Chapter 406 - Bottoms Up (Patreon)

Notes :

Well today was fucking draining. Fuck my life. Personal stuff, don't ask.

Chapter 406

Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire

Capital City of Rebirth

Discussion inside Firegecko's stopped dead as the door opened and Allya stepped through.

She was a regular. Everyone knew her. But it remained an adventurer bar. Hell, it was the adventurer bar.

She walked all the way to the bar, trailed by four bodyguards. This was a calculated risk. One the one hand, there was almost certainly someone in this room who had lost a loved one in the destruction of the guild. On the other, said destruction and the declaration of the Empire had separated her from her people.

She had taken great and considerable pains to appear close to the people of her city and their concerns. It was something her family had hammered into her head very early on. Ignore your core city or it's people and you'd lose it remarkably quickly.

Two of her bodyguards were her normal complement, a mix of royal knights and former Darthar guards. She was planning to add personnel from Erakis, the Hegemony and the New Republic when she had the time. Or, more accurately, dump it on Valker, now Captain of the Imperial Guard, and his lieutenants, Éclair and Rogard, the first trio to have guarded and repeatedly saved her hide.

The other two were Alexandra's golems. Some of the few remnants of her jetpack assault brigade. They had been repaired, but you could still see the scars on their armor.

The patrons' eyes took it all in. Adventurers tended to be perceptive, and Firegecko's was quickly becoming a more exclusive meetup for them. Not as in only high ranks were allowed in, more...those considered among the more dedicated and promising. The golems were a message, and everyone received it, five by five.

Look at how the guild fell by their hand. Do you think yourself more powerful than Orromar, hero and guildmaster?

Clearly, no one thought the answer to that particular question was 'yes', even those with seething hatred behind their gaze, as none rose.

She sat down on a stool in front of the bar, and her guards casually stopped by her side.

"Hello there, your Imperial Majesty." Said Stor, the lizardman barman and owner, with a toothy smile.

He was relaxed, completely unafraid of the tense atmosphere and the staring adventurers. First, because raising a hand against the barman in their own business was only slightly less suicidal than attacking a guild attendant in an adventurer hall had been. Everyone would jump you.

Second, because he didn't need anybody to help him when he had an enchanted, fire belching Hegemony shotgun behind the counter, and the extensive field experience to use it as one of Tark's stormtroopers. He'd fought in the Far Reach campaign, part of the volunteers defending the mountains from the Senate's assault, a few adventurers thinking they were hot shit for having knocked a few golems down didn't scare him.

Third...well, he might lose some clientele by greeting her, but antagonizing the second to third most powerful woman on the entire planet wasn't a wise move, especially when you operated a business in her capital city. Plus, the cachet of the Empress coming would offset any loss quickly.

"Hello Stor. You can still call me Allya, you know that hasn't changed."

"I know, but I've never said that and wanted to taste the novelty. Your usual?" Allya nodded, and he pulled out a shot glass, as well as a bottle of frontier brandy. It still amazed her how much of this stuff he was able to bring in, friends in the merchants guild or no. "Tough week I hear."

"Yep. Plenty of psychopaths looking to murder their way across the city. Going after Crystal as usual. Then all the political wrangling."

The silence in the rest of the room was still total, everyone hanging off of their exchange like it was the declaration of the Empire.

"I can imagine." Stor uncorked the bottle, then sniffed as he looked at the shot glass. He swapped it for a normal sized one...then sighed. "Oh what the hell. Here, it sounds like you need it."

Allya smiled as he slid her the whole bottle, easily and adroitly catching it.

"Thanks Stor. You're a friend." She took a swig, and he smiled widely, the sight of which was not for the faint of heart when it came to a lizardman.

"I know." He raised his voice. "Anyone else?"

The challenge broke the spell. Conversation started again as a couple of adventurers called out orders.

"How's business?" Asked the Empress as Stor leaned over the bar.

"Good. Bit of a hiccup these last few days, but people bounce back quick." He shrugged. "Money's flowing from the dungeon again, adventurers come back from delve and need a drink, or prepare to head in and come get some liquid courage."

"Adventurers are resilient."

"That and many thought the guild had it coming." He shrugged once more as she gazed at him. "People liked Orromar. But not the people he served."

Allya nodded.

"I share the sentiment." She felt guilty as hell too.

Orromar was the one who had warned her the guild was planning something. Even with that warning, they'd almost failed to find it before it was too late. The town wouldn't have stopped a sand kraken attack, even with Alexandra's help.

Yet she'd killed him. The too loyal bastard had gone down with his ship.

And with those area of effect soul sealing devices...

"Curious." Stor smiled. "I'd thought you would hate him."

"It's...complicated."

"Ain't it ever. How's the wife?"

"Pyn has enough on her plate to last her ten thousand years. Same for me, really." Pyn didn't have to handle the politics, but she more and more acted as the Empire's face for trade negotiations, with Melia's backup, and still kept a hand in Rebirth's construction and expansion. And, in this case, reconstruction. "But she gets by."

"Well, I'm sure you'll find yourself a moment of peace."

"That's becoming a more and more precious commodity lately."

"Hey, you signed up for this gig, remember?" He smiled, and she smiled back.

"Sure did. Wasn't expecting to end up here though."

His smile got wider.

"That's gonna be one hell of a story to tell the grandkids, that's for sure. And here I thought I had plenty of tales to tell."

"I'm sure trudging through the snow while the Republic Army hunted you is more captivating than endless meetings and paperwork."

"Perhaps, but those meetings will be written about in the history books, and that paperwork would end up in a museum. Adds some gravitas, eh?"

That hit Allya like a freight train. Because...yeah.

Everything she was doing right now. It was going in the history books. She had lived in the shadow of her family her whole life. Her ancestors' reputation, from the founder of house Aubétoile and onward, had always loomed over her. Even becoming Knight-Valiant by rescuing Cassissa from certain death hadn't made much a splash.

But now she was the one casting the shadow. Kids would know her name and learn about the summit of Rebirth or the founding of the Empire for thousands of years to come, just like how she'd been taught about the First Empress of the Eris Empire by her tutors.

Provided, of course, that there were any children to learn her name.

That was a grim thought.

"I suppose it does." She said. "Puts things into perspective too."

"Perspective. My most requested drink."

"Really?"

"No, it's actually vodka. The kind that feels like it belongs in your mouth and not in the engine of an Erisian battle tank."

"Mmmhhh. Well, there's no accounting for taste." Allya moved to take another swig of the bottle, and stopped herself mid motion, grimacing. "Probably should calm down with that."

"Hey, I ain't telling you what weight class you belong in, oh glorious leader."

"Ah ah." She sighed. "I should head back to work. It was good catching up, Stor."

"Pleasure's all mine boss." He waved as she moved to slide the bottle back to him. "Keep it. I'm sure you could use something once you get back to all that paperwork."

"Thanks. I appreciate it." She didn't pay him. She had a tab that went directly into the Empire's finances. Rank hath its privileges, and as a de facto absolute monarch, freedom to do whatever she wanted with the treasury was one of them.

That was going to change though. Alexandra had entire plans for finances for the 'Imperial household', various bureaucracies and even a damned parliament.

She walked out, her guards in tow. This time, a few of the adventurers raised a glass as she passed, and she returned some nods to those she knew personally.

She liked to think it was genuine appreciation, and not just self-preservation, but it was probably a bit of both.

The Empress took a deep breath as she exited the bar. Time to head back to work.

*****

Stor grunted as he set the last barrel down.

Technically, this was a back alley leading into his stockroom. But having the duchess...well, Empress now as one of his client, plus her wife, meant that he could do a lot of things, like getting permission to close off the entire alley for his own private use.

The other buildings leading onto it also belonged to him. Not directly, not by a long shot. But the advantage of friends in the merchants guild was that shell corporations and other masks were easy to get.

Moving to Rebirth had been the best decision of his life. He was rich now. In truth he could have retired months ago, and probably should have someone else hold the bar, let alone unloading and taking inventory. But he liked it. And he was a fixture of the town here. Old Stor the bartender, he who slid drinks to adventurers and monarchs.

Man. He still thought of it as a town. Rebirth was a proper city now. He still remembered the tents, the mandatory guard rotations on the lookout posts keeping watch for monsters.

Now the mesas those outposts had been on were covered in buildings and elevators, being dug into as the city started to densify. There were even houses beyond the walls now! It's not like anybody could threaten it. If the guild had failed, who could succeed? Besides-

He didn't know what tipped him off. But one second he was looking at his newly unloaded stock, taking mental inventory, the next he had a revolver in his hand, pointed at the man standing in the fully closed off and highly secure alley.

He stopped himself before pulling the trigger as he recognized the man.

"Hello there." Said the barman, before holstering the revolver. "Never learned how to knock?"

"Good to see you too." The man fixed him with bland, brown eyes. He looked so nondescript he could be in a biology textbook. 'Human, example one'. The only hint of identity was the way he breathed, like he was always tasting the air before fully committing. Like someone who had spent their childhood in the poor quarters of Tark, near the lava fields, where the fumes could get in. "And I will once your security forces me to."

"If I got any better one, I'd start killing passersby." Besides, his best protection was who he was, not expensive trinkets and defenses someone could eventually bypass with enough preparation anyway. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Ulkan?"

"Couple of people wanted you dead, Stor."

The barman snorted. Ulkan was an assassin. A pretty good one at that. He was also someone who generally didn't take stupid contracts, and avoided shitting in the bed in which he slept, which was why he constantly moved up and down the trade route without having slit a single throat in Rebirth.

Also, Stor had carried his little sister on his shoulders for two days during the Palmen offensive, getting her out of the Republic's line of advance and regrouping with the rest of the volunteer force.

That 'couple of people' were probably told a very polite 'no' and would find themselves having problems before too long. An anonymous letter to the city guard perhaps.

"How's Mayun?"

"Still complaining about how cold it is up in the mountains in the letters, in the same sentence she gushes about the sights."

"Sounds like her."

"Indeed it does." Ulkan met his gaze. "Seriously though. Watch your back. Most are clapping for what the Empress did, but there's a lot of petty assholes out there with enough spite to do something but too cowardly to go after her directly."

Stor nodded.

"I know the type. They're usually too stupid to keep it on the down low. It will be over pretty quickly."

"I hope so, but there's a lot of sentiments and a lot of money involved. Things could get nasty."

"I saw a golem the size of my house walk through the streets shooting at attendants and the guild hall is a pile of rubble. Nasty's already here."

"Fair enough." Ulkan nodded. "Good day, Stor. Stay safe."

"You too my friend. You too."