Dread Witch: Coming of Age Epic Fantasy (Dreadmark Covenants Book 3) by Doty J. L

Author:Doty, J. L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J. L. Doty
Published: 2024-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

25

A General’s Quandary

HESSIAN WOKE AURELIUS at dawn, shaking him gently. She had donned her slum boss outfit of tight men’s pants, a shirt open down to her navel, knee-high boots, black makeup, and spikey hair.

Standing over him, she smiled. “I told the staff to prepare a buffet breakfast for a large group in the Blue Drawing Room, and as the senators arrive, servants will show them there. As for me, I have a slum to run, so I’m off.”

She turned and walked toward the door.

Aurelius sat up, shaking the dreams out of his thoughts. “No,” he said, “don’t go.”

She halted, turned around, and looked at him with a question on her face.

Aurelius threw the sheets off and stood. “I want you in this meeting. It’s Quantanople again. It was Quantanople gaming us in the slums, and now Quantanople invading our eastern coast. You and your colleagues rule half the city, so you have to be in on this. And afterward, you can brief Bapo-Anto and Tenato. We’ll probably end up fighting in the streets.”

“Okay,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, so I guess I’ll stay. While you’re getting ready, I’ll go down there in case any of those old farts arrive early.” She glanced down at the shirt and the skin it exposed. “I’ll make sure they have something to look at.”

She spun about and walked out of the room.

Aurelius hurriedly cleaned up and shaved, then pulled on a uniform and stopped in front of a mirror. “Always look the part,” his father had told him and Max. Marius Supremus would have never guessed that his own wife would be the architect of their son’s murder. And even now, when Aurelius thought of Max’s corpse rotting in his grave, he wanted to strangle Divonia. It occurred to him that if he did that, the family would be guilty of matricide and filicide. What a legacy that would be.

He turned away from the mirror and headed down to the Blue Drawing Room, but he ran into Denian waiting just outside the door. “Your Grace,” the young man said, bowing his head. “A messenger from Andopolous has just arrived.”

“Andopolous?” Aurelius asked. “Not Tarnasus?”

“Yes and no,” Denian said. “The second Tarnasus courier arrived about an hour ago. I’ve held them back until you arrived. Your councilors and the members of the Primus Council have all arrived, as well as your sister and Mistress Hessian.”

Aurelius nodded. “Good. Send both messengers in.”

Denian turned and marched away, while Aurelius opened the door and stepped into the drawing room. A dozen senators, five councilors, and his sister immediately converged on him. Several of them threw questions at him, each clamoring to be heard above the others, but there were so many questions, they stopped asking and shouted.

Aurelius took a deep breath and raised his voice above the clamor. “Silence.”

He had to repeat that a couple of times, but once he got them to listen, he told them of the two messengers that arrived that morning, then told Denian to bring the men in.

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