The Emperor recalls revolt and rebellion

When disciplining unruly vassals, most lords send armies. I only need to utter her name. There’s no faster way to dull a vassal’s ambition or any festive occasion than hearing ‘The approach of the Alexandra the second, the dragon reborn.’

House Akane of the Arcadia peninsula was an old and proud house that was slowly sinking back into the muck. Their mines had run dry. Without gold, they turned to a more common source of wealth. Daughters. Lady Ellyn Akane was betrothed to my uncle. But when he fell in battle, Lady Ellyn sought comfort in his twin brother’s bed, beating out the other woman he had promised to marry. Then the husband, who had shared his twin’s wife, shared his twin’s **** on a different battlefield.

Lady Ellyn flung herself at the new and married heir to the empire my father. But my father contempt with my mother scorched Lady Ellyn’s designs and Lady Ellyn soon found herself married off to Carlin Ironbalt, Lord of another failing house and a lesser branch of the Cobalt bloodline.

The Akanes and Ironbalts should have sunk into obscurity together, and they would have if not for my father’s ****. And I assumed the throne.

With my sister ranging a war of conquest and taking the imperial army with her, the nobles sort to test me, to see what power they could rip away from me. None pulled harder than the Akanes and Ironbalts. Though Lady Ellyn was no longer welcome at court her brothers weren’t refused a place, not even when they asked for extravagant loans. Thanks to our family’s gold, Lady Ellyn restored Ironbalt Hall to a splendour she hadn’t known since being cast out of our home.

When my treasurer broached the subject of repayment, the brothers only laughed. And soon enough, the lesser nobility was laughing along with them. Then my sister Alexandra returned from the last War of Fortian’s Subjugation a different person than she had left. And that’s when I had an idea. I showed her how the rest of the realm sniggered at the Drakenire name. Determined to restore our proper place, my sister demanded the immediate repayment of all debts to the Empire or a hostage from those who couldn’t pay.

Lady Ellyn merely laughed when she received the message. Carlin Ironbalt chose to ride to the imperial palace, sure that they could cow the new emperor in person into rescinding my sister’s commands. They could have, except it wasn’t I who met him at the gates but my sister, who had Lord Ironbalt thrown into a dungeon.

Lady Ellyn protested. The Akanes threatened war. And finally, I released Lord Ironbalt with an apology, no less. As if bathing myself in shame, I further forgave all the Ironbalt debts to our house. To celebrate the end of hostilities Lord Carlin feasted at the imperial palace, and the two of us proclaimed our friendship for eternity.

My sister allowed eternity to last a month. When she summoned the Akanes and Ironbalts to the imperial palace to answer for their crimes, they rose in revolt, exactly as she expected. Their defiance gave her the pretext to call her veterans tempered from over a decade of warfare and ride for Ironbalt Hall with an army behind her. She didn’t even bother to inform me. Just how I hoped she would react.

My sister’s army descended on the Ironbalts so quickly Lord Carlin had no time to gather his forces and rode against my sister with only his household knights. Soon his head, his sons’ heads and the heads of any man with Ironbalt blood adorned the spears of my sunny dragon’s vanguard as it marched to Ironbalt Hall. At their approach, Lady Ellyn Ironbalt closed the gates and sent messenger birds to her brothers at Arcadia. She assumed they’d have more than enough time to muster their armies and break what would be a long siege. My sister had trebuchets up in a day and brought down the keep within hours. Lady Ellyn and her son were crushed in its fall. When the Ironbalt forces surrendered, my sister put their castle to the torch.

Alister Akane arrived with his army just in time to see the flames consuming his sister’s home. He charged my sister’s camp, hoping surprise would win out over my sister’s great numbers. It didn’t. With half his men dead on the field and a gunshot in his back, Lord Alister fled back to Arcadia.

My sister’s host arrived at Arcadia three days later. Like the Imperial Palace, the seat of House Akane had begun as a mine. When the gold gave out, the mine shafts were widened into halls, galleries and bed-chambers deep beneath the earth. Alister didn’t have the men to defend the castle walls and retreated into their underground stronghold. From this relative safety, they offered terms to my sister to avoid a long siege.

My sister didn’t reply. Instead, she commanded that the mines be sealed with stone and soil until there was no way in and no way out. When that was completed, it took less than a day to dam the stream beside the castle and only two to divert it to the nearest mine entrance. The Akanes had taken more than three hundred men, women, and children into the mines. A few guards reported hearing faint screams and shouts below them one night. But come dawn, the earth was silent once again. And now everyone in the empire knew what person my sister had returned as and they should respect and fear her.