Episode 202: Planning (Konrad)

After a brief period when all of them were asleep, Konrad disentangled himself from his loves and re-donned his leather work clothes. Rather than wake Enny or Nell, he tied the shirtstrings himself and made his way onto the palace grounds, into the throng of the festival.

Married, to two people. It didn’t seem possible, or moral, and yet…he loved them both. How could any of them give each other up?

He let it settle over him, the reality of his choice. As he ambled through the festival, he searched the crowds for a familiar face. He wasn’t fully sure what he searched for, whether the face would be young or old, but he knew it the moment his eyes fell on the familiar sandy blonde hair.

It was a memory of a face, thousands of years sealed away like silt in his mind. Yet here it was, renewed.

Impossible.

“Weston,” he breathed, inaudible.

He went to stand alongside Weston’s twelve-year-old form, the perfect replica of the boy Weston had been the day Konrad met him, except that on that day Weston had been covered in brine and bruises.

“Hey,” Weston greeted. “What’s up.”

Weston’s voice was up, for one. It meant he would go through puberty again, through the breaking of his voice.

“I had hoped to talk more,” Konrad began, “about our discussion this morning.”

“I’m twelve,” he joked, “so you can see how that went.” He found a table for them to share and claimed the chair nearest the table of desserts. “What part?” he asked, a scone in one hand.

Konrad studied him in silence. Weston wasn’t the sort who needed to feel as though he was superior or had control, the way some did. He suspected Bentley’s aging decision had more to do with not wanting diapers than anything else, but in the case of Weston…he thought Weston prefered the equality established through being the same age as his wife.

“Who was it?” he asked, for clarity. “Amoret, or Ariadne?”

Happiness spread across Weston’s face like dawn after a storm.

It had been too long. Seven hundred years, or more, since the plague in Teca.

Konrad relaxed against the back of the chair and drank in the hope, so long absent from Weston’s voice. “Ariadne,” he said, as though her name itself was a blessing.

She would be good for him. Konrad had wondered, when he gave it any thought today, whether Weston might have preferred the tenacity and fire of Amoret. Ariadne was calmer, more centered.

She might just be able to draw him from the grief of losing his entire family in one catastrophic event.

Then again, Konrad had dwelt for three thousand years on Khale. It wouldn’t do to rush Weston.

For a fresh topic, Konrad swiveled the lens of discussion on himself. “Nell and I remarried today, along with Enny.”

Weston nodded his head once, likely in acknowledgement of a suspicion. “And you didn’t invite me?” he admonished, laughter in the creases of his young eyes.

“Neither event was planned,” Konrad apologized.

“But you’re happy? With Enny?”

This time, Konrad felt the name chase happiness across his own face. Weston gave him a knowing, satisfied grin.

  “Congratulations,” he offered, genuine.

Konrad nodded in thanks and then addressed the issues at hand. “What is it about this attack that makes removing security so worthwhile?”

“I don’t know. It’s fuzzy, a ton of roads forward.”

What use was that? Decisions had to be based on logic and fact, not in some blind faith of an intuition Weston himself could not understand. It always came down to the same debate: Trust the intuition, which they frequently misinterpreted, or move forward blind?

“Does security include myself?” he asked Weston.

“You shouldn’t stop it,” Weston reiterated. It ought to have sounded less reliable, coming from such a young voice, but Weston had once led Konrad and Khale to safety with that same young voice. In a way, it held more authority. “You want to quit?”

He ought to. Failing in his duty, in his oath to uphold their safety about his own.

“Can you guarantee Talise’s and Indigo’s safety?” Konrad demanded.

Weston passed him a scone. “No.”

“Then I ought to step down.” It was the honorable thing to do. Nothing good could come from sacrificing Talise, who was as much as his daughter, or Indigo, who was his sister through Nell.

Weston shook his head. From somewhere, he manifested a stein of coffee-flavored liquor and set it in front of Konrad. “In battle,” he pushed, “you always help clean the armor of the ones you know won’t come home without a miracle. You had people you knew would be sacrificed so you could win.” He stole a sip of Konrad’s drink and grimaced as his newly immature tastebuds reacted to the alcohol. “I think they’ll be safe, but I don’t know. I just know this,” he tapped the table with his index finger, “is a battle, and the end game is a war.”

He looked up and met Konrad’s eyes. “You and I, we win wars.”

Konrad dipped his scone in the drink. “We do, yes,” he considered.

“I think they’ll be fine,” Weston pressed. “Around after. Talise is most uncertain. Timing matters. There are too many factors. Too many people intervening.”

Konrad asked the harsh question: “Would you sacrifice your own child for this?” Never mind what losing Indigo might do to Nell. Konrad was confident that Acheron could rule, were he called on to do so. But Nell…to lose Indigo a second time…

“I don’t know if I could,” Weston admitted. “I have just one left.”

Just one.

Konrad could not ever sacrifice Weston. More even than Talise, Konrad could not lose Weston.

Still, he persevered. “Talise is a daughter to me. I’ve grown too soft for this.”

Weston shook his head. “Talise is going to die if you don’t do this.”

What?

Konrad let out a long, dissatisfied breath. “It will be done, whether by my hand or another.”

“The Dells isn’t safe anymore,” Weston confirmed.

Talise ought to be able to handle pain. Konrad wasn’t certain Niels could handle the grief of losing her. For all his apparent toughness, Niels was far softer than Talise in his manner of addressing emotions.

It hardly mattered: Once Talise died, Niels’s claims on the throne would cease and be passed along to Spence, and they’d be back to the old question of whether Spence would be allowed to ascend given that his mother had failed her trial.

“Will it be safe again?” Konrad asked.

Weston shrugged and braved another sip of the drink. “If we win,” he winced against the strong flavor.

Yet another consideration. “How certain are you?” He didn’t need to remind Weston, but he found himself doing so anyway. The loss no longer stood between them with the same weight, but the grief still lingered. “You’ve been wrong in the past.”

“As certain as I can be.” Weston drummed his fingers against his chin, lost in some internal debate. After a few seconds, he added, “You aren’t too soft now; you’ve always been soft.”

This was the truth which Konrad hid from himself most days. It was what Nell saw in him, what gave him deep hope about Niels and the future of the Dells.
He laughed, short and low. “I’ve never had children aside of you, before.” And Weston was unique; thoughtful and philosophical, capable of protecting himself from a young age without ever needing to flout the power he possessed.

“Would you risk my life, to save the realm?” Weston asked.

One kingdom was hardly the realm.

“Will I need to?”

“No,” Weston assured. “But you’ve risked it before.”

“Alright.” Was it so different, then, to risk Talise? She was bright and capable in her own way, compassionate and eager to serve.

Perhaps, like Drey, death was how she was meant to serve.

It was cold. Konrad took a long drink of the coffee vodka, finishing what remained.

“Talise is special,” Weston observed. “Why?”

There had been countless other kingdoms he’d known and loved people in. Lost people, to wars protecting the kingdoms.
Konrad shifted and cleared his throat. What had he gone and finished his drink for?

A smirk spread across Weston’s face, as he refilled the glass.

He’d expected Konrad. He usually did.

Konrad engaged in another drink and delved into his thoughts. “The emotions are muddled,” he confessed. “I cannot tell where my own affection ends and Nell’s begins.”

He hoped Weston understood that he spoke of the long-dead Drey. The man so close to Nell, so similar of feature and mannerism, to Khale. How was Konrad meant to avoid such attachment, especially when he could access any of Nell’s dreams and memories of the man? At times it seemed, to Konrad, as though he had been the one in the relationship with Drey, and not Nell after all.

Weston, for his part, showed no surprise to this admission.

“Would you have children with her, if she had no one and it was the best, only choice?”

With Talise?

Whatever for? She had heirs already.

Did Weston mean she was likely to lose them? Who would she be, if she did?
She would be someone who needed help, and restoration.

He’d been so worried about Talise, but what if the attack was meant to strip her of her children, of Niels? It would have to strip her of Spence and Acheron in some way, too, leave her alone and vulnerable.

“I likely would,” he assured Weston.
Aadya might never forgive him, but he was practical enough to be unburdened by that possibility, if it was for the good of the kingdom.

“She wasn’t meant to be heir,” Weston explained. “Everything about her life is part of a plan, for this kingdom and realm.”

“Whose plan?” Konrad asked, softer than the emotions that broiled within him. “And who ought to have been heir?”

“Eshne,” Weston offered.

Well done, then, to whoever had altered the course of Aadya’s heirs. Eshne…even Amoret, with all her volatility, would have been a superior heir, because Amoret’s volatility was predictable.

“And it’s selkie meddling,” Weston added.

Always the selkies. They had their hands in everything. He wondered, at times, whether he was their willing tool, or stood in opposition, or whether they simply worked in tandem; different methodologies but similar goals.

Except, hadn’t some of the Dragons mentioned recently that they’d lost faith in the selkies?

“With a positive intent?” Konrad clarified.

“To protect this realm,” Weston confirmed, though his expression grew clouded in thought. “It’s why they formed. This, the next century, is the final act. But that’s why it’s complicated, with many options.” He looked down, eyes on the table, weighing some thought. “I don’t know how well luck will work going forward,” he confided. “How reliable it will be.”

Konrad’s back muscles tightened. It was time for him to come out of retirement at what he was best at, time to stop fooling around with the simplicity of palace security.

“I’ll set Corban in charge, I think,” he tested, his eyes on Weston’s countenance. “I have an instinct that he’ll involve spence.”

“Probably,” Weston agreed, open. “It will give you time to follow other things. Work behind the scenes again.”

So it was decided. Back to work.

Konrad finished his drink, as Weston stood.

“Am I supposed to call Enny, ‘Mom?’” Weston teased.

The idea filled him with warmth. Not Weston, but there could be other children, perhaps, who called her that.

“Mom seems a bit informal,” Konrad joked. Weston laughed, subtle like always. It amazed Konrad that Bentley’s slapstick and self-deprecating humor could have come from the same line as Weston’s more subtle amusement.

Now the lines would merge: Luck and Dragon. Weston and Ariadne’s children would be unstoppable. “Today, you chose to make this your family too,” he mused.
Weston’s smile thinned into a mixture of hope and worry. “I know.”

“We stand at the epicenter of whatever this plan is?” Konrad asked him.

He shrugged. “We always do.”
Willing tool, or opposition?
“Yes,” Konrad murmured, “but on this occasion we don’t stand alone.”

Weston gave one nod of his head before he drew in a deep breath. “I’ll work on meditating more. Figuring out what I can. It won’t be much, but something.”

“I’ll speak to Aadya and Meldrick,” Konrad decided. He would tear down the wards, welcome the attack, bear the weight of that decision as he bore the weights of his past.

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