One Emerald, anyway. Adrian Gellert, the father of Demansk’s grandchild.
No, Demansk knew full well the Confederation was rotting from within, and the rot had no alien source. Simple greed, and sloth, and envy, and corruption—all homegrown. Like gout of the spirit. Inevitable, perhaps, a disease brought upon itself by a nation which had grown too powerful too quickly. Or, to use a more homely simile, the stomach-ache of a reckless child after stuffing himself at the dinner table.
Demansk’s jaws tightened. He had just selected himself to be the purge, after all. And, here also, he would not hide behind simile and metaphor. His purge would be far more brutal than that of a parent forcing too much food out of a child. Blood, not vomit—though there would be plenty of that, too—would be the product of his labor.
* * *
That thought set his feet moving again, and he found himself wandering through the gardens anew. With the self-awareness that had always been part of him, Demansk understood within a short time where his feet were leading him.
Soon enough, he was there, standing before it. The statue of Wodep, painted in red. He stared up at the image, for a moment, his own green eyes meeting the black-painted eyes of the savage-looking idol. Then, lowered his head.
Not in hesitation or fear, simply in thought. He had never cared much for that statue. Odd, perhaps, given his undoubted skill at the god’s art. But Demansk had never been an enthusiast of battle, much less a lover. That was why, he sometimes thought, he was so good at it.
No, his head was simply lowered in thought. Having decided upon treason, it remained to implement it. And some of that implementation would involve the clash of armies in the field. Some, not all—Demansk allowed himself the hope that much of it might be accomplished using less ferocious means.
But, as his thoughts of the coming campaign followed their own steps, he soon relinquished the hope. True, some of it would involve political maneuver. As ruthless as war, perhaps, though not as bloody. But some of it . . .
He could see no way around it. At the heart of Vanbert’s rot lay the great landed estates. (His own numbered among them, he reminded himself.) They had, like a cancer, destroyed Vanbert’s yeomanry and replaced it with a huge caste of slave laborers. Conquered foreigners, for the most part.
Demansk would do what he could to make the revolution as painless as possible. But he had no illusions. The overseers on his own estate were mild, by Vanbert standards. Demansk saw to it. But even his own slaves would be prone to violence when the yoke was lifted. The slaves on many of the great estates would explode like a volcano.
It would be . . . bloody. The more so because Demansk would not hesitate, as other would-be reformers had done, when the time came. When a new slave rebellion erupted, he would yoke it to his purpose. But doing so would require letting the thing burn itself out.
His head still lowered, he lifted his eyes beneath thick eyebrows and looked up at the statue again. It’s not as if the All-Father hadn’t warned us. Some crimes can only be purged with blood. The lash repaid by the hammer, or the hoe sharpened to an edge.
The statue’s eyes, painted solid black like those of a monster, gazed back at him pitilessly. He could almost hear the god’s imperious demand: “Do what you must! Be what you must! But give it a true name. Whatever else, do not lie to yourself.”
And what am I? wondered Demansk. What am I to become?
“The reformer.” He shook his head. Demansk was not a reformer, because “reform” was now impossible. The Confederacy of Vanbert could not be fixed, the way a broken machine is mended. The whole thing needed to be torn apart—wrecked completely—and built on different principles.
He would be . . . what, then?
A revolutionary, perhaps.
But that term fitted him poorly. He was no slave, leading a slave revolt. Demansk was one of the most powerful men in the whole Confederation, after all—and one of the richest. Hardly someone who could call himself a “revolutionary” and keep a straight face.