I was slightly wary, but I politely sipped the beverage. Happily, the liquid was cool and smooth, and it did stop my coughing. Gratefully, I thanked the prince. I looked to Darius, whose own face had gone pale, although he avoided coughing like I had.
One of Prince Selnikov’s hands, Count Zukov, I think, leaned forwards. “It is a great honor to drink tak with the prince. You did well not to vomit.”
“Oh,” I lamely replied, suddenly very glad I hadn’t spat the drink back into my cup. “I’m honored.”
“It was deserved. Today was a good kill,” Prince Selnikov said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
That had disturbed me from the beginning. “I, um, I cannot claim Count Gretsky’s death. I didn’t kill him. The guards did.”
“You stopped him from killing you with capable blade-mastery until your ally could strike the fatal blow. His death is still yours,” Count Zukov explained.
“It is easy to shoot a fighter in the back when they’re occupied dueling a skilled opponent. There is no honor in it. The shooter is but an opportunist. Your duel with Gretsky was a good fight. You deserve the credit,” Count Gerasimov, the other hand, added.
“Any peasant can kill with a lancer,” Count Zukov said with finality. All three demons nodded in agreement with this sage statement.
Prince Aureli tried to insert himself into the conversation again. “Well, that’s not entirely fair, is it? The sharpshooting matches today were very impressive. I certainly couldn’t put abeam on a coin at one hundred yards, that’s for sure.”
The demons were silent, their glittering yellow eyes all focused on me. Prince Aureli stood, confused for a moment, then glowered at their rudeness. I sat helpless, uncertain how to salvage the situation.
Darius took a massive pull from his drink, then set down his empty stein and stood. “Very true, Your Highness. Some of Princess Marie’s groupings? Put all five shots through the same hole. I could have sworn she’d only hit the target once.” He bowed to the kneeling demons. “Excuse me, dread lords. May we drink again.”
“May we drink again,” the three demons chorused. Darius deftly took Prince Aureli by the arm and dragged him away, his charm turned up to eleven. Boleslaw lingered a moment to give me another inscrutable glance full of meaning which I failed to understand, then followed, leaving me alone with three massive, deadly demon lords.
We sat in silence. I sipped my beverage, waiting for one of them to say something. When none of them spoke, I searched my brain for a way to start the conversation.
“Earlier, you said two other names, along with Count Gretsky.”
“Prince Kerensky. Count Petrokov,” the demon prince confirmed.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“They were the lords you slew in battle,” Prince Selnikov said.
I sat back, remembering the fights. One was a drop trooper who tried to land on my supply depot in a surprise attack. I shot him with a lancer as he emerged from his pod before finishing him off with my dirk. The other was a cavalryman who interdicted our retreat on Gorastern. I sliced him in two with my greatsword while riding Tilly, after I cuthis hoversteed out from under him, along with his left leg. Neither had been honorably slain. Both suffered bad deaths, painful, slow. I could not make them clean. I still remember how they snarled at me as I killed them.
“I never knew their names,” I said softly, my last motes of energy bleeding away.
“They were not important to you then,” Prince Selnikov said.
“And now it’s important to you who I killed? How did you find out?”
Count Zukov spoke. “We looked into your combat record, compared your reported kills to our lists of the slain. It was not hard to find comparable deaths.”
The realization that they must have hacked the Royal Commonwealth firewall chilled me. That they would admit their duplicity to me freely scared me even more.
“That’s a lot of effort to go through for a nobody. I’m terribly uninteresting, an aide to the Duke of Lynwyzc, nothing more.”
Prince Selnikov leaned forwards, resting his elbows on the table, his chin on the intertwined claws of his shovel-sized hands. “This afternoon, you became somebody very interesting to us.”
Before I could think of a response, an Imperial lady-in-waiting appeared behind Prince Selnikov’s shoulder, the same massive demoness from before. “Excuse me, Your Eminence, but the Emperor requests the presence of your conversation partner.”
Prince Selnikov finished his stein of drink, staring at me the whole time. “We must not keep the Emperor waiting. Captain Boylan, may we drink again.”
I finished my massive mug, taking a few seconds to gulp down the soothing brew. Placing the empty tankard on thetable, I returned his missive and stood. “May we drink again.”
“Follow me, Captain.” The lady-in-waiting turned and began to lead me to the same green baize door I’d gone through to see the Emperor the night before. I made it maybe five steps before Boleslaw was at my side.
“Levar, you cunning fox, we’ve been trying to get the Imp nobles to open up since before you got here. You kill one lowly count, and now the cream of the Imperial crop are lining up to talk with you. What did they say?”
