keep from betraying any of her own secrets to me.

I had actually been banking on this when I chose to engage. Now that she had seen my physical abilities, she would be curious about them, and, if I was lucky, enticed. It was one more reason added onto the list of motivating factors for her to join my alliance and take her place as one of my generals.

“What was that?” Qaigor asked. He was doing his best to seem angry and threatening, but the boy could not quite hide his happiness as he walked over, currently wearing what looked like at least three pints of other people’s blood. He still held the enchanted sword I had made for him to defend the refinery, though not the cumbersome armour.

Shuo Meg eyed my brother with much the same expression Sethira tended to reserve for particularly interesting artifacts. I felt myself bristle, though I resisted the instinct to step in and put myself between them. Letting a lich see your weakness was about the most dangerous and stupid thing it was possible to do.

“This region has been growing…less stable lately,” Shuo Meg told him. “The people living here have never gotten along. Too many minor differences in culture, language, beliefs, and the problems have only been worsening lately.”

Qaigor spat at his feet. “Bloody savages. Probably killing each other because someone fucked someone else’s favourite goat, eh?”

I truly did not know why he said it with a smile and a wink, as if he was expecting Shuo Meg to find his remark funny or agreeable, but, predictably, she did not.

She also did not seem to care enough to confront him on it, just looked past him exactly like she was a millennia-old magical construct of near-perfect intellect being irritated by a human child and turned her focus to me.

“Thank you for your assistance in defending my people,” she said politely.

I looked around to behold the damage done to those people. The damage was certainly not insignificant. There were still patches of fire where my magic had gone astray, though none of it was quite threatening the remaining people. Putting aside the corpses left by Qaigor and myself, I still noted that several of the people living under Shuo Meg now littered the ground in their death.

This was, I knew, somewhat my fault. I could have been far more effective at reducing the damage if I had simply relied on my magic, but I had needed the practice. In any case, it was not like there were any significant talents among the slain, so I did not care too much.

Other damage was more superficial. The temple itself was fine, though there had been a few houses—more like huts really—cradled in its shadow that were now partly perforated by stray bullets. Most had fled into the main, stone structure, and I was quite sure no enemies had managed to find their way down there.

Blakely was gone, but that was no surprise. I imagined several of the enemy’s dead would be found with their throats cut from behind, which was essentially his signature by now.

All in all the damage was considerable, and I would certainly have been furious were it my own refinery, but not crippling.

Then again, Shuo Meg seemed to have already seen time do more damage to her own territory than one generation of idiots ever could.

“Qaigor, leave us,” I ordered my brother. He glared at me.

“Didn’t I just help?”

“You did. Now leave us, as we agreed you would do as instructed when important.” I stressed my words just a little, like there was some unseen danger present, and he scurried away urgently as soon as he picked it up.

There was not of course, but it had seemed like the best way to get some privacy.

“Those guns are not local,” I noted as I gestured to one of the corpses.

“No they are not,” Shuo Meg told me frostily. “I believe they come from your people, this ‘Garamon’ land. They have a long history of using trade to do what they cannot manage with military force. The jungle stops armies from marching, but not goods-laden caravans.”

One of the rifles drifted to her hand, and her eyes narrowed as she held it. I thought she might melt the weapon after a moment, or find some other suitably dramatic act of revenge against the inert tools with which this latest indignity had been inflicted upon her.

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Of course a lich was more rational than that, never prone to destroy that which might be taken apart and better understood.

“First it was the earliest gunpowder weapons, then it was that wretched filth. Opium. I was actually alive for that, I grew up seeing my people savaged by the stuff. No wonder the remnants of my empire have yet to reform in so many centuries.”

“I could provide aid with this,” I gently suggested. The trick here would be offering help and mutual benefit without giving her the impression that I had deliberately engineered the problems she now complained about. Liches were inhumanly intelligent, but we also had a tendency to get somewhat…paranoid. Spend enough centuries seeing through schemes, and you eventually become so good at it that, in the absence of any further schemes to see through, you instinctively manufactured schemes that were not actually there, simply to give your mind something to do.

Lich alliances tended to end unexpectedly and disastrously, and usually with some absurdly large explosion produced as part of a pre-emptive strike.

But this could be avoided. The trick, I had always found, was simply to be born with unmatched Lord Dread talent, and be much older than any other lich in existence, thus allowing you to guarantee that any betrayal or ‘pre-emptive strike’ would end in failure with your very presence. It was such a simple solution that I sometimes wondered how the rest of my kind were stupid enough to have never replicated it themselves.

Shuo Meg gave every sign of the usual response to an offer for aid; rapid and detailed scrutiny of me and everything she thought she knew about me. In purely chronological terms I could not have been responsible for much of her people’s troubles, not even the relatively recently ongoing opium, but I had known liches to cling to a theory in spite of a little something like chronological impossibility before.

Fortunately, she did not seem to be quite as paranoid as that.

“How could you aid me?” she asked at last. Was she suspicious? She seemed suspicious, but perhaps only in the normal, healthy way of one powerful being talking to another.

“I have influence in Garamon now,” I told her. “Not command, certainly not rulership, but…pull. I can make things happen or make it harder for them to happen.”

“Describe this influence in more detail,” she demanded.

I did so. I told her how Garamon, above all else, was a land now moved by money, and how my own wealth was rapidly climbing to the very top of all citizens under the Empire. How I was born with privileged noble blood and commanded respect among the magicians for my magical talent. I went over all the dozen other ways in which I could move events to my liking, though never gave her information that might help pinpoint an optimal target should she ever decide to wage war on my influence.

By the end of it, Shuo Meg looked somewhat thoughtful. Not impressed of course, few liches would find much to be impressed about in manipulating the magicless masses, but she had the sort of appreciation I was used to seeing in people who now recognised that a potentially useful tool was available to them.

“What would you demand in exchange for this assistance?” she asked, all wary and bristling now, ready for fierce negotiation.

“I was here to find a relic, as I said. Given that this is your land, your people and under your protection, I see none better to acquire it than yourself. If you can do this for me then I have no reason to infringe upon your hospitality any longer, and may depart back to my own lands knowing that you have given your word the artifact will be presented to me once located.”

Her face was so unreadable that I wondered whether she was deliberately paralyzing its nerves with magic to keep me from taking note of the expressions. I watched and waited as she mulled the prospect over, clearly trying to think of some way I might be getting the better of her.

In truth, I had no such nefarious plans. I did eventually want to recruit Shuo Meg permanently to my cause, and opening our relationship by tricking or beguiling her would be counter-productive to that end. There are times in life where being deceptive and evil is simply against one’s own best interest.

“...If you will leave immediately once I have made up my mind,” she told me. “Then I will consider it. But I want other concessions too.”

“No,” I told her.

She frowned. “You are not even open to considering them?”

“Not with my offer already being what it is,” I told her. “You are being asked to find a single artifact, I am being asked to move the political currents of the largest Empire in existence for your benefit. This is already not an equal exchange, and it is ridiculous for you to expect more.”

I could tell by her reaction that Shuo Meg had not truly expected any different. Perhaps she was just probing me for weakness?

Hm, no. I suspected she was trying to ascertain the value of my sought-after artifact. If it was as valuable as…well, as it was, then I would be tempted to offer ridiculous concessions to secure it. I had in fact felt that temptation, but of course I had known better than to succumb and tip my fellow lich off.

She thought about things for a few moments more, or pretended to, before nodding.

“Very well then. I will honour this agreement of ours, provided no harm comes to me on your part. I give you my word. When will you be leaving?”

I could not help but smile. Now that she seemed confident I meant her no harm, or at least was bound by my word not to give it, she was not bothering to hide how unpleasant she found my continued presence here.

For my part, I actually enjoyed her company. I did not often get to meet fellow liches, and it was nice to speak with one without being sexually harassed for almost every ongoing second of every day.

“I can leave within the hour,” I told her. “I just need to ensure that my companions are fit to travel, it would be irritating to lose such useful investments.”

The good thing about Victoria and Qaigor’s obvious talents was that I did not need to worry about my fellow liches realising they were a genuine point of sentiment for me. It was the ultimate camouflage, even if it drew attention to them in other ways from time to time. Shuo Meg did not seem to give it a second thought as I headed off.