The wind from a sudden storm howled outside his window and Coltair turned his back away. Izik had just entered, having arrived back from Kitska that afternoon. He was flush with the exercise and the adventure. Coltair could tell it would be an interesting interview. Whenever his chief commander was animated and smiling this way, it meant things had gone to plan or better and that some poor loser had gotten the worst end of his deal.

“My Emperor,” Izik began with a flamboyant bow. He had removed his helmet when he’d passed the outer doors. Coltair was pleased he’d not stopped to rest or change before reporting to him.

“Izik, what news from the frigid wastelands?” he asked evenly, indicating the man could take a seat in the small chair in front of his enormous desk.

“Grayson is on board, Highness,” he said. “Whatever we need, he will provide. He’s already irate about this new king the Orak filth have upped and crowned—some Madras or other? Anyway, he believed our reports that that new baby-king wants to ‘improve on the old ways' and all that and droned on at length how he feels they are squeezing Kitska for more than he can produce. He wants our goods now and in wild abandon, apparently to screw over Madras and his silly brother. Plus, I showed him the land for his summer colony, the crappy small village plot on the southern edge. He didn’t complain.”

Coltair sat back in his chair and gently rubbed his fingers over his mouth. “Will he accept Vail to marry his sister?” he asked.

Izik grinned and shook his head. “She died, Sire, but he did offer me a future daughter.”

Coltair smirked.

Izik grinned and shrugged. “With your permission, why not?”

“I think that should go to my son, but if he dies before she arrives, we’ll consider it,” Coltair replied.

Izik snorted at the obvious villainy the king of Kitska was willing to resort to, in order to appease the Rogun emperor. He liked Grayson. A king by mere months, he was cunning unlike his father, who he’d heard had gone insane and killed himself trying to attack the Orak’Thune over the sea ice in winter. A highborn woman of his own would help secure Izik’s status, but if the runt heir needed it first, so be it. He shrugged it off.

Not a particularly secure man, Izik fidgeted a lot. Coltair, a slow, calm, and calculating individual, noticed the commander’s near constant twitching and recognized likely the damage from an insecure upbringing on the streets. He’d found him cleaning dungeon buckets as a discarded youth, which had given Coltair all the avenues to groom and raise the man to be his personal muscle and spy. He’d been loyal ever since and now held the highest military position in the nation. Izik was the man he could trust to enforce wrath and ruin, often in bloody and horrific ways, but in times of subtlety, he was just as devious too.

“Prince still sickly, then?” Izik asked, bordering on infringement of his emperor’s privacy, but as for all of his children, Coltair had only ever cared about one and he remained secure in the care of the ancestors.

Coltair shrugged, uncaring. Izik considered the man’s apathy against the recent truth he’d been revealed, the truth that Coltair didn’t need an heir. He had immortality within his grasp and would never secede the throne.

As the emperor’s right-hand man, Izik was well placed to benefit enormously from a never-ending regime. He would do whatever was required to keep Coltair in power—alive or undead—and he was willing to support any plan to ensure it.

Coltair eyed his man, carefully observing the pockmarked face of a terrible bout of chickenpox but also scars of battle and street brawls he’d endured all through his youth, as far back as he could remember. Often the fights were to the death and more than a few times, they’d barely been in Izik’s favour.

“Izik,” Coltair said conversationally, “I want you to remember that the plans I have put into place, though unconventional, I have worked on my entire life. I am as confident as any master of the gifts and I need you to understand that it may come one day that it is not I, in this body, conversing with you, like this,” he added and waved his hand loosely and relaxed between them. “It may be that this body will be interred and I will speak to you in other ways. I have the knowledge for immortality, my friend,” he reminded his commander. “It just might not look like what you think.”

Izik nodded, keeping up with his master's meaning. He shifted in his uncomfortable chair. “So, you will look like something else, a ghost or something?” he asked.

Coltair’s eyes narrowed, but he smiled. “Something like it, yes,” he replied. Izik grinned. “But soon after, I will be free of the veil and likely you and I will meet face to face once more.”

Izik slapped his knee in bated excitement. “Oh, Majesty,” he said and laughed once with genuine enthusiasm, “I can’t wait to see that. Whatever you need, Sire, you can count on me.”

Coltair leaned back and steepled his fingers, conspiratorially tapping his lips with his thumbs. He’d chosen his man well; loyalty and enthusiasm sparked in Izik’s eyes.

For his part, Izik knew he’d made a deal with the devil, but it was the best deal he could ever have imagined.