The throne room was quiet in the way that rooms were quiet when the person sitting in them didn't particularly want to be talked to.
Leon sat with one leg crossed over the other, a glass of wine held loosely between two fingers, staring at nothing in particular. The wine was good. Everything in this territory was good — he had made sure of that, because if he was going to be stuck out here at the edge of nowhere running an operation that should have been beneath him, he was at minimum going to be comfortable while doing it.
Jeeves stood to his right. Still. Hands behind his back. Present in the way that Jeeves was always present — completely, without taking up any space.
In the shadows at the far end of the room, two figures stood.
Slann's eyes moved sideways.
Tano was looking straight ahead, the way he always looked — at Leon, at the middle distance, at whatever fixed point he had decided was worth his attention. His tail moved once. Settled.
Slann leaned marginally closer and dropped his voice to something that was technically a whisper.
"Hey-hey, halfbreed."
Nothing.
"I'm talking to you." Slann's eyes flicked to Leon — still drinking, still staring — and back. "Didn't you notice? This one's nothing like the buyer."
Tano didn't answer.
Slann looked Leon over with the critical assessment of someone who had developed very strong opinions about what powerful people were supposed to look like, and found the current example lacking. Small. Young. The wine glass held with the particular looseness of someone performing relaxation rather than feeling it.
(The buyer) Slann thought. (Now that was a different matter entirely.)
He remembered the cage.
Three lizardmen, and then him — which meant, effectively, him and an audience. The other two had understood the arrangement quickly enough. They were from a different tribe, smaller, the kind that didn't produce shamans and therefore didn't fully appreciate what sharing a space with one meant. Slann had explained it to them primarily through the medium of eating their food.
All of it.
Every morning, the guards slid three portions through the gap at the bottom of the cage door. Every morning, Slann collected them before the other two had finished waking up, arranged them in front of himself with the organizational satisfaction of someone setting a proper table, and ate. Methodically. Without guilt. The other two lizardmen watched from their corner with the hollow resignation of creatures that had already lost one argument and didn't see the point in starting another.
The mattresses had been his idea too. Or rather — the mattresses had simply become his, through the same principle. The cage provided three sleeping mats, worn thin and smelling of previous occupants. Slann had stacked all three in the center of the cage, constructed from them something that could generously be called a platform and less generously called a throne, and seated himself upon it with the settled dignity of a man who had made the best of available materials.
He sat there like a king.
A captured king, technically. But the distinction felt less important than people seemed to think.
(I am Slann) he had reminded himself, on mornings when the smell got particularly bad or the ceiling dripped. (Shaman of the great lizardmen)
(My tribe's elders sought my counsel before I had seen twenty summers. Other tribes sent emissaries. I was captured, yes — but the sun does not become less the sun because someone covers it with their hand)
The other two lizardmen had stopped making eye contact with him around day three.
He had been getting sick of it. The darkness. The smell — that specific, layered, inescapable smell of too many bodies in too small a space. The filth that accumulated regardless of what you did because the guards didn't care and the space didn't allow for alternatives. The indignity of all of it pressing down every hour.
He was worth more than this. He had always been worth more than this.
So he stood up one morning, crossed to the cage door, and started hitting it.
"I know you can hear me!" His staff — they had taken it, naturally, but a shaman without his staff was still a shaman and he wanted that understood — his fist hit the door again, rattling it on its hinges. "Open this door! Do you have any idea what you have in here?! I am Slann! The Great Shaman of the Lizardmen! You captured me like I was some common — some ordinary — open this door right now, you maggots, and put me somewhere that reflects my actual value, or so help me when I get my staff back I will—"
The door opened.
Slann straightened immediately. Smoothed the front of his robe — what remained of it. Raised his chin.
(Finally) he thought. (Even these fools recognized it eventually)
"I'm glad you've come to your senses," he began. "Now, as I was saying, the conditions in here are completely unacceptable for someone of my station, and I expect immediate—"
He stopped.
The figure standing in the open doorway was not a guard.
The face was in shadow — the light behind him too bright, the contrast too sharp, the details lost in it. But the eyes caught the light and held it, and they were red. Deep, burning red, with a cross of gold in each iris that caught the light and threw it back like the eyes of something that had decided a long time ago that looking away was for other people.
Slann forgot what he had been saying.
He forgot, briefly, several other things as well.
The presence of the figure filled the doorway in a way that had nothing to do with physical size. It was the kind of presence that arrived before the person did and stayed after they left — the particular weight of someone who had never in their life questioned whether they belonged in a room.
Slann, who thought very highly of himself and had excellent reasons for doing so, felt something he did not have a comfortable name for.
He stood very still.
"Quiet, you fool!"
Jeeves' voice, low and precise, cut through the memory like a blade through water.
Slann's mouth closed.
He looked at Jeeves. Then at Leon. Leon had not turned around, but the line of his shoulders had changed — the very slight, very controlled tension of someone who had heard every word and was deciding how to hold it.
A vein appeared at his temple. Briefly. Then was gone.
"You're only alive," Leon said, to the room rather than to either of them specifically, his voice carrying the particular quiet of something that didn't need volume to land, "because I want that labyrinth."
He took a sip of wine.
Tano said nothing. Slann said nothing. Both of them had, through entirely different mechanisms, arrived at the same conclusion about the wisdom of speaking next.
Leon set the glass down.
He stood — not dramatically, just stood, the movement simple and unhurried — and turned to look at them properly for the first time since they had been in the room. His golden eyes moved across both of them with the tired, unsentimental assessment of someone checking inventory.
"Do you know," he said, "how much I had to do to get you out of there." It wasn't a question. "The arrangements. The negotiations." A pause. The word that followed came out quieter, and sharper for it. "Going againt His orders."
The room was very still.
"It is indeed a great deal, my lord," said a voice from the shadows at the room's edge.
Harvard materialized from them the way he always did — as though he had simply always been there and was only now choosing to be visible. His green robes were immaculate. His monocle caught the lamplight and held it. His hands were clasped in front of him with the patience of a man who had learned that waiting was simply another form of leverage.
"I confess," Harvard continued pleasantly, "I had not originally intended these particular assets to go to you. The terms required some — creative restructuring." His monocle glinted. "But this labyrinth you speak of. If it is what I believe it to be, the profit potential alone would justify—"
The red light hit the room without warning.
Not gradual. Not a flicker. One moment the lamps were the only light and the next, a deep crimson pulse flooded through the gaps in the stonework from somewhere above — the particular red of a warning system activating, the color that meant something had crossed a line it wasn't supposed to cross.
Jeeves moved immediately.
"Slaves" His voice carried no urgency and all urgency simultaneously. "Go. Now."
"Yes." Tano was already moving, the word behind him rather than in front of it.
Slann followed, thinking — with some satisfaction — (good timing)
Jeeves turned back to Leon, composing himself in the half second it took to complete the turn.
"The one-time detection relic has signaled, my lord."
"It appears the enemy has moved before we could, my lord. Shall I go up and take command of the field?"
Leon looked at the space where the red light had come from.
(Those damn frogs!)he thought. (Sitting in their little well, looking up at the circle of sky above them and thinking that's the whole world)
His jaw tightened. (Who do they think they are? Attacking me?!)
He turned to Harvard.
"Harvard." His voice was even. "Don't worry — they won't get down here. I'll make sure of—"
The space where Harvard had been standing was empty.
Leon looked at it for a moment.
The monocle was gone. The green robes were gone. The clasped hands and the pleasant smile and the carefully maintained presence were gone, vanished between one breath and the next with the practiced efficiency of a man who had survived as long as he had by being somewhere else when danger arrived.
Leon looked at the empty space for another moment.
Then he laughed. Short and quiet, just once, the laugh of someone who had expected exactly this and found the confirmation more amusing than irritating.
(Of course) he thought. (That sly old merchant. The moment he smelled smoke he was already gone) He picked up his wine glass. Set it back down without drinking. (That's the difference between us, Harvard. You run. You've always run. It's kept you alive and it's kept you small and you've decided that's a reasonable trade, like the merchant you are)
He looked at the ceiling. At the red light still pulsing faintly through the stone.
(But, I'm not like you)
The thought settled in him with the particular weight of something that had been true for a long time and had been tested enough times to be certain.
(I'm not like any of YOU!)
His hand found the arm of the throne. Gripped it once. Released it.
"I will face this head on." He said it quietly, to nobody, which meant he meant it. "And when this is done—"
His golden eyes went distant.
"—I will have my REVENGE."
The memory came the way it always did. Uninvited. Complete.
A room much larger than this one. Ceilings that disappeared into shadow. The smell of something expensive — candles, old wood, wealth that had settled into the walls over generations and become indistinguishable from the building itself.
A boy.
Young. Standing straight, because he had been taught to stand straight, because the people who had taught him believed that posture was the first thing anyone saw and therefore the first argument you made about yourself.
Golden eyes.
And across from him — crimson ones.
To be continued.....