Kingmaker Page 3
Vera flinched. Well, that was one way for him to prove his dedication. “So you’re part of the Destroyers,” Vera said.
Jorn snorted, humorless. “Girlie, I run the Destroyers.”
“And you’re willing to work with us?” she asked. “The Ministry?”
Jorn slumped against the stone wall next to her, his dislocated arm dangling uselessly between them. “Do you understand why I created the Destroyers?”
Vera twisted her head to look at him—his stern, calculating gaze and solid jawline. How had she not seen it before? He was no dumb brute. She should have known. “You want to protect the tunnelers from the gangs. The gangs give them work, yes, but they also prey on them, just as much if not more so than the rest of Barstadt.”
“Than the rest of Barstadt,” Jorn echoed. “That includes the Ministry of Affairs.”
“But we have resources. We have people in places the Destroyers couldn’t dream of reaching.” Vera softened her tone. “We could help you. With your knowledge of the gangs and our place beside the Emperor, we could tear the gangs down, and everyone in the aristocracy who supports them. Change the system.”
“And how do I know the Ministry isn’t as corrupt as all the rest?” Jorn shook his head, then stared up at the ceiling. “Your Ministry’ll just find some new way to muck it up for the tunnelers. There has to be a better way.”
The Dreamer’s words, coming from his mouth. Vera stared. Finally, the Dreamer was showing her the way ahead. Not leaving her to flail in her past mistakes.
She just had to convince him.
“Then let’s make one. Not the same old Ministry way—your own way.”
Jorn turned to look at her—as if he were really seeing her, now.
“Tearing down the gangs is only the beginning. We can work with the Minister—you, me, anyone else who cares to help—to protect the tunnelers throughout it all. And then we can work with the Emperor to bring the tunnelers out of the dark. Integrate them into Barstadt society.”
“And why would the Emperor go for that?”
“The Emperor already wants to crack down on corruption—he’s sick of the gangs running rampant. Our primary goal in the Ministry, after protecting the empire from external threat, is to protect it from internal ones—and no one poses a greater threat than the gangs. So we convince him that freeing the tunnelers is the safest way.”
And we rid the aristocracy of men like Lord Alizard, Vera thought.
Jorn frowned. “Suppose I like it better where I am. Paid well by the Stargazers, helping tunnelers out on the side. Creating the Destroyers … it’s made a better man of me.”
“And you like tearing apart men like you in the brawling ring? Do you like tearing apart the aristocrats who’ve wronged the tunnelers you protected? Does that make you better, too?” Vera asked.
Jorn snarled at her. “The Stargazers made me a king. A king of death. It seemed fitting I should carry on the Destroyers’ work in much the same way.”
“With the Ministry’s help,” Vera said, “we can make you a king of life. A new chance. For the tunnelers, and for yourself.”
*
“And that convinced him?” Minister Durst asked.
Vera thrust her shoulders back and pointedly avoided Edina’s wide-eyed stare. “He handed over a list of Stargazers safehouses on the spot, with a promise of more to come.”
“I’ll run them by our scouts, make sure they check out.” Edina scribbled a note to herself.
Vera bit back a sharp comment and forced herself to smile. There has to be a better way. Dreamer, she was trying to find one. To take down Lord Alizard, even if it changed nothing between her and Edina. To find a new life instead of running laps around her past.
“We’ll meet with him regularly after the brawls—work through the bookie to pass information easily, make it look like bet payouts. I don’t mind overseeing that operation.”
“That’ll do for now,” Durst said. But his gaze was elsewhere again. “But I want to make this quick. Less chance of discovery.”
“How do you mean?” Vera and Edina asked at the same time, then Edina lowered her head, cheeks red, while Vera shot her a dirty look.
“The Dreamer has filled my head with ideas for this mission—ideas I think might actually bear out. I want to squeeze as much information from this Jorn fellow as we can, as quickly as we can, and then prepare for one quick purge to bring the gangleaders and aristocrats in before they have any chance to know something’s missing.”
“But even Jorn can only grab so much,” Edina pointed out. “He’s often with the Stargazers leader, it’s true, but he’s not trusted with all of his secrets. We’ll need those before we can truly act.”
“Yes.” Durst smiled. “We need someone who can walk right up to the gangleaders and convince them to give them everything. Someone they trust and know well. But someone working for us.”
“You’ll never convince them,” Vera said.
“I don’t need to convince them.” Durst smiled again. “Not when I have the Dreamstrider.”
About the Author
Lindsay Smith is the author of Cold War era espionage novels Sekret and Skandal, fantasy novel Dreamstrider, and Japanese time travel novel A Darkly Beating Heart. She writes on foreign affairs and lives in Washington, D.C. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Lindsay Smith
Art copyright © 2015 by Goñi Montes