Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 978: A new player(2)

Tiberius stood as a ghost at his own feast, surrounded by the blind and the treacherous. They puffed their chests and brayed with laughter at the "curiosities" Julian had painstakingly sourced for the evening’s entertainment.

As with any imperial celebration, there were the requisite musicians and mummers, but the jesters were ignored in favor of the freakshow. Anything that marked a soul as different was treated as a reason for scorn and laughter.

People pointed and howled at the man whose skin was a thicket of hair from brow to heel, leaving only his eyes and mouth visible. They gawked at the dwarf who used a towering man as a living ladder, performing a handstand atop the giant’s head with surprisingly nimble hands..

Tiberius, the new "Imperator" of the East, felt his stoic mask slip. His jaw tightened as he watched a drunken nobleman stagger forward to lift the skirt of a woman with three legs, his curious eyes wanting to see if there was something more down there that came in more than once.

The cruelty of the well-born was a bottomless pit.

His staring, dark and judgmental, did not go unnoticed.

"Do you like th—"

"No," he interrupted, the word dropping like a stone. He turned to look at his new wife.

A month had passed since the night they first met. Tiberius wished he could say they had warmed to one another in the mandatory hours Julian forced them to share. But that would be a lie. At most, they shared the mutual, silent recognition of two tools being ground against the same whetstone. There was no warmth in a forge.

"I find them endearing," she said, her gaze drifting back to the crowd of onlookers.

"What you find ’endearing’ is the very thing that made them targets as children," Tiberius countered, his voice a low rasp. "They were called monsters before they could even speak. Does the knowledge of their suffering abate your amusement in any way?"

Had Julian heard him speak with such moral weight, the man would have beaten the lesson out of him.He needed after all to have her favor,at the moment he didn’t care about it, perhapse it was the wine.

"Not really," she replied, her voice as smooth as polished glass. "This is how they earn their daily bread, isn’t it? If they managed to land a commission at an imperial wedding, I should think their fate is better than most. They are fed, clothed, and seen. That is more than the beggars in the gutters can claim.You know the one with the normal height, the normal amount of legs and arms, they may be normal but they are probably starving" She ran a slender finger along the rim of her silver cup, observing him with the same eyes that had watched the life leave her late husband’s body.

A sudden tremor climbed Tiberius’ spine. The image of Mavius’ corpse flashed unbidden in his mind. The thought that he was expected to share a bed with the woman who had helped orchestrate that end made the wine in his stomach turn to lead.

"I do not have the knowledge to offer a notion on the quality of their lives," he said, turning away.

"Do you have a stick up your arse? Or is that just your natural posture?" She had grown a much meaner tongue since Julian had chained them together.

"Had it been up to some people, I would be."

"I never did ask," she continued, ignoring his barb. "What was it like? Living at court as a bastard? Was it lonely? Were you ostracized? Bullied?"

He gave no outward sign of the hit, though his left eyelid flinched. He felt the phantom sting of a thousand small slights from his youth.

"Why? Aren’t the freaks enough to satisfy your appetite for the unusual tonight?" he asked.

"There is only so much of them one can take before they become a bore,they all have their story present in their face" she sighed, leaning closer. "It is much more entertaining to read you, page by page. Does your sympathy for them come from a shared childhood? Were you picked on by your brothers? Did the Empress do mean things to you when the Emperor wasn’t looking?"

Do you know your child was boiled into soup and eaten by your husband?

It would break her. So he forced the words down.There was no taking back once that was said.

What she was doing was merely teasing, a cruel sport to pass the time. To answer her with the truth of her child’s fate would not be justice, just cruelty.

"I was a ghost in my father’s house," Tiberius finally said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "And as any ghost can tell you, the living only notice you when they want to be frightened. I suggest you go back to watching the mummers. They, at least, are paid to be your playthings."

"You are so endearing, you know?" she whispered, the sweetness of her voice fake as her eyes as she clasped on his cheek.

"It doesn’t seem so," Tiberius replied, his voice a flat drone. "You have a queer way of showing affection."

"Oh, but I do enjoy our conversations," she said, leaning closer until the scent of her heavy, floral perfume clouded his senses. "I could count the number of meaningful words I exchanged with your brother on a single hand. And truly, the longest conversation we ever had was his last." She offered a thin, sharp smile at the memory before emptying her cup with one practiced, wide swing.

She wiped a stray drop of wine from her lip and pinned him with a look. "So, just to please me a little more... answer the question. Do you see yourself in them? In the hair-covered man or the dwarf? Would you be more at ease there, on the stage, being laughed at instead of being the one pretending to lead the laughter?"

Tiberius turned his head away, showing her only the hard line of his profile, his jaw locked tight enough to crack bone.

"What?" she prodded, her voice a silk needle. "Is the truth too stinging to put into words?"

"I am not drunk enough for this," he said, the words vibrating with a repressed feeling "Bring it up again in an hour. Perhaps then I’ll have the stupor required to indulge you some more" He drained his own cup in a single, desperate gulp, the wine burning a path down his throat.

Eloir let out a soft, melodic chuckle and turned her attention back to the freak show with the casual interest of a child watching a beetle struggle on its back. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

They stood there for some more, Tiberius never thinking solitude could be so blissful.

But as so as it was often, the feeling did not last long.

Tiberius felt the weight of a stare pressing on him and a cold pit forming in his stomach. He sensed a shift in the air before he saw the source.

Julian was approaching.

"My dear Eloir," he sang out, his voice draped in false warmth as he reached the royal couple. "You look absolutely radiant tonight. The crown of the East suits your complexion better than the mourning veil ever did."

Eloir offered a curt nod. She didn’t smile at him.

Julian’s gaze then pivoted, snapping onto Tiberius with the speed of a trap. He stepped into the young man’s personal space, his hand resting with terrifying familiarity on Tiberius’ shoulder. He leaned in, his breath smelling of cloves and expensive tobacco.

"You’re doing well, boy," Julian whispered, the words intended only for Tiberius’ ear.

"What are you talking about?" Tiberius hissed back, his skin crawling.

Julian merely arched a brow, casting a side-glance at Eloir.

She was watching Tiberius with the fixed, dilated pupils of a cat.

"I have no patience for your riddles, Julian," Tiberius pressed, his voice strained. "I still believe this is a catastrophic mistake. The lords are banding together against us even as we speak; their messengers are flying between estates like crows. Why are we wasting our strength on this farce of a marriage instead of calling our banners?"

Julian let out a weary sigh, the sound of a parent enduring a petulant child. "The marriage was announced long ago. To delay or falter now would signal a fracture in our resolve. Our allies need the theater of stability, Tiberius. Besides," he added, his voice dropping to a low, rhythmic hum, "I have told you more than once to trust me. Haven’t I already proven my words?"

Beside him, the old man remained a haunting presence.

He stared with a terrifying, unblinking focus, as if he could see past Tiberius’ flesh and bone to the rot of the bastard’s doubt beneath. Tiberius hated that gaze; it felt like a cold needle stitching into his soul.

"At least you could have ordered the nobles to raise their levies," Tiberius muttered, trying to look anywhere but at the old man.

"No need to ruin the festivity with the smell of iron and fear," Julian replied airily.

"But—"

"I said so.Than it must be..."

The shift was instantaneous. Julian’s hand clamped down on Tiberius’ shoulder with the strength of a vice. His solitary eye flared with a sudden, freezing authority that brooked no further dissent. The weight of that grip reminded him of something very well: the crown on Tiberius’ head was held there only by the grace of the man currently bruising his collarbone.

As soon as he saw the boy’s spirit yield, Julian’s face transformed. The hardness vanished, replaced by a radiant, paternal smile. He tapped Tiberius’ shoulder twice, the playful pat a master gives a well-behaved hound.

"It is your wedding night," Julian said, his voice brimming with a hollow warmth. "Relax yourself, for once. I will take care of the world; you simply take care of your bride and make her night unforgettable." He lowered his voice onto the young man’s ears with a cheeky smile ’’They like being licked down there, I trust that a man who swam in shit won’t mind seeing some sweet nectar come from a forbidden fruit. "

He gave one final, firm pat. "Enjoy the wine while it still tastes sweet. We have a mountain of work ahead of us, and I’ll admit, our position is... precarious. But I have led us through darker woods than these. Give it time, and you shall sleep in the bed of your father in the capital. We shall stitch the Empire back together, piece by bloody piece.

You and me."