Resignation and High Hopes

Renard catches up with the Iron King’s forces in the indicated town shortly after. After a night of drinks and revelry, he is permitted to join them again as they return to Sebilles.

Upon arrival in Sebilles, the Iron King talks privately with Sir Galfrey. Having ruminated upon his encounter with the Pilamines in the forest, he resigns that his place on the throne will turn every nation in the area hostile to Lacren. Though the Iron King has the capacity to rule Lacren by the same ethic that anyone else could, the moral code of this region demands the destruction of ghouls without compromise, especially ones favoured as patrons, gods, or kings. Precedent has told the horror of such circumstances — the corrupted ruler unfailingly becomes cruel and tyrannical, sadistically toying with the followers who depend on the ghouls’ supernatural powers for survival, or who were simply too weak to escape their reach and found no choice but to do their bidding.

These parodies of society were called hexant kingdoms. The instinct of anyone who came across them, before even needing to acknowledge this urge as ‘moral’ or ‘just’, was to overthrow the villainous ghoul, liberate the nation it tortured, and secure by even half-decent treatment the permanent loyalty of these new subjects. Lacren’s neighbours will view it the same way.

Though Sir Galfrey and his knights hold faith in the Iron King’s unique humanity, this faith will force them to compromise. Either they must defend the Iron King’s worth before foreign leaders and suspicious local nobles, defying their own moral code and so debasing themselves, or distance themselves from him to continue adhering to their noble title of ‘knight’.

The thought that his very presence will erode the nobility of his loyalists grates at the Iron King.

Further, attempting to alter this wideheld moral perception will only validate its point. He can conquer the neighbours to rewrite their ethos, but cannot prove himself human through his behaviour, as the moral behaviour demanded in this case is suicide. Else, ideally, he could simply rule Lacren fairly, without impinging on the territories of the neighbours, and earn enough favour that citizens would defend him of their own accord…

…But this too cannot be. He must inevitably involve himself with the Pilamines to maintain Lacren’s source of water.

Obviously, plundering Pilamine’s water reserves year after year is not a sustainable or attractive option. When he infiltrated the city’s gates, and demonstrated himself powerful enough to single-handedly raze the city, he did not secure the transaction of water by actually murdering everyone. He simply established the reality of his threat, then negotiated with the city’s leaders that he receive their reserve of water in exchange for the handful of seeds that had failed to grow water-plants in Lacren, but that likely would bloom in the more temperate Pilamine.

It was diplomacy — quite clever diplomacy, too, the kind a human King would make. These were the warfaring manoeuvres kingdoms all across the West took routinely.

Of course the Pilamines accepted. Now was to ensure they cultivated that crop and sent its annual yield to Lacren, to which the Iron King saw another clever solution. With the Pilamines’ guard force weakened after the Iron King’s offensive, and the need to restock their own water stores at priority one, those many large and powerful neighbours the Pilamines traded with would have good footing to swoop in and claim the city themselves.

Rather than allow that, the Pilamines would likely, begrudgingly, accept that Lacren install significant regiments of its own guard force in the city. The guards’ service would be the collateral given for the water, while the quiet threat of their presence ensured that water’s delivery. This would secure a bond of allyship — rather, of permitted occupation — while protecting Pilamine from an immediate threat of invasion by its powerful trade partners. Lacren, being comparatively weak, would be much easier to subvert or overthrow later. Given that Lacren did not mistreat the Pilamine civilians — and it would not, if only to ward the notice of those powerful partners — it worked in everyone’s interests for them to take it.

But what would the ultimate consequence of that be? How long could that arrangement last?

If there was any singular good thing the Iron King had done or could do, it was to secure the continued autonomy of Lacren and its people.

In a way, it feels he has achieved that to his utmost ability, and the positive offerings he has to the world are done. His parents still live in the tower. If he were to abdicate now, would they successfully navigate the board he has arranged to maintain Lacren above water? Is even asking that question presumptuous?

How he would love to push aside these doubts, and assert his devotion to good, morality, or humanity would forever steady him through the intrigues of politics. When he takes his knife to his throat, its blade fails to even nick his corrupted, adamantium skin.

This shall become a hexant kingdom, the Iron King confesses to Sir Galfrey. You must surrender me, and flee from this country, if you will not surrender your ethic.

The admission startles Sir Galfrey. Concerned, he questions that if the Iron King recognises himself incapable of humanity in the future, could he not simply abdicate the throne back to his parents and return to his cell?

The Iron King smiles ruefully.

To know there is still someone who would choose me, even when aware of my darkness, cloys this human heart with gratitude too great to ignore. Guilt shakes him as he continues. It seems I betray you in either case, Galfrey.

Fist gripped on the hilt of his sword in its sheath, Sir Galfrey soon turns away.

Outside the palace in Sebilles, the Iron King gives a victory speech to the gathered soldiers. Being a public event, it’s also his inauguration speech, where he announces the baseline principles that will guide him for the rest of his rule. The Iron King’s are quite simple. He wants Lacren to remain free, and for its citizens to always have water and day-to-day security. Though not a particularly ambitious platform, with the Iron King being a ghoul and that itself being a massive departure from convention, this level of conservatism is reassuring — provided that his acts prove him truthful.

In the crowd, Renard brims with awe. Though the scepticism of the townsfolk grates him, the combined force of the knights’ accreditations, the plundered water, and the Iron King’s passion works just enough to balm anyone from screaming or throwing rocks at him, the sentiment of proud victory from the knights radiating instead.

The speech ends and the Iron King retires into the palace to afterparty with the nobility. Renard scampers after the retinue of soldiers that join him, but the guards bar his entry to court. Renard, nervous, puffs out his chest and insists that he’s with the King. A guard leaves to confirm this claim, with the commotion also attracting the Iron King’s attention anyway.

The Iron King rejects Renard, speaking as though he has never seen him before, and harshly dismisses him from court as a peasant.

Renard flees from the palace to cry on its outer steps, hurt and utterly confused. Didn’t he and the Iron King have a thing? Didn’t the Iron King ask him to come? Didn’t the Iron King save his life? Then why on earth…

Through his tears, he peers around the square in front of him. Upon the sign of the Swordsman’s Guild, an organisation that trains lower-born civilians to handle weapons that they may become mercenaries or local guardsmen, is the same symbol on the Iron King’s forces’ tabards.

Renard then realises, embarrassed at how obvious it is, that duh! The Iron King couldn’t just give him status. At the very least to maintain appearances, Renard can’t cavort with the man without having done something to justify being there.

Feeling he has found the ‘something’ that will earn the Iron King’s approval, Renard picks himself up, and enters that hall marked with his symbol.