Sadly Sings Destiny

9

Verona sat in her home, lit only by the light in the hearth as she read the letter that Queen Andretti the Silver had sent her. She had read it five times already, and each time she read it, it filled her with new emotions. Now she felt only defeat where she had felt anger, desperation, a desire to fight, and the urge to flee. Andretti had attacked her in a way that Verona didn’t expect. The Queen had appeared weak as she attempted to handle the unrest that was growing, and as she tried to mitigate the rumors of the deaths. Now, the Queen had done both in one fell swoop, and if the letter was to be believed, it was done in front of a crowd. Verona knew from the date on the message the news reports would reach her soon.

She stood up from her chair and almost cast the letter into the fire, but she stopped at the last second. No, she wouldn’t destroy her message. She would keep it, and one day, when she was queen, she would put it on display for all of those who doubted her to see what she faced. She left the house and made her way to the one that Martha lived in, despite the darkness in the ghetto of Albion. She burst through the door of her friend’s house, shocking the other girl who was focused on eating her evening meal.

“Read this.” She demanded, forcing the letter in front of her friend’s face.

“I’ve read it twice.” Martha groaned, pushing the letter out of her line of sight so she could continue to focus on her stew, “What about it?”

“Andretti is openly challenging me, she’s inviting us to fight in Rachedale directly. We don’t need to wage an endless campaign against the entirety of the nation. Let’s take our women and men and our hired guns and march on Rachedale. We can avoid so much trouble if we just cut this snake’s head off instead of chopping up the body bit by bit.”

“That’s probably not the worst strategy,” Martha said between bites of her soup as she thought over the idea, “Forget the favor you’ll gain by not burning half of Lotherania, it’ll save you a bunch of that Sabbistahni gold we’re getting so you don’t become the next Astrid Glass or whoever, and you’ll lose fewer soldiers, so you can hold the city more firmly. Do you have an idea?”

“If we can rent a big enough airship from the snowmen, we can just land right in the Rass River and take the Swallow’s Nest in a night, right?” Verona offered, sitting down across from Martha, “Strike hard and strike fast. Maybe we can overwhelm their forces and get them to surrender without firing a shot.”

“I really like this idea,” Martha said, smiling as she began to support her friend.

“I’ll get it underway tomorrow,” Verona replied with a hungry smile before returning back to her home. The night couldn’t pass quickly enough for the plotting usurper. She didn’t sleep much as she envisioned herself on the deck of her rented airship as it dropped down from the sky and into the Rass River in the distant city of Rachedale, a town she had never been to before in her life.

When morning came, she made her regular walk to the bank headquarters where she had been working until her coup began to gain traction. She spoke with the Executive in charge of the location, who she had become to build a professional relationship with. She asked him after rental airships and how she could go about procuring one. Once again, he offered to help her with his mysterious ‘wireless,’ and she went on her way back to Martha’s house, where her loyal friend was once more working on her press to spread the pamphlets that would gather their followers.

The distributed literature implored her group to meet in their usual park the next afternoon, and for the night, she returned home to try and relax despite the oncoming excitement. She found herself sitting before the fire, trying to read a book, but her mind kept turning elsewhere. Verona had an artist’s image of herself standing on the forecastle of a fully rigged sailing ship magically floating on the clouds as the sunset over a marvelous city of brick and wood and smoke coming from chimneys in gabled roofs. She tried to focus on a passage in the pages, but she could see herself and a battalion of gun-toting Sabbistahni soldiers sweeping through the Swallow’s Nest with her loyal countrymen taking up the rear and holding off any attack from behind. She saw herself on the legendary balcony, looking out over a cheering crowd as she held the gilded head of the Silver Queen for all to see.

Morning found her still in her chair, sitting next to a fire that had burned out in the dead of night. She couldn’t remember falling asleep, and her book laying on the floor told her that sleep had overtaken her rather suddenly. She changed her clothes quickly and practically ran down the street to her meeting with the Executive of the bank branch. She could barely contain herself as she waited for the Executive to see her. After twenty minutes, she was called into his office. The smiling Sabbistahnian helped her work through the process of selecting one of several ships that were in nearby Elsideria, and that were for hire. She was forced to choose based on cost, however, when she found that they demanded a large sum of gold, and her selected ship was the CCS Arrowhead, a civilian ship for transporting ore and grain. She was also briefed on the status of her hired soldiers and was more than pleased to hear that the three hundred men would be able to fly out on her newly hired ship if she so wished, cutting down the time needed for her to wait.

She bent her unstoppable will to the unmovable object that was the Sabbistahni Credit Union’s bureaucracy. She signed all the paperwork that was put in front of her by the Executive, who was working equally quickly to explain to her each detail of each form that he produced. By the time he had finished, three hours had passed, and Verona’s hand was cramping from all the writing she was unaccustomed to doing. When the banker released her, she left his office rubbing her wrist. All of the excitement she had been building up had been dashed on the rocks of unending paperwork that she could barely understand. She knew first hand that the Bank had the ability to create dreams, but before it created, it had a surefire way to give the illusion of dashing those dreams to bits.

She returned to her small home to make herself a midday meal and to try and bring herself back into the right headspace to lead the upcoming meeting. As she scraped together a meager meal, she closed her eyes and pictured herself once more standing on the airship, maybe not the grand galleon that she had in mind, but still a noble craft that would lead her to victory as it fell into the city and that the Elsiderians to the north would sing about for years to come. She smiled at that thought. She would have to bring down an Elsiderian bard to record her victories in verse for all to remember for all of the years to come. She would be a far better queen than the Silver Liar who killed and blamed it on others. She would be a fair and just queen, and she would be remembered as a hero.

CCS Arrowhead rocked gently on the currents of wind as she sailed through the sky. Verona stood on the forecastle looking over the railing at the farmland passing by some three thousand feet below her, the Rass River was a silver ribbon snaking across a green patchwork blanket. The ship had not been what she had been expecting. The old ore ship was a former sea vessel, and though she had been repainted before taking to the skies, the colors were fading and peeling, and the white had gone grey, and the red stripes had faded to a disappointed pink. Above Verona’s head, the creaking wooden vessel was rigged to two massive balloons that ran nearly twice the length of the ship filled with a gas that Verona couldn’t name. In truth, Verona couldn’t explain in the slightest how the vessel stayed in the air or moved on a controlled path. All she knew was that it required two magicians, a team of engineers, and that there was an incessant ticking from somewhere deep below the deck that she could feel as well as hear.

Verona had been able to have three hundred women and five hundred Lotheranian men join her, barely a third of the supporters who would come to her meetings and a tenth of those who read her pamphlets. She had planned for many more, so she was happy to see that her people were well supplied with Sabbistahni repeating rifles and the curious brass shelled ammunition that the guns took. She had practiced with one, firing it over the edge of the ship and into the ether, she knew from that the flintlock rifles Andretti’s men would have, if they could get to them, would be useless against her force. Add onto it that the guns were foolproof,the mercenaries had her gang of volunteers trained in minutes.

Then there were the mercenaries. Two hundred eighty Sabbistahni soldiers and twenty lower officers all ready to follow her command. She watched them drill on the deck of the cramped freighter, and she knew that the well-oiled machine that was the Sabbistahni military could overrun the Swallow’s Nest of their own. She already had decided that they would lead the charge. The trained soldiers would do far more damage than her volunteers, and while she admired and respected those who followed her, she had to admit that they seemed hopeless when compared to the professionals.

She sighed as she watched the land sweep by under her ship. It wouldn’t be long now, only a couple more days.