Part 3, Chapter 26

We have a plan. It’s not a very good plan, but it is a plan.

Ch 26

Jiangou adjusted his helmet and fiddled with his fake hand. 

“Stop it,” Renping hissed, “You’re ruining the image. You’re supposed to be the Emperor, remember.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Your entire costume is just a seeming and what you usually wear.”

Renping looked a little smug, but Jiangou tried not to hold it against her. “When are we supposed to come into conflict with the Merfolk reinforcements?”

“Two days. You fell asleep at the briefing again, didn’t you?”

Jiangou knew she couldn’t see his expression under the helmet, but he felt guilty anyway and shifted uneasily. She started to smack him, but the winged tiger he was using as a mount grumbled and she drew back.

“I’ll get even later,” she warned him, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ll sit next to you at tonight’s briefing and make sure you stay awake.”

It was his turn to grumble. “I’m still not sure my grandfather will fall for this,” he said after the silence had stretched for an uncomfortably long time. “He must know my brother is in the city by now.”

“This was your plan. We have to draw him out somehow, and we can’t let him get new troops to fortify the city. He’s already made it plain that he is willing to use the lives of the people as bargaining chips, do you really want him to have enough troops to slaughter the population of the capital to make way for his own folk.”

Jiangou looked away, but didn’t answer. The silence stretched between them again and Jiangou once more attempted to breach it. “But luring him out was as far as I got. What strategy do we have to stop them? They already have twice the men we do and we’ll be stuck between them and the troops from the palace if things go right, and I do use the term right in the loosest sense.”

“We’ll have to hope your brother comes up with something.”

“In two days?”

“We’ll have to hope your brother comes up with something fast.”

Jiangou let the silence win this time.