Cryfder 25^th 398 AFU

Prologue



Blood, fire, devils, slavers, the Children of Am'met, a cult, a war, and a crown, and it hadn't even been a year yet. My father is alive, and so is the man who raised me. I thought both were dead. There's a prophecy or some such, and did I mention the false Empress?

Some days are just day days. You get up, you eat, you shit, you do whatever it is you need to do to get money, and you rinse and repeat for the next day. Each day blends hopelessly into a grey miasma of life and you desperately start to wish for something, anything to happen. When I was younger, my day days were simple. Piper and I would get up, go lift enough for the day, eat, lift again, pay our rent, go home, do the wash, hope we had enough money for our evening meal, and sleep.

Unless Jax had a job for us, this was life, first day to seventh, darkest day to darkest day, rain, shine, and everything in between. We lived for festival days and for the jobs Jax lined up for us. Festival days saw all kinds and it was always better to lift strangers than locals. Jobs Jax set up were always people who had it coming.

But we wanted more.

We knew, absolutely knew, that once we became adventurers, we wouldn't have any more day days. Something would always be happening.

Then Piper got caught, lost her hand, and wandered off in her guilt. I haven't seen my best friend since. Jax got pinched, full raid. I know, I was there for the start of it.

Thought he died.

I should have known better.

After that? I would have paid for a day day.

It wasn't adventuring that saved me, it was Al. Alabaster, a LeatherWing Priestess, my owner, my friend.

Since I met him and his sister, I have fulfilled my dream of becoming an adventurer. We took a job, broke up a slavery ring, watched a friend die, saved a city, and found out my Father was alive.

I haven't had a single day day since the day I became what the LeatherWing call a 'slave', and I call a found family. Haven't missed them either...

At least, not until I became the Crown Princess of Five Rivers and all her territories. Did I mention I'm a thief? Guess which one I like better.

Right now, I could really use a day day.

It's been three weeks since we found out that I had started a war. Three weeks since I had become queen... three weeks since we learned we could not bring Ba'call back, not yet anyway. The SkyLord K'neall stands on my right, waiting. I think he wants to be on my personal retinue. After all, come spring, I will be at war with my future mother-in-law.

Some people were having trouble with the idea that the LeatherWing were on the march once more, most simply thought it was inevitable. Vela was a warrior after all, and LeatherWing were a violent people, even then most wondered what had possessed her to do something like this, and whether it was a good thing or not. In Five Rivers LeatherWing aren't universally seen as demons to be feared.

I didn't wonder, I knew. I knew what'd possessed Vela, why she had suddenly gone to war with the north, why she had taken over South Point first. I knew, and I was terrified it wasn't good.

Me, a sad scared little girl who her son had rescued from the back alleys of those oh so welcoming streets of my hometown. She didn't know all of it. She didn't know someone in my father's church had lied to him and faked my death. She didn't know someone was running slaves though town, and what was now her territory. She didn't know about the connection to the church, or the others supporting the man who had made my life a living hell. I knew, and I was terrified it wasn't good. She didn't know, I hope. If she did, things would get bloody and fast.

If they weren't already.

LeatherWing are some of the nicest people you will ever meet... until they aren't. A few things set them off: rape, slavery, basically any abuse of power. They go from giving you the very cloth off their back and their last coin, to ripping your throat out with their teeth so fast, that to say it is frightening, is to truly not understand that word. To them it's all the same thing, looking after those that can't look after themselves. They approach doing good to others as a form of combat, one they, as an entire culture, intend to master.

Of course, as soon as she could muster the troops she went to war!

Too bad that's not the only war I had to deal with right now.

War One: The Way Things Were

Chapter 1

The only complaint most people had is that in three weeks we had gone from a predominantly human city to a 'LeatherWing' city in name, to a cosmopolitan city of a different religion, faith, and race around every corner. Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, SkyLords, as well as a few Orcs and GrassLords had always been here, but now we not only saw an increase in their numbers, but also we were getting Liberi, True Orcs, HobGoblyns, and many, many, more. The influx was immense.

Which was good, because some people were leaving in droves. And by some people, I mean the only people with enough money to be able to afford to pack up everything and leave, the rich. Father usually handled the councils, as he had more tact than I did, but I was having to learn how to do it.

Which is what saw me here and now.

The irony of it all wasn't lost on me.

Here I sit, in a playhouse throne with its gilded paint flanking off under my hand, with the tin crown from the same playhouse sitting upon my head, being talked to as if I were as fake as my accoutrements. I didn't want this, not the job, not the gaudy overwrought chair, not the tin circle with its sparkly colored glass that sat upon my head, and certainly not the condescending wench that stood before me talking to me as if I were a spoiled lordling.

"So, you see Chloe, there's a right way to do these things and a wrong, and well, you're making this more difficult than it really needs to be."

Alyn Xiaell, leader of the guild of merchants, and friend of my father, smiled at me with teeth so perfect it made me want to punch them. Her blonde hair and blue eyes sparkled as she spoke as if little miss perfect was followed around by a perfect beam of sunlight that knew just when to glint off her. Honestly, my opinion of the woman would probably be a lot more charitable if she didn’t talk to me as if I'd led a sheltered life of ease.

"I quite agree with, well, almost everything you are trying to accomplish," she continued seemingly oblivious to the look on my face. "It's just that these things take time." She gave an exasperated sigh, as if this whole thing was too much to bear. "There are people with legitimate concerns that must be addressed."

"Such as?" I didn't snap, but it was a near thing.

"Such as." She gave out a long sigh. "Making too many things legal, making things that were legal illegal, setting up a new base pay for a day's work without allowing for things to settle and the people who do the paying to adjust. Then there is the matter of discussion and debate, we are a council here you see."

"Well a council, your council voted it would rather be a monarchy, and I’m it." The truth of those words pissed me off, and I don't think they made this woman happy either.

"Yes, well. Your father and I fought long and hard to prevent that from happening."

"Yet here we are." Have you ever been so annoyed with something, with someone, you just became bored? We'd looked into overturning that damn edict right after it happened. Tradition it seemed wouldn't allow for it.

She sucked in a deep breath. "Quite right. But that’s no reason to ignore the wisdom of the council."

"A council literally bribed with their own greed and self-interest to sell itself to a cult of Waban. Excuse me if I fail to see the wisdom in that."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then without opening them, explained things to me very slowly.

"Democracy is not perfect. We must hear all voices, let all people speak and be represented. Each and every thought and idea given its proper weight. The cream will rise to the top and the bad ideas will fall to the wayside. If allowed to work it will work, it has worked for us for nearly 500 years."

I would have been impressed, if this wasn't the hundredth time I had heard it from the woman. The first few times, it had cowed me. It sounded so good, so right. Self-rule like what we had back in the guild. I grew up on the idea that everyone was the best person to run their lives, that they could run them better than any church or lord ever could. I had so wanted to see things her way that I looked up all the bylaws for the council, all of them.

Education is the best cure for ignorance after all.

I met her condescending gaze with one of pure steel. "Two problems with that." I could feel it, she was creeping into my voice. The same she that had ripped the wings and slit the throat of the false empress. "The first problem, you're not a democracy, you never were." I took a deep breath and tried again. "You and your fellow councilors are all either the heads of guilds, or lords and nobles like my father." I was slipping, I needed to get this under control. I still had to work with this woman.

Yes, but she's not working with me, and that’s the problem. She's treating me like I'm a know nothing. Time to educate her better.

Over the last few weeks, she had been coming out more and more. When she spoke my voice was cold, colder than ice. Yet it held a hint, a promise, a promise of pain. Unbidden, my mind's eye filled itself with visions of this woman being tortured… but then it stopped. The whips were there, a scourge, the headsman was there with his ax, I knew I wanted to do 'things', the tools for those things were there, but my mind balked at it.

For a brief moment, I thought that the thought had scared her off. A step too far even for her.

No such luck, "You know, it would be so easy to have you beaten right now."

She blanched, and so did I. "Excuse me?" She said.

"You and your way of doing things gave this town to that mad man Averit. He would have had your head for your insolence by now." Shut up, shut up, shut up.

I watched as iron formed in her back, bringing her up, haft straight.

Before she could speak, she continued. "I, of course, have no interest in such things." We, her and I, locked eyes with this woman, this Lady. "But make no mistake, that is what your council voted to make legal, and legal it is. It is also wrong." The woman went to speak, but I held up a hand, "I am not finished."

For the first time I saw fear on her face, just a flash of it, but it was there. The problem was, I don't think it was me, or even her she was afraid of.

With an effort of will I took my body back over. "I am trying to set things up, and set them up correctly from the start. This includes me not having the power to just chop your head off because you have annoyed me by saying the exact same things over and over again, yet not listened even once to what I have said." I worked hard to emphasize that not.

She considered her words and mine for a moment then said. "My apologies your Majesty, but I was under the impression you had no need for such formalities."

The thought of her being whipped disgusted me, and her, but didn't make her retreat. This did. I could once more think without the ice creeping into my brain and vision.

"Lady Xiaell, you miss my point." I reached up and took the bit of tin off my head. "My Father is Lord Regent," the next part had me rolling my eyes. "And will be until I marry." Part of me really hoped I had found a way out of this by that point. "But the Night of Terror was just the opening gambit of that cult. You, your council sat with Avert and let his poison spread, and all because you valued debate." That was as far as I got before she interrupted.

"Yes, exactly, debate. And if Averit hadn't cheated by bribing..." She trailed off, her voice growing quite. I had raised my hand again. She didn't respect me, but she seemed almost to operate on an indoctrination to authority. Not mine obviously, just the very concept of it.

"As I was saying. You valued debate and protecting that debate more than you valued the people under your protection."

"Well, that’s hardly fair." She stammered.

She couldn't shut up. That too seemed to be pathological.

"Fair?” Rowen's voice cut off whatever Xiaell was about to say. "Fair is an evil concept used to let the privileged believe they are doing their best, while they do nothing whatsoever. It is a thing you tell yourself so you can sleep at night, with a smile on your face, knowing that you, today, were fair."

Lady Alyn Xiaell often talked to me as if I were a fool, but she never lost her temper, until now. "Now see here. I expect given who her father is and the circumstances of her life, for Chloe to be a little slow in understanding things. She was taken at a young age, but she still did grow up in civilized lands. You, young warrior, if I want to know about blades and death, I will ask for your input. Here? That statement is probably the dumbest thing I have ever heard come out of anyone's mouth. No, life isn't fair, that's just life. But we make rules, and all agree to live by them, and those rules should be fair and fairly applied to all." She let out a bit of a sigh and deflated. "But you're right, the law is not always applied fairly." She turned back to me, "It can easily become corrupted, by say, bribing people?"

This woman was working my last nerve. I had seen how she treated me, now I saw how she treated her 'lessers'. This lesson from her I would not soon forget. For now, I needed to get her out of my sight. The cold was growing.

I took a deep breath to try to warm myself, to warm my core, then spoke. "Your points are taken. Laws must be applied equally across the board. Now take mine. I am going to justly apply the new laws, the ones snuck in, bribed in, and the ones voted in correctly. Why?" I took a deep breath again and closed my eyes. I was about to admit, out loud, why I hadn't already just run off for the hills. "Because if we just overturned things, the people who voted for it who died, well they wouldn't have their voices heard and it would set precedent that if you didn't like a vote, just kill your opponent." Those were Marcus', my father's words. "Second, it wouldn't even bring back the status quo because Averit's little 'party' killed a lot of your council with his cutting of corners, and the Night of Terror saw him round up and kill a lot of your counselors since they opposed him." Jax, my dad's words.

Part of me wondered how she was still alive, actually.

I didn’t let that stop me now, however, "And finally, like it or not, due to my actions, my father's actions, and Bec and Call's actions, the people love me. They want me here, not anyone else. Hence why a Crown Princess is making any decisions at all." Alabaster's words.

He was right. When the smoke started to settle the next day and they found out more and more of the truth behind things, not only did they rush to crown me, they were all but begging for me to set up LeatherWing law.

As one group put it, "Got to be better than what we got."

There had been a riot when they found out I couldn't be queen yet, allowing me to make decisions at all, then having them cleared with my father was the compromise.

She nodded grimly. "All true, and your point?"

By the stars in the sky. "My point is, you were a council of many, now there are less than 20 of you, you serve the rich, I serve the poor. If we don't get this worked out, we're not going to be able to keep the people from revolting."

She pursed her lips and nodded. "Very well. But if you insist on changing the laws, go study them first. Learn them and learn the why of them." She looked at Rowen as she said the next part. "I believe that IS the LeatherWing way, is it not?"

The stupid... Cow? Bitch? The choices just got worse the more I thought about them. Why was it all the good insults for a situation like this were ones made and used to degrade women? Fool? Fine, fool. The stupid fool had no idea how close she was to Rowen beating her ass right then and there.