Page 12 of Nemesis Mine
Chapter Four
One reconnaissance exercise. A chance to see Maximillian in the flesh, to watch him interact with those around him, to confront him and see how he took it. Cyrus had thought that would be enough.
In the days that followed his visit to Arclee, he began to reconsider. Surely it made sense to gather as much intel as possible on the man he would be fighting. He needed to know Maximillian’s strengths, his weaknesses. What to expect, and how to best him. He needed to become an expert on his subject of choice, and to achieve that, he needed to observe his target in action.
Maximillian’s tour took him over to Lathakil in the west, less than a day’s ride away, where a young wrongdoer, a newcomer, had recently taken up jurisdiction after she drove their aging champion away. He looked out of place when he arrived in the tired marketplace, his emerald cloak more vibrant than anything else in the town. The wrongdoer—Mori? Mora?—had left her mark in the past few months. What used to be a thriving town was nowglum and downtrodden. People clustered hopefully around Maximillian as he arrived astride a fine chestnut stallion with an intricately braided mane. Soulripper had been left tethered in a secluded corner, but Cyrus knew she would have sneered at the sight.
As expected, Mora took offence at his presence. She hurtled out of the shadows, all furious dark eyes with a thick black plait whipping in her wake, and interrupted Maximillian’s conversation with the people of Lathakil by launching herself at him with a roar of rage. From the other side of a stall piled with bruised apples, Cyrus watched intently. He tracked the way Maximillian moved, surprisingly light footed, muscles rippling in his arms as he hefted his sword. He was more skilled than the wrongdoer, although she made up for lack of technique with sheer viciousness. Cyrus would never usually root for another wrongdoer—they were competition, after all, and as a rule Cyrus didn’t root for anybody but himself—but all the same he found himself willing her to get a strike in. He wanted to be the one to finish Maximillian off, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy a savage spike of pleasure at the thought of somebody else getting in a painful hit or two.
Were the Guild’s standards slipping with the current cohort? Mora missed opportunities that Cyrus would have latched onto with glee. Maximillian threw himself too far to the left in avoiding her swinging blade, his balance askew; Cyrus would have sent him sprawling to the dirt. Where Mora tried to back Maximillian into the crowd of slack-jawed peasants, Cyrus would have shoved him into something harder and less helpful: a wooden stall, a wall. Theexposed curve of Maximillian’s throat as he ducked, right there; he would have caught that. He willed her to do better, to embarrass Maximillian before his admiring audience.
But it wasn’t to be. Mora fled in the opposite direction after barely a minute of combat, to a great swell of cheers from the onlookers and a pleased grin from Maximillian. Cyrus turned away, frustrated, trying to push that smug smile from his thoughts.
The situation lingered in his mind as he found himself somewhere to stay for the night. In the doorway of Lathakil’s least shabby inn he found a man and woman pretending to worry as the bored innkeeper grunted something about only having one bed left, as though they weren’t both pink cheeked with excitement at the thought.
“I’ll take it,” Cyrus declared, barging in between them so that they ricocheted off opposite walls with matching yelps. He snatched the key dangling from the innkeeper’s finger and stomped up the stairs. Call it his bad deed before bedtime.
Later, Cyrus lay on his back on the thin mattress and stared up at the uneven beams crisscrossing the ceiling. He kept thinking of the crowd’s gleeful cheers as that wrongdoer ran away from Maximillian; the quirk of Maximillian’s lip. The delighted clamour of Lathakil’s people.
It confirmed that he’d made the right decision. Maximillian needed to die before he ever set foot in Ranragh. Cyrus could not allow himself to be laughed out of his own territory like Mora.
He cast his mind back to the poster tacked up in Ranragh’s square, as though the date wasn’t unpleasantly etchedinto his mind. Maximillian’s visit was planned for midsummer, nearly two months away. In years gone by Ranragh had primarily worshipped Spring in all her delicate, hopeful glory, but his people would probably still bring out old traditions to mark the solstice. He imagined garlands of summer blooms flung around Maximillian’s neck, bellflowers and bright primroses; soft pastries with sweet strawberries pushed past his lips.
Irritation brewed at the thought. But there was no point letting it rile him now. He had time. He would destroy Maximillian before he ever set foot in Cyrus’s town, and he would enjoy it.
Cyrus shifted, making one last attempt to fluff up the lumpy sack the inn had the nerve to call a pillow, and let that reassurance carry him off to sleep.
As frustrating as it had been to see Maximillian win a fight with such ease, the trip to Lathakil did prove useful the next morning. Cyrus was readying Soulripper to leave when he caught a snippet of conversation that made him pause halfway through adjusting the saddle.
“—why he’s making such an effort, she said, visiting all these places.”
“Who?”
“Maximillian.”
Cyrus’s head lifted automatically at that name. He was alone in the stable, apart from Soulripper. She shifted, restless, and he stroked her flank soothingly.
“Why would he bother?” Cyrus recognised the western burr. The innkeeper, standing just outside the stable. “Not like we can vote for him. Should spend more time in his own city.”
“Well, exactly. Nori said he’s trying to impress people.” The first woman pitched her voice low. She had the conspiratorial, slightly gleeful tone of someone who made gossip a key hobby. “She said that there’s a lot of talk in Heliarth about how he’s losing his touch.”
Oh,really? Cyrus ventured closer to the door, listening hard. Soulripper didn’t take kindly to his distraction and stamped on his foot. His hand flew to his mouth to stifle a cry, though he still strained to listen.
“They say he’s idle,” the woman confided. “Lots of people talking about needing a change, and all these younger champions coming out of the Federation who don’t take everything for granted... There’s Avexa, you must’ve heard of her? She wants Heliarth too. Quite the fighter, so they say.”
“And how does Nori know this?” The innkeeper didn’t sound convinced.
“She heard so from her friend’s cousin’s uncle. He works in city planning for Heliarth.”
“Her friend’s cousin’s uncle... hang on, isn’t he also the one who said he could talk to goblins?”
“Well, yeah, but he’d been on the mead at that time, you know what it’s like...”
Their voices faded as they walked away. Cyrus bent to refill Soulripper’s water bucket, smiling to himself.
So. Maximillian was running scared.
He’d thought the tour was just a chance for the arrogant fool to posture and bask in admiration, but this was much better. It was quite the effort to go to, to try and remind the people of Heliarth that their champion was well renowned across the land. His situation in Heliarth must indeed be precarious. The last five elections had seen Maximillian win and keep his title, so firmly ingrained as champion he might as well have been one of the stone figures carved into Heliarth’s walls. He’d had fifteen years to enjoy the riches and status that came with such a city, but perhaps his time was up.
