There is one major drawback in an alliance based upon a common enemy. What happens once the enemy is defeated?

-Shoring Up a Crumbling Future

Desten 3 lived in the district directly to the east of Desten 1’s house, making him actually closer than Desten 2 had been.

I brought a book with me anyway. Perhaps I would look odd, but if I was going to spend half the day in transit I wanted something to do besides brood.

Desten Varon 3 had a small house only a little bigger than my building downcity. Downright modest by nobility standards. (Though I was beginning to see that there were tiers of nobility; while to a commoner all nobles were a single thing, there was a definite class distinction between people like Desten 1 who were close line to the Reirn, Desten 2 and his ilk, and Desten 3.)

I knocked on his door, not sure what to expect. He might not even be at home. But a minute later, a man neither young nor quite yet middle aged answered the door.

“Hello?”

“I’m looking for eirn Desten Varon?”

“That’s me. Unless you’re looking for the alchemist; that’s not me. Or the verdis player. That’s very much not me.”

I blinked, taken aback by his casual manner and the fact that he apparently didn’t have any servants, then reassessed him.

Not particularly tall, not particularly fit. He appeared pretty nondescript in most ways, the sort of person you would walk past in the street without even noticing. His dark hair was a bit longer than shoulder length, roughly in line with current fashion, half tied back so it wouldn’t fall in his face.

“I’m not looking for the verdis player,” I answered, smiling to cover my perplexity. “I just want to talk to you, get to know you a little. If you don’t mind.”

I still didn’t have a reason to give. Why hadn’t I come up with a better reason than—

Oh, hmm, that could work.

I continued with barely a pause, “I’m working on a research project about Reirn Desten, and his impact on later generations, and the fact that so many different people have the same name, I thought it would be interesting to interview them all and see what impact being named after so famous a leader might have on you.”

Eirn Desten’s expression brightened. “A fellow scholar! Wonderful to meet you! I would love to give you an interview. Do you have time right now? Come on in!”

For a moment I hesitated. His voice had a lightness to it, but inviting strangers into your home with no notice still felt like a strange thing to do. Was it a trap? Had he realized what I was doing?

“It’s alright, don’t mind the clutter. Just, here, let me move this out of the way for you, just a moment.”

I couldn’t keep letting myself freeze up. I stepped inside, to a scene of absolute chaos. The front room looked like someone was in the middle of packing up to move. Half-full boxes covered the furniture, stacks of books on the floor and table, piles of papers haphazardly strewn about. One chair and a corner of the table were clear enough to eat at, but the rest of the room looked like a maze of unfinished research projects.

Desten 3 hastily cleared off a second chair, unceremoniously piling pages higher on an already precarious stack by his feet.

“Go ahead. What are your questions?”

I blanked. I hadn’t thought this through that far. “I seem to have forgotten a pen and paper,” I said to buy time. “I don’t suppose you have some I could borrow?”

“Certainly.” He jumped up and went rummaging, then paused and turned back. “I don’t think I got your name?”

“Ah, sorry. Astesh Varon.”

He hummed thoughtfully as he searched for a working pen. “Astesh. I’m not familiar with your work. Is this your first research project?”

“No, but I haven’t published any of my past works to the public. I suspect this may be my breakthrough.”

“Have you read mine?”

“Oh, I haven’t. I didn’t realize you were a writer.” I frowned, beginning to wish I’d done more thorough investigation myself rather than just rushing off to an address that showed up on my floor without any preparation.

“I’m not surprised. My work is, well, controversial to say the least.”

“Oh?”

“Just a moment. Here. Let me know when you’re ready.” He passed me a stack of blank pages and two pens.

“Well, since we’re on the topic, why don’t you start with an overview of these controversial opinions of yours?”

Desten 3 smiled. “Certainly. I have been a student of history and politics since my youth, and I believe that this political structure we’ve built up is, to put it bluntly, a haphazard mess that will never stand up to the tides of history.”

“Wow. Yes, I can see how that would be a controversial stance.”

“Indeed. My first book is a study of other cultures, both historical and modern, and provides a foundation for how this sort of disseminated but controlled power is only viable so long as the rest of the factors remain stable. I never state it outright, but the idea is to get people to think. You can already see how our ruling structure is crumbling at the edges.”

“Is it?”

“Very much so. You know the sort of petty power plays, the constant attempts to one-up each other that go on? They don’t matter so much in the long run, so long as we remain united when it counts. But the frequent disasters which once brought us together have grown weaker and less frequent even as we grew stronger. Now, there would be no need for the houses to band together against even a major incursion from the skies. One house, two at most, would suffice to deal with it. Do you see the problem?”

“Not really.”

“In a few more generations, we’ll no longer have any reason to remain allies. The strengths of each house have surpassed their weaknesses to the point where cooperation is hardly necessary any longer. Most haven’t realized this, but this erosion of purpose will eventually split the houses apart. And when that happens, all the little injustices, all the past grievances, all the minor land squabbles of the past, will ignite into an actual war the likes of which we’ve never witnessed. If we do not find a reason to truly unite, beyond the convenience of mutual defence, we are doomed to destruction.”

“Wow. That’s a pretty bleak outlook.”

“Not at all. It’s a realistic one. Bleak would be far worse. Bleak would be this dissolution actually occurring, and the commoners taking advantage of the chaos to form their own coalitions. A ten-part war is bad enough, add another two or three commoner factions into the mix? We might never recover. Certainly some houses would be utterly annihilated before the end, and possibly all of them.”

“Do you think there’s potential for a commoner revolt?”

He leaned forward, extremely serious. “I think it’s all but inevitable if we do not head it off soon. Which brings us to my second major controversy. I have proposed that the solution to our disunity problem is to simply integrate into commoner society. They do not see us as ten regions loosely allied, they see us as a single unified state. No one has border checks between Varon territory and Raysh districts. There’s not even an indication on commoner maps of the delineations we nobles are so particular over. If instead of holdings and territories, we could simply integrate into the existing united society? Our problems could be left behind.”

“Hah.” I’d stopped even pretending to take notes, drawn into the conversation fully. “You oversimplify the matter if you think people will give up generations of grievances so easily. Not that I’d expect nobles to care about commoner unity anyway. Do you really expect to dissolve territory boundaries without a fight?”

“Without a fight, no. Without a pointless war? Yes.”

“But where’s the benefit for the nobility? If they give up their status and their high cities and their claims over territories, that’s all well and good for the cause of unity, but you’ll find very few people willing to surrender what they see as theirs for so vague a cause. What can you actually, concretely offer in return? Keep in mind, avoiding a potential war isn’t a great motivator either, since you’re basically asking them to accept the same consequence as losing that war, but without even trying to defend what’s theirs. I think it’ll be a lot harder than you seem to think.”

“Which is why we need to start now, before it’s too late.” Desten 3 hesitated. “I think we need to encourage unions between nobility and commoners. I think we need to do away with antiquated customs and allow mixed-union children to inherit heartstones. Allow full power adoption of outsiders into noble families, and refrain from ostracizing those who choose not to do so. The nature of our power naturally lends itself to this divide, but it doesn’t have to. If we could do away with the wasteful customs of the past, we could change the world.”

“Sounds grand and all, but I’m still not seeing an incentive for nobles to dilute their lines and give up their long-held territories.”

“We can start small. Allow commoners to visit our cities, and lift the restrictions on visits to their towns. If we can begin to treat them as equals, and see them as part of our communities instead of separate entities to be ruled from a distance, that would be a start.”

I snorted. “If you really think they’ll consider that incentive, you don’t know people very well at all.”

“But, I’m trying to stop a disaster here. Surely, once they understand the magnitude of this downhill path, they’ll want to divert it before we go too far?”

“And I’m sure if that solution involved something like annexing a nearby state, or finding a way to expand into the ocean, they’d be all for it. But giving up power that they’ve held for centuries, on the promise of some nebulous threat not materializing? Not going to be enough.”

“But there are countless benefits of remaining united. The freedom of travel, the security, trade, and protection against any outside threat. Surely there must be a way to prove that it is better to continue as a unified alliance.”

“And that’s true. It’s better for everyone if they all stay together. But is it better for each individual house? Is there no one who could benefit from the downfall of a neighbor? You can’t pretend that there’s no attempts made to undermine or weaken the other houses. You can’t contest that there aren’t cities over which multiple houses would lay claim if the alliance fractured.”

Desten 3 frowned unhappily. “But if everyone goes after each other, we’ll end up with things even worse than they were before the alliance! Everyone’s more powerful now, the resulting clash would be deadly on a whole other level. We could do so much more damage to ourselves than any incursion ever has managed.”

I considered a moment before replying. “Is any one house strong enough to unite the others? Sarosa, or Varon perhaps?”

“No. Even Sarosa and Varon together couldn’t stand up to the other eight if they came into conflict.” Desten hesitated. “If anything were to happen to throw those two into conflict, I’m afraid the entire alliance would fracture down the middle.”

My breath caught. I was in the middle of investigating House Varon. For the violent slaughter of the Sarosa heir. Was this part of a conspiracy to tear the alliance apart? Which house would benefit most from the Varon-Sarosa alliance splitting?

Any one of them. It didn’t take much to see that the combination of the two most powerful houses benefited no one more than they themselves. Any of the smaller houses could profit from a private arrangement with one or the other of the duo, were they no longer so closely tied together.

But if the attack were meant to destroy the Varon-Sarosa pacts, then that meant it was part of a wider conspiracy. It meant they intended for Desten to be caught and outed. It meant they’d known I was there and staged the whole thing for my benefit.

Which was just too far-fetched. There was no way they could predict my actions so perfectly. And if they were counting on my revealing their Varon pawn, they were probably overestimating me anyway.

No, I told myself firmly. This whole mess had not been intended as a political move. It was a personal matter between Fylen and his killer.

“Are you alright?” Desten asked.

“Oh. Yes, just thinking. I would hate to see the fallout of a rift between Sarosa and Varon.”

We continued to discuss related matters for another hour, until Desten heard my stomach growling and I excused myself to find lunch. He’d ended up taking more notes on our discussion than I had, and asked if he could invite me back sometime to continue our discourse.

I gave him my address at Desten 1’s house, and only when I was halfway home did I pause to consider that it may not have been wise.

Desten 1 was shouting at the housekeeper again when I returned, which meant that he’d probably had a bad day on patrol. I avoided him and slipped down to the kitchens, and he’d calmed down again by the time he joined me in the library. We spent the evening trying to bring my power under my conscious control, which continued to go about as well as it had before.

I could make the pink light flare up into weapons at will, by imagining the Desten across from me as a monster at night, but I couldn’t make the power do anything particular and the flare would end the moment I stopped actively thinking about it. The rest of the time, the power rested within me quiescent, or surged in brief flashes when it felt I needed adjusting.

Try as we might, I simply could not pull it to focus the proper way.

Desten seemed equally frustrated and resigned. If I’d only received my stone recently, it made sense that I’d be so childishly far behind. But it also wasted his time. He wanted me grown up and out of his house, and as the month dragged on he grew increasingly irritable at my presence.

I tried to keep out of the way, but at a certain point I could only do so much. He knew I was around, I knew he was around and unhappy with me. I started having nightmares, twisted things half memory and half fearful imagining, which never stayed the same but always left me shaken. They didn’t happen every night, but they happened more often than I was comfortable with. Sometimes Desten 1 came for me, shouting and flaring his power. Sometimes it was Desten 2, slicing me apart with calm control. Or Desten 3, telling me the whole time that this was the only way to prevent the alliance from collapsing, and it was a good cause to die for.

Most of the time, it was the other Desten. The faceless shape of darkness and death. I knew him, and I fled, and I never ever escaped.

Twice my power flared so hard it sliced through the bedding before I woke.

Once, I broke the window in a half-awake daze, jumped out and flew to the ground before coming to my senses. I couldn’t pay for the window, and felt increasingly like a useless drain on Desten’s resources.

He assured me the Reirn personally covered any costs I incurred, but said it with a look of disapproval that made me want to get a job.

But I had a more important job to do, and now that I had my list of Destens, I had no excuses to delay.

The week after my visit to Desten 3, I made the trip across the city to the final local Destens. Desten 4 and Desten 5 were father and son, with the same address listed. Neither had an occupation or workplace, so I simply walked to their front door and knocked.

A few moments passed before a harried-looking middle-aged woman answered the door. I gave her my story about researching Destens for a project about the past Reirns and their impact on their namesakes.

“Oh, that sounds very interesting. I’m afraid my husband isn’t available right now, and Desten is out with Talish, and he’s very busy.”

“When would be a good time?”

“Well, I don’t know. I can talk to him for you if you like. What were the questions you had?”

“I prefer to conduct the interviews in person. I want to get a feel for who they are, and it’s easier for conversations to flow naturally in person.”

“Oh, I agree. There’s something special about letters, but they’ll never replace a real conversation.”

I reluctantly gave her my address, and she promised to arrange a time when I could come conduct the interviews, with the warning that they really had a lot going on right now and it might be some time.

Which was fine, because midsummer was almost upon us and party season was about to begin. Destens 4 and 5 weren’t going anywhere, and I could visit them any time. From what I’d heard, there was a good chance Desten 6 would be visiting for the official start-of-season gala.

So would Desten 1, with me in tow, as my first official introduction to the courts.