The Fire Queen

Chapter 58

The next morning I had the Theran ambassador summoned to the palace. She arrived in short order and when I asked her about the leak of our plan that had precipitated civil war in Dranii she was remarkably candid.

"There have been rumblings coming out of Dranii for a long time that there are members of the Council of Regents who believed that he was going too far with his influence campaign. Our belief was that if our plan for rescuing these kingdoms from his stranglehold became known to him that he would propose taking retaliatory action against us which those members of the Council of Regents would consider a dangerous escalation that he could not be allowed to proceed with. Prince Philip had nothing to do with the assassinations, but he's the one that they want on the throne, and with the kingdom now in a state of civil war Dranii is too weak to exert its power externally, meaning we don't need to commit the funds that we would have needed to commit to service Kandalar and Volstaff's debt for them."

It took me a long time to digest what Ambassador Gail had shared with me. I had thought after speaking with Queen Herana that I could trust her to be a faithful and honest ally, instead she had taken my proposal that I had spent countless hours working on and used it to instigate a war.

Perhaps sensing my deep sense of anger, betrayal and disbelief, Elias came to pay me a visit. I was up on the palace roof at the time, breathing in the fresh air and doing my best to collect my thoughts.

"I understand that you are frustrated, but this is the reality of dealing with the rulers of other kingdoms, if an opportunity presents itself for them to achieve an advantageous outcome in an expedient manner they will take it without hesitating," he said to me.

"We spoke for days, we had an agreement that we promised to honor; is nothing sacred?!"

"In the game of kings and queens, I'm afraid not. The only thing for you to think about now is how you will move forward after this."

"Why is all of this happening? If it's the job of the Overseers to select the rulers then why are there so many struggles over succession in all of the kingdoms?"

"Succession is not simply a matter of the Overseer choosing a ruler and installing them on the throne; whenever possible we try to ensure continuity and stability, which generally means that when a royal vacates the throne it'll be someone from within their orbit who has displayed the most leadership acumen that will be the one who is selected to succeed them."

"Then why did you pick me?"

"I picked you because this kingdom was in need of someone new who would sweep away all of the rot and corruption that had taken hold of it. Dranii is not in as bad a state as Aseron was in when I chose you to become its ruler. Prince Philip would be a good choice to take over as king, that's if he's able to survive this war."

"He'll survive; I know where he's gone, they won't find him."

I decided to take Myra and go and see Philip. I went alone, planning to be in and out of the kingdom as quickly as possible. As I flew across Dranii the towns that I had flown over with Philip now had columns of smoke rising up from them, confirming that the kingdom truly was in a state of civil war. As I thought, Philip had fled with his gryphon to the cabin where Griselda lived.

"I just found out two days ago about the war; how did this happen?" I landed and asked Philip, who was busy brushing Rolf.

"The Council of Regents had been split into two camps for a long time: one camp was opposed to my father's campaign of using the financial support that he offered to kingdoms to entrap them, believing that eventually those kingdoms would turn on us, and another camp that supported my father in everything that he did, needless to say the regents that supported my father did so because of the generous fiefs that he bestowed upon them. It was only a matter of time before the regents that opposed my father moved against him; when he started talking about retaliating against you and Theran for your plan to bail out Kandalar and Volstaff they decided that they had to act."

"I never meant for this to happen."

"This was always going to happen, it's not your fault."

"What are you going to do?"

"Wait for this war to end and see where I stand when everything shakes out."

"You and Griselda could come to Aseron, you'd be safe there."

"If we did that then you would be accused of being involved in all of this, and I won't be a part of anything that would jeopardize what you're trying to accomplish as queen."

"Elias told me that the regents that opposed your father want to place you on the throne."

"I have no interest in the throne, and besides, I'd need the backing of the Overseer."

"Suppose you did have the backing of the Overseer, if the opportunity presented itself, would you take the throne?"

"If I had the blessing of the Overseer, and I believed that I could serve the kingdom well as its king, then yes, I would agree to become the king."

I returned to Aseron with the intention of not getting involved in any of the politics of the realm until the situation in Dranii had been resolved. I focused all of my energies on my domestic agenda. I checked in on the construction of the dams, oversaw the teaching academy's intake of students and I expanded the scope of the legal code that I was working on by adding property laws to supplement the land reform scheme that I was planning on implementing. My plan was to take the land that the peasant farmers had been farming for the nobles and give it to them as a way of compensating them for their generations of toil they were made to endure by the nobles. Giving them the land that they had been working for generations was a small gesture, but it was a start.

I was in my study happily working on my various projects when Ferland came to me to inform that a messenger bird from Galand had arrived with a note from Brumli asking if I could come north to Galand to have a look at another invention of his. I was always excited to see Brumli's inventions and when I read the note saying that he had a new invention and rushed outside to Myra and set off for Galand. In recent weeks Galand had become a bustling town. The dwarves that helped to build the schoolhouses in the villages had made their way to Galand after the schoolhouses were finished, and after seeing how well the furnace worked that I had asked Brumli to make and send down to Glendale, blacksmiths from all over the kingdom were coming north to Galand to learn the dwarves' trade secrets. Brumli met me in the town when I landed and had me follow him to his house. He led me into his house and through to his kitchen where sitting on the table was another device he had invented that was nothing short of miraculous. A lump of coal was being used to heat up a small metal cylinder which discharged thick steam and somehow it was causing a piece of wood to see saw, which, through another piece of wood that it was connected to perpendicularly, was rotating a wheel.

"Brumli, what is this?"

"I haven't come up with a name for it yet."

"How does it work?"

"The boiler is filled with water which is heated up by the coal, the steam is then sent up here where the build up and release of pressure produces vertical movement which is used to turn the wheel."

"Could you make a big one?"

"Yes, easily. I was about to start building one but we've been focused on building more structures to accommodate the rest of the dwarves that are making their way here."

"Brumli, I want you to start working on a full size version of this as soon as I leave, okay?"

"Yes."

Alegra had always held the dwarves' engineering talents in the highest esteem, but she'd never imagined that the dwarves would bring about so much transformation in such a short space of time. If they continued to make engineering breakthroughs such as this then Aseron was going to advance further and faster than she had originally anticipated. She stood in Brumli's kitchen and wondered what the challenges and opportunities of that rapid advancement would be as she stared down at the world's first steam engine.