Lich for Hire

Chapter 388: The Blood of Dawn

In the Lyon Empire, in a remote small town as far from any major city as it was possible to get, Cade Watson was reclining contentedly in a rocking chair, sipping rum one measured mouthful at a time.

Life had been agreeable—until the magic mirror showed several hundred meteors falling from the sky. The apocalyptic sight made him spray rum all over himself.

Tens of thousands of githarks, and perhaps two dozen dragons, gone just like that...

Cade's generation hadn't seen much actual war. The war against the Dragon Tyrant had taken place more than a millennium ago. Though it had been recorded in tomes of history, its scale and horror genuinely difficult to imagine for later generations.

This apocalyptic sight was the closest he had come to understanding it, and it had frightened him more than he expected.

The lich's power was completely unreasonable. Surely even Lyon's capital would fall to a bombardment like that!

How lucky he was, to be an unremarkable man living an unremarkable life in the countryside! That was a deeply comfortable thought.

More lucky still, he had the magic mirror. And he hadn't let Ambrose down. He had quietly established contact with a certain Mr. William Harvey and was conducting discreet transactions in jetpacks and other alchemical products.

It was all made possible by the mirror. No one could have imagined that Cade Watson could be in contact with Harvey out in the desert without even leaving his house. Small items could even move through the mirror's auxiliary teleportation function.

The overhead was significant, but the secrecy was absolute.

Any general would give a great deal for tools like this. The ability to communicate instantly across any distance would reshape how wars were fought.

Cade had already conducted transactions worth over a million gold through Harvey—not for himself, but to acquire equipment on his brother Allen's behalf.

Despite the young emperor's performance, Lyon's enormous population contained a number of sharp minds and true believers. Some of them were outwardly compliant, but had already made their decision about the royal house and were simply waiting for the right moment to strike.

Allen was their figurehead, and Cade worried constantly that his idealistic brother was being used as a blade by people who would not bleed alongside him.

But Allen had no choice. If he needed their backing, he had to stand in full view.

Cade saw all of this with complete clarity. The imperial house was rotten, and Allen was right to say so, but his future would be fraught with peril and tragedy. The young emperor hadn't moved against Allen directly only because the memory of his battlefield defeat was still too fresh, and Allen was one of the few visible heroes that battle had produced. Revisiting it would work against the emperor.

But the moment that memory faded, or something else arose to occupy the population's attention, the emperor would move against Allen without hesitation.

Cade could only hope Allen would be strong enough when the time came.

"Why can't everyone just calm down?" he said to his rum. "This continent can feed everyone on it. Is peace really so impossible?"

He turned back to the mirror, wondering what the lich would do next. If things went badly for Allen someday, there was probably a place for Allen somewhere under that lich's protection.

He was watching the live feed with full attention when a very familiar silhouette appeared at the edge of the image.

He spat out his rum again.

"Father?!"

His own son had no difficulty piercing through the disguise that might have stymied everyone else.

Before Cade could make sense of what he was seeing, the feed cut off.

He was about to smash the mirror in frustration before catching himself. The mirror wasn't broken. The lich had ended the broadcast.

"Lord of Dawn, please don't let him do something stupid."

On the island, Ambrose was looking at the heavily disguised old man with an expression of genuine surprise. Wasn't this James Watson?

He cut the live feed immediately. If this got out, his reputation as a lich with no loyalty to the undead cause would be even harder to deny than it already was.

"What are you doing here?" Ambrose asked.

James Watson said, coolly, "Is that so remarkable? You don't seem very pleased to see me. In fact, I was nearly blown up by your island just now."

The island was saturated with undead. When James Watson arrived by boat after the battle, the holy light radiating from him had provoked an immediate hostile response. He had come within moments of being torn apart before Ambrose intervened.

"Get to the point," Ambrose said. "I'm busy. Say what you came to say, and then leave."

He had no particular warmth toward this old man, and suspected he was one of the "enemies" the dice of fate had summoned, though his body language didn't suggest he had come to fight.

James Watson didn't react to the lich's tone. The entanglement between the two of them had long since become too complicated to be governed by ordinary social norms. A priest of light maintaining such a relationship with a lich—Watson had concluded, privately, that he had brought all his struggles upon himself.

He exhaled. "You deliberately announced your location to the entire world, didn't you?"

Ambrose nodded. "What of it? Are you here for revenge? You came alone: that's a little insulting."

"I am no longer Lyon's High Inquisitor. I'm not even a citizen of Lyon anymore. Judging the undead is no longer my concern. I came to warn you that Lyon has dispatched the Knights Penitent."

Ambrose laughed. "The Knights Penitent again? Have they already healed up and forgotten how much I hurt them?"

The last time the Knights Penitent had come for him, Ambrose had captured them all in a clean sweep. He had barely needed to try.

Did they already dare to try again?

Last time, Ambrose had only had Gareth around to help him out, while the various factions watched and waited at the periphery of the conflict.

This time, Ambrose had the full backing of the Umbral Depths, along with Gareth, who had recently honed his monstrous skill into peak form. He wouldn't hold back. If the Knights Penitent showed up, he would extract every possible benefit from them before he was done.

"Not the young ones from before," Watson said. "The actual Knights Penitent. Seven legends: five paladins, and two priests. And a full legion behind them, the kind that can cast mass, coordinated spells."

Ambrose was quiet for a long moment. "Is everyone from Lyon this crazy?"

Seven legends... What Lyon was committing to this attack was almost incomprehensible. Who was guarding the border against an orc counterattack, then? What if the druids decided to invade, or the dwarves chose this moment to push back?

Watson sighed with some resignation. "I'm no longer in a position to speak for Lyon. But if you're asking whether it's worth it to them, the answer is almost certainly yes. You should understand your own position by now. Every person in Lyon lives in fear that one day you'll banish the entire empire to that void."

Ambrose understood. This was his senior's doing, ultimately.

Banishing the Unholy Kingdom had required a convergence of specific conditions that couldn't be replicated. Neither Ambrose nor Harvey could sever fate's threads alone; that particular outcome would not happen again. But others didn't know that, and as long as they didn't, they had to remain wary of Ambrose.

"Fine. I understand why you came." Ambrose paused. "But why warn me? What's your reason?"

"Because Allen has stepped into the open. If you're alive, Lyon's primary focus will stay on you. The moment you disappear, everything will turn toward him."

Ambrose understood that logic clearly enough. Allen had been receiving his support; Ambrose's continued existence was the thing keeping Lyon's attention fixed on something other than Allen.

But this was still out of character for the man in front of him. "Last time, you refused to pay my ransom. You were prepared to let Allen die for your principles. Why the sudden paternity?"

James Watson's answer was forthright, without any trace of embarrassment. "While I remained High Inquisitor, Lyon's law was paramount. Now I'm just an old man. An old man can afford to put his family first. I've always let my station determine how I conduct myself."

Ambrose gave him a thumbs-up. "Priests really are something else when it comes to defending an argument."

The man had clearly only rediscovered his feelings for his son after confirming the royal house was irredeemable.

"I'll accept the goodwill," Ambrose said. "Now, do you have any particular details worth sharing about those seven legends? Don't look at me like that. You've already come this far. You might as well give me everything. The more I know, the better my odds, and the less this trip was wasted."

Watson thought about it and conceded the point. He gave Ambrose a rundown of the commanding officers' capabilities, then added at the end, "One of them is my student. If you can spare him, I'd appreciate it."

"I'll try," Ambrose said. "No promises. A full Lyon legion is no casual problem."

Ordinary conscripts in large numbers were manageable: one well-placed spell could clear hundreds. But a proper Lyon legion, trained in combined spellcasting, changed the calculus entirely.

Combined casting was what had given the Ragetide Kingdom the confidence to believe it could take on the Silent Sea Pirates. Their stormpriest corps could produce effects that individual casting simply couldn't match.

The githarks, for instance, had swarmed in and been shredded by Ambrose's mass spell before they could act. Elite troops wouldn't make the same mistake. Add seven legends leading the formation, and he really might die.

Watson understood the difficulty. He gave Ambrose the full intelligence on the commanding officers, then added, "If I'm not mistaken, they'll likely bring an artifact as well."

"An artifact." Ambrose's attention sharpened immediately. "What kind? What does it do?"

"The Blood of Dawn," Watson said. "Have you heard of it?"

Ambrose went quiet. He was still for long enough that Watson began to think he had been dumbstruck. Then Ambrose started laughing. "Perfect. I haven't acquired a new artifact in a while. The Blood of Dawn should fetch a very good price."