Treacherous Witch

20. The Spoils of Empire

"You'll get everything you want," she said at length. "The rest of us will suffer."

"Not if I can help it."

She frowned. "Then what?"

"I'm a public servant," said Avon. "My father is the emperor of Drakon. From my earliest years, I was trained to serve the Empire. I joined my first battle when I was sixteen and killed my first man. I married a woman I'd been betrothed to since I was ten."

"The woman who passed away."

He nodded. "She died in childbirth, leaving behind our son."

His son had come into the world without a mother. She felt a stab of sympathy for that. Did he have aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings to love and take care of him? A grandmother to lead him? That was how it worked in Maskamere. Every child was brought up by the entire family.

"My father declared me Chancellor of Maskamere," Avon went on. "The situation here has been mishandled from the start. I hope to change that."

"Are you saying you didn't want to invade Maskamere? You had no choice?"

"I'm saying that what I wanted didn't matter," said Avon quietly. "I live by my duty. But the Empire can be a force for good. Maskamere deserves to see that. There's no reason for your people to suffer."

He had the gall to say that after everything they'd destroyed. Markus was an orphan who'd pledged himself fully to Bakra's cause because he didn't have anything else left. She'd been orphaned too, fortunate to have been taken in by another branch of the family. There were countless stories like that.

She shook her head. "A force for good? Burning villages, killing civilians, destroying the silvertrees. You call that good?"

"I call that war," said Avon. "Yes, there is suffering in war. The important part is what happens after."

"You take your spoils. You force us into your way of living."

"Do you consider that bad?"

"Yes, it's bad!" She was growing in confidence, her voice stronger. At least he was having an actual conversation with her. Whether she'd learn anything useful to pass to the resistance, she didn't know, but it was a start. "It's never stopped being bad! When have you Drakonians ever done anything for us?"

"We are a civilising people. We bring the benefits of natural philosophy, divinity, commerce, and the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman."

"What about the sanctity of the silvertrees? The things that we consider sacred?"

"I would like to see a Maskamere with the silvertrees restored. Even the priesthood, though not in the form it once was."

"What does that mean?"

It was the second time he'd alluded to it. Voicing her own ambition back to her, though she couldn't imagine that their visions for the future of Maskamere were anything alike.

Avon sipped his wine before explaining. "The priesthood existed to uphold the rule of the monarchy. It was a successful system. But any system can be replaced. The Drakonian Empire is the most powerful in the world because we understand that the old structures must be removed and new structures must be put in their place. If we were to restore the priesthood, it would need to serve us, not the royal family."

"That's why you murdered the royal family and killed the priestesses."

The way he talked about it was so cold and academic, like something he'd learned out of a book.