Chapter 34:
The ruins of the old factory were calling to her. Sitting at the window, staring out at the shadows of broken stone walls, her mind conjured specters. She saw the foreman, who'd burned alive inside. She saw the faces of the other children who'd worked there as slaves. The distant lords of the eastern empire hadn't been very concerned with what went on in the ruined lands to their west. The traders brought them cloth to be made into clothing. The traders brought them food to fill the tables of their citizens. In spite of or perhaps because of their powers to compel truth from others, the lords of the east rarely dug too deeply into what went on beyond their borders.
The Bandit Princess had risen to womanhood in a world of brutality where your life could be taken for looking at someone of a higher caste. She'd survived that world and even learned to thrive in it, meting out brutality of her own, aided by her now-dead half-brother. The two siblings had risen to power on their wits, killing any who got in their way. When the Thief King approached her to run operations on this side of the world, Peihong had joyously signed on for the chance to destroy the pretty little kingdom that had been the source of her childhood suffering.
After the madwoman met her end, the Bandit Princess had been somewhat at loose ends. She'd found herself with a stockpile of weapons, a pile of money, and no master to tell her what to do. She'd woken to a world that she'd never dreamed existed with power to do whatever she wished to do. Her adherents had counseled her to take power. Her brother counseled vengeance. Peihong had steered a course in the middle, stealing power where she could but with the steady goal of vengeance on the world that had thrived on her suffering.
The men who counseled for inaction had met their ends, one by one. Honestly, she hadn't even realized it herself. One by one, the men who'd wanted to take the power they had and carve a kingdom out of the wastes had gone into the fire to fuel her dreams of smashing pretty little Princess Sakura and her supposedly peaceful kingdom. Her brother's doing. Looking back, Peihong was certain her brother had removed anybody who exerted moderating influence on her. It was her brother that pushed her dreams of finding or building vengeance weapons, and it was her brother that introduced the ogress to Chelsea the Wax Hustler.
She'd been mourning her brother's death, and now she found herself cursing him. She'd always imagined him as angling to take her soul–offering her earthly power for the right to her soul when she eventually died. Never had she imagined that he was slowly coaxing her down the road to perdition–inciting her to ever more ugly acts and putting her on a collision-course with the people who could end her existence.
She was stuck on this road now.
Her forces were in disarray. The men who'd been menacing the Lizards had been scattered and the ruse revealed, and it appeared that Chelsea had raided the troops at the Wall, taking hundreds of them further south for her idiotic project. Her forces in the west were in disarray. Her project to build a weapon capable of smashing cities and holding the Empire of Ooo hostage had run aground. She had neither the weapon, nor the means to deliver it. She was in a jam. The only cards she had to play right now were her hostage and the King's emotions. That brought her right back to her unhappy vigil. She'd been sitting here in this office, unable to sleep, staring out the window at the old factory all night. She'd seemingly started life there. Her mind feared her life was coming to a swift, premature, and inevitable end. She needed a plan, but a rising sense of panic was interfering with her ability to craft one.
On the far side of the world, Orzsebet the Agent Princess stood before her master waiting on his attention. She'd gone right to work on the matter of the missing Queen Bee. Anxious to secure her position against her own hostile councilors, she'd thrown all her resources at the problem and come up with a lead not just to who might have taken the missing woman, but where she was physically located. Unfortunately, the King of Ooo hardly seemed interested in what she had to say, even though he'd been the one to summon her to give her the job. "Are you listening," the spymaster growled? The big man nodded. His face was focused on the machine in front of him. He was looking at a pack of kids, of all things. The rugrats were all snug in their beds with their nursemaid going from bed to bed, tucking them in. It made no sense to her that he was so invested in that when one of his vassals was missing.
Glancing up into her brown eyes, the big man said, "why should I trust this information?" Orzsebet stopped cold and stared at him. His blue eyes burned into hers. "Every lead you brought me in the east came with an ambush or trap," the big man rumbled. "Why should I trust this information? What makes you believe that there's something there worth risking lives on?" The spy opened her mouth and shut it again when no words would come. He could see the terror in her eyes. With scant trust for the Lady of Spies, he knew he had to control Orzsebet as closely as possible. In the east, the big man had come to realize just how much fear motivated her to obey. Nodding, the King of Ooo man said, "you will bring me some measure of proof, Princess Orzsebet. Before I risk lives, I require proof that your lead has value. You may go." Just like that. Defeated, Orzsebet got on her way, wondering/worrying about how she was going to find the proof he demanded before their prize got away.
Hundreds of miles to the north, the Warrior Princess stood staring out at the dirty, dangerous camp in the wilderness. Something was stirring. She'd seen signs of it for weeks now. Where they had been making progress, there was now obstinacy. Where people once greeted them with smiles and cheers, they now saw furtive stares and whispers. Where they'd seen cooperation, they now saw dangerous signs of looming conflict. Many of the men had gone missing from the camp and couldn't be found. Their families pretended that they had never been there. Scouts in the wilderness had seen hints that maybe some of the missing males were out there. They were planning something dangerous.
"Alright," yawned Fionna, "what was the reason for your summons?" Those words might have been from a colleague if Ingrid didn't recognize the voice as Fionna's. She'd heard her stepdaughter had spent most of the night tending her eldest. Mona had come down with a cough. The pretty blonde was standing behind her, just now, and Ingrid could see the younger woman in her mind's eye.
She'd be standing there with a baby on one or the other of her hips. She'd be dressed in what she called 'mom-pants'–ugly, baggy blue-jeans that did nothing to flatter her beautiful figure. Fionna seemed to be rising to the job of 'mother' better than Ingrid had been able to manage. Like her father. Ingrid had been having trouble with achieving that serenity. Maybe it was her other persona. Maybe it was her upbringing in a world devoted to bloodshed. There were days she didn't know what to do with a child. Worse, there were days she didn't know what to do with herself. "We're going to have to kill some people, Fionna," Ingrid murmured.
Fionna nodded to herself. Her stepmother spoke that way. It was what it was. Ingrid talked about death as the unpleasant and everyday occurrence that it was. She was coldly antiseptic about it, and Fionna had grown to understand that death was as much a business as running a restaurant. "Who and why," asked the Bad Bunny? "Many of the men have gone into the woods," Ingrid replied. Which Fionna had noticed herself. Striding up alongside the warrior woman, the pretty blonde said, "there are other measures we can take to address the imminent risk of violence than systematic brutality, mother." Ingrid glanced over at the younger woman as those long words sank in. It must have been a late night indeed to produce that stream of overly-intellectual invective.
"Fionna," howled Ingrid! "You can't do that!" The pretty blonde had her big right booby hanging out for all to see with Nadine's cute little pink face attached to it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Fionna yawned, "it's a natural process. I understood my father required you to nourish my younger brother this way." All the Royal Moms were supposed to be giving their Finn-Kids the 'good stuff' as her father put it. "Y-you put that away," howled the princess! "That's unseemly!" Thinking quickly, she whisked her cloak off and draped it over the young mommy's shoulders, 'hiding the evidence' as it were.
As Fionna and Ingrid Mertens had a deep, philosophical discussion about motherhood, in the Lizard Kingdom, a very bored Marysia Okonski stood staring down at her host from atop the wall. Cunty-cyborg and the Lizard-Bitch were both almost standing down in the water. The very idea made the young elemental shiver. They were discussing plans to put up buildings there. To Marysia, it was a horrifically bad idea, and she scarcely understood why anyone would want to bother. She hardly understood anything the flesh-creatures did, honestly, though their mistress's return had caused the servants to react in ways that Masia was all too familiar with.
The gossiping had started up almost as if by magic, but that was often what happened in a Royal household. She'd seen–and engaged–in a little of it herself. She'd gossiped about Olesia and her eating habits. She'd even once hung a pair of the older girl's panties on a flagpole outside of school to really get Olesia's goat. The boys had called Olesia 'fat-ass' for two weeks after that. Unfortunately, the topic of conversation here in this Glob-forsaken place was Marysia. She'd been tempted to burn a couple of the more obnoxious servants to a crisp.
They talked about her clothes. They talked about her body. They talked about her... defeat at the hands of those fucking flesh-creatures in the woods. That last really stung, but what stung the most was the incessant talk about the Fire Drop. She'd caught that bitch of a Princess sneering about it, and the servants had taken up the same pattern of insult, snickering about the stupid girl who wore an ugly red rock everywhere she went. She was tired of being in this place, was Marysia Okonski, and she wanted to get out, out, out of this miserable land and get home where it was warm, and there was good food to eat.
Late that day, the King of Ooo found himself alone in the fortified hostel that Orzsebet's people had taken over. The big man sat going through text messages from Hurletta and worrying. The plump princess had nothing at all to say about what they'd done or any possible consequences. Indeed, it seemed almost as if she were devoted to behaving as if the whole business had never happened. It was odd to the point of being eerie, and it had the big man wanting to pick up the phone to call her. A piece of him wanted to call and talk and apologize, even if it had been 'Letta jumping him.
He'd worn a track in that thinking, bouncing between worries about his friend, worries about his own efforts to cling to some semblance of morality, and worries about Breezy. Now, as he found himself getting up to pace some more, his phone began to ring. "Go," Finn announced, as he flicked his phone on. A cold voice on the other end of the line declared, "the Lady of Spies is walking into a trap. Diego's Saw Mill is set to become her grave." The caller hung up just like that, leaving Finn no time to ask any questions at all. Not that he needed to. Rising, the King strode for the door, gathering on his coat as he did. He hadn't seen Orzsebet in hours. Now he knew why.
He'd sent the wench out to prove there was something to her lead. He'd wanted her to dig up evidence that Breezy was actually in Diego's Mill. He hadn't wanted her going to the mill itself. They'd played that game too many times in the east and come up short each time, coming close to getting butchered a time or two. Now it appeared that the Agent Princess had disobeyed him and gone out to prove her organization's words the hard way. He was going to wring her neck if she weren't already dead.
Hundreds of miles to the north, a brute of a man strode to the center of a small clearing under the watchful eyes of his lieutenants. Their hidden masters had been demanding action for days. The shrillness of those messages and the conflicting demands they carried both worried him and told him that matters were drawing to a close. He'd been ordered to send five-hundred men south to the mountains. Among the cliffs and high-mountain passes, his masters had found a way to get over the deadly fence that had kept their army of the damned from entering the civilized kingdoms. He'd sent the precious men he had to spare, two-hundred total.
Now, he was in the ugly position of carrying the business forward when he was down over two thousand men from the start. It helped not at all that morale was in the toilet, with none of the men anxious to fight the entrenched army on the other side of the field. Many men had seen the light when the elemental and the Ice Prince slaughtered their friends and neighbors. Those men's families had been abandoned in the wilds to starve to death or fend for themselves, however they managed to do it. In the rush back north and west, thousands had lost their lives, and the only way he'd held them all together was through the distribution of his carefully hoarded supplies of food and vital medicines.
Things had changed when they reached this place. The pressure had evaporated on his men. They'd had more food than they'd seen in more than a year. They'd seen medicines provided for their sick families and injured loved ones. Far from slaughtering them, the soldiers had been kind and generous in taking care of them. The King's daughter, Princess Fionna, had been in and out of the camp, seeming almost tireless in her efforts to see every person in a shelter against the brutal cold. How did you make the argument that they should attack the princess and her army when the pretty blonde had done so much for these men?
The Bandit Princess's warlord was in a bit of a bind, and he was rather nervous as he began to make his pitch to his officers. These were his most loyal men. Some of them had partaken of humanoid flesh in the east in Lizard Kingdom. They'd hitched their stars to his predecessor, sacrificing their souls just to put food on their family's tables. They'd all done evil things, and that was his one hope here. The young princess's evil stepmother had made it clear that she was hunting the men who'd eaten humanoid flesh. She was searching for the men who'd committed atrocities. Those men were going to be put to death. The King of Ooo had decreed it.
But some of these men might have taken their chances.
He'd heard the rumblings. Men talked when they thought their master wouldn't hear it. Several had suggested they just hunker down, come up with a story, and stick with it. If they all rehearsed the story–if they put the blame on those who'd died in the east–they'd escape punishment for their crimes. They'd go on living and maybe resettle in the Civilized Kingdoms. They'd get to put all of this behind them. The sentiment had been gaining ground these last few days as the Bandit Princess made increasingly shrill demands. He'd sent the weakest men out of the camp already, putting them among the two-hundred he'd sent to the mountains and making their families somebody else's problem.
Now, he was at the crux. He had to convince the rest to move tomorrow. The garrison had been shrinking. His scouts and spies had been counting camp fires, and the garrison was clearly shrinking. The remainder of the force guarding the hole in the Wall were more focused on feeding the hungry and tending the sick than anything else. If they could strike them hard and fast, they could be through the opening and inside the Civilized Kingdoms before the King could send troops to stop them. There were farms and towns and cities waiting in the heartland, ripe for plunder. He just had to convince them to move.
"Hi," announced a female voice, as the thug began to speak. The battle-scarred bandit spun around to find a woman there. The pale princess was there, and, absurdly, she had a baby hanging from her left tit as if it were an appendage. "You guys are the problem," Fionna announced, as she stepped into the light of the fire. "My daddy wants to get those peeps into some kind of shelter and maybe build 'em a town, but you guys are causing trouble..." The warlord's blood chilled at those words. How did she know who they were?
With a yawn, the plush blonde announced, "been followin' you guys for days..." Uneasy faces flicked to their leader. He'd made them move out into the forest. He'd drawn attention to them. "I know who your families are," she said. It was almost as if she knew what they were thinking. Daddy says you have to die for eatin' peeps," announced the King's daughter, her dainty nose wrinkling in disgust. "I'm'a take care of your families," she declared. "I just need you not to resist, ok?" "Just like that," growled the warlord? Fionna nodded. "There's been too many folks getting killed," she insisted. "Daddy let's me have some money for stuff... I can take care of the kids and their moms... Nobody else needs to be hurt."
She was suggesting that they just lay down to be killed. More to the point, she knew their faces. Nobody here had his face covered. Even if she hadn't known who was who before, she knew now. Their hopes of hiding out evaporated, and it was clear to all of them that there wasn't any way they would get out from under their death sentences now.
The first man shot to his feet, but a jagged spear of grey crystal erupted from the ground, skewering him through his gizzard as he lunged forward. A gasp of pain left his lips, and then he began to scream. That woke the rest. As one, the pack of them leapt to their feet and rushed forward towards the pretty blonde. Fionna yawned, as a jagged glass lance pierced a second man and then a third. As the first of them reached her, she did a neat pirouette, causing Nadine to giggle, even as she tore the man's throat out with her diamond-hard nails. A spinning roundhouse kick did for a second, the hard crystalline structure of her bones smashing his ribs, as he went sprawling.
"Surrender," announced the Angel of Death, as she fell on the pack from behind, slashing and chopping with the demonic blade in her hands! "Surrender and face just punishment!" For Fionna, it was just like old times, as she rushed in to help her stepmom. The leader took a swing at Fi with a massive war-axe. Twisting out of the way, Fionna drove her hand up through his middle, shredding his guts. Ingrid chopped down the man at her back, removing both arms at the elbow as he would have swung at her stepdaughter, then taking his head off with the back-stroke.
Six men turned to run. A lattice of crystal shot up from the ground, blocking their way. As they turned to run again, crystal spears lanced up at them, taking down two of them. The other four ran into the forest, but they barely reached the edge of Fionna's keen eyesight. Sharpened glass shards cut their feet, slowing them down long enough for her to finish them off. Meanwhile, she and Ingrid danced with the last eight.
The Glass Witch seemed to be the threat, and six men went for Fionna, little realizing how dangerous the other woman was. Pressing her free hand into the chest of the man on her left, Ingrid caused his neck to shatter just as it would have when he dropped through the trap on the hanging-scaffold. Parrying the second man's stroke, she tapped him on the shoulder, causing his throat to crush inward–botched hanging, a bad way to go. As he dropped to his knees, his face already changing colors, the curvy princess strode past him. Fionna was in the middle of finishing off the last two of her opponents. As glass spears skewered the pair, Ingrid came face to face with a shock. "Fionna," she howled?! "You can't bring a baby to a battle!"
Hundreds of miles to the south, the Lady of Spies glared at her incompetent burglar. Inigo wasn't her first choice. He'd been sent down to lesser postings repeatedly for being a fuckup. Unfortunately, the ugly war going on within the heart of the FIRM had limited her ability to call the shots. She was on probation. There were men who wanted her dead, and she'd ducked that fate by the scantiest of margins. They feared the King of Ooo. They feared what he might do to them should they harm their 'leader'. At the same time, they weren't exactly hungry to put themselves out in support of his goals.
"Get out of the way," snarled the Agent Princess. She came close to knifing the fool. Stepping into his place, she deftly tripped the tiny pins inside the lock. The door popped open with a minute click. Well made, she thought. The lock was very well made–the kind of thing you used to safeguard things you cared for. This looked like it might be the place. Easing the door open, the thin woman crept inside with her fellows at her back. She was tempted and tempted again to call the outside man to get an idea for just what he was seeing. The King had been right. They'd sprung a lot of ambushes the hard way in the east, and she feared the reasons for that.
The quartet of spies crept down a set of narrow stairs in the chill darkness, as Orzsebet pondered her future. The sawmill was a maze, and it had taken a lot of work and back-tracking already to get to this point. She'd been unable to get much in the way of plans on the place. Her local agents had nothing to give her. At least that was what they said.
The FIRM's entrenched elite had a number of ways to get rid of problems. She was beginning to see the failures in the east as evidence that her fellows were fighting back against a man who seemed to care nothing at all for their wishes. She'd given up the FIRM's assets for free! That alone was reason for sanctions. After her release, her fellows had begun politely hinting that she find a way to make this whole business pay, and Orzsebet had been wracking her brain to come up with some way to broach the topic with the King before she found herself back in hock with the Committee. She'd been failing by degrees, and she feared half of it was the lack of progress on any of the tasks he'd set before her.
Woolgathering, the thin woman blundered into the back of the point man, who turned and promptly cussed her. The Agent Princess very nearly knifed him. Nobody talked to her that way! It was as the drag man was shushing the pair of them–and Orzsebet's hand was snaking down the back of her thigh towards the knife she kept there–that they heard the strange metallic clanging. The quartet immediately stopped where they were. Those sounds were ominous. As the Lady of Spies was reaching for the radio in her pocket, the point man shouted, "water!" Indeed a massive wave was coming at them from their right. Orzsebet flicked on her flashlight and spun towards the door they'd come through, just in time to see the door shut.
Finn the King skidded to a stop on the rocky bluff above the San Marco river. Just as he'd feared, the abandoned saw mill was in full cry. The massive dam behind the mill had been opened, and water was pouring through the facility's massive waterworks. There was water there to power a thousand giant saws and more than enough to drown one fool woman. A part of him screamed. She was already dead. The dam was open, and there were a hundred ways for a body to be bashed to pieces inside the waterworks before even getting to the whole drowning thing. "Rescue the Princess," he muttered. "One last time, Finn."
Blipping down the bluff, he came upon the first chunks of debris floating down the river. It was little bits of flotsam–the kind of shit that got jammed up in the works over time and then came blasting free when a big rush of water hit it. "No Agent-Bitch," he muttered, as he blipped up the river. Under a cloudless, moonlit night sky, he could see quite a bit. Bits of barrels. Splinters of scrap wood. His eyes scanned back and forth, ceaselessly. His mind screamed. She was dead. She was already dead. She had to be.
As he was pondering who he would even tell about her fate, he spotted the limp form, floating face down in the tumult on the far side of the river. He'd have to move fast. Blipping down the river to the low bridge there, he quickly blipped himself across to the other side. She was coming downstream fast. This was taking a lot out of him. He'd been laying off using the curse because of the toll it took. One last burst, he told himself. Timing his jump, the big man blipped himself to a rocky outcropping that jutted out into the river, arriving just as Orzsebet swept past.
The King jerked the skinny girl out of the water and up onto the bank. He could immediately see that she was in distress–breathing her last. She was almost like a rag-doll in his hands–completely limp and still, her body icy cold. Cold is good, man, he reminded himself. The cold would keep her alive a little longer. Drew had told him that when he'd accidentally drowned in an icy pond. He'd awoken in the Candy Clinic with an angry Doctor Princess standing over him. Those were the days. Drew had been one of many girls to turn him down back then, and now he knew why.
In the now, the tall man lay the Lady of Spies out on the bank and began chest compressions, forcing the water out of her lungs. Stopping occasionally, the King of Ooo leaned down and pressed his lips to Orzsebet's cold ones, forcing good air into her lungs before repeating the cycle. It was coldly methodical, just like Drew had always been when he came in with a boo-boo from his reckless lifestyle. He owed his wife a lot of apologies for the things he'd put her through. He found himself reflecting on that as, coughing and sputtering, the thin woman opened her eyes at last. The Lady of Spies woke, not in hell, as she'd expected when she was washed into the race for the sawmill's water-wheels, but in the icy cold by the San Marco with the King leaning over her.
Took a minute to get this one done. The walls are closing in on the Bandit Princess. The army of the starving is out of action, and she's running out of options.
And Fionna is definitely weirding the Warrior Princess out with the whole baby thing.