Chapter 33 – Change of heart from desperation

While Alex was going to his lands with the three girls, another carriage was travelling in the opposite direction.
Inside of it, Marquess Seth Perry was biting the fingernail of his right thumb while Baron Rowan Harvey was seated in front of him, nervously waiting. On his left, Earl Marley Barker, a long-time friend of Marquess Seth Perry, was fiddling with his fingers, thinking about what happened inside the Chamber of Lords.

Baron Rowan could no longer hold his curiosity and asked, “Marquess… what happened in the Chamber? Something went wrong with our plan, judging by your look when you entered the carriage.”

Marquess Seth looked at him with anger in his eyes. “Our plan? Our plan, you say? Shouldn’t you be saying your plan? Was it not you who contacted as many Lords as possible, in secrecy, so that they would support your idea of putting up for a vote the lands of Earl Kayden? You led me to believe that everything was going to be easy, that Earl Alex was just a mere boy, despite being the son of the Hero Yahei! I told you how he fooled us all five years ago in that same Chamber with his request for an unheard law that protected, until now, everything he made! And you reassured me it was just a fluke because ever since then, every time he attended, he just listened!”

Baron Rowan gulped, and asked in a trembling voice, “Did he... know about what was going to happen?”

The Marquess looked at the window and answered, “He could have some suspicions, but there is no way he could know all of it. I underestimated him because of his age and totally forgot who his father was. He was well-trained in politics, no doubt about it. He splendidly rebated everything I said, and he even threw a few traps that I so foolishly fell into. All of our supporters backed away, and when it was time for a vote, there were only three Lords on my side.”

The Marquess returned to his fingernails, and the Baron looked at him and Earl Marley, waiting for more explanations, but they were both silent. He asked, almost losing his composure, “But what happened? Did he get the lands of Earl Kayden? Even after all the planning?”

Earl Marley took a slow deep breath and said, “Not only that, but he also said that he supported the idea of more Security Forces, continuously patrolling our country.”

Seeing Baron Rowan making a weird smile, the Earl continued, “Don’t be so happy, Baron, because the control of those new Forces and every single one of the Magical Orbs they will get will be delivered to the Chamber of Lords to be used on our country. Every decision about the new Forces will be put up for a vote, and everything will be decided by a majority. Considering that he even gave Earl Kayden’s vote to the King, all our supporters will definitely withdraw and will be with the King and his friends from now on. We lost, and we lost badly…”

Baron Rowan was about to explode. He punched his right knee and grunted, “That brat… that obnoxious little runt… How dares he, ruining everything… we need to… we need to…”

Marquess Seth Perry stared blankly at him and lowered his voice. “We need to what, Baron? Dispose of him? Good luck with that, considering the size of his army. My sources told me he was out of the country over the last few months, and no one could find him. Even without him, his lands were heavily guarded. There was nowhere to breach because a soldier or a Mage was always near. While he kept on flooding the market with fresh products daily, I was struggling to grow a few vegetables! When it was time for the harvest on my lands, he was already selling his! Things are becoming worse every day, with my crops shrinking, the soil losing its strength, and commoners keeping on escaping, even with a death sentence if they are caught crossing my borders!”

Baron Rowan bit his lower lip and asked, while narrowing his eyes, “What do you intend to do, then? Quit?”

The Marquess stared at the window again and continued, as if he had heard nothing, “Things were easier before him… The Nobles were at the top of the social ladder, the commoners knew their place, the harvest was more than enough for us and for selling, and we even accumulated a large number of coins and Magical Orbs. Now, I fear for the future. Every day I lose workers. Some portions of my lands are unattended, becoming prairies instead of the fertile fields they once were. Tell me, Baron, before this scenario, what would you do if you didn’t have Magical Orbs to sell? Because you don’t have commoners working for you, at least that I know about.”

Baron Rowan gulped. “Y-yes, I only have a handful of servants that agreed to continue to work for me because I pay them. At least my Security Force is gathering Magical Orbs from the Monsters they kill, and I also work as a mediator between Adventurers that sell Magical Orbs and Nobles or Merchants that want to buy them.”

Earl Marley Barker spoke after checking that the Marquess was listening, despite still staring at the window, “Marquess, I think it’s better if we pay the licence so that Earl Alex teaches us his methods and lends us his equipment before we run out of money to pay him.”

The Marquess looked at his friend, and he seemed defeated. “You know that even after paying the licence to learn his methods, he will still charge us for his equipment by the hour, and we will give him a small percentage of all our profits while we use his methods and equipment? Are you really telling me to do that?”

“What is there, then? We either act now, or we will run out of money and we will never have enough to pay him. It’s not only you that is suffering, my friend. Why do you think all those Nobles agreed with our plan to discredit Earl Alex and tried to take Earl Kayden’s lands from him? Because they, like us, are becoming desperate. It was our fault because we all failed to see the advantages of his ideas five years ago. Like he said today, we all laughed because we considered his ideas and methods to be delusions from the mind of a young boy. Maybe we don’t need to change the way we treat our commoners, but what about his methods for enriching the soil, planting and harvesting, when is the best time to plant a particular crop and not another, why let a portion of the field rest for an entire year and what to do with that field while it rests? How does he make that delicious wine? And the beer? That extremely expensive whiskey?”

The Marquess was slowly nodding, thinking about all that, and the Baron almost shouted, “Are you both mad? Are you really considering siding with him?”

He then lowered his voice to a whisper, “What about the Emissary from the Consortium? They won’t be pleased if we back down on our word to help them take control of the Chamber of Lords through us and our supporters!”

The Marquess leaned back and stared blankly at the Baron. “It seems you are the only one that still believes that there is such a thing as a Consortium, a secret group of extremely powerful Mages whose only goal is to unite the entire World against the Monsters and to get rid of the Beast-kind, Elfians, Fairies, and Mermaids. I only agreed to that charade because it was according to my plans, but I didn’t see them in the Chamber helping me when I was losing my ground. Until now, no one has ever proved the existence of such a group, and not one of its members has ever been found. Their myth is only good as a bedtime story to put children to sleep, but who in his right mind would ever believe that there was a group out there, almost three centuries old, working in the shadows against the Monsters and all the other races with whom we share this World? A group whose single goal is to make this World into a paradise, with Magic being solely controlled by Humans? Not by Spirits, Elfians, Mermaids and Fairies, but Humans alone.”

The Baron gulped. “You wouldn’t say that if you woke up in the middle of the night with a dagger on your throat, held by a whispering Mage dressed in black garments! He proved to me they were real with a bag full of Magical Orbs, the biggest Orbs I ever saw, full of Magic. They are very real, believe me, and you would be a fool if…”

The Marquess leaned forward, facing the defiant Baron with anger in his eyes. “Now your place, Baron Rowan! I don’t care who is or is not behind you! If you dare to forget my title again, you won’t need to be afraid of a dagger in your throat anymore, because I will stab you straight to your heart.”

Baron Rowan immediately apologized, “I-I am sorry, Marquess, it was foolish of me. It’s just... It was a flawless plan, and we could by now be travelling to new lands, full of cropped fields and all the secret wonders that grant all that. Finding out that everything escaped through our fingers just because we underestimated a young Earl made me forget my manners. Perhaps we are being hasty. We could think of another approach that wouldn’t involve agreeing to any kind of payment to…”

Marquess Seth Perry raised his right hand to silence him. “There is no point in thinking anymore. I agree with Earl Marley. My money is running low, and unless I act now, soon I will be begging in a corner in the City, fighting my way to a few crumbs on the floor, like a pig. When I arrive at my manor, I will send a messenger asking for a meeting with Earl Alex as soon as possible. He might make me wait a few days just to teach me a lesson, but I need to forget my pride, or I won’t have a future. My children deserve to have a good life like they were always used to, and if for that I need to lower my head to a young Earl, so be it. Everything will be better when my lands are productive once again, full of working commoners. You should take your head from the clouds, Baron Rowan, and not rely on some dubious Emissary from such a mythic group. Myths never put food on the table, or coins in a purse.”

While Earl Marley Barker was slowly nodding, Baron Rowan Harvey was biting his lower lip, preventing his mouth from screaming blasphemies. They were just irremediable fools, and he was the biggest of them because he believed they could help him satisfy the wishes of that dreadful Dark Mage.
The Baron trembled before the sudden realisation that he had to tell that scary Emissary that his plan had failed, and he couldn’t gather supporters in the Chamber of Lords. He feared that Mage’s reaction because the darkness in his eyes the last time he saw him was almost impossible to escape because if a person was scared by having a dagger close to their throat, no one for sure ever felt the absolute nightmare inside the darkness in that Mage’s eyes as he did on that traumatising night.