Zora had thirty minutes to take a short bath and recollect his memories of the Salaqa Household before Machi knocked on his door. Kita was already standing outside with her, so he gave his cloak and collar a good tug before leaving his room, joining the girls with a friendly smile.
“Do the gloves stay on even during dinner?” he asked, throwing Kita’s right hand a pointed look.
“That is none of your business,” she said, scowling and hiding her hand behind her in return. Machi sighed. The head servant was tightly dressed as ever, but the lady of the house had changed into a dress flowing down to her ankles, mineral beads sewn into the hems. Her arms were adorned with simple metal bracelets, and a short, feathered cloak draped over her shoulders. Her jewellery—a mix of carved bone and what sounded like obsidian—made light clinking sounds as she moved past him, following Machi’s lead down the hallway.
His ‘gaze’ lingered on her gloved hand for a moment longer before he sighed as well, following the head servant down to the dining room.
That scar over her right eye as well…
No doubt about it.
They’re ‘that’ Salaqa Household even I’ve heard about during my time in Amadeus Academy.
Knowledge of their history was useful information to know, but not to raise over food and wine. As a pair of servants pushed open the double doors at the end of the foyer and Machi led him into the dining room, the scent of roasted maize and spiced meats immediately filled his nose. Striking scents. Earthy aroma of burning incense wafted from carved stone holders set in each corner of the grand room. The walls hummed with etched stone reliefs depicting scenes of harvest processions. A dining table stretched long and wide in the centre, and dozens of servants carrying plates of roasted meats, spiced vegetables, and fresh fruits were already standing along the walls, but only three chairs were set around the table. No way three people could finish every dish they were going to be served.
Even still, Kita went over to the chair in the middle, taking her seat quietly as Zora glanced around at the attending servants. The bearded old man in a regal cloak, tunic, and ceremonial sash on the far end of the table immediately tried to raise a fist, but Zora plopped himself down on the other end of the table without invitation, smiling cordially—and he spoke before the Salaqa Lord did, if not only because he liked getting the first word in.
“I know the traditional processions for a feast in a noble household,” he said, picking up a fork and twirling it in the air. “The servants serve only after the sojourner takes their seat, and the serve is slow, silent, and soft—but I’m impatient when it comes to my food, you see. Where I come from, the one who eats lines up to get their own food with their own two hands. Having to watch your servants strut in one by one for the next ten minutes would bore me to death.”
His spell took effect, a quiet ripple washing over the room. Save for Machi standing directly behind Kita, every servant reeled and gasped as sudden flows of sound waves swept the trays off their hands, picking the dishes up into the air and making them swirl around the dining room. Zora didn’t need to direct the spell. He knew how to carry multiple cafeteria trays to multiple children at once, and he could imagine himself doing it blindfolded. It may be a bit crude seeing the two dozen dishes sliding onto the tablecloth in disjointed order—most of the meat dishes floated to his side of the table, and most of the vegetable dishes floated to Kita and the lord’s side of the table—but he could at least swear he didn’t do it intentionally.
When he cast that spell, he must’ve envisioned himself getting the meatier end of the dishes. That was all.
“See? That’s a lot faster, isn’t it?” he said, grinning from ear to ear as he stabbed his fork into the closest dish: chicken cooked in tomatillos, cilantros, garlic, and peppers. The smell was the most alluring of the bunch in front of him. “Now, are the servants also going to partake in our feast, or will you let them have an early night off?”
The servants tried not to make it obvious, but he heard the lot of them gulping and looking at the Salaqa Lord anxiously.
In response, the Salaqa Lord chuckled and waved everyone out of the dining room. Only Machi remained standing behind Kita. The rest looked positively relieved to be allowed reprieve from this possible bomb of a room.
But no way Zora was going to destroy this room with such a feast in front of him. If he didn’t at least finish his food first, there’d be bad weather tomorrow.
“... I am Baya Salaqa, the Regional Lord of the Salaqa Household, a paramount family with great influence in the lands just right beyond the walls of the Capital,” the old lord said, picking up a fork with his left hand and showing Zora the back of his right hand as he did. Zora didn’t have to look up. He could feel the army ant crest of the Salaqa Household etched into the old man’s hand from half a room away. “Your reputation precedes you, Thousand Tongue Zora. I did not think the rumours about you being blind were actually true.”
“And I didn’t think the rumours about you being a frugal lord were actually true, either, but for a Regional Lord of such high standing, you’re certainly holding back on the amount of dishes you’re putting in front of me,” Zora said, half-chewing, half-talking. “The other Regional Lords hosted much more grandiose feasts for me, you see. Not that I’m too picky about my food.”
Baya chuckled again, and a small horde of tiny army ants started crawling across the table, lifting dishes and moving them closer towards the old man. “I do not know how much you know about me, but I know you are all the nobles in the northeastern outer regions talk about nowadays—the man who killed ‘Fate Spinner’ Nona, youngest of the Magicicada Witches, with a fiery ‘spell’ that rocked the very mountains your academy was set upon. I know you are a powerful man with influential connections to boot. You have marched across half the regions in the northeast, evading death at every turn, and—”
“Insincere flattery isn’t my thing, old man,” he said, finishing his first plate and casting “to me” on a second plate, pulling it in. “If my reputation truly precedes me, then we should both just come out and say what we want, and then we can get to the truly important part in bureaucracy: the transactional relationship that binds blood together.” He was about to dig into his marinated pork when he decided to pause, smiling up at the old lord. “Blood is what the empire values most, no?”
The old lord seemed taken aback for a moment, but Kita, who’d been eating quietly between them, sent Zora a sharp glare. “In times like these, we must have tact and engage in a bit of niceties before indulging in business matters—”
“You have calloused hands,” Zora said, ignoring Kita and looking at Baya pointedly. “The difference between nobles and commoners in this empire is but one thing: nobles have Arts that allow them to summon and control a specific type of ant, and they are able to use those ants for the greater good of the people. The Salaqa Household has always had the Art to summon ‘army ants’, which are ants that specialise in interlocking with each other to close bloody wounds. In battle, nobles of the Salaqa Household are rather powerful. As generals and commanders, they can give every soldier a small group of army ants that can stitch their wounds shut and accelerate regeneration—and you were a particularly influential commander back when you still served in the military, were you not?”
Baya smiled slyly. “And your point?”
“You were a top graduate of the Royal Ayapacha Military Academy. Before you, the Salaqa Household was but another dime-a-dozen low-class noble household, but with you as the head, the Salaqa Household’s rise to power was a terribly quick one. Your war achievements against the Swarm were aplenty. In a mere two decades, you went from being the head of a noble household almost nobody has heard of to almost rising to the seat of one of the Empress’ Four Families—the four most influential noble households in the empire—and it truly is a remarkable feat. I know I only worked two years as a teacher, but I never got a salary increase in my life.”
“Here I thought you said insincere flattery was not your thing—”
“But then an incident eight years ago happened, and you lost it all,” he said, almost too casually, and the air in the dining room stilled. He didn’t stop eating. “The Salaqa Household went from nearly being one of the empire’s most influential households to being relegated to an outer region household, albeit still the one closest to the Capital, so it’s not like you don’t have any influence anymore. You’re just not part of the Capital nobles anymore.” Then he paused again, if not only to let his words sink in a little. “And you want to tell me you still care about tact and etiquette?”
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“...”
He raised a wine glass to his lips, took a small sip, then set it down as he shivered from head to toe. He still hated alcohol after all. “Etiquette is taught and performed in school, but on this continent, it is very rarely practised between warriors, and we are both carrying weapons to the table. Let’s not pretend we’re trying to be any diplomatic here. You sent your daughter to get me because I can help you get what you want, and you can do the same for me, so what would you rather have? The stew or the sword?”
For a second, Zora wondered if he may have pushed the old lord and his daughter a little too hard, but he also wasn’t lying when he said he’d tired of noble etiquette a long, long time ago. He’d been patient when the first Regional Lord invited him to a feast, but the second, third, and fourth feast had dragged. He could’ve covered a lot more distance and gotten more done if he’d just upped and told those lords to get to the point, so if his mere words angered the Salaqa Lord now, there was no point continuing the conversation anymore.
But the Salaqa Lord was every bit like his daughter: surprisingly level-headed when he needed to be, to say the least.
“... You really are a sharp-tongued devil. As expected of a man from the Fabre Household.” Baya laughed, and it was probably the first real sound he’d heard from the man tonight. “But fine. An honest man like you is refreshing once in a while.”
Zora shrugged. “Glad to hear it.”
“I’m aware there’s no time for tact and etiquette either, so I’ll do as you say and come out with it: the Attini Empire is being torn apart from the inside-out, and I believe, well within a year, that the entire southern end of the continent will suffer a collapse.”
Then Baya gestured to Kita, smiling softly.
“You’ve probably heard a bit from my daughter on your ride here, but as of right now, more than half of the outer region trade routes have been conquered by giant bugs. The nearby fungi forests have been conquered by the same bugs, so there isn't enough food for the commoners, and the Swarm battering against the frontlines in the far south are getting bolder and bolder as well. All of us in the outer regions—that is, anyone not within the walls of the Capital—are getting screwed by the Swarm, and do you know what the Empress and Her Four Families are doing inside the Capital?”
“Counting their lucky stars.”
Baya slammed his fist on the table, making Zora smile. “The fools in the Capital are collecting tributes and hoarding resources from the outer regions like they’re preparing to close their walls to the rest of us. Hell, that they’ve even branded you and that Warlord of the Northwest enemies of the empire—and expending precious resources to kill you both—isn’t helping their public image amongst the commoners and noble households of the outer regions. They see the two of you as walking calamities without realising they are the ones refusing to acknowledge themselves as the real problem. At this rate, a civil war will break out between those of the Capital and those of the outer regions, and only the Swarm will benefit if that happens.”
At the snap of the old lord’s fingers, half a dozen servants streamed into the room from behind to clean up some of the emptied dishes, but Zora spoke “I’ll help you with that” and had the empty dishes fly into the servants’ hands themselves. Befuddled, the servants blinked at their lord for only a second longer before hurrying out of the room, taking the empty plates with them.
“And I told your daughter just as much: I’m not interested in the politics and the internal strife of the empire. The empire has made its bed, so the empire will sleep in it,” Zora said plainly, leaning back in his chair as he pulled out his wand, raising it to the ceiling. “But do you know what this is, old man?”
Kita clenched her jaw, looking slightly anxious, but Baya answered without reservation. “A Magicicada Mage’s wand. I’ve heard of it.”
“Correct. But this one is made out of the flesh of ‘Fate Spinner’ Nona, youngest of the Magicicada Witches.” He gripped the wand tight in his hands, and it started vibrating, trying to tilt backwards. He didn’t let it budge a single inch. “It responds to the other Magicicada Witches, you see, and for the longest time, it’s been pointing me in the direction of the Capital. I don’t have proof, and I don’t have evidence, but I know ‘Reverberator’ Decima is in the Capital. I’m going to kill her, and that’s all I care about. Why, exactly, do you think I’ll be interested in helping you with whatever you want me to do?”
“Because our goals align,” Baya said, leaning back in his chair as well, clasping his hands in his lap. “The Empress and Her Four Families didn’t start acting so selfishly until a decade ago. Believe it or not, the Capital used to have a good reputation amongst nobles and commoners of the outer regions. They protected the outer regions, cared for our development, and lent us aid in our greatest times of need—so why do you think the Empress started rejecting us and let internal strife fester in her precious empire a decade ago? Why did she start demanding more tributes from the outer regions while offering less aid in our times of need? Why did her Spore Knights and Forward Armies start purging small towns and villages that wouldn’t acquiesce to her demands of building weapons factories over sacred earth?”
Zora grinned. He could entertain the old lord a little. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe she got sick of being a good empress and decided to be a tyrant.”
“Because a certain bug infiltrated the Capital as a human and began manipulating the Empress a decade ago,” Baya finished, shaking his head in dismay. “When I first heard the rumours a decade ago that an Insect God might’ve gotten into the Empress and Her Four Families’ inner circle, I started investigating. I looked for traces of shedding in the carpets of the Divine Temple, clumps of chitin scales where they shouldn’t be, but—”
“The incident eight years ago knocked you and the Salaqa Household out of the Capital, and you were relegated to being the most powerful outer region household, but still only an outer region household. You no longer had the power or the authority to investigate the Empress and her inner circle.”
“... But the nobles of the Salaqa Household do not wince when they are wounded,” Baya whispered. “I have never faltered. Not once in eight years. I continued investigating outside the capital, searching for traces of that bug’s influence across the entire empire, and when I first heard of your rabid pursuit of some Magicicada Witch in the empire two years ago… I began wondering.”
“I know.”
“I believe ‘Reverberator’ Decima, second of the Magicicada Witches, has been manipulating the Empress and Her Four Families for the past decade,” Baya finished. “I don’t have proof, and I don’t have evidence, but I know the Empress and Her Four Families, and this past decade of increasing tension between the Capital and the outer regions… was not their doing. It’s Decima. She’s the one driving the empire into the ground, and if she isn’t ripped out of her hiding hole, she’ll tear the empire apart by the end of the year.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You’re the Thousand Tongue. There’s nobody on this continent who knows more about the Magicicada Witches than you do,” Baya said, reaching behind his chair and tossing a scroll across the table. Zora caught it, smiled, then tossed it away. The old lord returned a small smile; the man hadn’t been lying when he said he hadn’t thought Zora was actually blind. “The Salaqa Household will back you up. We’ll hide you from the Capital. We’ll provide you a steady influx of points, coins, weapons, equipment, human support, and everything else in between—it’ll be the household’s lifetime of capital and resources put in your name than you’ll ever be able to accrue on your own. You will need people to support you in this venture. Decima is nothing like Nona.”
Zora shrugged. “Oh, I know. Nona is the Witch of Childhood. Her spells are loud and abrasive, but simple all things considered. It’s brute force against brute force. Fire against frost.”
“But Decima is the Witch of Adults. Her spells are trickery, deception, and manipulation. Unlike Nona, I’m sure you’ll kill her the moment you see her, but she’ll never let you see her. She’ll hide behind the walls of the empire, the Spore Knights, the Four Families, and use even the Empress as a shield. To hunt a bug that hides in the shadows, you must fight from the shadows, too.”
“What do you want me to do first?”
Baya tilted his chin back, inhaling deeply. “Well, you’ve had a long march down here all the way from Amadeus Academy. I wouldn’t want to set you on your first objective before letting you rest for a week, at least, so you can search for Decima’s footprints afterwards. In the meantime, please feel free to enjoy the frugal luxuries of the Salaqa Manor—”
“One question, old man.”
Kita looked more nervous than her father as Baya started moving his fork again, but Zora wasn’t going to press the two of them anymore. He’d gotten them to just come out and say what they wanted, and he was grateful for that. To know there was someone else who came to the same conclusion he did a year ago—that Decima must’ve infiltrated the Empress’ inner circle somehow—was immensely relieving, and made him want to put his trust in the Salaqa Household immediately… but there was something he wanted to confirm before putting his blood on any contract.
Namely, the reason why there were only three chairs set around the table.
“The incident eight years ago,” he began, “was devastating for your household. You were kicked out of the Capital. You were relegated to being a mere outer region household. You lost most of your capital, status, and influence within the empire. You must realise Decima was most likely behind it all.”
Baya's eyes softened. “I am aware.”
“Then you know the extent of Decima’s influence within the empire. By deciding to support me, you are putting not just yourself, but your daughter and your entire household in her line of fire once again.” Zora paused for a moment, finding the words in his head. “Compared to the far outer regions being pummeled to submission by the Swarm with zero assistance from the Capital, you guys have it relatively easy here. Why risk it all again? Why challenge Decima to a fight again?”
Baya angled his head to look at Zora, but it wasn’t the old lord’s calm and steady face, Zora decided, that answered the question.
Kita fixed him with a determined gaze, too, and it was ‘fire’ that almost seemed to burn in her killing pressure.
“... You could have chosen an easy life at Amadeus Academy, too. Why did you set off on your long march?” Baya said, a dark smile stretching his thin lips. “Now, how about some idle chatter for the rest of the meal? Business talk bores me as well. I’m sure my daughter would love to hear some of your more infamous exploits during your long march across the empire.”
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