TheBookofEndsEndFightingDogs - The Lich King Reincarnates As A Baby: Book 4 Chapter 14: Subversion

Book 4 Chapter 14: Subversion

++Magicians are as two faced a group as you’re ever going to find. I do hate the bastards, always stealing honest work from the nobility. Something ought to have been done about them years ago.++

-  Speaker unknown, date unknown.

“What did you learn?” I asked Victoria as we exited Professor—soon to be Grandmaster—Bogern’s house. The girl had taken to staring at me with some measure of awe after the negotiation, and I found it rather amusing to watch her hastily scramble to formulate a more appropriate response to my question.

I absolutely refused to think of her as ‘cute’, not when she was clearly thinking so hard. That would be as big an insult to her as it had once been to me.

She was though.

“That money can do basically everything?” she asked.

“Yes. But that was not the lesson. Think carefully about how that conversation went. When did it start to go my way?”

Her face scrunched up like furled paper and her brow pressed in on itself. I fancied that smoke may have been starting to hiss from her ears. 

“...He ended up thinking that everything you said would be good for him, not just you,” she told me at last. “So…make people think that?”

“That is essentially the most basic element of it, yes,” I confirmed. “People are self-interested creatures by nature. Most of them are solely driven by what will benefit themselves, what is easy and safe for themselves. Ideological appeals are of limited use. If I had waxed lyrical about new frontiers of magic and the capacity for human greatness, I would have been speaking truths, but those truths would not have appealed to an old magician who wanted recognition and stability for his work.”

“...So instead you talked about how the people behind those frontiers would be remembered, since you knew he cared about that?”

“Correct. His walls, did you take note of them? Absolutely plastered with his own awards. It is useful to meet people in their own homes, because those homes often give you a lot of insight into who you are dealing with.”

Victoria frowned at that, and did not reply for a few moments. “That’s very…manipulative,” she said at last.

“Yes.”

“We’re told not to manipulate people. Honesty is the greatest virtue.”

She intoned that with the cadence of a quote. Oh dear, was that some passage from the idiot scriptures the Gods had commissioned about themselves?

“We are told that because the world is run by easily manipulated idiots who need to teach the intelligent and powerful to curtail their own abilities early on to have any chance of holding onto power,” I informed my sister. “And that brings us to our final lesson from this exchange. Do you know what the keystone was in my arguments with the Professor?”

I had not expected her to answer correctly, but to my surprise she did.

“The Grandmaster,” Victoria told me. “When you mentioned his name, Bogern started changing up his attitude instantly.”

“...That is right,” I was pleased with her, and let the girl see it. “Because until then he had no reason to believe that any of my promises about prestige or success were real. What a person should do is entirely immaterial. What matters in this world, the only thing that truly counts, is what a person can do. Because there is no overarching authority to enforce good and proper behaviour once you reach adulthood, only forces opposed to certain actions and in favour of others. If you can find a way around those forces, then you should.”

Victoria looked disturbed now. “That sounds a lot like you’re just saying might makes right.”

“I do not especially care if might makes right,” I told her. “But it does, in fact, make real. As I said; the conviction that something is good or bad is quite ephemeral compared to the simple, base question of whether it is reality or not. My ability to manipulate Professor Bogern to join my Institute, evidently, was reality.”

My sister was, like all girls in Garamon, raised upon a certain, particular set of values. She had been taught weakness as morality. 

I shuddered to imagine what a lowly, mewling creature I might have become were I raised in such a destructive environment, but Victoria at least had the opportunity to transcend her atrocious upbringing by my good example. I had sprinkled in pieces of wisdom and insight to her over the years, and was pleased to have found her at least more cunning and less superfluous than most girls her age. Now I would see if I might free her from her social prisons entirely.

“...That’s why you’re always meeting with people like him,” Victoria said slowly. “You don’t want to. You just…need to?”

I bristled, but nodded. Her words stung my pride precisely because they were true. 

“Correct,” I confirmed. “For now.”

“What do you want to achieve?” Victoria asked me at once. “Everyone else, all the women I mean, they always have the same answers for that. The men too actually. But what do you want?”

I weighed my sister’s question and decided she was owed a nugget of truth.

“I want to rule the world and reshape it to my will,” I told her.

Victoria giggled. “You’re not that weird then,” she told me. “You just want manly stuff instead of womanly stuff.”

“What?”

“That’s what all the boys want, and their fathers. More money, more rank, more power—it’s all basically the same thing. They want to control more things. I was wondering about you being this big mystery but you just want what they do. Except I guess it’s weird for you since you’re a woman.”

“I do not want what they do,” I told her. “My goals are grander than they could imagine.”

Victoria looked sceptical. “Grander how?”

“I…” I could not tell her about my plans for the Gods, and even if I did…what then? Putting aside the danger she would still just point out that it was merely another escalation of influence I wished. “...They just are,” I told her.

Victoria giggled again.

“Stop that,” I told her. She kept giggling. Why was this so annoying? Ah. “You sound like someone I know,” I told her at last, grumpily. 

That seemed to get her attention. 

“Who?” Victoria asked.

“A very annoying magician.”

“Annoying how?”

“Constantly talking about my breasts.”

“Is he talented?”

“She is very talented.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Why do you care about that?”

“Because you started blushing when you talked about her and your breasts.”

I decided not to dignify that with a response, but Victoria just started giggling again as if I had confessed some deep secret. 

I made a mental note to do whatever was necessary to keep Sethira from ever meeting her.

***

I had come to Laugrey for more reasons than just my meeting with Bogern, as productive as that was. Unfortunately, unlike that engagement, I could not bring Victoria to the other, more important attraction. 

My younger sister was fourteen years old, close to womanhood now and starting to formulate her own understanding of what that meant. She was also, apparently, not yet very good at being told ‘no’.

“You said you’d be teaching me how you do things,” Victoria accused. “But you don’t want me here, for this of all things? It’s a marriage negotiation! The most important thing you’ll ever do!”

Perhaps it had been a mistake to tell her that I was going to meet with the Vorets, perhaps not. Honesty may have had its benefits for preparing my sister to carve her own path in the world, but it could also be very inconvenient.

“You can learn, then, how to sit out of a meeting you are not meant to be privy to,” I told her. “Believe me, you do not want to be anywhere near this.” 

The thought actually made me rather disgusted. I recalled the attention I got from men—even grown men—when my reborn body was Victoria’s age. I was not going to watch her experience that too. 

Fortunately, Victoria, however much she complained, was by no means in a position to actually force my hand about anything. I simply ordered her to remain in the penthouse room I was renting out for us and headed off by myself.

***

I was not meeting the Vorets at their own mansion this time, which surprised me. When I had sent word ahead of me to let them know I would be in Laugrey once again, it had been with the full expectation that they would wish to speak in their own domain. 

Not the case. They instead suggested that we meet at Laugrey’s centremost park, one of the more impressive structures within the whole area, and expansive enough that it actually took me quite some time to find the person I was meant to be negotiating with.

He was tall, somewhere between Backry and Aravon Voret in height. Blonde enough that I identified his heritage at a glance and dressed rather surprisingly casually. His clothing was certainly high-end and expensive, but not extraordinarily so. It looked like, unlike any of the other Vorets I had yet encountered, this man was entirely comfortable to live life without blasting his own affluence around in all directions at all times.

He saw me approaching fast and moved to head me off, walking with an easy grace that I found quite interesting. He did not seem nervous to be here.

“Isabel Vornholt,” he nodded with a smile. There was not, I noted, a question in his voice. But of course he knew what I looked like—putting aside descriptions he would have received from his own family, my picture had been distributed in quite a few newspapers of late.

“I am not aware of to whom I owe the pleasure,” I told him evenly. This man was an unknown, and therefore a potential problem. I made sure to keep my guard hidden, but certainly up, until I had the chance to assess whatever danger he may pose.

“Ilgryn Voret, forgive me for not introducing myself first,” he smiled and held out his hand. I realised after a moment that he wished for me to shake it, then, hesitantly, I did so. Odd. Most men did not offer such gestures to women.

Ilgryn. I had made a brief study of the Vorets and their innumerable spawn. This one was considered an above-average talent for their mainline, but was barely in the top five of his generation and lacked any of the prestige afforded to Backry, let alone Bagran.

That just made me even more curious as to why he could possibly be meeting me here.

“You’re probably wondering about why I’m here instead of my grandfather or great grandmother?” he grinned. “I’m uh…well, this is an awkward thing to say, but I’m your prospective fiancee.”

I frowned. “You are not nearly the most talented son of your family.”

He laughed. “Ouch. Yeah, I’m not. It took grandmother the better part of an afternoon to convince father to put me forward instead. She thinks my personality is more compatible with yours than my brothers and cousins.”

I happened to know that most of those brothers and cousins had more than zero public indecency arrests to their name, so I was inclined to agree.

“Your grandmother is hoping to charm me into accepting a less advantageous offer?” I sighed.

“I wouldn’t know,” Voret shrugged. “I gave up trying to guess what my grandmother’s hoping for a long time ago. What I do know was that I’ve been told to come to this park and meet a brilliant, beautiful, magically ingenious young lady, get to know her a bit, and show her some of the nicer sights. Care to join me, or does that sound a bit too nefarious a scheme for your taste?”

I weighed my options. 

“That is…tolerable,” I told him. He laughed again, then held out his arm. I realised after a moment that he expected me to link mine within it, then reluctantly did so. If I was to be seen courting someone in public, I may as well ensure that all the proprieties were seen to.

Ilgryn, for his part, did not seem to especially care much, nor was he particularly in my space. As we walked, I found that he seemed far more interested in my past than my future.

“I still can’t quite wrap my head around the way you set up those new refineries,” he told me. “Would you mind explaining, or is that a trade secret?”

“It is not exactly a secret…” I hesitated anyway, but volunteered a basic overview. It was not anything he could not have uncovered himself with a bit of cunning. My major advantage in business was having done it first, and being willing to spend the money on efficiency. 

Voret did not seem to see it that way, though. He was rather amazed after I finished, and followed that up with a great many more questions. All about my business, or me, or my decisions. I took a while to realise that he was not simply trying to impress me, the man merely held genuine interest in these things and saw no reason to ask about anything else. 

It was difficult to truly articulate how or why, but I found myself easing into the conversation and actually enjoying the act of answering him.

“Most men are more contemptuous of me than you are,” I told him after a while. Voret did not, I noted, seem surprised, though he did wince.

“Yes, well, I’ve always been a shade different from most men.”

“In what regard?” I asked him. He hesitated, then just shrugged. 

“In many. I suppose it’d be more accurate to say I’ve always been different from most Vorets, though to tell the truth I fear the men of my family are simply the worst parts of the men in most others.”

He trailed off, looking suddenly embarrassed. 

“Continue,” I ordered him. “This is the closest thing to an interesting sentence you have formulated so far.”

He chuckled at that. “Are you always this…uh…”

“Direct?”

“I was going to say socially inept.”

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Nevermind, anyway, I’ve noticed that the men who tend to talk the most about how much they like women tend to…well, actually like them the least. For most of my relatives, conversations about you are basically revolving around the claiming of an especially valuable prize.”

“And you are too enlightened and decent for such behaviour?”

He burst out laughing. “More like I gave up on winning the prize a long time ago, maybe.” He did not sound especially bitter, nor even upset. Merely…content. “I suppose I just don’t put as much stock in that. I was never in the running for my family’s favour, so I never found myself competing for it as hard as the ones who were. An outside perspective I suppose. Does that make sense?”

I thought back to my own childhood, and all the insights I might never have acquired if I had not been driven away from my village’s dogma by sling stones and death. 

“...Yes. It does.”

We were alone now, this section of park was a wider, more natural part with far more grass and treelines than footpaths. I was glad for the solitude, and I found myself spending a moment of it to gaze up at Voret’s face. He had the family’s strong jaw and high cheekbones, though nothing of their sneering, almost petulant contempt. 

It was, I thought, a face I could get used to looking at. Or sitting on, Sethira had taught me how fun that could be too.

But I was getting ahead of myself. 

We continued our circuit of the park and the conversation remained as enjoyable as ever, not least because I got the distinct impression that all the praise and awe I was seeing now was somehow more personal. It was an odd kind of admiration, and one that I certainly cared for. If this was an act on Voret’s part, then putting on such a good one only made me all the more interested.

I found my mood raised as we re-entered the paved roads of Laugrey and headed back for my hotel. Five minutes later, my mood plummeted like it had been shot down.

Because when we reached the street outside my hotel, I saw rubble in the road and a great fire engulfing the penthouse floor. There was magic in the air, but no sign of Victoria’s, and it took me all of a second to realise my sister had been kidnapped in my absence.