Author's Nightmare: Chapter 164 (Patreon)

Solitaire POV: Day 153

Current Wealth: 167 gold 22 silver 32 copper

Walls, that was my major contribution to Barbed Point. Walls. Nice, big walls, made with a halfway decent understanding of mathematics and engineering. Walls with angled sections to deflect projectiles, their weights distributed and supported properly. Walls that might last a good long while. 

But still, fundamentally, just walls. Because if I was going to help the town of giant angry rapists, it would be with as little overtly weapons-grade technology as I could manage to give them. Even this much stung, knowing how well it would perform against magi or siege engines compared to the shoddier architecture they’d been making before.

Funny thing was, I actually didn’t know how good the walls even were. I had a basic knowledge of mathematics and engineering, and I could intuit things well enough to fill in the gaps my actual understanding had, but that just meant I had no clue about the relative advancement of what I was having them do. For all I knew I’d given them architecture able to weather cannon balls. I suppose I’d find out if I ever attacked the place.

“You really are clever.” Adravigi said abruptly at my back. She was sneaky, very quiet when she walked. Quiet enough that she was risking her life every time she let her presence be known by speaking within arms’ reach of my back.

This time, I resisted the instinctual, reflexive urge to spin kick her in the head.

“I told you.” I shrugged, not enjoying the acknowledgement as much as I usually would have. It was soured slightly by knowing that every flourish of intellect I demonstrated would only make me a more enticing and useful ally. I was keeping myself safe by feeding the orcs information, but I was tightening my chains too. It was a balancing act. Freedom vs security.

And that was without considering that Adravigi was, no doubt, having me followed subtly on top of the overt “bodyguards” accompanying me all over the place. Cunning bitch. 

“You’re holding back however.” She noted, thankfully not taking pride in having noticed the obvious. 

I just shrugged again. It irritated her, which was both good and bad. An enemy who was irritated was more likely to make mistakes, but mistakes could include hurting a person who was useful to them. I decided it was worth the risk. Barely.

“I heard about the weapons you used against us.” She pressed. “The magic ones, that spat fire and metal. You could make those for us, couldn’t you? You could arm us with tools of war to overturn this very kingdom and make us the greatest military power in the region.” She stepped in closer, eyes intense. “You could rule us alongside me if you did.”

That was a lot of offers. In fact, it was so many offers that it made that little “paranoia” bit of my brain start frothing at the mouth, rolling around on the floor and shrieking about killing John Lenon. I kept as much from showing on my face of course, making sure to be polite and calm as I replied. 

“First time I’ve gotten an offer like that. What makes you think I care about ruling?”

She smirked. 

“I’ve never seen a man half as sure of his own intelligence as you, nor one half as impatient with the world’s stupidity. Do you expect me to believe you don’t want to rule?”

Well, she had me there. 

“One of the stupidest things about humans is how many of them think they should be calling the shots.” I shrugged. “Kings, emperors, prophets, Reddit moderators, cops. They need control, and they think they’re the ones to bring it about. It’s pathetic. No, I don’t want to rule. I’m better than the rest of you by such a wide margin that it’s not even worth calculating. Why would I be stupid enough to want infinite power?”

I almost had myself convinced, and certainly had her. That’s the issue with clever deductions, they’re only worth anything if you can keep your confidence in them. 

“What do you want then?” She pressed. “There must be something, you and your brothers were working for something, what is it?”

Interesting question, I’d barely even thought about it myself. Was I doing this to genuinely help people? To prove I could? Because I was, deep down, a violent person, in search of excuses to justify my destructive behaviour and in desperate need of help to drag me out of my self-cannibalising oroborus of psychotic annihilation? Nah, that was lame. 

I was doing it because some people needed killing, and I just so happened to have been dumped into a whole world of them. If the universe didn’t want me to be a terrorist, it wouldn’t have made everyone a cunt and me smart enough to see it. 

Of course that wasn’t the sort of thing you could just say. Unfortunately, wanting to kill most of the people you met tended to give you a reputation for being unstable or dangerous. Not great when you were at someone’s mercy, and a known manufacturer of, from their perspective, weapons of mass destruction. I didn’t think Adravigi would pre-emptively kill me rather than keep trying to make use of my knowledge, but I couldn’t know for sure and wasn’t in a position to survive taking more chances than I absolutely had to. 

“How about my freedom?” I asked, with a smile.

Adravigi didn’t smile back. 

“You think you’ll find more freedom out there than in here?” She asked. “You’ll still be a prisoner to the laws that put you below every noble brat with half your guts and a tenth of your brains.”

Right, of course. That was the same as my literal imprisonment here. Note to self; arguing with slavers is an exercise in futility.

“I’d have my family.” I noted, deciding to take a different stance altogether than the one which required moral insanity to not already agree with. Maybe I’d actually get somewhere that way. 

By the look of her, Adravigi was at least slightly moved by the appeal. Though her eyes were still hard with resolve and contradiction. 

“I see.” Her voice came out tight, and reluctant. I knew then that she’d not bother continuing to convince me. Not for a while at least. 

And I wondered whether I’d made a mistake. I already had to be sneaky with my plans, knowing she was keeping track of everything I introduced to Barbed Point and watching my every move. That was when she’d thought- or hoped- that I was aimless and stuck in my ways. If she believed that I had something serious holding me elsewhere she herself would be more diligent about keeping me from leaving.

That was the problem with smart people, they drew a lot of conclusions from a little information.

“What were you actually here to ask me?” I hurriedly added, wanting to give her as little time for conclusion-drawing as I could get away with. “Or was that it?”

I added a hint of a sneer to the inquiry, to see if she’d pick up on it and feel overestimated. Smart people hated falling short of expectations, and I was willing to bet someone who ranted about cleverness as much as this one did would be even more inclined to.

I was right.

“Your loyalty hasn’t been accepted by most of the orcs yet.” She told me, matter-of-factly enough that it was almost tempting to believe that she wasn’t just giving an excuse for whatever she personally had decided to do next. “And we need to fix that, every day you stay here, with the memory of what your weapons did to our forces fresh in their minds, the odds of you being killed by some over-eager moron remain unacceptably high.”

“And let me guess,” I began, “The only way to reduce this is to be more helpful.”

Obviously that wasn’t what she was going to say, or what she wanted me to think. But if she thought I thought she was trying to needle me into offering more technology, instead of justifying more surveillance, it might convince her that I was less suspicious than I was. Rarely a bad idea to let yourself get underestimated. At least by your captors.

“No, you need to prove yourself. To me, to them.” She was, at least, up-front about having a stake in what I did too, but the tone in her voice…It had me worried.

“What will I be doing?” I asked, sharper than was probably wise. 

Adravigi met my eye and responded with a voice that sounded like something dead was speaking to me. 

“We will soon be going on another raid, and this time, Solitaire Belahont, you shall accompany us.”