RE: Monarch-Chapter 258: Kholis III

Lucius's slouch straightened as we approached our destination, shoulders squaring beneath his traveling cloak, posture transforming from road-weary traveler to something far more regal. His typically acrid sarcasm fell to the wayside, replaced by the honeyed tones of a gracious host. The metamorphosis was effortless, like watching a snake shed its skin to reveal gleaming new scales beneath.

He distracted us with tales of his wedding—the seven-day feast that followed, the gifts from distant kingdoms, the musicians whose melodies still echoed in villagers' dreams months later. He spoke of village minutiae and economic triumphs with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to impressing guests. The stories teetered on the precipice of boasting, a touch too fanciful to fully believe. Such grandeur seemed beyond the reach of any rural village, even one with Lucius at its helm.

Still, I engaged with him, avoiding the probing questions that typically peppered my conversations. The reason for his performance was clear in the subtle glances he cast sideways—he was trying to distract Maya.

And failing.

Our time in Whitefall had hardly been a cakewalk, yet throughout most of it, Maya hadn't flinched. People didn't endure the sort of trials she had without transformation. She'd blossomed from adversity, in some ways actively following in Nethtari's footsteps, distancing herself from emotion and relying on the same cold stoniness that made her mother an effective solicitor.

When we'd arrived in Whitefall, she'd remained completely unreadable. But today was different. First came the tight grip on her reins, knuckles whitening with each mile marker we passed. Then the slight hitch in her breathing whenever we crested a hill. Now her shoulders hunched as if at the zenith of a cringe, and her eyes darted, searching the road as she seemed to prepare for something to happen.

It hit me entirely too late. "All this time reminiscing about our history with Kholis and ignoring yours."

"Hm?" She started a little at the comment, eyes snapping to mine, searching my face for meaning.

I made a gesture at the landscape unfurling around us—the sprawling meadows giving way to copses of trees, the distant silhouettes of buildings beginning to materialize on the horizon. "The life you lived before we met and brought the children back here like traveling heroes. Barion didn't like leaving the guests in the basement unsupervised, but he liked the idea of leaving you alone with them even less. So he made you cover up—dragged you here—and made you run his errands for him, taking on all the risk to your detriment."

At the mention of Barion, Lucius's mood darkened like a storm cloud blotting out the sun. The amiable smile vanished, replaced by something harder and more genuine.

"It didn't occur to me at all," he breathed, the cadence of his words slowing. "Is it... painful to be back here?"

He paused, watching Maya's face, searching for an answer in the tightness around her eyes. When she didn't immediately respond, he offered, "Only a half-day's ride to the nearest village. Cvothe. Not nearly as charming as it used to be, but it's still beautiful. Quieter than Kholis by a considerable margin."

Maya's spine straightened a fraction, some of the tension ebbing from her posture. She nodded, a flicker of confidence returning to her eyes. "That's... very kind. Both of you. I am not some wilting flower that must be planned around. Travel doesn't always treat me well, that's all."

"Is that true?" Lucius asked me, his voice pitched low enough that it might not carry.

I shrugged, giving him a look that I carefully masked the moment Maya turned my way. "I'd never call her a liar."

The horses crunched through autumn-brittle grass, hooves pulverizing fallen leaves into a fragrant mulch. The scent of earth and decay rose with each step, mingling with the sharp tang of morning air. Early light filtered through half-bare branches, casting dappled patterns that shifted across our path like liquid gold. My mount's muscles rippled beneath me as we navigated a slight incline, its breath forming small clouds in the cool air.

For several minutes, these natural sounds provided our only accompaniment—the steady rhythm of hoofbeats, the occasional snort of a horse, the whisper of the breeze through the trees.

"You're not shrewd," Maya said suddenly, her voice slicing through the silence like a blade.

I mimed taking an arrow from her direction, clutching my chest dramatically before sliding down the opposite side of my horse. I clung to the saddle, hanging horizontally as if mortally wounded.

Her eyebrows plunged lower, dark slashes of disapproval. "You're not funny either."

"Lucius, help," I croaked after the second invisible arrow struck. I clutched at the pommel with theatrical desperation. "We're under attack."

"We nothing." He immediately guided his horse away from mine, the traitor, putting several feet of distance between us. The morning sunlight caught the hint of amusement he failed to suppress.

Maya's gaze swung toward him, sharp as a hawk's. "And you."

Lucius placed a hand to his chest, mock pride radiating from the gesture. "Your incredibly flexible host who bent over backwards to facilitate this venture with what had to be the least amount of advanced notice possible?"

"If there's something you want to ask me, ask me." Maya's words rang out clear and hard as steel. "Not him. He is not my keeper and does not know the secrets of my mind."

"Well, I did ask ye, and ye weren't very forthcoming then were ye?" he snapped.

The words hung in the air, sharp and incongruous, like foreign coins dropped into local waters.

A long silence followed, broken only by the creaking of leather saddles and the soft nickering of horses.

Inevitably, I lost any ability to contain myself. "Was that... the barmaid's accent?"

"Surely you are not referring to my gentle wife, Lady Timbermour." Lucius leveled a dangerous look in my direction, but the warning in his eyes couldn't stop the telltale flush that began around his neck. The redness crept upward, spreading across his cheeks like spilled wine on parchment.

"It did sound a great deal like the lady of Kholis herself," Maya teased, a genuine smile touching her lips for the first time that morning. "Let me guess. In public she speaks like the typical human noble, but in private—"

"La-la-la-la-la-let's stop talking." Lucius returned sourly.

His eyes narrowed, and for a heartbeat, I feared we'd crossed some invisible boundary. Then the stiffness in his posture eased, and he turned to Maya with unexpected earnestness.

"I'm not questioning your integrity. It's fair to say I trust you more than nearly anyone." His voice softened, weighted with memory. "When we were... in the darkness... you were all I had. But even then, you lied to me many times. For my own benefit. When I was helpless, that was one thing. But I'm not helpless anymore. And I just want to make sure that's not what's happening here."

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Any joke I might have made died on my lips. Even without knowing the specifics of Lucius's lineage, the transparency of his emotion was unmistakable. His sentiments mirrored many of my thoughts regarding my own mother, and he expressed them with such raw honesty that I couldn't help but respect him for it.

My horse turned its head, offering me a rather potent side-eye that suggested the earlier joke had run its course. I pulled myself back into the saddle, working out a muscle that had stiffened during my dramatic display.

"We lived through a great deal of strife together," I said, "during a time when none of us were ready for it. Yet, we rose to the challenge. Our bond is precious." I looked to Lucius, allowing genuine appreciation to color my words. "I'm proud to call you friend."

Lucius stared straight ahead, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward. "I'm just happy you didn't turn out to be the smug cunt everyone expected you to be."

He snorted and looked away, eyes fixed on some distant point on the horizon. A beat passed, the silence between us comfortable rather than strained. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its edge. "And I suppose it is a pride we share."

"Are you sure I don't need the bandages?" Maya whispered, leaning toward me.

I tugged my reins in her direction and reached across the space between us to take her hand. Her fingers were cold despite the warming day.

Lucius gestured toward a nearby hill, his expression shifting to something more serious. "Come. See for yourself."

We picked up the pace and followed him. The rampant, jungle-like terrain that sprouted up around the Everwood thinned out gradually, giving way to shedding trees and carpets of fallen leaves in a tapestry of gold, ochre, and crimson. The path steepened, and our horses' breaths came heavier as we climbed.

At the crest of the hill, we reined in our mounts.

The world opened up below us.

A city sprawled across the valley floor—not the modest cluster of buildings I remembered, but a thriving metropolis that had swallowed the village of Kholis whole. Where once dirt paths had meandered between humble structures, paved roads now cut straight lines through the landscape, widened to accommodate the flow of commerce. The main thoroughfare had doubled in breadth, a river of cobblestones winding through the heart of the settlement.

"Gods," I murmured, the word barely audible even to my own ears.

My uncle stood tall in his stirrups, pride evident in every line of his body. "It's really something, isn't it?" The gleam in his eyes suggested he'd witnessed this transformation more recently than I had.

Maya stared down at the city, lips slightly parted in astonishment. She turned to Lucius slowly, as if moving underwater. "How is this possible?"

Above the old marketplace—now twice its former size—smoke billowed from several smithies, dark smudges against the morning sky. The eastern wind that rustled the surrounding trees pushed these clouds of industry toward the center of the city, where an old granary had metamorphosed into some vast hub of activity, its silhouette unrecognizable from the modest structure I recalled.

Wagons traversed the roads like worker ants in a colony, each with its designated purpose. They scurried along predetermined paths, pausing at various junctures to deposit goods or collect additional burdens before jolting back into motion. The queen's chamber of this hive appeared to be the transformed granary, toward which most traffic gravitated, a constant stream of commerce feeding the colony's growth.

What truly captured my attention was the populace. Like the capital, Kholis now hosted a healthy population of infernals, elves, and dwarves. But among them moved other figures whose origins I couldn't immediately place—taller, more sinuous forms that might be northern elves; stockier, golden-skinned figures that resembled illustrations I'd seen of desert dwellers from the far south.

Lucius rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, appearing almost embarrassed by the scale of the transformation. "Well, it wasn't too hard."

He squinted against the morning light, gazing down at his creation. Then he turned to me, gesturing with one hand as he explained. "We got wind of what the crown was doing, connected the dots between the sudden shift and the discussions I'd had with Cairn before he up and almost died—"

"Apologies for the inconvenience," I interjected, unable to resist.

Lucius shot me a look but continued. "—After nearly a year of trying to get in touch and coordinate with Cairn and failing—"

"Depending on when, I might have been in prison." I adjusted my position in the saddle, suddenly conscious of how the statement might sound.

Maya's voice cut through, sharp as a razor. "He can be a difficult person to get a hold of at times." The weight of her stare bored into the back of my head.

"—Essentially," Lucius pressed on, refusing to be derailed, "we followed suit before most of the neighboring regions. Early bird and whatnot."

He swept his arm in an expansive gesture that encompassed the sprawling city. "Geographically speaking, it's a little north for our less-human friends, but there's massive Elven and Dwarven cities within a few days' ride. Obviously the Enclave is nearby as well."

A wagon laden with timber rumbled along one of the main roads below, its load swaying precariously with each turn. Lucius tracked its progress as he continued.

"As soon as word got out that there was a small oasis in the upper reaches where anyone could stop and sell their wares without being taxed to the hells or ran out on a spear, and that oasis was centrally located at the base of several other desirable trade routes, well..." He paused, satisfaction evident in his expression. "We graduated from the title of small."

"How the hells did you get this many dwarves?" I asked, genuinely shocked.

Every other place I'd traveled to, including the Enclave and most recently Whitefall, dwarves were rarely spotted even in areas where non-humans frequented. I'd assumed—perhaps ignorantly—that they preferred to spend their time underground. Yet here they were, men and women, perusing the town, buying goods, stumbling into and out of taverns, their stocky forms distinct even from this distance.

Lucius chortled, a sound of pure satisfaction. "Now that's a story. And a good one, so I'd rather save it for later when we've travelled at least partway into our cups."

He gestured to the east, where the terrain rose slightly. "Short version is, we had a shit iron mine that no one had worked in years, and now we have a better one."

Situated a small distance from the city proper, the mine's entrance was partially obscured by trees that had not yet shed their foliage. Even so, I could make out a massive waterwheel churning a river that ran alongside the opening, its motion hypnotic and constant. The telltale grind of dwarven machinery carried across the distance, a symphony of industry.

"You gonna ask how we cleared those nasty, persistent Everwood trunks we all fucking love so much?" Lucius asked, his tone sliding from pride into something decidedly smug, bordering on smarmy.

"Don't have to," I murmured.

My gaze remained fixed on the diminutive figures traveling to and from the mine. Some of the materials they transported were concealed beneath canvas wagon tops, but the uncovered loads caught the morning light, glimmering with chunks of dark green metal I recognized despite the distance. "You found lowhil."

"The dwarven metal?" Luther asked, looking back with renewed interest.

I nodded, feeling a surge of admiration for what Lucius had accomplished. "One of them. It's as good as high steel at half the value."

The more I observed, the more impressive the transformation became. "The dwarves have to be thrilled with that, and just from the sheer number of mana lamps I'm seeing, I'm guessing at least a few of them were made here, so there's some production happening too."

A high buzz of metal reached my ears, and I tilted my head, trying to isolate the sound. "And I'm going to guess that lowhil makes one hell of a logging saw. Several, unless I'm hearing wrong."

"Yes, yes, you're very clever," Lucius rolled his eyes, but the dismissive gesture couldn't mask the pleasure in his expression. Pride radiated from him like heat from a forge.

Not knowing what else to do, but feeling compelled to acknowledge the magnitude of his achievement, I reached out and offered my arm. He gripped it firmly, and I returned the gesture, our forearms locked in ancient recognition of respect.

"The transformation of Whitefall pales in comparison," I said quietly.

"Surely not."

"This isn't flattery. What you've managed here is extraordinary. All of it." The sincerity in my voice surprised even me. "You have to show me how you managed it, the fine details, how you circumvented the obvious problems."

"Of course," Lucius agreed.

Only then did I notice the shadows beneath his eyes, the fine lines that hadn't been there before. Weariness clung to him like a second skin, visible now that his initial excitement had ebbed.

"But I have yet to find a solution for the most obvious problem." He raised an arm, gesturing toward the city that had outgrown his wildest expectations. "When I say this place got away from me, I mean it. They built what I'd dreamed of before I'd so much as gone to sleep, and by the time I woke, they'd built more."

"You're worried about attracting attention." I panned the city again, shaking my head in wonder at its sprawling expanse. "Understandable. But I don't see the problem. You're facilitating trade, and—I presume—paying a small fortune in taxes."

There was a small shake of his head, and Lucius managed a tired smile that didn't reach his eyes. "There's a little more to it than that. We can speak on it later if you wish."

He clapped his hands suddenly, the sharp sound startling both Maya and me. Our horses shifted nervously beneath us, sensing our surprise.

"But that's not what you're both here for," Lucius announced, his tone brightening artificially. "Follow me. The surprise… awaits."