BXBX NOVEL Chapter 262: Leverage
Sure, the princess\' group was still too far away to hear anything I said with a voice low enough… But judging how great Madam\'s eyesight was to spot the details of what happened at Etaria\'s tent, it would be foolish for me to assume the princess\'s eyes were any worse.
And so, while she likely wouldn\'t be able to hear what I whispered, I had to turn my head and shield my mouth from her line of sight to speak.
An action that by no means would look good in Etaria\'s eyes, for what kind of proper negotiation was it supposed to be if I had to pass instructions to my people until the very last moment?
This lack of professionalism only betrayed my lack of proper trust in my companions.
\'I wonder if it\'s because of my bond with Fay?\' Using the last moments before the meeting would come to be, I forced my thoughts to a different topic.
There was no use burdening myself with thinking about the meeting just before it was about to happen.
"Sir, yes sir," Chris responded, as usual, content with just those three simple words. In fact, ever since we left Makary behind for the exact same reasons why he didn\'t want to let me go myself, Chris didn\'t utter a single word that went beyond those three!
"We meet again."
That was it, for our time to prepare.
We met with Etaria\'s group near the edge of the camp, in one of the two corners of it that didn\'t really see much fighting, leaving it mostly unscathed and thus a proper place to meet.
"I wish I could say it\'s my please, Your Highness, but given the circumstances…" I leaned over my shoulder, throwing a long look at the field where the imperial soldiers were now stuck between the forest and my small delegation.
And from the looks of it, all the theatrics we used to pass right through them safely proved sufficient to force all of them to stay, too scared of just the four of us to dare to take one step away from where they were.
But when looking back, I actually turned my eyes just beyond the crowd, where I could see piles of bodies slowly stacking higher and higher as the crowd opted to pull their dead aside.
"I\'m not in my best mood, so cut the small talk and just tell me what the hell are you doing here?"
Away from all the prying eyes of the huge number of her subordinates, Etaria showed a slightly different face to how she acted the last time we met.
"Since that\'s your request, let me cut to the chase," I shrugged my shoulders, more than happy to just deal with the situation instead of throwing pleasantries and titles at the other.
Sucking up to others\' asses simply wasn\'t in my nature.
"I\'ve come to make a deal," I revealed the first stage of my grand scheme. "I don\'t know about you, but my people are really wary of the plagues caused by the rot of the corpses. So, I\'ve come to trade the lives of the surviving half of your army for you to order them to clean up their mess first."
As I spoke, I kept my eyes glued to the face of the princess. Thankfully, my bond with Fay would protect me from suspicion I was, in any way or form, interested in the beautiful princess.
No. I simply wanted to see her reaction to my proposal.
Etaria squinted her eyes. Then she furrowed her brows, causing two small, vertical wrinkles to appear right above the bridge of her nose and adding an extremely cute detail to her already dignified face.
It took the princess well over just a few seconds to slowly relax her face, take a deep breath, and then cast one hell of an intense stare right at my face.
"I feel like I\'m repeating myself, but…" Etaria\'s stare only intensified even further, "are you for real?"
\'Good.\'
"Yes, I am," I replied as calmly as I could. "Once you go through what my ancestors did, your civilization is sure to learn this lesson too."
The princess\'s stare didn\'t lose any of its intensity for a while as she continued to drill her eyes into my soul. Ultimately, though, she was the one to look away first before breathing a long, exasperated sigh.
"Is that really all that you want?" she asked, taking a look over my shoulder, to where the survivors of one of her armies awaited their fate, unsure of what to expect from themselves.
"No, there\'s one more thing," I didn\'t bother playing any games and stalling. "And I\'m not exactly sure whether it will make you happy or not. But sometime tomorrow, I will have my friends prepare a stake with an altar on it," I announced before looking up while raising my hand to rub my chin.
"After all of this aggression once again directed at my friends and family…" I kept my chin raised for a second before removing my hand and looking down, giving the princess a fierce stare. "Call me vicious, call me silly, but after all the killing we had to do, it would really raise my spirits if you gave me a head on a silver platter."
"Huh?"
Faced with such an abrupt turn, the princess jumped a little. And quite notably, her eyes skirted over to the side, looking for confirmation in Madam\'s eyes.
"I will leave it to you to give the orders to those poor folks," I casually waved my hand in the direction of the nearby crowd as I turned around. "And in two days\' time, I expect to see a head for me to put on the stake and burn away."
As disrespectful as it could be, I didn\'t even bother to wait for the princess\'s response. Instead, I simply started to walk away, as if everything was already settled.
Which, of course, wasn\'t true.
Not for a human supreme. Not when all I shook by taking a step was a small dagger by my hip when her single step would shake half the overwhelming military power of the empire.
This couldn\'t be over for someone as used to be the one to decide the course of events as the Golden Princess.
"And what if I don\'t?" Falling right into how I both expected but also hoped her to react, Etaria called out.
Judging from Fay\'s twitch and Madam\'s steps slowing down a bit, she also took a step forward, making the two girls raise their guards a bit.
Quelling the terror of standing so defiantly in the face of a supreme, I turned my head over my shoulder and gave the princess the most amicable, sympathetic, and… pitying smile.
"Then, I will help you learn what happens and why I\'m so eager to give proper respect to the corpses. But that lesson..." my simile widened before I shook my head and looked back at the forest, already taking a step to leave.
"Are you ready to pay its price?"