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Conor broke him out of his reverie. “While I hate to break up your revenge fantasy, I think we should draw the line at actual torture.”
Annie shot Conor a betrayed look, similar to the look that Aster would give Matt when he cut her off from eating ice cream.
Conor looked at Annie with an almost imperceptible smile on his face as he explained, “Sure she was being selfish, but she had a point. She was just gaming a flawed system, and she had no real reason to help us or the kingdom. Which, from everything I’ve seen and heard, is total dogshit. And she can clearly get out at any time, if her suitor comments are true. She had no reason to play nice.”
He shrugged. “I think a single death will be sufficient. She’ll lose half her points and be out of the war for two weeks. Same as us, except she won’t get those points back.”
Annie countered zealously, “She should die six times. One for each of us.”
Matt ignored the bickering. He wanted to hate Alyssa, but maybe Conor was right, and he and Annie were going a little overboard with their plans for retribution.
Juni moved to the prince’s side as the meeting hall filled. “Things were worse than we expected. No one’s taking the bait. They all demand to collectively negotiate for compensation.”
Albert shrugged. “It was always a possibility. We’ll pay more up front but, in the end, they can’t gather up every time one of them dies. It will work itself out.”
Juni hesitated for a moment and said, “We’ll have to cancel the strike on Alyssa. She knows about it already.”
He wanted to curse the woman. For as much as she was a pain in the ass, she was good at networking and getting spies into places they shouldn’t be. It was good that he had bugged all the meeting rooms beforehand, or he would have missed that she was already aware of their ploy.
Albert didn’t look surprised at that. “We both knew that it was a long shot. If we just pause the order, we might be able to cause her to worry, and that could be just as bad for her.”
Juni wasn’t so sure, but as Princess Sara walked forward, he stepped back and started observing the crowd for the upcoming negotiation. No matter how this turned out, he needed to identify the major players and start learning their weak points, so the proper leverage could be applied.
Matt stood with about one hundred others in a large meeting hall. They were all Pathers who had been screwed over in various ways over the last few days.
The groups weren’t only the teams that Liz had spent all morning recruiting for her plan. No, there were at least a dozen more teams that had been abandoned by their vassal allies and other preventable disasters.
The mood of the room was sour, and getting worse by the minute as they waited for the prince and princess to arrive. No one seemed to have taken the small bait offered in the individual meeting, which seemed to only piss the other teams off even more.
Something Alyssa had said sent Liz into a messaging frenzy, and she had spent the entire time after their meeting typing at her pad and sending messages to various parties. It was like a fire had been lit under her.
That was what led to more than half of the room being distinctly crowded around their group of six. Both sides were present and mixing without the enmity Matt might’ve expected.
He hadn’t needed to ask Liz after he thought about it for a little while. In the end, calling the Pathers here to fight as mercenaries wasn’t wrong. Their fights with each other were the reason for the war, sure, but it was also a game. And the vassals were screwing it up.
None of them had been able to sleep much before the meeting, so Matt had read parts of the book that Liz had recommended. While he didn’t find it as interesting as she had, he certainly learned a few things. Mostly, he learned that if the vassals didn’t stop these problems now, they would, at least historically, spiral out of control. At least until a third faction was formed, or the army stepped in and laid down new rules.
Matt was very interested in what those new rules would be, as he thought that they could be a good starting point for arguments. But two things killed that hope. One was that there was no record of what those extra rules could possibly be. Anywhere. He had searched high and low on the EmpireNet but had found nothing.
The second was that Liz, when he mentioned it to her, said that it was a last resort for a reason. They were meant to deal with these things on their own. It was a test for both the Pathers and the vassal faction’s young leaders.
His musings were interrupted when Sara and Albert walked onto the raised stage. Matt wasn’t sure what he expected, but they seemed unconcerned by the array of angry faces aligned against them.
“Good afternoon. I wish this meeting was under more joyous circumstances.”
The prince’s opening statement was met with a hiss of anger, which he nodded toward and spoke over.
“Yes. As I said, these are not ideal circumstances by any means. While I had hoped that the individual meetings would allow for more personal negotiations, Princess Sara and I are more than willing to hear everyone out.”
Princess Sara took over. “Is there a speaker for everyone? It would be easier that way.”
Calmly, Liz called out, “The offer of points is a bandage for the greater problem. And that’s not good enough.”
All around them, there were murmurs of, “Yeah.”
Princess Sara looked unsurprised as she asked, “And what is it that you want? More points? Money? A duel we can’t force?”
Liz smiled right back at the woman looming over her. “No. We-” she spread her arms out, encompassing the small faction she had created. “-and a few thousand of our friends don’t like how we’re being treated and want a change.”
“You don’t have…”
Sara started to speak, but Liz cut her off. “Oh, I assure you we do. We have both the authority and the leverage to demand what we want. On my side, I have the top ten percent of earners for the Pathers.” She paused to emphasize her words and finished with, “From both sides.”
Liz’s voice echoed out as she continued, “We’re all angry, and most of us have two weeks of healing cooldown. We have nothing better to do than trying to drum up support for our faction.”
Princess Sara looked miffed, but asked, “And what are your demands? If you think you’ll be able to create a third faction, you overestimate how badly we’ve mistreated the Pathers as a whole.”
Liz laughed and said, “No. What we want is a cut of the profits, and a seat at the table.”
Albert looked genuinely surprised at that and asked, “How so?”
Liz looked like a shark that had found its prey, and with a wicked smile, said, “We want three percent of the points earned by our various factions. Given to the teams with the greatest contribution based on percentage. According to the point totals published by the Army, which should be adequate compensation. If you want us to fight, we need some skin in the game. We also want a voice in all decision making and command sessions going forward. We want a council created for all war decisions.”
Princess Sara looked slightly green at the suggestion, and Albert looked stonier than usual.
- Writer
