The door before him swung open on smooth hinges and Mellen Minoc entered the private office. The room was small, but such were the constraints of a city as populous as Caso built squished into an island a fraction of the size. There were no wide avenues, nor were there grand open plazas. The only exception to both of these facts was the opulent garden square atop the high plateau between the Royal Palace and the Great Library that Mellen had passed on his way inside. The city was notably old and was rife with myths and legends. Some believed the city of Turtle was named for the sea that shared its name. Others claimed the city was built on the back of an ancient spirit that took the shape of a turtle.

Mellen entered and the librarian who had led him closed the door behind him. The small room was filled beyond its capacity with all manners of books and trinkets and contraptions. They crowded the shelves and desk. Books and papers were stacked high into the bay window that looked out over the city below. The scene through the window was as beautiful as a painting. The rooftops of the houses and buildings below were a confusion of ochre coloured roof tiles. Further below, the water sparkled in the afternoon light and the dark hulls and bright sails of the ships below dotted the marine blue canvas of the sea.

The old man, who had his face pressed into a diagram of some kind, lifted his nose from the page and gave a warm smile. “You must be Mellen Minoc” the older man said. He rocked to his feet with a youthfulness that was unexpected. “Please, take a seat,” he said, lifting the stack of books that had been piled atop the guests’ chair and placing the stack carefully on the floor. A book on top of the pile slipped on the floor, but the man made no effort to restack it. There were many such objects left in this state.

“Grandmaster Redd?” Mellen asked cautiously. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from the head librarian in the oldest library in the known world, but the energetic old man before him simultaneously matched precisely and yet also contrasted heavily against his expectations. Mellen took a seat and the chair was far too small for his large frame. It squeezed uncomfortably at his thighs.

“You may call me Redd” the older man said. “No need for haughty titles here or we’ll spend all day in compliments and honorifics and never get to real words.”

Mellen smiled. He liked that. “It is a pleasure to meet you finally” Mellen said. “We’ve exchanged many letters over the years, but I never expected to actually meet you in person.”

“Nor did I” Redd said. His smile vanished. “I’ve heard all of the things that have happened in Casoya and I must admit, it had caused quite as stir here in Turtle. This city is a fortress, but even we fear how bold the Careyago have become.”

“This was not the work of the Careyago alone, I’m afraid” Mellen said. He explained how Patzau Yohati had manipulated the course of events that had led to his consolidation of power. How the old Casoyan Patzau had convinced his own people to perpetrate the acts that had culminated in his rise to power. The old librarian listened attentively through the whole retelling. How the council was turned against itself. How additional powers were granted in the turmoil. How Mellen was framed as a traitor, and then saved from execution. How he had been put on a ship with only his family and their most important belongings and sailed away. First to Onera, then Towiin and Mina’abik, and finally north to Turtle.

When Mellen finished, Redd lifted his gaze and sighed. “You’ve played the game and lost” was all he said. “Tea?” the older man asked. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled a kettle from somewhere behind the desk and poured a cup for each of them.

“Yohati outsmarted me” Mellen confessed. “I figured out far too late he was the enemy that had been harrying me. And then, even after I discovered his treachery, I underestimated his intentions. I thought his greed was for a throne, a pretty crowd of his own and a kingdom under his rule. But his vision was far grander and far more sinister than I imagined. He never wanted to be king. He wanted his grandchild to be Emperor.”

“You may not know this,” Redd said softly, “but I met Burrenal Yohati when we were both far younger men. He wasn’t yet Patzau on the council, and I wasn’t yet Grandmaster of the Library. We were both younger, but rather ambitious men and Yohati had travelled to Turtle with his father to learn how the library organized our centuries of information and other administrative details. Most often, I find the administrative types to be rather stiff. But Yohati always stood out as a cunning person. Thinking back, I believe now that he understood even from a young age just how much power administrators can wield. But, to manipulate conflict and bloodshed to seize additional power. And to sell his city and his people for a bloodline… it is a grave betrayal.” Redd admitted. “I must admit, I would have underestimated him too.”

“As I have” Minoc agreed. His smile faded to a grim line. “I thought about…” Minoc started hesitantly. His resolve faded and he took a deep breath, hoping the man across from him would understand what he was about to share. Mellen tried again. “After we left Caso, I was angry. I had been framed for a crime I hadn’t committed and the people who knew me best, my colleagues, had condemned me to die a traitor. It still pains me to think about which ones were part of the full conspiracy, and which ones believed the lie they had been fed.”

“Does it matter?” Redd asked, his question genuine.

“I suppose not” Mellen answered after a moment. The break in the retelling had resettled his nerves, as had the tea. “By the time my family and I reached Onera, I was filled with rage. I had considered a thousand different ways of retaliating. I had pictured a hundred ways in which an assassin might appear to snuff the life of the man who had tried to take mine from me. I wrote him a letter and had it sent to Caso to make him fearful. To make him fear me and the retribution I promised. I wanted that fear to eat away at him. But then, I figured out Yohati’s real plan. The plan to wed his daughter to the emperor’s son. I realized how wrong I had been, and the perfect plan for revenge came to me like a spark of evil inspiration.”

“And what was that?” Redd asked. He held to judgement in his stern gaze.

“The best way to hurt him would be to assassinate Yohati’s daughter. To do it right in front of him and his future son. It would be poetic. I imagined the moment over and over again—his victory snatched away from his treacherous hands at the very last and most devastating of moments. All his dreams ended in a single heartbreaking moment.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Grandmaster Redd shifted awkwardly in the chair across from him. He was seeing a glimpse into Minoc’s mind. A glimpse few would ever see. “So why didn’t you?” he asked. His tone had lost the whimsical energy it had carried through the beginning of the conversation. This time, his question was serious and filled with probing curiosity. “You had the chance. You had the connections. Why let him have his victory?”

Mellen cast an accusatory glance at Redd. He wondered whether the old man had let slip that bit of secret knowledge on purpose or not. He decided Redd had deliberately revealed how much he knew. Mellen looked down at his palms in contemplation. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it,” he whispered. “I wanted to so badly” he added, and the truth of those words stung. “But the girl is innocent; simply a pawn. Complicit maybe, but to condemn her to die for idle vengeance? No. I realized that to stoop to such an act of evil, would be a monstrous deed.” He paused, trying not to choke on the lump in his throat. “I have my own daughter, Glory. To perform such an act of evil would be to welcome the same evil against my own family. I couldn’t fathom cursing her or my wife to a fate where they must fear assassination at all times. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t do it.”

Redd stirred in his chair and took a sip from his tea. “What you say is wise, perhaps” the librarian said after quiet contemplation. “But it is also weak. By allowing Yohati this victory and in letting him solidify this alliance, you have only sealed your fate. I believe you smart enough and clever enough to be a worthy adversary to Yohati, but I would not make the same declaration now that he is supported so strongly by the Careyago and their emperor.”

Mellen’s smile returned, though it held no mirth. “This is where you and I disagree” he said, leaning back in the small chair. “I have learned from my enemy how best to defeat him, and that is by leaving him unsuspecting. Yohati will expect assassins, and so I will send them. But in failing to kill me, he has made the gravest mistake of his life. As you say, he believes he has won, and I intend for him to live comfortably in that illusion until his defeat has been long assured. He must only register my revenge after it is far, far to late to stop it.”

Author’s Note:

Thank you for reading Prince of no Kingdom. I appreciate each and every person that made it to the end and am grateful that you enjoyed or trusted the work enough to see it through to the end.

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