This is why I hadn't bothered to join the resistance in the first place. These guys were nuts. Stupid, and crazy. I mean, did they know who they were talking to?
We were sitting in one of the old bars off the port of San Drumais. One of those places that used be dugout palaces of the El Durar chieftains back before I was born. My father used to take me riding up here, back when I was still a princess and our kingdom still stood and he was still alive. He would tell me stories about the old peoples who sprang from this planet, and how the new peoples came from the stars. But that was back when people could fly and didn't need to breathe air.
I obviously needed to breathe air; I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to pass out. The boys from the resistance weren't pleased with my reaction. "Wait, wait, wait," I said, still trying to stop laughing. "Explain this again." I held up my finger. "One more time."
Bolthos, the big one with the big ears and the dull blonde hair sighed. "We want you to seduce him. Then-"
"Wait!" I cried, before bursting into a fresh round of laughter. Oh damn. This was too funny.
"Then," Bolthos continued once my laughter calmed to giggles, "We will kidnap you, and we can lure him to Gravlor's Peak. His sorcery won't work there."
"Even if it does," began Saymar, "It's the perfect place to attack. We'll have the tactical advantage." I looked at Saymar; I had always had a sort of begrudging respect for the guy. He stood out from the others in the resistance because usually when he opened his mouth, foolishness didn't spring from it like spilled marbles. He was also uncommonly handsome. --Which I never held against a man, unprejudiced as I am. He was scarred, but that just made his bright green eyes look dangerous and calculating. And I liked easily spotted dangers. You could always play near enough the edge for a thrill without getting in real trouble.
"Please, Princess?" the boy Dartix began to ask. But I slapped him across the face before he had a chance to say it.
I wasn't a princess. I hadn't been in a long time. Not since Moms and Pops had been slaughtered in the throne room.
I should have been killed too. But when there are a dozen princesses, three dozen ladies in waiting, and about two hundred other girls under the age of twenty hanging around at court just because the eldest princess is about to be married -- well, it's easy to miss one. I suppose.
I was twelve and I escaped. All sorts of people wanted to take me in at the time. But I was twelve and I was pissed. -And scared. Mostly pissed. Anyway, even then I knew being a princess would get me killed. And I refused to be anyone's victim.
"Sorry," Dartix said, rubbing his cheek.
"Sometimes I wonder whose side you're on," Bolthos said, shaking his head at me.
"Really? Maybe we should stop meeting then," I replied, and rose to get up.
A heavy hand landed on my arm. Saymar. He looked at me, and said, "Please sit down. They're both idiots."
I sat. "No. Dartix isn't an idiot. He just should be more careful. Bolthos simply makes the mistake of assuming that I care what he thinks."
"I know you don't believe us effective, Dor. But you don't seem to getting anywhere either. If we work together, we can take him down," Saymar said.
I closed my eyes a moment before responding. "Look, I realize that it may not seem like a bad plan on paper. But you don't understand the reality of the situation."
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Long story shorter: After wandering quite enough through the world on my own, to the point that I was fairly unrecognizable to most, and not of any interest to all, I decided to get my revenge.
I was fifteen and still terribly angry that my family had been murdered. --Fancy that. I also was newly aware that the man who had killed them all was living in the glass desert, over beyond the Uspi sea.
I made a point of trying to find out if I could slip into his palace as a servant, unnoticed. I had vague plans of then slitting his throat in the night or poisoning his dinner.
Unfortunately the bastard didn't have servants anyone knew of. The people I asked supposed that maybe he used magic, like he had when he killed my parents. --That was actually the first time that I had heard how they had been murdered. An army of dead things swept through the castle and throttled everyone with bony hands.
Others supposed that maybe he did have servants, but they weren't from around there, and maybe they used magic too.
Only one way to find out.
I headed out, on foot -- because yeah, I'm kind of a badass -- to find his palace and demand a servant's position.
I made it. Barely.
-But I made it because I'm a badass.
...Nearly dying of dehydration and being attacked by an army of ants with heads the size of grapes, no big deal.
Would I do it again? No. -Of course not. But, that's because I'm badass enough I don't have to.
Anyhoo... I got there, and I discovered the strangest thing.
No, the strangest thing wasn't that the palace was completely empty. The strangest thing wasn't that I found the man I had been looking for totally unguarded, unprotected.
The strangest thing was that he wasn't really a man. He was just a boy. --Younger than me.
Well, maybe not younger than me. We were both at that age where girls shoot up faster than boys. And I had always been pretty stocky, in an athletic way, to start with.
I first spotted him lying in the courtyard of his palace. He was drawing on the stone floor with chalk, in a dreaming, idle way.
I limped in past the stone arch entrance -- the ants had taken some pretty necessary chunks out of my legs and the only drink I had had in a while was the blood from my cracked lips.
"Hey," I said. I was vaguely worried at the time I might die before I see him. I didn't know this boy in the courtyard was conqueror of my planet.
He stood up immediately; shocked I was even there.
"I'm looking for the Master of the Realm," I said.
The boy looked at me in confusion, and then looked around before saying, "Uh, you found him."
I sagged. "Idiot. I am looking for the Master of the Realm," I said, this time slowly. "The killer of the kings. The mighty sorcerer. You know, the one in charge?"
Now he looked vaguely bemused. "Yeah," he said. "That's me."
"Oh shut," I began, but then -- for some reason, probably just a little too much ant poison, I fainted.
Fast forward a couple weeks -- I had the servant's job, though, in retrospect, I think he just wanted a friend.
Fast forward a couple years -- I was his trusted counsel, who was regularly making attempts on his life, and failing.
Fast forward to now --
I'm twenty-freaking-nine. You know how frustrating it is to try to kill someone for over ten years, and never quite succeed?
I know what you're thinking; this girl is completely incompetent. How do you not kill someone in the span of a decade? But you have to understand.
I can't be overt about it -- or he'll know what I'm up to and kill me. Or maybe turn me into a sea monkey.
After all, he's a sorcerer. He has potions for everything and magic words for everything, and portals for everything. --I poisoned a shirt once, and he sent it through a portal to the realm of laundering. No joke. ...Okay, minor joke -- but not really; he did send it away somewhere and it came back smelling like flowers. It's disgusting.
In any case, it usually takes a while to come up with a plan anyway. Factor in the time it takes to pull off said plan without getting caught, and doing the research to make sure it might work, and besides that he actually does have me working a lot. I mean, a lot. I have to help him with spells, and local uprisings; baking up fake armies and dead armies and invisible wind armies. -I get in a couple attempts a year if I'm lucky. He also likes to read and have someone to talk to about what he's reading. He likes for us to each paint something and compare the results. He's a weirdo.
Then about five years ago, the resistance figured out who I was and thought it would be a good idea to keep tabs on me.
They're the ones who attack his fake soldiers and break his laws and try to draw him out once in a while by marching off into the desert (much as I did once), but usually they just end up lost in storms or something and never reach the palace.
Anyway, so I meet them once in a while, and I hear their plans and they hear mine -- and usually we just give each other a pat on the back for encouragement, have a drink and call it a night.
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