Royal Assassin: Book Five of The Empress Saga

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Ban left his so-called meeting with the empress feeling as if he'd be within his rights to lob her into a ditch. A sewer ditch.

He understood an empress didn't have to explain her every move and motivation to her first knight. However, he would've appreciated it very much if she could at least try. He'd asked her point-blank what she was up to, and the only response he received was a cold reminder than he had plenty work of his own to do without trying to meddle with hers.

It hurt to be pushed away like that. Ban couldn't deny it. The Enfri he thought he knew was hiding herself in favor of this imperial mask. The more Ban saw that mask, the more he wanted to snatch it from her and smash it against a rock. As much as it hurt him to see it, he knew it hurt her more to wear it.

In the end, Ban felt powerless. An entire legion and twenty-five knighthoods at his command, he felt utterly helpless. He couldn't save Enfri. Not this time. All he could do was be there for her, for when the time came she needed her Ruby Knight once again. Ban would stay close to her side, do what she asked him to do, fight who she asked him to fight, because he knew his nitwit sister of the heart was still in there somewhere.

And he would never leave her to face the darkness of this world alone.

In the meantime, Ban had more than his share of nonsense to see to. Joining the Jade Empire's campaign against Althandor was difficult for more than just personal reasons. It was a logistical nightmare, made more so by the number of Dragon Lords decreasing by one.

To that end, Ban believed it necessary to check in on the other twenty-two. The Lady of Opals wasn't about to abandon herself, Ban hoped, and he could speak with authority as to what the Lord of Rubies planned to do. He needed to look in on if any other Dragon Lords were at risk at following the Lady of Diamonds into exile, and that's what brought him to the monstrosity he found himself in.

Ban didn't much know what to make of a place like this. The Emeralds got up to the sort of things he usually considered the product of the wishful thinking of printsheet serial authors with overactive imaginations. On the one hand, Ban would prefer the Emerald Knights would use their allotment from the treasury towards something practical. On the other, if they managed to get even a fraction of the gizmos around here working, Shan Alee could begin to approach Althandor or Irdruin as a technological power on the Continent.

It was where the most brilliant minds and most talented hands of the new empire gathered. Plans were made for this to become Shan Alee's industrial center, the heart of science and progress for the western Five Kingdoms.

They called it the Forge.

It was a massive warehouse with every amenity an artificer could ask for. Located in the midst of New Sandharbor's industrial complex, the expansive building housed an impressive foundry filled to the brim with huge smelters. It was blisteringly hot inside, hot and muggy from the constant hiss of steam engines, and there seemed to be an ever-lasting red glow in the air from rivers of molten metal flowing across apparatuses like aqueducts. The metal then poured into casts to be worked by an army of craftsmen.

Beyond the foundry, the product of the metalworkers filtered in to the artificers. The discordant ring of hammers echoed, a constant din as the Emerald Knights pursued their technological art. Sparks fell from men and women working on the higher two stories on catwalks as they still worked to complete the Forge. Only halfway finished, and it still produced almost the entirety of Shan Alee's metalworks.

The high-vaulted ceiling was a spiderweb of walkways and scaffolding, craftsmen milling about sets of dragon battle-regalia suspended high above the floor. The Emeralds had taken the production of dragon armor to a science and were now able to produce a functional set of regalia for a dragon within three days of taking measurements. If Ban didn't miss his guess, the enormous set intended for a larger and older dragon was the one destined for Mevek the Guardian now that she'd received her Peridot.