His hope now—hisonlyhope—was to find a loophole in the surrender agreement. An angle, an outside case, something the Chinese dragons hadn’t considered that he could exploit to buy Heartstriker a way out of this that didn’t involve giving up or starting a war. Because therewouldbe a war. Julius wasn’t sure about the rest of his family, but Justin would fight any foreign rule to the death. The same went for Conrad, and if the knights fought, others would join, which meant a lot of dragons he cared about would die. They couldalldie if he didn’t figure out a plan to fix this, but despite having read it ten times now, the surrender agreement the emperor’s aide had given them still didn’t make sense to him.
“I don’t like this.”
“So you keep saying,” his mother drawled.
“Because it keeps being true,” Julius growled, smacking the scroll in his hands. “This surrender doesn’t make any sense! Why are they being so nice to us?”
Bethesda choked on her cognac. “That’swhat you take issue with?” she sputtered. “They’re toonice? I thought that was your entire shtick.”
“Not when it’s suspicious! The Golden Emperor has us over a barrel. He haszeroreason to give us any concessions, but these terms read like a love letter. Listen to this.”
He unraveled the scroll, sliding the elegant paper between his fingers until he reached the English translation of the Chinese text. “The introduction is exactly what you’d expect: unconditional surrender, weakness of our clan before the emperor’s might, and so on. After that, though, it goes off the rails. The first ‘demand’”—he lifted his fingers to make air quotes—“is that once we’re conquered, Heartstriker will retain the right to self-rule and join the Golden Empire as one of its clans. We also keep control of all our territories, assets, and businesses. He’s not even charging us taxes for the first hundred years.”
“Really?” Bethesda scowled thoughtfully. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It’s wonderful,” Julius agreed. “That’s the problem. They invaded us knowing we couldn’t fight back, but this surrender is written like they’re afraid we’ll say no.Why?They made it abundantly clear this morning how much they hate our clan and you personally, but there’s not even a mention of you stepping down.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. We’re under their boot. They should be demanding heads on spikes, not giving us sweetheart deals.”
“I’d demand heads on spikes,” Bethesda said wistfully. “But while I’m sure the Empress Mother dreams of stuffing me for display, the Qilin’s always been odd. They don’t call him benevolent for nothing. With luck like his, he can afford to be.”
“This goes way beyond benevolence,” Julius said. “This is insanity. There’s no fealty requirement, no demands for changes to our clan structure, no land grabs or tribute. Other than accepting him as our ruler and joining his empire, he’s literally asking for nothing. If I’m reading this part about imperial funds distribution correctly, we might evenmakemoney off this deal, and that just makes no sense to me. Why bother conquering us at all if he isn’t going to get anything out of it? Why is he being sonice?”
“If I were less depressed, the hypocrisy of hearing you say that would make my day,” his mother said. “But loath as I am to admit you’re right about anything, what does it matter? Like you just said, we can’t turn him down. I fully intend to rally our clan and make those Chinese snakes rue the day they set foot in our desert, but unless I can do it by tomorrow morning, we’re going to have to bow our heads and take his offer. If the emperor wants to be overly generous about it, why should we stop him? It’ll just make our inevitable rebellion that much easier.”
“Because I don’twantto rebel,” Julius said angrily. “I don’t want to surrender at all, especially not if it means signing something that is so obviously atrap.”
“Maybe it’s not,” she said. “I just watched you read that contract ten times over, and it’s not as though you don’t know how to read between the lines. I had to sit through six hours of your legal nitpicking just yesterday, if you’ll recall.” She shrugged. “If you can’t find the poison in that apple, maybe it’s not there.”
“But ithasto be,” he said, staring at the paper. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Why would he go through all the trouble of conquering Heartstriker if he doesn’t actually want to conquer Heartstriker?”
“Who cares what he wants?” Bethesda snapped, sitting up at last. “If he wants to piss away his chance to crush us, why are you fighting it? You’re a clan head of Heartstriker now. You need to think about what’s best forus.” She waved her glass at the contract in his hands. “If he’s going to be a fool about this, we should take full advantage. I say sign ourselves over and leverage the bastard’s luck for all he’s worth. It’ll give Algonquin a new target if nothing else. While they’re duking it out, we’ll use all the space he’s left us to rebuild our power so we’re ready to stab him in the back as soon as the opportunity presents itself.”
That was a suitably draconic plan. Julius didn’t even have any particular moral compunction against betraying the dragons who’d forced them to join in the first place. But he just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else going on here. He’d heard the cold disdain in the Qilin’s magnificent voice. Dragons like that didn’t conquer clans just to shower them in kindness. He was here for a reason, and if that reason wasn’t actually the conquest of the Heartstriker clan, then there was still a chance Julius could find a way out of this without any bowingorbackstabbing.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” he said, standing up.
Bethesda slumped back down to her gold. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“I got it from my mother.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s not going to talk to you.”
“We don’t know that until I try,” Julius said, grabbing his Fang from the gold pile where he’d set it down and fastening the sword to his belt. “But I have to do something. I don’t care how good the terms are. I didn’t work this hard just to turn around and hand Heartstriker over to someone else. I stalled this for a day. I’m going to use it. It’s not like we’ll be any more conquered if I fail.”
“Don’t count on that,” Bethesda warned. “As I’ve learned the hard way these last two weeks, things canalwaysget worse. But I’ve also learned there’s no point in trying to stop you from doing stupid things, so knock yourself out. If you need me, I’ll be here plotting our revenge.”
She rolled over, putting her back to him as she sprawled her human body across the gold coins the way she used to as a dragon. Julius shook his head at her one last time and turned to go, but as he reached for the door, Fredrick grabbed his arm.
“Not you too,” Julius muttered.
“You misunderstand,” the F said, his voice oddly quiet. “I’m not trying to keep you from seeking an audience with the Qilin. I actually think that’s an excellent idea, but you can’t leave yet.”
“Why not?”
Fredrick cast a worried look at the metal door. “Because we have a visitor.”
Julius was opening his mouth to ask who in the world would visit themnowwhen the vault door of the overflow treasury swung open to reveal a very tall, verynotHeartstriker dragon. He looked regal in a long black silk robe that looked like it had been stolen from the set of a Chinese period drama. But though his human form was clearly modeled after mortals of Han Chinese descent, he wasn’t one of the Golden Emperor’s dragons.
Julius knew that last bit for a fact, because he’d seen this dragon before. It was the third seer, the one who’d been with Bob the night he’d killed Estella. The Black Reach.
