Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

continued. Loid took out a Riken Lake lyre and plucked out a tune. Some listened, though mostly the others continued on with their business. Men from the south entered and cast Gailert dirty looks as they passed by, while Gailert attempted to sleep with his coat rolled up and set underneath his head.

One man actually gave a noisy snort, remarking loudly that they had humored Key long enough and they just ought to kill the general right out. Some of them debated over that, though most agreed that only Key had the right to kill ‘General Gole’.

Another lake man entered the hall, his presence making the air strangely muggy. Loid paused in his playing and greeted the man with an embrace—but then he went back to playing again. The other lake man spoke with a stutter. His tone was tired, yet in an odd way pleasant. He hardly looked at the general when Loid pointed him out, though he did say with his halting speech that he agreed it was Key’s right to kill him.

The night passed fitfully. The guards changed once more after Loid and his friend had left the hall in search of sleeping quarters. By then, only a slow trickle of newcomers arrived, and they all appeared to be from the north: Sundri, Kolden, and Tobi. They were urged to find a room to rest in to be fresh for the meeting on the following day. On the morning, there were more arrivals. Several men from Westerlund arrived, though three of them looked more like Herra men than those of the far west. Each of the Herra men cursed at him as they passed by. Another set of Herra men arrived doing the same, though these were much older and more tempered in their remarks.

By midday his human captors dragged Gailert onto his feet. They hauled him into the dining hall where he saw humans from every end of Westhaven sitting around the table where in his younger years he had once dined with the former Sky Lord. They set him in a chair they drew off to the side, loosely tying him to it.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” a man called out as he marched into the room.

Gailert’s heart jumped from fear. But when he saw the man, he recognized the new comer as a southerner, most likely from Stiltson. The man snorted when he looked at Gailert then walked around the table to find a free seat.

“No matter,” Lady Sadena replied, sitting at the head of the table so all could see her well. Apparently she was the leader. “Not everyone is here yet.”

Several other men entered the room, making the same apology and excuse—each time causing Gailert to jump and sweat. Those watching him took great amusement at his anxiety. Some of them laughed.

“Can we start now, Lady Sadena?” a swarthy looking southerner said, checking a gold pocket watch he had either stolen off of a Sky Child’s body or had negotiated for in business as a collaborator then turned against his own kind in the usual human selfishness. “Every city leader is here.”

“Yes, but Key is not,” that woman replied, with a firm tone.

Sharing a tired look with one of the other men, that man said, “True, but Key was never really a full member of the council, but was more advisory—”

“Key was with the council in the beginning, Pattron,” she replied. A chastening bite entered her voice. Gailert read it as a sign of division already within the human groups. Indeed, it had been odd to think they had been united at all, as humans really were such savage things. So greedy and self-serving. It was likely they would war among themselves before long. Retaking Westhaven would be easy.

“Yes,” said another man who had a more southwestern look to him, as a man from Kalsworth would be. “But Key’s function is, for practical purposes, over. The Sky Children are out of the land now, most of our citizens read, and the need for spies is over. And unless I am not mistaken, he will not need to make as many swords for us as he has in the past.”

The swordsman at the woman’s right stood up from his seat with a glare at the southwestern man. “Captain Freyman, may I remind you, you had been invited into this council on his good graces. If it were not for your associations with the lake men that recommended you, some of us would not have approved of your attitude towards Key. He is still a vital part of our council.”

“Excuse me.” A man dressed in the tan crinkled attire of Sundri who wore a heavy sweater rose from his seat. “But we have mostly gathered to discuss the governing of this land post-removal of those demons. What does Key know about governing? He has plenty of military understanding in his head. That is fine. I move that he work with General Holbruk to set up and maintain a standing army in case those demons try to take over our land once more.”

“Here here!” Someone chimed in.

The lady pressed her long fingers against her smooth brow. “We cannot make any motions in regards to him either.”

“Sorry I’m late.” Another man walked in.

Gailert jumped—but once more he realized that this man was not Key. It was broad, burly sort of man escorting a young and rather lovely woman with him. The man walked over and kissed Lady Sadena on the cheek as the young woman bowed and pulled up a seat near the Sundri man who was delivering her a chastening glare. The young woman merely turned her eyes away to ignore him. She leaned on the table and watched all their faces. When she saw the general, she blinked and nudged her neighbor as if to ask who he was. When her neighbor answered back, her face hardened with a look that said she wished to spit on him.

The Sundri man said with a nod to the newly arrived warrior, “I realize it is impolite to plan without our useful and somewhat eccentric friend—but it is just as impolite for him to keep us all waiting. We need to at least draft a plan to govern this land for its protection. If the blue-eyes don’t attempt to return here, I am sure the red warriors of Kitai surely will. This is our land, and we ought to set up a unified government and soon. I believe we ought to select someone wise as leader of our new nation.”

“The nation of Westhaven?” Lady Sadena asked, turning her head at a skeptical angle. Yet she listened. “A replacement for the Sky Lord?”

Shaking his head with gravity, the Sundri man replied, “No. After the old tradition, he ought to be a patriarch. The Patriarch. And he ought to have a council, like this one.”

She leaned back, considering it. “That is an interesting proposition. And how should we choose this leader? We have no precedent for such an action.”

“He should be noble born,” the Sundri man said with a nod, expecting the question. “Educated, experienced, not too young—”

Someone broke into a laugh. Gailert saw that it was the witch.

Several of the heads turned as the witch spoke his mind as freely as the savage he was. “Are you saying you ought to lead us?” The witch then laughed again. “She didn’t ask if you would do it, but how we would choose a leader.”

“I was merely listing qualifications,” the Sundri man snapped, though he was blushing at being caught so plainly in his ambition.

“I say we put it to a vote,” another woman, slightly younger than the council moderator, though this woman had face powder and dressed foppishly with flounces like a woman of the north. “It worked so well in Tobi Town.”

“We didn’t all agree in Tobi,” the southwestern man snapped.

“Well, that’s just it,” the woman replied with a nod. “Very rarely does any group of people completely agree. But if we all agreed to abide by the ruling of the majority, I think we can all choose in a simple vote whom we all can trust to stand as…what did he suggest? A patriarch for our new nation.”

“There was a lot of pressure in that last vote,” one of the local Wede men said, glancing to Sadena. “With so much support from a wizard who wanted it, I dare say not all of us were as happy to go against her wishes. Not publicly anyway.”

“Though he was proven right,” the witch cut in with a smirk. “They did help us, and they aren’t here to interfere with our governing plans. They were only after the blue-eyes.”

Giving him a nod, the Wede man said with a conceding sigh, “I grant that he was indeed right in that respect—but what I object to is such pressure. If we are to select a leader for a newly established nation, I want it to be without any such pressure.”

“And how are we to accomplish that?” that southwestern man snapped. “I was stomped on last time. And my objections still stand. Those Cordrils are too dangerous. You just wait. They will start to feed on us just like those other blue-eyes did.”

“How about a secret ballot?” Sadena suggested.

Everyone grew silent. Several of them started to nod to themselves, including those that had first objected to the vote. The Sundri man even appeared to be impressed.

“All in favor of this method?” that woman asked with a smirk.

Some raised their hands and then chuckled. Then they all did.

“Agreed,” the Sundri man replied, and sat down.

For the next hour they discussed the details of the requirements for the new leader of their nation, adopting mostly what the Sundri man had suggested. They even outlined the term of office for the leader, though there was some bickering over whether it should be an inherited position or a continual elected one.

They were in the middle of voting over whether or not it would inherited or elected when two other men entered the room. One of them was an obvious Herra man who had a limp from a war wound. The other was dressed like him almost to the laces in his boots—but his face was of a lake man. He removed his hat and gave a bow to the moderator, whispering their apologies. His hair stuck out white and reddish brown.

“No.” Gailert stared, blinking at his former slave—who halted.

Their eyes met. Both stiffened.

“No. You ran off with pirates,” the general murmured.

Everyone turned their heads to look at them both. The boy from the Bekir Peninsula was now a man not that different from his father—though he was still quite young. The young man’s chest heaved as he stared back at Gailert as though all the memories of being his slave were striving to force him back at the general’s feet.

Yet his former slave drew the sword at his side and pointed it at the general.

He approached.

The guards at Gailert’s side, surprisingly, stepped back.

“No. Not you.” Gailert struggled in his bonds. “I am not to die by your hand. Where is Key? Where is that general you promised? I was to die at his hands! Not this…this pitiful slave’s!”

His former slave halted. He lowered his sword. Then he turned to the others. “You didn’t tell him?”

The woman that moderated the council rose from her seat. She gave his old slave a slight shake of her head. “We thought it fitting that you did.”

Turning once more to face his old master, the man who had been his slave sheathed his sword. Then he reached inside his shirt, pulling out a chain with seashells and beads on it, along with one brass all-key. Slipping it over his head, he walked over to Gailert and held it out for him to see. “Remember this?”

Gailert stared at it, wondering what was going on. Where was Key? But then his eyes fixed on that brass key. He blinked. Then he looked up at his