RE: Monarch

The march towards the south-end of the city was a novel experience. Generally, the average person wouldn’t give two shits about the clash with House Westmore. What they should give a shit about was the massive uptick in military presence, skirmishes on the streets, and fires. Yet we were met with little enmity. Somehow, it was almost the opposite.

A priest, likely assigned to a Topside parish, considering the severe, almost monkish asceticism of his attire paired with a brooch of Onara on his collar approached Annette, a small clutch of freshly picked flowers beneath his arm. "Goddess's greetings, Princess." His smile was generous and gap-toothed as he held them out to her.

Annette took them slowly, looking him over before giving the simple bouquet a performative sniff. "These are lovely. But I am not currently available for courtship."

Beside me, Sera choked and laughed. But my little sister's warning—while awkward and harsh—did not seem to diminish the priest's enthusiasm.

"Alas, as Elphion holds a claim on my soul, we are alike in that small way." He patted her horse.

"Then these are simply tribute?" Annette asked.

The priest nodded. "You were hardly the first to fall prey to Panthanian machinations, yet one of the rare few to escape them. The rejection of their brutish norms and gilding of their authority brings hope to many."

Internally, I struggled not to roll my eyes. House Westmore had Uskarrion roots long before the slavers established a Panthanian foothold. And they made that foothold after the prior king elevated them to noble status. Crippling them and stripping them of their status was more janitorial than valiant. A long overdue tidying of our own mess. But of course, self-reflection and societal responsibility was a difficult topic, ungraspable for many, so naturally it wasn't the angle Thaddeus would choose to spin the events of the last few days.

"Then, thank you." Annette nodded, showing great tact. There was no doubt in my mind she'd connected the same dots I had, to the point I'd half expected her to correct him. But she was far more diplomatic in this life than the former. "They'll live on my window-sill in a crystal vase, and I'll tend them daily."

"Very kind, your grace. However, these are Gilded Asters. I was careful to maintain their roots. If you choose to replant them in a place that is partially shaded, they thrive almost anywhere."

These are the ones that help. They thrive here more than most weeds, yet their applications are limitless. You'll find them in any field or forest. But if you need them in greater numbers, there's no better place to search than a graveyard.

"Ah. Then I'll plant them in the patch of earth beneath my window, where I may look out and see them bloom." Annette withdrew a small blanket from her satchel and wrapped them.

The priest bowed, then turned to me. "There was more I would deign to discuss, but from the look of things, you are in a hurry."

On one hand, we were in a hurry. On the other, Annette was rarely sought out by the public, and despite her show of sternness was clearly delighted with the gift. If he wanted something else and was using the gift to gain an audience with a prince, I could appreciate the cleverness. As my father had just proved, there were far more distasteful methods of gaining my attention.

"The crown always has time for our spiritual counsellors. But if the matter is complex, it might be best to schedule a time so we may discuss in greater detail." I said, my delivery atypically wooden. Despite knowing full-well that the gods of this plane---with few exceptions---had left us, being in the presence of priests and other religious folk often made me uncomfortable. They wouldn't look kindly on my "cavorting" with demons, to be certain, but it was more than that. From the beginning of my second life, I'd been forced to make difficult decisions. Choices that often led to solutions that were underhanded and occasionally cruel, albeit by necessity. Most religions demanded their supplicants live in a binary, right and wrong, good and evil.

I always tried to do the good thing. The right thing. But the more difficult the situation, the more I found myself beholden to a different binary. The thing that worked, and the thing that didn't.

The result was a quagmire most gods would probably disapprove of.

Despite my obvious reticence, the priest shook his head. "It's a simple matter. But an important one nonetheless."

"Then speak."

His expression grew solemn, full of empathy. "Shameful as this is to admit, it's come to my attention that a woman was interred in the graveyard attached to my chapel without the proper rites."

The air evacuated my lungs, as the weight---always there, but often banished from the forefront of my mind, crushed down on me. Images from that day assailed me one after another, their sharpness cutting deep, only dulling as Maya placed a hand on the small of my back. Somehow I formed a sentence. "If it's that the plot is unpaid for..."

The priest shook his head. "You misunderstand me, your grace. There are many in Topside who cannot afford a plot. Were I to circle the city like a tax collector, demanding payment to all those who laid their dead to rest in hallowed ground, there would be countless vacated graves, and I would be no richer for it." Something approaching passion flashed in his eyes. "Even if I were that sort of man, we do not charge heroes for their resting place."

"I'm sorry, heroes?" Maya repeated, giving voice to the question lodged in my throat.

"Yes, noble diplomat." The priest addressed her, casting the occasional glance at me. "If the rumors are to be believed." He waited for confirmation.

"What rumors?" I managed, weakness in my voice betraying me.

"Pardon." The priest cleared his throat, hesitating. "If there is nothing to them, I apologize. But from my understanding the woman was an apothecary's apprentice---"

Right so far.

"---who discovered the cure for the Gray Pallor."

What?

My jaw dropped. Because that wasn't common knowledge. I wasn't sure anyone could know that. In my first life, Lillian had multiple ideas and theories on how to combat the plague. With her blessing, I'd lent noble credibility by passing them along to the Royal Alchemist as my own, and when a cure was finally created, he'd taken full credit. She claimed she didn't want it. From her perspective, she'd simply provided ideas, and the Royal Alchemy division had put in the necessary experimentation, research, and footwork to create it. As long as the sickness lost its lethality, she didn't care. But it'd always bothered me that she'd never been recognized for her contributions.

More relevant, this was right out of Thaddeus's playbook. Circulated rumors on top of rumors, each tier growing less plausible, until the conspiracy peddlers were shouting the most ridiculous iterations from the rooftops, and the core element he needed everyone to believe seemed completely obvious and rational by comparison.

The question was, did he have enough information to reasonably make that connection?

Maybe. He'd read the letter I sent to my father after the battle with Barion. Beyond that, he'd known I'd gone searching for an apothecary's daughter, eventually finding her in an unmarked grave. The logical connection was there, but it was tenuous at best. Either he read between the lines...

Or he knew from the beginning.

"Did these rumors address who killed her?" I asked, trying to stay focused on the present.

The priest's lips thinned apologetically. "They grow a bit less plausible on that point, my lord. But considering the sheer quantity of wyvern-oil treatments for the plague coming out of House Westmore during that period, and the considerable influx of gold they stood to lose should an effective and affordable cure come to light, many believe the story tells itself."

Right. Now that the non-humans were off the scapegoating block, it was full-speed ahead on the "Blame the Panthanians," initiative. Still, there was a certain poetry to the narrative, the sort that bore the spymaster's signature. Thoth's part in Lillian's death would be buried, because neither Thaddeus nor my father would want the public to believe she could strike unchallenged, slipping in and out of the kingdom as she pleased. This counter-narrative recognized Lillian for her accomplishment, explained the sheer ire I'd leveled on House Westmore, and turned her into an icon. A hero.

Everything Thaddeus did was multi-faceted, accomplishing multiple goals with a single action, but unless I was completely off base, there was a part of this that almost felt like an apology.

The priest was waiting expectantly, shifting slightly, arms clasped behind him.

If I had any doubt Thaddeus intended to use Lillian to turn the public opinion towards Panthania hostile, I might have blown up his blending of truth and fabrication right there. But from what I could tell, this wasn't that.

I nodded slowly. "I try not to speak on rumors. But, yes. Lillian Gray's contributions are the only reason we have an effective cure. It was my intention to see her recognized and rewarded properly on my return. You know the rest."

"May Onara embrace you in this time of grief." The priest said, gently offering condolences before he continued. "There is no greater injustice than for one so young and accomplished to be stranded on the glass shores of the eternal tide."

Pain wracked me. Because while the image of Lillian denied passage was painful, the truth was worse. Onara abandoned us long ago, the dark wicker boat and ferryman that granted passage to valiant souls to Valhalla, or the Elysium halls, gone with her. Now there was nothing but darkness and the black beast.

There was nothing. No glass beach. No hope of passage to somewhere better.

She was just gone.

"Respectfully, Priest of Onara. What is your aim?" Maya interjected brusquely, already maneuvering to cut the painful interaction short.

"Yes, you all have business to attend to, I'll keep this short." Again, he made eye-contact with me. "Apologies for my directness, but do you intend to move Lady Gray? To a graveyard overseen by Elphion, perhaps?"

"It's been a harrying few days. There has been little time to decide." I admitted. Realistically, I should've already come up with something. Lillian deserved better than to be buried in an unmarked hole in the ground. But knowing what I did, it all just felt so... pointless.

"Given your confirmation, I'm aware that Lady Gray's accomplishments have earned her an ultimate resting place amongst nobles." The priest spoke carefully, tip-toeing around obvious heresy. "But afflicted nobles could always afford the bespoke services of an alchemist, even before the cure. It was the common-folk she aided most. And as a commoner myself, there's no doubt in my mind she held their best interests in her heart. Because of her deeds and the misfortune that one so worthy of rest was denied it beneath my watch, it would be my honor and privilege to perform the rites of Onara and the subsequent service. The church will canonize her as a Guardian at my behest, and commission an effigy to mark her resting place."

I felt a flash of anger at the idea of an ambitious priest exploiting the dead to pull more potential supplicants in, when I realized it was likely nothing nefarious. Onara's following was smaller than Elphion's. But with Onara being the goddess of death, her church wasn't exactly lacking in visitation. Canonization was a rare honor, one that cost the church a great deal more than the tithes her effigy would pull-in.

And while Lillian rarely spoke of the gods, she'd always had a soft spot for Onara in particular. Probably the reason Gunther buried her there in the first place.

"I think she'd be honored." I said, the words heavy as they left my lips. "Go ahead and make the arrangements."

He bowed low and peered at me as he rose. "It will be done. The church will send word once the day is set. I'm not sure how familiar you are with our process, but during the funeral, there is a period of remembrance. Would you like to speak there?"

Of course I would. But as I imagined being there, speaking for her, something about it felt wrong. Across both lives, I'd failed Lillian. In my first life I'd seen only what I wanted to see, and despite all my plans and good intentions, pushed her into a role she'd never wanted to play. In this life, I hadn't been there when Thoth tied her to a chair, goaded her screams for help, and laughed—laughed—when no one came.

I should have been there. Then. When she actually needed me. Arriving half a decade too late in a world she never knew me, drawing attention away from her contributions to share my sorrows when it was my choices that brought her nothing but grief in return?

It would be wrong to even attend, let alone speak for her.

I stared at the ground, suddenly unable to look the priest in the eye. "I'm not sure."

From the long hesitation, the response wasn't what he expected. When he finally spoke his voice was kindly, practiced, as if he'd said similar things countless times before. "From what I've heard, you have the gift of speech. But the gods know better than anyone that some words carry more weight than others. And while there are those among my brethren would vehemently disagree, personally, I don't believe the dead care for our words at all."

"No?"

"Of course not." The priest huffed in annoyance. "If you were suddenly uprooted from this plane, cast into the alien and unfamiliar, then expected to find your way to a place you had no idea how to locate, would you give two shits about what they were saying about you back here?"

I managed a hollow laugh. "I suppose I'd have bigger things to worry about."

"Exactly. It's just common sense. Should you decide to attend, we'll have a place for you. There is no right or wrong way to honor the dead, your grace. Some find solace in eulogies, others in quiet reflection. The path you choose is yours alone, and the sincerity of your intentions will be felt by those who matter most."

"Thank you, priest. I'll think about it."

/////

By the time we arrived at the sewer entrance, a few scouts from my regiment were already dismantling the rusting cast-iron bars that held the massive outlet grate shut. This was the widest entry point by far. The sewers themselves were winding and expansive, but so long as we were methodical, the regiment was large enough that the net we cast could cover the entire sewer within a day.

The regiment unpacked on the mountainous outcropping above, the wafting scent of putrefied refuse pervading our nostrils.

Someone caught my eye immediately. Nothing about his appearance was extraordinary, if I saw him strolling down the street in Whitefall I likely wouldn't have given him a second glance. It was his proximity to the grate that was strange. He was mere spans from the men dismantling the grate, close enough that they should have noticed and told him to clear out.

Then again, arch-fiends probably had a lot of experience going undetected.

"Need something Ozra?" I dismounted and called over my shoulder.

He grimaced and disappeared in a flash of smoke that startled the scouts, manifesting astride the horse I'd just dismounted. "Really? No 'who is that, what the hells is he doing there, oh dear gods it's an arch-fiend?' I've been waiting for hours."

I leaned over to Annette, unimpressed. "Who is that? What the hells is he doing there?"

"Dear gods. It's an arch-fiend." Annette returned in her usual monotone.

"Perhaps we should not mock the demonic power that so kindly aided us?" Maya called over as she slung her staff over her back.

"No matter how much we hate each other, the infernals always end up being the most reliable." Ozra pouted, before he seemed to finally grow tired of the charade.

"What have you been doing?" I asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"Beyond giving kings existential angst? Exploring, mainly. So much has changed from the last time I was here. The existence of buildings, of course, but especially the subterranean. You'll be clearing the sewer today?" He asked, suddenly serious.

"That's the plan." I checked both my sword and sword-breaker, testing the blades with my thumb, finding them both razor sharp. "Any last-minute words of advice?"

"One in particular." Ozra's expression clouded. It suddenly struck me that this was probably the second time I'd seen the ancient demon troubled. "Don't."