Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

across the three of them. "Nothing but empty words. It's too late for such evasiveness now. I won't have it. The barbarians are pounding on the gates of Empire. I need weapons to hold them back while I plan how to undo my reverses. You're going to be those weapons. Tell me about your powers. Tell me everything. Or die here at my feet."
    Just for a moment, Silence considered defying her. She had no real power over them anymore. All the armed guards in her Court couldn't compel him or Frost to do a single damn thing they didn't want to. Not after everything they'd become.
    But the moment passed, as he'd known it would. She was his Empress. He and Frost had kept their powers to themselves out of a very real fear of ending up as lab rats. Possibly even vivisected lab rats. But the time for such weakness was past. He could recognize fate when it came knocking on his window. So he told the Empress, as clearly as he could, of the strange strengths and abilities and intuitions that he and Frost had manifested since their time on lost Haden, also known as the Wolfling World.
    It took a while, not least because Lionstone kept interrupting, pressing him for details and explanations he didn't always have. As he spoke, two new figures appeared in the Court, breasting the sulfurous mists on their way to the Throne.
    First came Valentine Wolfe, the dandy in black with the long white face. He stopped a respectful distance away, quite happy to watch and listen while
    Silence spoke. His crimson mouth was stretched in its usual constant smile, and his heavily mascaraed eyes were fever-bright from the impact of the dozen drugs roaring through his veins. Valentine wasn't used to losing, and his recent reverses had stunned him. His response had been to amplify his whirling thoughts with stimulant after stimulant, trying to force his mind to come up with answers to his problems. The end result had been something of a chemical stalemate, where his thoughts crashed emptily together, canceling each other out. And so he'd come to Court; not just for his own safety, but because that was in the end where all the real decisions of Empire were made. Whatever happened here, he was confident he'd find some way to turn it to is advantage. He always did.
    He had hoped to call on favors from his previous dalliance with the underground, but it hadn't taken him long to discover that the esper leaders had promised his head to Finlay Campbell, in return for the Campbell's services. You couldn't trust anyone these days. Still, it wasn't a complete loss. Finlay might yet die during the rebellion, with a little help, and afterward Valentine was confident he'd find some way to bargain himself back into the underground's good graces.
    Or, if things somehow went the other way, and Lionstone yet pulled off some miraculous victory, or more likely some form of compromise with the rebels, she would need someone to speak for her to the underground. Someone with good connections. And who better than the widely experienced Valentine Wolfe?
    He laughed quietly, quite at home in Hell, and stood patiently before the Iron Throne, winking at the snarling maids. His body twitched and seethed with possibilities, his thoughts running a mile a second in all directions at once.
    So he stood still and said nothing. Let others speak. He would listen. He'd find a way to profit. He always did. And then let his enemies beware.

    The second figure to appear was, of course, the Lord High Dram, Consort and Widowmaker. He looked rather battered around the edges. There were tears and scorch marks on his clothes, and blood, too, some of it his. He'd been driven from the surface fighting by one rebel victory after another. When the war machines stalled and the Mater Mundi manifested, Dram knew a lost cause when he saw one. He deserted his men, disguised himself, and made his way back to Court.
    He felt angry rather than guilty. Lionstone kept expecting him to do things that only the original Dram, with all his experience, could have pulled off. While he was only a clone, barely finished, trying to learn on the run and stay alive while men died all around him. It wasn't his fault he didn't know how to cope with overwhelming odds and strange new weapons and espers with the powers of gods. Even the original Dram had never had to face a ubiquitous Mater Mundi. And so he ran away and came home to Lionstone, like a child beaten by bullies at school, hoping not to be beaten again for losing.
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