Episode 137: Rounds (Konrad)

Late at night, into the blue shadows, Konrad emerged from his bedroom, the room that had been his and Nell’s since construction of the palace was completed.

Nearly twenty years, he’d walked these grounds. Nearly twenty years, he had lain in that same bed, in that same apartment.

Called himself part of a family.

He made his way crosswise toward the dungeon; an indirect, wending path which gave him opportunity to explore parts of the grounds he didn’t often scrutinize.

All was quiet. The overflow guests slept elsewhere, guarded by a coterie of some of the best men. The very best, save Xenos who led the guardianship of the overflow guests, Konrad retained at the palace. They’d work a long week.

There were things he knew which he did not care to know. He knew that Aadya had entertained the likelihood of replacing him. He knew the judgment in Nell’s eyes when he’d called his sidhe ‘it.’ He knew that his family had let him go an immeasurable amount of time, cursed, blinded, lost, before anyone had decided to act.
He knew that he was not alone.

Silent, he led them into the office of the dungeon.

He pulled out the liquor Aadya had brought them on their last meeting, the gift from Nell. Above half the bottle remained. He took a long swig and then removed a thimble from his pocket and poured a few drops of the alcohol into it.

He set it on his shoulder, balanced carefully, and waited.

After a moment without any sort of response, he said aloud to the room, “We must come to terms, you and I.”

He felt her settle against his shoulder, legs draped over the side, and consume some measure of the liquid in the thimble. “I tried to die,” she said, almost as though this might be amusing to her.

How he loathed her. In his life, he had disliked scores of people and loathed a few handfuls from among those. They had always been other, outside of himself. He could choose to walk away, or to kill them, and it would serve.

This thing he loathed, this cancer, it was as much part of him as his eyes or his hands, it might even be the portion of him that Nell truly loved and Nell-

Nell.

“Tell me what you need from me, in order to be healthy,” Konrad urged in a gentle voice. He could ill afford to give into his desires to push her away, to drive her to want to leave. He suspected they were inseparable.

“Achievement,” she said glibly. “I don’t suppose you want to overthrow Aadya so Merlyn can be king?”

Though he knew that last portion was meant as humor, it stung. He had a life here, a life he would likely be leaving in order to preserve her health, unless they could find some other way around this.

“I won’t leave this life,” he said. Perhaps if he set that as his foundation term, she might be more creative in her search for a solution. “Whatever you need will have to be done from here; either I can discover a new talent which does not involve leaving, or I can make trips.”

He knew the trips would not serve her needs. When he razed a kingdom and deposed its leaders, it took years of planning and building a network that could withstand the coming war, the coming losses. Trips would never accomplish that.

“We’ll see,” she said, as though she agreed.

He sighed and propped his feet on the little metal chair he’d set Greg in earlier today. “What sorts of achievement would serve?”

“We could start with chess,” she mused. “You always get excited when you win.”

Not that it showed, to anyone aside of her and Nell, but it was true. “Chess,” he thought aloud. With Sam in his own house, it would be easy enough to conceal. He thought perhaps Zero might entertain a weekly game as well. And Meldrick, with the right motivation.

“Alright,” he said. “What about…” he thought of Talise and Niels, and what energy they obtained from a concert. He doubted he would reach that same emotional high, but it was worth an attempt, at very least, before he abandoned his own children in search of conquest. “A musical instrument?”

“You could try it,” she said, dismissive again. She knew what she needed. “Competitions will go further. You know I don’t like this anymore than you.”

He doubted she disliked him as much as he disliked her. She had such control of him, such a terrifying ability to demolish everything which mattered to him.

It might be disdainful to her, to work with him, but he couldn’t see that it was loathsome for her, that it made her despise herself for her connection to him.

“I’m aware,” he said nonetheless. He mulled over a handful of other possibilities and dismissed each almost the moment he thought of it. His mind settled on the obvious: “The arena?” he asked.

“The arena,” she confirmed, as though she’d led him down this path herself.

Very like his interrogation and vetting process.

Who was he? How much of him was himself, and how much was her?

He took a long drink, unsure he cared to know. “How frequent? Would you get more from me directing a team of competitors or competing myself?”

“Yourself,” she answered. “You could lead a team, and have another lead a team.”

Spence and Corban would be ideal for that, although he ought to push Mel, Niels, Zero, and Greg to lead teams occasionally.

This would take a substantial change to his routine, to coordinate. All for something he neither wanted nor needed, something he couldn’t call a thing without inducing an argument with Nell.

“It would be good training for them,” he decided. He kept his tone even. It would not do, to alert her to his emotional state. “How often?”

“Weekly,” she said, “if you win and it’s good. Maybe include some monsters. Traps. I can help draw up arena plans for Mags.”

Weekly. Alright. Spence and Corban could each lead two battles a month, and they could invite someone to lead the fifth battle.

He suspected these events would be popular within the school, perhaps become a new means of distinguishing the best strategic minds from among the student population.

“I’ll arrange it;” he assured her. “Weekly battles, occasional training excursions with Spence and Corban, chess with Sam, Zero, perhaps Mel. Whoever will play. Will that suffice?”

And Nell, if they spoke again. They fought so rarely that Konrad was at a loss for how best to mitigate this. Admitting how Nell’s protectiveness of Cecily hurt him, was an admission of vulnerability; admitting his fear, even more so.

“Yes,” Cecily said. “Thank you.”

He sat upright, feet on the ground, ready to end this negotiation. Perhaps they could return to never speaking, and he could let himself forget how she plagued him. “In exchange,” he demanded, “you will not attack me in that way again. I’ll set someone to watching me for signs of it.”

He wouldn’t. Rumors could spread. There was no one he could trust with this.

She let out an exasperated huff. “I didn’t mean to, you know. Instincts and all. I bet I could do it to someone else though…new skills for battle?”

He laughed, because it was appropriate for her tone, but he felt no humor. Only this burden, weighing on him. “You have a drive towards survival,” he said, and then lied: “We work well together for a reason.”

He tapped the side of the bottle.

If he was right about Nell, and Nell’s unfathomable wishes… “Would your children be sidhe?”

She flew down onto the desk, a few inches tall and delicate in a snakeskin gown.

“Children?” she asked.

Never. He could not stomach the idea of what he was about to offer. Nell could take care of that end of things and leave him out of it, if it was what Nell wished.

“It matters to Nell,” he explained.

For some reason Konrad could not grasp, Nell cared for her. Perhaps as much or more as he cared for Konrad.

“No, they wouldn’t,” she answered. “We’re not born sidhe.”

That was unfortunate. It might have been a convenient excuse, otherwise. He enjoyed the children he had, but he didn’t relish the idea of Cecily as a mother. Of sleeping with her, or of sharing Nell with someone he so disliked.

“How do you become one?” he asked. Perhaps if there was a ceremony of some sort, Zero could experiment until he found a spell to reverse it. He would ask, after the coming war.

She let out another large huff of air and gestured for him to refill the thimble. Once he had done so, she took a long swig and then regarded him with a miserable expression. “Pressure, expectations, failure…the intense desire to succeed twisted inside us. There’s a place you can go, and trade your life for a life feeling fulfilled by that need. To serve others so they never feel like a failure.” She met his eyes. “Or rarely,” she said, and he thought she might be teasing him.

He afforded her a small laugh for the sake of it. “Perhaps whoever grants this gift to the sidhe needs to discover new definitions for accomplishment,” he mused.

Not that it was a gift, to trade one’s life in order to become a parasite. An unwanted, unasked for parasite. An abhorrent, detested, repugnant parasite.

“We define it ourselves,” she explained. “What it means to us when we pass through.”

He wondered why she couldn’t have simply admired a talent for music or successful farming. Why war and conquest?

“Alright,” he said. “There’s no chance of it changing this far along?”

“It’s like the elixir,” she complained.

Well, then.

He supposed, with the right attitude, it couldn’t be any worse than what he’d done to Drey. No one expected him to die in service of his country, at very least.

“Is there a chance you misunderstood the magic?” he clarified, to be certain. “We seem to be bound.”

“There is,” she agreed, her tone more amicable, full of self-loathing.

He thought, for a moment, that she at least seemed to know how unlikable she was.

In his mind’s eye, he saw Nell’s disappointment when he’d called her it.

He wanted this complication gone from his life, but it seemed that it was an impossibility. Better to focus on mitigating the consequences of this disaster, than lamenting her presence.

“There are four things I would ask of you,” he said, to which she all but rolled her eyes. Her entire body sighed in annoyance. “Yes?”

“Firstly,” he said, for Nell, “that you allow Aadya or Meldrick to deage you.”

“You don’t like wrinkles?” she joked.

He forced a smile onto his face. “Secondly, that you entertain the idea of children with myself and Nell.”

“I got that part,” she said. “Okay.”

“Thirdly, that when I retire from here, the three of us go on a journey to discover the source of the sidhe and learn what we can,” and find a way, if it was at all possible, to get rid of her.

Unless Nell attached.

He suffered from a deep terror that if Cecily left, Nell would follow.

If Nell did, he told himself, that was Nell’s choice.

“Okay,” she said with some trepidation. “I can show you there.”

Perhaps. Or perhaps Konrad would discover excuses to avoid setting her free, in order to retain Nell for himself.

No. He needed to regain his independence from her. Whatever the cost; if Nell left, if he chose Cecily over Konrad, it was within his rights.

For the time being, Konrad needed to know her limitations. “Lastly,” he said with more seriousness, “that you tell me in what way you believe you have failed in the past.”

“Uh huh,” she huffed. “I’m going to need a lot more of this.” She tapped against the bottle, so he refilled her thimble.

After a long drink, she sat. “My twin failed the trial. She was my responsibility. But she ruled anyway and had kids anyway and died. And then this kingdom fell apart.

Ah. He knew that story. One queen, died in childbirth. It shouldn’t have happened to a dragon queen, but it was her fate, her punishment for ruling despite that she failed the trial. She died alone, with a pair of twins and a family who had no way of knowing which twin was heir.

The ensuing war had split the Dells, destroyed both lines.
Dragon.

Nell hadn’t managed to kill him. She’d said their bond was similar to the elixir. She was dragon.

He’d assumed, until now, some sort of bizarre side effect of the gancanagh curse with Aadya, but now he looked at Cecily, at her alabaster skin and sapphire eyes and cornsilk hair and realized…

There was a war, long ago, across oceans and plains in another continent altogether. Konrad’s injury in the war was such that his heart lay exposed. Many said it was a miracle he’d survived.

No miracle. It was Dragon, the same magic which protected the royal family.

If Cecily had children, she would be starting a competing Dragon line, heirs with more claim to the throne than Aadya would ever have as princess of the sea kingdom.

“So when you fixed it,” she interrupted his thoughts, “You kind of ran out of mission from me. And you didn’t just do more on your own.”

She’d chosen him, millennia ago, in the hopes that he might undo the mess her family started, and he’d done so, and here they were, both of them without a cause.

“It isn’t nearly better yet,” he argued. “Something big is coming; your effort to save yourself hampered my ability to prevent it, so you’ll be looking at a war soon. Battles.”

“We were always looking at a war,” she dismissed. “The United Realms were here before.”

“What makes you certain they will return?”

“Because,” she grumbled. “Their leader has a sidhe.

Of course the leader had a sidhe. He began to wonder whether all successful generals had them. Perhaps the worlds and all their problems came down to a handful of angsty sidhe looking for nourishment at the cost of countless lives.

And Nell had defended her.

Konrad was so lost.

“How would you feel about me getting a job with Bruno?” she asked him, out of the blue. “For Talise and Niels.”

“Leave, you mean?” he asked. Bruno was something of a follow-through officer for all the various things Aadya and Mel promised on the days they held court. He would give her success, in a different way. “Are you capable of that?” he asked, more hopeful.

If it was as simple as her choosing to leave, if that was all it would take, he would do anything to encourage it.

“I leave you alone all the time,” she said.

He let a silence hang. She knew what he intended with that question.

“Sorry, no,” she answered at last. “I tried with Spence.”

Spence. She had damned well better stay away from Spence or Konrad would kill her himself, even if it cost his own life.

“I wasn’t asking you to,” he lied. “I was wondering how terrible it is for you that I’ve ignored you.”

“I don’t mind,” she lied in response. “Nell talks to me. I mean, it wasn’t ideal. I’m not exactly your traditional company.” She took another sip of her drink. “I don’t know if my vocal cords can handle the strain of so much talking tonight, though.”

“Nell…” he sighed and stood. “I’m going home.”

He wasn’t, as it happened. He wasn’t ready for that talk, or worse for no talk. He could blame it on the festival, which afforded him ample time to think as he made his rounds.

“Do you remember the kangaroo?” she asked.

“I do, yes,” he said, wary.

“You know he needs a set,” she pointed out.

Perhaps she could take over all of Nell’s gifts and completely remove Konrad from the picture. Just when he’d begun to feel some measure of humanity towards her, she goaded him.

“Tomorrow, perhaps,” he muttered.

“Have fun,” she said.

He waited, uncertain. He had no means of being sure how often she was with him and concealed, how often he was alone. “What is the matter?” he asked, because she appeared to have no intent of following him.

“The matter is, I usually sleep here. I let you sleep at home without me,” explained.

So generous of her.

He wondered how long before she and Nell would have a child. Perhaps, if he was lucky, never. Nell might come to his senses and see what a destructive and selfish being she was.

He left the office, in search of some mischief he could quell, while he plotted the best ways to win this war. They were at a disadvantage, but if Cecily was right about other leaders having sidhes than he at least knew one incredible weakness:

Starve them for success, and their minds would become feeble.

All of them were as much prisoners as he was.

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