Chapter : 1569
Lloyd’s hand dropped from the lamp. He looked at her, and the ghost of a sad smile touched his lips. It was the question that defined the current war. He didn't leave. He sat back down on the edge of the heavy wooden table, the wood creaking slightly under his weight.
"Because, Jasmin," Lloyd said softly. "When the prison doors were opened, the prisoners didn't want to hug the jailer's son. Even if the son killed the father."
He gestured vaguely to the south, towards the border they had just crossed days ago. "When the dust settled, Liam Bethelham invited the leaders of Tiamat to join the new Kingdom. He offered them equality. He offered them a seat at the table. But they looked at him, an Austin count, and they looked at Malachi, a Ferrum prince. And they spat on the offer."
Lloyd sat on the edge of the heavy wooden table, the map of the old world spread out beneath his hand. The dust motes dancing in the light of the glow-stones seed to slow down, as if the air itself was getting heavier with the weight of the history he was recounting. Jasmin sat opposite him, her eyes wide, her hands gripping the edge of her chair. She looked like a child listening to a ghost story, except this ghost story was real, and the ghosts were still trying to kill them.
"So," Lloyd said, his voice dropping into that storytelling cadence he used when he was trying to make a complex point seem simple. "We have the stage set. On one side, you have Liam Bethelham, the idealist rebel from the swamp. On the other side, you have Malachi Ferrum, the traitor prince with a sword full of his father's blood. They had a plan. They were going to crush the Austins and the Garcias and break the United Front of Babylon."
He traced the line of the old borders with a finger that was calloused from sword practice and stained with ink.
"It was a good plan," Lloyd admitted. "Mathematically sound. Strategically bold. If this were a ga of chess, it would have been a checkmate in ten moves. But war isn't chess, Jasmin. In chess, the pawns don't decide to pick up pitchforks and start stabbing the knights. In the real world, they do."
Jasmin frowned. "The pawns?"
"The people," Lloyd said. "The people of Tiamat. The breadbasket. Rember, for two hundred years, they had been crushed. They had been treated like cattle. They watched the Ferrum Overseers take their grain and the Austin Wardens take their children. They were broken, beaten, and starved. But here is the thing about broken people, Jasmin. If you break them enough, eventually you break the part that feels fear. And when that happens, you don't have a slave anymore. You have a bomb."
He tapped the green valley on the map known as Tiamat.
"While Liam was fighting in the south and Malachi was purging the north, the grip of the Empire slipped. The Ferrum soldiers were recalled to fight in the civil war. The Austin mages were distracted by Liam's attacks. Suddenly, for the first ti in centuries, the boot was lifted off the neck of Tiamat. Just a little bit. Just an inch. But an inch was all they needed."
Lloyd stood up and walked to a shelf, pulling down a different scroll. This one wasn't a map of nobles or borders. It was a rough sketch, drawn in charcoal, showing a chaotic battle scene. It showed farrs ard with scythes and hamrs swarming over armored knights.
"They didn't wait for Liam to liberate them," Lloyd said, unrolling the sketch. "That was the mistake Liam and Malachi made. They assud the people of Tiamat would sit quietly and wait for the 'good' nobles to save them. They were wrong. When the chaos started, the farrs looked at the Overseers who were still left behind, and they realized sothing. There were a lot more farrs than there were guards."
"They rose up?" Jasmin asked.
"They exploded," Lloyd corrected. "It wasn't an organized rebellion at first. It was a riot. A massive, valley-wide riot of pure, unadulterated rage. They stord the granaries. They burned the manor houses. They dragged the Overseers out into the fields and... well, let's just say they used farming tools for things they weren't designed for."
Lloyd looked at the sketch, at the raw anger captured in the charcoal lines.
Chapter : 1570
"But a riot burns itself out," he continued. "Usually, a peasant revolt lasts a week. Then the soldiers co back, kill the leaders, and everyone goes back to work. That's how it always happened. But this ti, sothing was different. This ti, they had a leader. Or rather, a family."
"The Altamiras?" Jasmin asked.
"The Altamira family," Lloyd nodded. "Back then, they weren't kings. They weren't even nobles. They were essentially the 'Head n' of the region. Wealthy land-managers who worked for the Ferrums. Collaborators, technically. But they were smart. They saw which way the wind was blowing. When the riots started, the head of the Altamira family didn't run to the Ferrums for protection. He ran to the people."
Lloyd paced back and forth in the narrow aisle between the bookshelves.
"He organized them. He took that raw, chaotic rage and he forged it into a weapon. He turned farrs into piken. He turned hunters into skirmishers. He raided the Ferrum armories and ard the mob. Within a month, the 'Tiamat Front' wasn't a riot. It was an army. A third army."
He stopped and looked at Jasmin. "Imagine the confusion, Jasmin. Liam is fighting the Empire. Malachi is fighting the Empire. And suddenly, right in the middle of the battlefield, a third player enters the ga. And this player hates everyone."
"Why didn't they join Liam?" Jasmin asked. "Liam wanted to free them. They had the sa enemy."
"Did they?" Lloyd asked with a cynical smile. "To Liam, the enemy was the system of the United Front. To the Austin (Nation) of Tiamat, the enemy was anyone with a noble crest. Liam was a forr Nation of Austin Count. Malachi was a Ferrum Prince. To the farr who just watched his house burn, they looked exactly like the people who had been oppressing him for two hundred years. Why would they trust Liam? Because he had a nice speech? Words are wind, Jasmin. The lash is real."
Lloyd leaned over the table, his voice intense. "When Liam's ssengers rode into the Tiamat valley to offer an alliance, they didn't get a eting. They got arrows. The Altamira leader sent a ssage back. It was very short. It said: 'This land is ours. The grain is ours. The blood is ours. Any noble who steps across the river dies.'"
"That... complicates things," Jasmin noted.
"It ruined the plan," Lloyd said. "Liam and Malachi had counted on Tiamat being a resource they could use. Instead, it beca a kill-zone. The Tiamat Front fought everyone. They fought the retreating Austin armies. They fought the loyalist Ferrum legions. And when Liam's 'Sons of Dawn' got too close, they fought them too. They fought with a desperation that terrified the professional soldiers. They weren't fighting for a king or a flag. They were fighting for survival. They knew that if they lost, they would be put back in chains. And they would rather die."
"The war dragged on for three years," Lloyd continued, his eyes distant as he recalled the history he had morized in two lifetis. "Three years of mud, blood, and fire. The Empire of Babylon didn't fall gracefully. It shattered. The Austin and Garcia families were wiped out. Not exiled. Exterminated. Liam and Malachi were thorough. They knew you couldn't leave a root if you wanted to kill the weed."
He picked up a small stone paperweight and placed it on the map where the capital of Bethelham now stood.
"When the smoke finally cleared," Lloyd said, "the old world was dead. The Throne family was gone. The Garcia family was gone—except for the few who hid in their forest, like the Don. The main branches of the Austin family were dust. Liam stood in the ruins of the old capital and declared a new order. He proclaid the Kingdom of Bethelham."
"And Malachi?"
"Malachi kept his word," Lloyd said. "He knelt. It was the most shocking mont of the century. The Lion of the North, the man who had just conquered his own nation, knelt before a swamp count and swore fealty. He declared that the Nation of Ferrum was no more. It was now the Duchy of Ferrum, the Northern Shield of the Kingdom of Bethelham."
Lloyd moved the paperweight slightly north. "It was a beautiful mont. Unity. Peace. The beginning of a golden age. Except for one problem. The problem of the South."
He pointed to the green valley of Tiamat.
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